What you disliked in Vanilla?

[Eucep]

Not enough quests and those that were there at times were in insane locations with no way of knowing they were there. If there had been enough of them for leveling I'd not have cared and just found those weird location quest givers a good thing. Then they would have been an actual exploration bonus.

Bad quests: A lot of them were downright boring. Effectivly, there were three types: Kill counter, drop counter and escort.
Bad quests: Insanity in where you had to go for quests, they often felt less 'there is a reason for going here' and more like 'they threw a dart on the map for where you should go'.

Loot stats: Way way to many items you just had to toss as their stats were useless. Including quest rewards.

Specs: Some just did not work well as options to pick in the trees. Not for questing, not for raiding. Moonkin being one that quickly comes to mind. Retri paladins were hard to take down, but were insanely slow to quest with.

Server stability: This was just bad, luckily for classic this should be way less an issue.

[Armourboy]

Dunno there are lots of thing that I'm glad changed over the years, but frankly at the time I wasn't really bothered by anything major about Vanilla. Probably the biggest issue was just server performance and stability. Past that, probably character customization, which is still garbage to this day.

[Ange]

What system do you think is better rank 14 or rank 1 pre removal of arena teams ?

R14 grind was just time spend in BG's, playing pvp was not a requirement. The bonus weekends alone mattered more than anything else, if you spend 24/7 on bonus weekend in BGs you had your rankprogress, if you spend less time, you did not progress. Simple as that.

Arena is kinda different dont you think? There is no underdog spec/combo up in the rankings, its allways overtuned specs/mechanics/items what dominates arena. I never liked arena that much because of this, since you saw R14 healers of any kind, HYBRID-DPS of any kind just as often as your rogue/mage/warrior meta-bullshit-bingo we see since the introduction of arena.

I allways use arena for gearprogression, for me its just a stupid minigame just like WQ or anything else for gearprogression.

[Bathrezz]

Not sure why 'not enough quests to 60' bothers some players. I got to either 58.5/59.5 before I needed to dungeon and even then, it didn't take long to cap *shrug*

[deviant010]

I didn't like how you could add only a limited amount of friends on your friendslist. While leveling, questing and dungeons I made so many e-buddies in vanilla. Such a difference with current WoW.

[Morbownz]

The PvP system. It is just terrible. It's a grind that has nothing to do with being good at PvP and the most effective way to grind (farming PuGs all day) just compounds the issue. As an avid fan of Classic and someone that is awaiting the release of Classic I can't think of a single thing that is good about the PvP system.

[Ange]

I didn't like how you could add only a limited amount of friends on your friendslist. While leveling, questing and dungeons I made so many e-buddies in vanilla. Such a difference with current WoW.

Never had an issue with that. I joined guilds with people I liked and I did not have to add all 250+ guildmates to my friendlist so it was never an issue. For everything else like raiding organisation etc. we had phone lists and webtools to sign in, check your DKP whatever.

Todays guilds are more like PUG-raidgroups with strangers, I get why people only use the friendlist, but in vanilla?

- - - Updated - - -

The PvP system. It is just terrible. It's a grind that has nothing to do with being good at PvP and the most effective way to grind (farming PuGs all day) just compounds the issue. As an avid fan of Classic and someone that is awaiting the release of Classic I can't think of a single thing that is good about the PvP system.

The blue pvp gear was outstanding for gearprogression, rivaled Tier1/Tier2 gear for many specs and was WAY EASIER to get. Whats terrible about the best gearprogression system vanilla ever had?

[roent]

Non-viable specs, part of which was the inability to effectively manage resources (mana). The cost to respec.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It's probably easier to name what I liked about vanilla besides the stuff like being a major change in the genre at the time: The orignal talent trees, at least the way that builds are made by spending your points how you saw fit. I would definitely like multiple build slots though...

[ArenaDk]

R14 grind was just time spend in BG's, playing pvp was not a requirement. The bonus weekends alone mattered more than anything else, if you spend 24/7 on bonus weekend in BGs you had your rankprogress, if you spend less time, you did not progress. Simple as that.

Arena is kinda different dont you think? There is no underdog spec/combo up in the rankings, its allways overtuned specs/mechanics/items what dominates arena. I never liked arena that much because of this, since you saw R14 healers of any kind, HYBRID-DPS of any kind just as often as your rogue/mage/warrior meta-bullshit-bingo we see since the introduction of arena.

I allways use arena for gearprogression, for me its just a stupid minigame just like WQ or anything else for gearprogression.

But it doesn’t bother you that someone who does not know anything about pvp could get r14 just by playing a lot ?

[Essem]

Debuff limit and class balance. Its just a Warrior show with Rogue and Mages behind. And then nothing until Warlocks becomes semi viable with Naxx gear.

[Akka]

Not sure why 'not enough quests to 60' bothers some players. I got to either 58.5/59.5 before I needed to dungeon and even then, it didn't take long to cap *shrug*

Because those who claim there was "not enough quests" typically didn't play Vanilla and are just repeating bullshit they read on forums.
The few who did either don't actually mean "not enough quests" but actually "quests not efficient enough to beat grinding" or were stupid enough to not realize you needed to change zones to get more quests.

[Teri]

R14 grind was just time spend in BG's, playing pvp was not a requirement. The bonus weekends alone mattered more than anything else, if you spend 24/7 on bonus weekend in BGs you had your rankprogress, if you spend less time, you did not progress. Simple as that.

It also highly depended on what other players on your server/faction did.

