Reminders of what vanilla was like

[Uurdz]

The one thing vanilla had over any other version of the game was the progression. No multiple difficulties, it was a straight road all the way from lvl1 to Naxxramas. Gear progression was much better partly because of this, every upgrade felt great since you had to spend a lot of time getting them, you knew where your pieces dropped and what your chances were.

There's something fulfilling about knowing what you want, where to get it and chasing after it until you do. In a wayvanilla gearing was a lot like mount farming is today.

There is something in the lack of catch up mechanics too that made it feel worthwhile grinding it out. If im bored of a tier and sub-heroic i can just wait until the next tier and be no worse off.

[garicasha]

Yah and that's a thing that I don't really consider better or worse, just different.

It certainly makes logistics easier for guilds as they don't have to arrange runs of content they're already sick of.

But it does diminish the accomplishment of getting there.

[Jackrabb1t]

Well, brother (OP), I'm convinced. Thank you for the long and thorough post. I was in Vanilla for the first go-round, and was on the fence about whether I'd play Classic when it came out (mostly due to the appeal of anything-goes in PvP and the lack of the modern dual cancers of Monks and DHs). But I just can't bring myself to hate myself that much. There's just not enough time in this life to go through all this again.

I leveled an Alli rogue to 60 and it was fun. I remember how exciting it was to be scared in STV just while leveling ... from mobs! (I was on a PvE server .. major noob.) Raided (seemingly forever) in MC and part of BWL. And 13 years later, I still have PTSD from MC and the repetition and rote boredom of doing the same thing weekly for gear.

But that wasn't enough self-punishment, and Alli queues on my realm were very long due to faction imbalance. So I rolled a Horde hunter, leveled up, had a blast playing thru Barrens and seeing a whole other part of the world/game. And because I knew I just couldn't raid, and gear was sparse, and I liked pvp, and was a MASOCHIST ... I went for Rank 14 / High Warlord. For the HWL gun and title. Yeah. (Though the occasional 4-6 hour AVs *WERE* a lot of fun.) And during the later ranks, as AQ came out, and the Earthstrike trinket became available - and I decided I REALLY needed it - I farmed that via the Silithus repeatable quests. While pushing for R14. For weeks. A horrible, interminable grind I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

It would be cool to try AQ & Naxx in the original version simply because I never did. But that would necessitate farming MC first, and I would rather eat glass.

To those who never played, and others who just miss it a lot - I sincerely wish you all the best in the world (of Wacraft) and hope you have a blast.

[digichi]

I think the biggest error in Vanilla was not properly informing the players during the process if picking a character what each spec really "meant" at end game. If you read the different spec description all you got was "formidable hand to hand combatant", "excells at empowering allies", "powerfull spell caster", etc; when in thruth some of those specs where really "pvp only spec", "just for leveling spec", "real end game viable spec" and/or "you-are-only-hear-to-press-a-button-when-we-tell-you-to spec".

I think this wont be an issue for classic though. People will be going into vanilla with a wealth of information thats far greater than it was back in vanilla.

Yea that is true... There is a certain disconnect between the char creation screen and the social community of the game, who has figured out what is best and where.

But in my experience, Vanilla was all so new, and i was ultra-casual/extreme MMO noob. My bro would figure out rotations and explain me how to play, and i asked him how he knew and he'd say his friend told him.. So i never questioned about forums or theorycrafters figuring that stuff out, or that something was more OP than something else. Also if i would ever pvp, the shitty net/lag coupled with the other MMO noobs meant i thought the game was perfectly balanced and just down to skill and gear ^^ (i always saw it that in PvP, the first person to strike would win (especially if your class couldn't heal.) So rogues were annoying with stealth and stuns by default, but i never considered mages OP for instance.

(My biggest noob fault was not knowing raiding existed past molten core. I saw ppl with raid gear but for some reason i never questioned it- probs because i spent most of vanilla levelling and exploring, and then like 4 months of end game PvPing before TBC launched. Didn't even know about the forums... I knew it existed in some form but wasn't bothered enough to access it, cause i thought the point of the game was PvPing lol. It was only in TBC/wrath that i felt dumb for not trying it out while it was current.)

[Buskb]

alot of what you say here is actualy wrong in a minor or major way but thats not the point.
Thing is i want to play the game i played back in the day, the very same one because its history.
almost all old games can be played by instaling some old CD or what ever.
with wow not so much, you got the expansions and the patches and that is good for progressing a game and keeping it interesting, but what you dont get to do is pop in
that old CD and install and enjoy the older game.
World of warcraft is a pice of gamer history and i want that pice of history not some new age digital remaster/remake new release updated this and that..
i want and i hope many other want the same and that is a re relase with no changes

[Afrospinach]

Think the spammy'ness is more how the playstyle of Legion feels like an Hack'n'Slash ARPG ala Diablo compared to Vanilla.

That is precisely it. "Spamming" shadowbolt until CoE wears of means pushing one button every 2.5 seconds, for rogues it was once every 2 seconds on average because of energy, may have even been 4, two ticks for a SS. Nowdays it is GCD lock every class or bust. Replace auto attack with a button you must mash at every opportunity. I think this is what a lot of people take issue with.

