20 reasons why Vanilla was better

[pateuvasiliu]

At no point in WoW were dungeons more relevant than they are right now, current endgame PvE doesn't suck, leveling in Vanilla wasn't fun or exciting- stop lying to yourself.

Levelling in Vanilla was my favorite part of Vanilla AND WoW-- ever.

I'd set up a group, add the players after we were done and then 5 levels later we'd team up together again. It was like we grew together and went from killing the Druids in Wailing Caverns to Emperor Thaurissan himself.

Never had a more RPG-ish MMO experience.

[Lochton]

20) Night was dark and atmospheric - This was a missed thing, though the flasks does ad to current but would be nice with a cycle.

19) no flying mounts - This is more your opinion alone, nothing more. I love flight myself.

18) no twitter/facebook integration - Don't want it, don't use it. That is so simple. This has never affected or shown itself within the game with more than a little toy.

17) leveling - Yes, and no. It was lovely and challenging but I have my doubts people nowadays wants to go from 1 to 110(120) at that speed.

16) blizzard did not appeal to the lowest common denominator like they do now, people argue about removing factions and having the game auto-play for them while they do the dishes - Eh, they still don't on the low. They've lowered the bar because their fanbase isn't that many of the core. They have to do changes to pull in fresh players.

15) game was socialy encouraging - Can still be, unless you play like a hermit.

14) no ashran, Blizz wanted new AV and failed - This I agree with but even the old AV could be bothersome.

13) No inflated gold, go to AH today and everyone has 30k gold and no one is using crafting - Eeeh, people are still using crafting though but it is centered around the raiders more. Back then gold might be harder but was sadly also a little easier to come by if you break a few rules (And no, not done so myself).

12) no pay to win features, you can buy gold today and level capped characters - You don't have P2W features yet. You could buy gold in classic too, just more unsafe and at the cost of another player's account or botting.

11) dungeons were more relevant - Relevant to leveling, yes they were. Now a days they are more made to be relevant to the zone and storyline, as leveling is too fast at times. That is to be fixed with scaling.

10) no heirloom,everyone has heirloom today, if you don't have heirloom, you get kicked out of the dungeon, no cc, no nothing just faceroll with heirloom - I have yet to experience, or see one experience being kicked for no heirlooms. The rest I agree with.

9) low level experience and progression, - Wasn't much progression at low level, and the experience was more that you were part of a thriving zone of new players anyways.

8) crafting, today professions are not relevant at all - They are still relevant but only a select few of them. The new system was meant to help but only did a little. They should put more work into it having gear that could compete with intro raiding.

7) pvp, today ratings are deflated - PvP back then was unstable at my experience. Was fun but ran out of air over time. Should bring negative honor back again.

6) no mission table and garrison which transformed the game into singleplayer - I like the mission table, and the followers. The garrison too, really but I never chose to lock myself inside like other players. How do you think it would go if we had player housing? The same way. .

5) endgame pve which does not suck, - Eeehh.. One of the personal opinions, I liked and did raid the 40mans back then but was a shit ton of work to be sure you had AT LEAST 32 of them geared enough for the specific raids.

4) you are a one of many players in an mmo, and not a king or hero of your own garrison where you don't interact with anyone - First, lack of interaction is a human error, the player, not the game. You can still go meet, talk, do things together. Though, from an RPG perspective, I do wish we weren't on the high seats. Miss when we were just the adventurers, heroes of the factions or soldiers.

3) abilities, today everything is squished - True, but back then it felt bloated with the rankings - one of the things I don't miss.

2) no cross realm zones, CRZ makes everyone hate each other - How does CRZ make everyone hate each other? If that does, wouldn't merging the servers fully do the same? The playerbase is deflating and something had to be done to avoid you being alone in the zone all the time.

1) Game is no longer about the overall experience with the end package. - That is where it hopped off the rail but feels like they are trying to move back on them.

The journey to level cap was important, - Yes, for else there was nothing else, really. You only had your journey .
the journey of finding friends, - Still a journey, some just don't make it anymore.
the journey of building social packs, - Still a journey, some just don't make it anymore. It was already shown in classic.
the working together, - Still a thing, just about wanting to do so.
exploring zones. - Still a thing, just about wanting to do so, there is new zones every expansion.

Ugh, can't believe I am doing this. I am not disagreeing with you, OP but there are some things on the list that needs a few notes.

[salate]

Why people always bring up the twitter integration?
I still dont know how to use that and never tried...

[Schweddy]

18) no twitter/facebook integration

If your gonna whine for the sake of whinening dont forget that vanilla didn't have Allied Races

[Blamblam41]

20 subjective reasons to leave a game 13 years old in the past.

- - - Updated - - -

Levelling in Vanilla was my favorite part of Vanilla AND WoW-- ever.

I'd set up a group, add the players after we were done and then 5 levels later we'd team up together again. It was like we grew together and went from killing the Druids in Wailing Caverns to Emperor Thaurissan himself.