We had an organized order of PvP rankers on our server to keep it somewhat predictable.

Even then, it took a ridiculous amount of time, I won't deny that.

- - - Updated - - -

But it doesn’t bother you that someone who does not know anything about pvp could get r14 just by playing a lot ?

Playing with an organized team on a WSG or AB weekend still could net you a lot more honor then randoms.

[Outofmana]

Warlock curses. -75 boss resistance +10% damage is simply too much to play around, if you have 2 warlocks (which often happens on pvt servers) in your raid, you as a lock will do CoR, and CoE, not Curse of Shadows, making your raid basically useless in regards to staying competitive right from the start, while also (partially) resisting 50% of your spells. So thank god they will at least go with 16 debuffs and not do the ridiculous 8, which ment locks never even got to do CoS or even spec into improved shadowbolt ever, even with 5 locks in the raid.

On one hand all the debuffs and tools make every class worth it to bring (which makes class design so good in vanilla, not purely looking at dps numbers) but as a lock you simply need too much support to stay competitive, 3 locks minimum, then a shadowpriest (not as easy to have someone play one, as in my experience they all quit because of boring gameplay aka oom 24/7 or using 50 manapots a raid, also being behind mages/locks in loot priority most of the time), then PI from a priest etc etc. People begging for PI alone makes it annoying as a caster to compete.

Also don't like the dead zones alliance has while leveling, not as prominent on horde, but alliance does run out of quests at certain points, lvl ~22 has one, same with around level 35 and 52. Grinding while leveling I don't enjoy at all, not even a small amount.

[avitush]

Some specs were just crap (boomkin, for example). Others could be good but weren't accepted unless you had like Naxx-quality gear.

No dual specs. If you needed to respec, it got expensive and could be a pain in the ass depending on where you were at the time you needed to respec (since you couldn't do it without visiting a class trainer).

Some flight paths were a huge pain in the ass and took forever. Seems like Kalimdor was worse about this, if I remember correctly.

edit: also I found it annoying that I was pretty much stuck forever with whatever I chose on character creation as far as hairstyles, etc. It sucked when I started thinking my character might look better with a different hair color but couldn't do anything about it. I didn't know how badly the game needed the barber shop until we got it.

Oh yeah i forgot about tags too, leveling in the starting areas was a nightmare when so many people were there, and i do remember people making lines to pick up a quest item that only one person at a time could pick up

Yeah, I forgot about this. Anyone else remember the Felix's Tools quests from the dwarf starting zone? This gnome sent you on a quest to pick up his tools that he left when trolls invaded his camp. Each tool is a lootable item on the ground that you loot by just clicking on it. When you click on it, there's a short timer/cast bar for actually looting it (a timer that will be interrupted if a nearby enemy attacks you). The items could only be looted by one player at a time, took forever to respawn, and were in a starting area where like 10 other players were ready to pounce on them (not to mention they spawned in areas with hostile NPCs who had a crazy respawn rate and would often spawn and attack you while you were trying to loot the item). I eventually got to the point where I just started ditching quests like that after I realized they were a huge waste of time.

While we're on the topic of looting stuff, shared drops also weren't a thing (they were for some quest items, but not most). It made those "collect 20 bear asses" quests pretty annoying to do if you were in a group with a friend.

[Alexeht]

Lack of dual spec, not making complete maps from beginning, quest log cap, shitty AH interface and probably more...

I started in TBC, but I played warlock then and the thing I hated most of all was farming soul shards and having reduced bag space because of the shards.

I remember doing it before every raid (not in vanilla but still) and it was awful...

[McFuu]

As a rogue...

Mainhand, Offhand, and neutral weapons (If i remember this correctly).

In Vanilla you would encounter weapons that were specifically offhand weapons, even if it were better than what you had in mainhand, you couldn't equip it there. Which mattered a lot in vanilla seeing as offhand had a damage reduction tied to it and a lower hit chance. So 15dps off hand that swung every second, wouldn't actually hit for 15, it would hit for 10 (rough numbers) and that's before we get into hit%, expertise, armor, etc...

I just remember this being annoying, when you think you get a big upgrade and really it's a very minor upgrade with much better stats. Goes both ways with finding MH but not being able to equip offhand... they are fucking daggers still.

[deviant010]

I couldn't raid as fire mage because everthing was immune to fire.

[Bigby]

Having to level weapon skills was completely pointless. My impression was they were a half-baked idea they forgot to actually take out during beta.

No linked flightpaths until late into Vanilla. Meant just going AFK during a long flights was redundant.

Greater Blessing of X and similar raidwide buffs requiring Regents was a good way to burn a hole in your pocket.

Alliance queue times for BGs were often horrendous until cross-realm, especially at low levels. No Blood Elves meant Horde was about 30% of the population and would pop instantly. I main'ed a Troll for most of Vanilla so I can't complain, but given I intend to be a Dwarf this time around I am not looking forward to all those Belf Paladins going Human and Nelf.

[Coombs]

But it doesn’t bother you that someone who does not know anything about pvp could get r14 just by playing a lot ?

I had an avid Classic fan tell me that playing that much PvP made someone better at PvP. Just like driving from Spain to Russia makes someone a better driver.

Apparently if you take a long road trip you're ready for Formula One. These are the kind of scrubs waiting to get shit on in Classic.

- - - Updated - - -

Nothing at the time except buffing all the freaking time as a paladin.

Which was a very odd decision since some of the core designers played a lot of Everquest where buffs lasted over an hour.