[Buskb]

there is alot of catch ip mechanics in vanilla like Dire maul was introdused to give more pre raid bis gear, ZG and aq20 where added as a catch up. some of the gear from zg with blue quality where somethimes bethere than MC epics. so dont say that vanilla didnt have catch ups and they added the dungen armor set witch at even later stages could be upgraded with quets to some dank items. vanilla invented catch up mechanics.

[JSA2422]

I remember as a lower level always seeing the Argent Dawn buff (the one you get when you start plaguelands via trinket) on higher levels and trying to theorycraft what it was. Was it some sort of elite club? Is it guild related? etc

[Trunks2017]

Spend 5 days on un goro crater's line quest hmmmmmm....? Getting raped by dinosaurs/NPCs being killed by the opossite faction and lvl 60 fukers camping you :P.

I actually miss those days. Now I jsut afk in dungeons and Im lvl 60 in no time.

[Gaidax]

Back in ma days wisp spirit was the best racial...

[garicasha]

Very technically ZG and AQ20 were catch-up mechanics, but it's not like you did 3-4 ZG runs and then hopped in to AQ40 or Naxx, so I'm just gonna leave the OP as is because it'll be less confusing for players that didn't play vanilla.

[Fmr]

Soloing as a rogue was such a pain in the ass looking back. You jogged my memory of the bandage thing. Note we didn't have cloak so ANY DoT effect would interrupt your bandage and you'd sit there and either wait to die or wait another minute for the first aid debuff to wear off and try again.

I hated DoTs so damn much...

Then there was the two extra professions I had to level, poison and lockpicking, as well as the -50% speed increase while stealthed and no wonder leveling took me so darn long. Ever spend 3 hours straight stealthing through an area opening junkboxes for 1-2 copper apiece? I have!

I think I'm going to level something else this time around...

You can eat to regen health. First rank of stealth slowed by 50%. While leveling it was not worth it to stealth to every mob. Just walk in and attack. Also nobody forces you to level up lockpicking while leveling.

[Powerogue]

You can eat to regen health. First rank of stealth slowed by 50%. While leveling it was not worth it to stealth to every mob. Just walk in and attack. Also nobody forces you to level up lockpicking while leveling.

Your raid group who wants access to that dungeon without attunement does!

[garicasha]

Getting the key out of that statue by the Tauren fire mage was actually one of the easy atunements....err wait unless you’re talking back door of Strath....that wasn’t super bad for a raid guild.

[ifrah]

The Fury warriors got it to make up for the Hateful Strikes. And recall - I did Patchwerk ONCE, was at the top of the threat list under the tanks, hit evasion, got the rogue lead killed, and was kicked. So...yeah. All I know is that shortly after that, we used fury warriors almost exclusively and all the rogues were benched.

Fury warriors soaking hateful strikes, which one of us is on drugs now? For "naxx-progressing" prot warrior in defensive stance the hateful dealt around 5...7k after mitigation. A well geared and buffed tank had ~10k hp. I'd bet my balls that a fury warrior in dps gear and zerk stance would not be able to survive that. If the given warriors were in full tank gear and def. stance, then it was quite usual practice, esp. for "lesser" guilds to have only a fraction of (off)tanks to be specced prot.

[xindralol]

Very nice recap
Can't wait for vanilla servers.

Another interesting mechanic: as a hunter you could feign death and drink for mana during a boss fight xD

[Alydael]

Didn't they basically say though they want to re-create the classic experience and NOT copy-paste it?

It means that this remaster may have some improvements over Vanilla

It will. Blizzard is a business at the end of the day and they want Classic to be profitable.

I bet they researched exactly what changes to make and they will mostly be QoL stuff.

I expect:

improved graphics, class balance, things such as multi-loot, some form of an achievement system, updated meeting stones, some form of pre made quest finder, improved maps/ terrain for dungeons and raids, maybe changing the 40 man requirement on some raids, add ons

This is a company that made billions. They didn't "trip and fall" over that success. This will be a heavily polished and researched product.

[garicasha]

One of the posters in another one of my threads was either a dev or sure managed to sound like one. He said the goal was to re-create vanilla, not balanced raiding, which I could see them doing.

Both sides of the coin have serious pros and cons, but there's no way to both balance the classes in classic and keep the original feel. Especially since they had none of the modern tools to tune PvE and PvP separately. Can you imagine giving warlocks buffs to their damage to make them compete with fire mages in PvE? lol

Improved character models will be an option.

Multi-loot, achievements, meeting stones, quest finder, etc...none of those will be in.

The API for addons will be the modern one, though.

[Daffan]

Very technically ZG and AQ20 were catch-up mechanics, but it's not like you did 3-4 ZG runs and then hopped in to AQ40 or Naxx, so I'm just gonna leave the OP as is because it'll be less confusing for players that didn't play vanilla.

I loved the old linear style of progression. No skipping content or making it obsolete, nothing felt like a waste of time because next patch wouldn't just invalidate your progress.

T1 > T2 > T2.5 > T3 with ZG/AQ20 sprinked before and around T2.

Only downside is that Vanilla was 40 man which was a joke, makes it a logistical nightmare and hard to catchup when you need a 40 man guild just to do T1.

[ydraw]

Can you imagine giving warlocks buffs to their damage to make them compete with fire mages in PvE? lol

Yeah I can imagine that quite easily actually. Just buff life tap and Shadow Bolt, neither of which are particularly useful PvP spells.