Which patch defines "Vanilla" or "Classic" for you?

[Ranganathan]

I'm honestly curious. Everyone who's even vaguely into the idea of a pure, old school, vanilla, or classic server seems overjoyed at the idea. And that's great, good for you guys. I'm really not one, but that doesn't matter. Something's come up time and again in these discussions though: which patch to base the new classic servers on?

TBC with draenai, blood elves, and Outland locked doesn't seem to be a good option as it's too far advanced.

The original retail release without any patches doesn't seem to be a good option either as it's not advanced enough.

I think this will be the sticking point that fucks up classic servers for people. So which one of the 38 1.x patches is the right one for vanilla? Pick the wrong one and a big chunk of fans will be pissed. It seems to be one of those can't win situations.

But for you, which patch defines classic vanilla wow?

[Echocho]

1.5, before Blizzard decided that warriors didn't have to pay a hybrid tax and started buffing their damage.

[Charge me Doctor]

1.7-1.9 for me, ZG release, dragons of nightmare, arathi basin, AQ. All the good stuff

[Aphrel]

All pathces are vanilla, its simply a preference of where one whould like the servers to start at.
No 1 patch defines vanilla. Its a progression, you whouldnt wanna start at the end, not whould you say any one part of it defines the entire thing.

If i were to pick a patch id prefer starting at id probobly say the one where AV/wsg were added (1.5? not sure what number it had). It has pretty much stuff to do without yet having introduced any of the more gamebreaking buffs to pve progression (like t0.5 and zul gurub crafting sets etc. Dont rly recall wich patch added a bunch of spellpower/healing on the lvl 60 dungeon gear, think it was the zg patch)

[Zka]

All patches are vanilla but discussion is quite pointless. They won't release bugged crap, they will make something based on the last patch before the BC prepatch, add new shit like bnet integration and call it Wow Classic 1.0.

[Deleted]

We still don't even know exactly what "classic" means for Blizzard. Maybe they plan something similar to the progression server for EverQuest, where they open a new server with the first iteration of the game and later add all the following expansions.

[Ranganathan]

All pathces are vanilla, its simply a preference of where one whould like the servers to start at.
No 1 patch defines vanilla. Its a progression, you whouldnt wanna start at the end, not whould you say any one part of it defines the entire thing.

If i were to pick a patch id prefer starting at id probobly say the one where AV/wsg were added (1.5? not sure what number it had). It has pretty much stuff to do without yet having introduced any of the more gamebreaking buffs to pve progression (like t0.5 and zul gurub crafting sets etc. Dont rly recall wich patch added a bunch of spellpower/healing on the lvl 60 dungeon gear, think it was the zg patch)

That's interesting. So you're saying you want them to progress classic servers through the patch iterations rather than release a finished and stable classic server. How fast would that progress move? Would servers be reset and start over? Seems like it would be making something that's already complex and adding unnecessary complexity.

[Lolsteak]

1.12 the final patch of Vanilla, When it was as complete as it was ever going to be.

[sam86]

for me or what it should ? for me prior to naxx patch, since i stopped game (due to mostly guild drama) almost as soon it was out and didn't return until tbc
what it should be is obviously 1.12, when the 'exp' cycle is full

[Vaelorian]

All patches are vanilla but discussion is quite pointless. They won't release bugged crap, they will make something based on the last patch before the BC prepatch, add new shit like bnet integration and call it Wow Classic 1.0.

This but it would be the best (imo) if they released raids/dungeons in the same way as original

[Dundebuns]

Probably the pre Nax one. I wasn't the biggest fan of Naxx in vanilla (have to have 4 priests hit capped, siphoning off tank gear to DPS tanks for horsemen, having to farm 50+ shadow resistance potions etc) and I really enjoyed running smaller raids in AQ20 and ZG. Naxx gear also blew PvP into a worse situation when you had Naxx geared mages PoM pyroing people into oblivion etc.

[Mormolyce]

3.3.0, absolute classic.

[Deleted]

I just hope they bring a lot of QoL changes to the game. Thinking about classic's history there's no way I'll enjoy it as much as I did when I was a teen. If not, have fun wasting your time again.

[Deleted]

IMO what defines vanilla is not one patch or another. Its the world, the 60 lvl to grind and the end game after that. You could not skip 2 raid tiers and jump in Naxx a few hours after reaching lvl60 . Now the game works with catchup mechanics, 10 fast lvl to rush and gear falling from the sky. Probably why I dont have any problem with QoL changes. Vanilla with a few QoL is not going to turn classic into legion.

[Dastreus]

Naxx release.

[Soon-TM]

1.5, before Blizzard decided that warriors didn't have to pay a hybrid tax and started buffing their damage.

+1, add dragons of nightmare and I'm sold.

[Storfan]

For PvP: 1.9 or 1.10
For PvE: 1.12.1

[Aphrel]

That's interesting. So you're saying you want them to progress classic servers through the patch iterations rather than release a finished and stable classic server. How fast would that progress move? Would servers be reset and start over? Seems like it would be making something that's already complex and adding unnecessary complexity.

It wont happen ofc. The best we can hope for is to get the last patch of vanilla, and having them unlocking the raids over a period of say 6months or so.
To compensate for the quicker pace of raid releases they could increase the amount of loot dropping or something.

I really hope they simply wont just release everything at the beginning. If they do that ppl will start farming the materials for the naxxpatch catchupgear you could aquire in lights hope at lvl 40. So much content will be redundant from launch if they do that.

[Kaeth]

Somewhere between 1.8 and 1.12. Around the time my raid group let me occasionally take a break from being an Innervate and Rank-4-Healing-Touch bot.

[vsb]

1. There should be all vanilla content, Naxx, etc.
2. There should be vanilla feeling to class design. Tanks must be warriors, Healers must be priests, etc. No balancing nonsense, please.
3. There should be a proper progression path through every dungeon and raid, not just jumping to last raid. No catch-up nonsense, please.

So I don't think that it should be any particular patch without any changes. It should be last patch in terms of content. It should be something around last patch, preferaby without balancing nonsense in terms of class changes. There should be some stuff removed, so it won't serve as catch-up mechanics (there was such stuff in later vanilla patches, when some gear from dungeons rendered early raids obsolete).