Features and QoL changes NOT in Classic

[TheTaurenOrc]

I want to put together a comprehensive list of all the Features and Quality of Life changes that WoW has seen over the last 13 years, that technically a pure Classic (Vanilla) server would not have.

Personally I am on the side of keeping Classic as authentic a possible, but there are a few things I was reminded of that I took for granted!

No Barborshop
No Name / Race / Faction Change
No Mini-map Tracking
No Deathknights / Monks / DemonHunters
No Draeni / Bloodelfs / Worgen / Goblins / Pandas
No LFD
No LFR
No raid-wide Paladin buffs
No raid-wide Warlock stuff
No contemporary addons
No Instance Maps (good luck running BRD/BRS)
No Realm linked AH (Faction based)
No Instance Summoning Stones
No AoE Looting
No Instance Re-spawn
No Guild Banks
No Regent Bank
No Flying Mounts
No Pet / Toy / Mount collections
No Transmogrification
No Void Storage
No Mage Tables
No Feasts
No Bloodlust / Heroisum
1 hour Hearthstones
Buff Regents
15 min Raid Buffs
Mana Per 5 Seconds Regen
Raid Instance Locks
Meeting Stone Queuing
Weapon Skill
Smaller Item Stacks (20)

I will continue to add to the list as people post more.

[Queendom]

Depends on how deep you want to dive in that "pure vanilla experience":
* no raid-wide Palading buffs
* no raid-wide Warlock stuff
* no contemporary addons
* no maps (good luck running BRD/BRS)
* no cross realm BG
* useless specs/classes/talents
* no linked AH
* garbage zones
* no battlemasters (to queue for BG)
* no meeting stones

[Deleted]

15 min Raid Buffs

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the class buffs were 30min and had book upgrades to buff all party members with 60min version. It had reagent cost tho.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Depends on how deep you want to dive in that "pure vanilla experience":

* no battlemasters (to queue for BG)

I was looking into Battlemasters as I wasn't sure, turns out they were added in 1.6

Thank you!

[Daggot Ur]

No Name / Race / Server / Faction Change
No cross realm BG
No linked AH
No meeting stones
Race Bound Mounts
15 min Raid Buff
.

There was a limited
Server change
Cross realm BGs were added later into Vanilla
AHs were linked later in vanilla
Meeting stones were there they just worked differently
You could get other races mounts frkm your aside for tons off gold and exalted rep
30 min intel, stam, spir, GOTW buffs

[kathvely]

No AOE looting. You had to click on every guy.
Mob targeting was based on first hit and then grey to all
5 man and raid trash mobs respawn after 2 Hrs. Even in 5 mans this would sometimes cause a problem due to long run backs.
No quest map help
No guild banks
Making flasks required a 5 man clear or BWL raid clear
No repair bots
No ilvl (thank god)

[Dimzum]

Regular mount was not until 40
Epic mount was at 60
Mount skill was cheap, the mounts themselves cost all the money.
Fewer flight points (enjoy that long trek in STV)
Fewer graveyards
No respawn points in instances
Weapon skill leveling boys

[Wildberry]

Are we not counting Classic patch content as Classic now?

[Enthusiastic Steward]

Regular mount was not until 40
Epic mount was at 60
Mount skill was cheap, the mounts themselves cost all the money.
Fewer flight points (enjoy that long trek in STV)
Fewer graveyards
No respawn points in instances
Weapon skill leveling boys

I have a masochistic nostalgia for leveling my poisons though.

[Corroc]

no aoe looting
no auto looting

[Alienshroom]

You can get another races mount you just have to get exalted with that race. Which is actually pretty cool. A human on a tiger is exalted with Darnassus.

[MMKing]

AH were linked later in classic

Battlegrounds were linked to other servers later in classic, in 1.12 though, so it had little effect on the classic pvp system.

Certain buffs were raid wide, paladin auras, hunter auras, warrior shouts and warlock imp buff were not. Mage buff, priest and druid buffs were cast on whole groups at a time at the cost of a reagent, while certain buffs such as amplify magic (mage) and thorns (druid), were cast on individuals. Paladin blessings were either cast on individuals lasting 5 minutes, or cast on all the members of a class lasting 15 minutes.

Mob targeting was also based on damage. Damage over time abilities tagging was not introduced until WOTLK, prior to which it only tagged when it first ticked.

Repair bots were very much present later on in WOW, though i am not sure which patch. They were introduced prior to patch 2.0.

Race mounts were obtainable through being exalted with other factions. Which was typically achieved by trading in rune cloth, though the Ahn'Qiraji event rewarded tokens which could be traded for faction reputation.