Never had a more RPG-ish MMO experience.

It's almost as if the people made the experience, not the game.

[Devilyaki]

Well you will have classic to play on so there you go

[pateuvasiliu]

20 subjective reasons to leave a game 13 years old in the past.

- - - Updated - - -



It's almost as if the people made the experience, not the game.

But when you put in server transfers and LFG your reputation and social skills mean less.

[Deleted]

It's almost as if the people made the experience, not the game.

Correct, it's the game that makes the experience, and today WoW gives no experience compared to Vanilla.

[Blamblam41]

Correct, it's the game that makes the experience, and today WoW gives no experience compared to Vanilla.

You can do literally everything you can do in Vanilla in current WoW with even greater social interaction (I can finally play with friends on other servers).
This is a stupid argument.

But when you put in server transfers and LFG your reputation and social skills mean less.

Social skills mean less for the parts of the game you don't need social skills for? Sorry if you thought needing 4 other people to do something out in the world met your socialization quotas for the day, but everyone knows the only thing you needed social skills for was for dungeon and raid coordination. And reputation? You're going to talk to me about reputation on the fucking internet, where anonymity is literally the only reason you and I say the things we do?

Spare me the semantics if you were actually looking to debate.

[TaurenNinja]

Why people always bring up the twitter integration?
I still dont know how to use that and never tried...

It's in the options, default disabled, completely optional, and you weren't even told in-game that it exists. So this was done right with such a feature. They bring it up because they think it undermines their point better, which it doesn't of course.

The reality is that very very few things were actually "better" in Vanilla (and those things are even somewhat debatable), most things were definitely worse but one generally doesn't remember much bad stuff when thinking about the past because one was still new to the game. There was so much magic and excitement when everything was new, that obviously gets lost over time because a lot of things become routine.
The main point that almost every classic lover makes is that the levelling phase and in general the "non-endgame" was more satisfying in Vanilla. Which I agree with, because the levelling phase is factually broken since like the 2nd or 3rd expansion onward.
And the other big point that almost every classic lover makes is that dungeon finder is bad for the social interactions with players. Which I also agree with, however here it's not as easy as to dismiss the value that it has. Pretty much every MMORPG has implemented this sort of thing because most players want faster access to dungeons and they don't want to search 2 hours for a Sunken Temple group which on top of that is also likely terrible. The long wait time for groups makes your standards for the other players extremely low, you're happy about anyone that wants to join and then you play that dungeon in a very slow and inefficient way, so that it might even be challenging for that particular group when in reality the difficulty of the dungeon is very easy. It's great for casuals though because they are always able to find groups, which is more difficult nowadays with all the veterans only wanting other veterans in their groups and even kickvoting newbies just because they're slow.

These are the only things that could maybe see some improvements/changes in the current game.

Apart from that, pretty much everything was worse back then (it was fine in 2005, but not anymore in 2017+) - especially crucial things like class/spec balance (and not just balance, also having meaningful and varied rotations etc.) or boss tuning in general. The fact that a lot of vanilla lovers don't care much about that (if at all) very much indicates that they are much more on the casual side of playing, and thus simply want a more satisfying casual content (levelling phase, normal dungeons, easy introductory raids). Which I agree is a (relatively minor but still existing) issue in the current game. The levelling phase today is a) completely broken and b) way too easy even for casuals. Which means that for a casual, Vanilla might in some cases be a better game experience up to a certain point.

But I have the assumption that someone will now quote me and go like "are you crazy, vanilla was way more hardcore in all regards, raids are so easy now, there are welfare epics, yaddayadda". Which would basically just prove my point: these people are casuals with very little clue of the current game. The dungeon system since M+ has *never* been more hardcore as it is right now, and raid bosses also were never harder as they are right now (in Mythic of course). So don't even bother trying to tell us that vanilla was generally more hardcore, it's just a subjective thing because people sucked back then because everyone was still new, so it seemed hard, but wouldn't be hard anymore today. The only thing that was more """hardcore""" back then was the difficulty of the levelling phase (which is still overall fairly low to begin with because it's non-endgame), and that you had to farm more stuff but I generally dislike to attribute difficulty to things that are just more time-consuming but anyone can do it.
That's it. The rest of the vanilla game was appropriately tuned for the players *back then* which is why it was cool *back then*, but it would NOT be appropriately tuned for the *current* time. Any decent M guild would obliterate every single content within vanilla in record time if it still were exactly like it was back then. Which is why I hope that for Classic WoW, the endgame will be buffed / more difficult (and more balanced) than the snore-fest that it would be otherwise for more hardcore players.