Humans were the preferred race for allot of people, sometimes in spite of the fact that they were not always the best. This is due to the +10% reputation gain, which would save you hours of farming if you were to gather rep with several factions, or it would save you a couple weeks with some raid reputation factions.

While there were some utterly useless speccs, most had some niche to them. People often say that 2/3 of speccs were useless or close to, while in reality. Mages, hunters, warlocks, rogues and warriors raid with 2 or more distinct speccs depending on progression and play style. Mage an example to vanilla spell resistance mechanic due to Molten core being filled with bosses practically immune to fire, you would have to cast frost spells. But while you did cast frost spells, you went 31 points into arcane, then rest into frost. Except for one mage that went a bit deeper into the frost tree to apply a debuff which increased frost spell critical chance (15%) vs the target. That mage would ideally gear a little differently, so that they would be more likely to survive the encounter and provide the debuff on the boss for the encounter.

Keeping the above in mind. Feral druid, balance druid, protection paladin, retribution paladin and elemental shaman were utterly useless. Enhancement shaman were a little less useless, a single discipline priest provided spirit buff to the raid and if you brought allot of warlocks you could also bring a single shadow priest to apply a debuff on the boss which boosted shadow damage taken. Feral druid was mainly useless due to sub-par damage, not terrible damage, but also because they required the use of a debuff slot which was limited to 16 at the time. They also used largely the same items as the rogues, except they had a little more to gain from strength, so there exist the odd leather piece better for druid than for rogue. Tank feral druid was also useless.

[Super Kami Dende]

QoL changes not in Classic?

Primary Stats changing on Gear between specs.
Items with shitty itemisation (Agi, Spirit Mail gear)

[Nheme]

The stuff that really ruined the community the most was flyingmounts, LFD and cross-realm.

[schwarzkopf]

Mage Food and Water ... OMG. No tables.

[Shadocat]

Much smaller bags, no reagents bank, no void-storage, no transmog, much smaller stacks if stackiing at all.
No pet-"tab", let alone account-wide pets.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Thanks everyone for their contributions.

I am trying to vet them all and to clarify the list will include features added during Vanilla. For example PvP had a lot of changes going from instance portals and realm bound to having battlemasters and cross realms called battlegroups.

[Crixes1]

You couldn't have hit it more on the head, transfers were also another thing. It allowed servers to die. People complain about no flying. People don't come together anymore as a community when they can just push a button and be teleported to a dungeon now, cross-realm was just a mess and a headache.

[innerpartycolt]

ores were stacked at 10 and bars were stacked at 20
track mining or track herbs. one at a time. there was a macro for 'dual tracking', but sometimes you'd get banned for that.
enchanters needed rods. that was expensive af
enchanters conjured oils which were mandatory for raiding guilds
you really needed that first aid
really low drop on quest items
no quest helper, no atlas, no idea where to go next and what to do. no hints on the map under a zone name.
sometimes you would go back to the zone you were done with just to get a 'referral quest'. otherwise some quest hubs were empty.
no tracking for something unrelated to professions or npc types. you couldn't track low-level quests or quest givers.
hunters feeding their pets, otherwise pets were gone
want to level a hunter's pet? it will feel like leveling a second character. also only 3 slots at stables
no means to change weaponsmith<>armorsmith, you stuck with your choice forever. unless you're into leveling blacksmithing.
never have enough bag space to farm all you need – you had to go past nodes thinking 'If only I had more space...'. is was really a problem, you had to face it every day.
quests for warlock demons and mounts. not everyone had infernal/doomguard, some even didn't bother to get a suc/fh
overall, class-specific quests were primarily nothing but a torment from a thought "other classes don't have to deal with this shit". I mean the quests without rewards from which you couldn't really represent your class properly.
autoattack if OOM. or use potions. until OOM.
itemization so poor paladins had to fight with cloth classes for a piece of gear. a common problem for hybrids.
not everyone had mount at level 40. most people got them past 50, because you never had enough money.
group-wide buffs were added around AQ I guess. they required reagents.
not just buffs, bot regular spells required books to learn the last rank –*rejuvenation, healing touch, renew, multi-shot. it's the ones I can remember.
I remember dudes farming BWL while wearing the cloth robe from a lich in RFD. because nothing else was better or T1 didn't drop.
damn...

[Maudib]

It all sounds amazing to me. All the things you DID in WoW were quality of life'd right out of the game... leaving only pew-pew and loot. Both of which are meaningless without the meaning given it through preparation.

Playing vanilla/BC now and loving it all... are somethings a little tedious? Yes. But well worth it. The game is FUN again. Classic is going to breathe life back into a game that has been so dumbed and watered down.