The Classic WoW project is sadly poised to be mostly a failure because of completely different expectations of what to start out with (which patches, bugfixes, balancing to include) and what to continue with (when to introduce new contents/expansions, if at all). There will be flat-out war in the forums about these things. There will never be a consensus of course, so Blizzard will just decide on whatever, which will then be attacked like mad from the others who wanted it slightly different.
But still, it's cool that they are trying to recreate it, because it could be a fun side activity, to get that nostalgic feeling for a while. In general though, at the endgame level, the current game will always be vastly superior. It should just receive several fixes and buffs for the non-endgame content.

[Deleted]

You can do literally everything you can do in Vanilla in current WoW

If you played Vanilla or took some time to make research about Vanilla you wouldn't write this nonsense.

[Deleted]

If you played Vanilla or took some time to make research about Vanilla you wouldn't write this nonsense.

says someone that never saw anything besides his holy grail of gaming

[deadhorse12]

Look, the main reason everyone thinks vanilla was so much beter is because it was new and EVERYONE was playing it.
All your IRL friends/school/work whatever.
Not because of the features it had or fixes they made.
It was an awesome social experience and that's what everyone wants back.
Not only that, but servers were an actual small community, players new other players on their realm because of accomplishments and what not.

But jump to 10 years later and mostly everyone has moved on.
You still got a couple of friends trying out every expansion, but they quickly stop after a couple of months cause of reasons.
The servers are a mess, it's filled with random people from other realms so nobody gives a fuck.

Have you actually tried playing on vanilla realms?
It's fun for an hour and then all the outdated stuff starts to become annoying, because we're used to certain QoL standards.
Also it's not like people who quit 6 years ago will suddenly come back, you'll probably just be playing with the same people who are playing now, and they'll probably go back to the live version quickly.

[Deleted]

But jump to 10 years later and mostly everyone has moved on.

Because BLizzard destroyed the game

[Romanthony]

These points are pretty stupid if you ask me

20) In some areas, like Duskwood yes
19) Yet people cry and QQ about them every time Blizzard mentions removing them for 3 patches
18) Your not forced to use it, so i dont see why this is even a "Issue"?
17) Yes and no, It was always amazing to see a level 60 as a rare amazing sight! But also leveling was horrible, quests all over the place and to far between
16)Wut?
15) Alright yea it was alot more social ill agree
14) So you focus on a WOD feature?
13) Thats what happens as time goes on back then having 100 gold was an amazing feat.
12) This THIS I REALLY HATE the feature for wow tokens and level cap does NOT MAKE IT PAY TO WIN does getting a wow token give you mythic gear? NO does getting a level boost, give you the best pvp gear around NO, its not pay to win stop with this nonsense
11)Not really only high end dugeons was for Resistance gear for raids but not really Relevant
10)Never been kicked from a instance for having no hierlooms so i guess you was unlucky?
9) Low level wasnt really all that engaging if i remember right
8) Crafting like dungeons only Relevent near the end.
7) Yea ill agree here, pvp was better
6)Again your focusing on a outdated WOD feature,
5) Endgame doesnt suck right now?
4)You really miss Wod huh?
3)Yes because pressing 1 none was riveting
2) Yea ill agree here, I remember being a Kill on Sight for Alliance because i was one of the top hunters pvp
1) Disagree here, Wod and legion learned that you need a good story to get to max level not just Xp packets

[Polybius]

The game has always been socially encouraging. The tools we have now are the same tools we used before (want proof? see addons), only we don't have to incessantly spam and wait for a group. They add flexibility to list what we're looking for.

As for server merging and cross realm? Good luck finding a group today in more than half of the servers. Decline in social encounters wasn't a result from antisocial behavior, it was a result from low play time and subs. Low player count was a problem before server merges, thanks to half-assed expansions nobody asked for. Communities still exist (Don't believe me? Look at Discord groups and Battle net lists).

[Aliven]

Because BLizzard destroyed the game

Nope. 10/char

[Deleted]

Decline in social interaction wasn't a result from antisocial behavior, it was a result from low play time and subs. Low player count was a problem before server merges.

becuase blizzard destroyed wow by casualising it, so people left

[pateuvasiliu]

You can do literally everything you can do in Vanilla in current WoW with even greater social interaction (I can finally play with friends on other servers).
This is a stupid argument.



Social skills mean less for the parts of the game you don't need social skills for? Sorry if you thought needing 4 other people to do something out in the world met your socialization quotas for the day, but everyone knows the only thing you needed social skills for was for dungeon and raid coordination. And reputation? You're going to talk to me about reputation on the fucking internet, where anonymity is literally the only reason you and I say the things we do?

Spare me the semantics if you were actually looking to debate.

Sounds like you never played Vanilla.

Your reputation meant a lot. If you're blacklisted everywhere you won't find a guild. Which in turn keeps players in check so they don't ninja or act like cunts.

[Halwyn]

Oh, look, this guy with his nonsense he tries to masquarade as a neat attept of trolling... Again.
And I actually thought evolution works it's magic on the likes of such as well, silly me.