WoW from a Vanilla player's perspective.

[Joeydivision82]

US-Mannoroth - First server to open AQ gates so I know what I'm talking about, I'm not from some crap backwater server full of carebears.

I downed Rag in Vanilla.

It still doesn't take long for someone to get blacklisted on a server so your point is moot.

The stats prove Hrag in Firelands was one of the hardest fights ever put into the game. So again you talk out of your butt lol.

You can't get Teir loot from vendors doing 5 mans, they require tokens to this very day.

You are trying to tell me I'm a liar, but you make argumentative points that make zero sense.

Killing Rag during Vanilla is not really anything to use as a reference to raiding from then until now. So that goes to show your point regarding the difficulty of raiding then and now is invalid.

Also, you're saying one boss, that's right, ONE boss in the histor of raiding is harder than anything before it, and currently, so tha means the entire game is just as difficult, or harder now?

So, you're saying you can be blacklisted on a server now, seeing as there are no real hardcore raiding guilds anymore, or semi hardcore that still bust their ass on a regular schedule like there are then, it not exactly the same. Also, getting blacklisted means really nothing for a few reasons, LFD, LFR, name changes, and server transfers all fight off the being blacklisted.

Now to your original post.

I have played roughly the same length as you, but up until Ulduar in WotLK, I raided wverything, finished everything but Huhu on AQ, and get Ito some of Naxx, and finished everything during BC while it was current, and was probably one of the top 3 decked out Paladins on my server because of how dedicated our guild was. I can say, although mechanics seem a but more difficult now in some situations, most bosses are dying faster, and it's taking a week to two weeks to clear an entire raid for a world first, but back in Vanilla an BC, it would take up to several months in some occasions. Sure bod mechanics were broken and made them unlillable, but that wasn't the case with every boss I that raid, yet it still took them several months to reach the unkillable boss.

As for the overall community, how can you say it's the same? When you have a few thousand people on your sever, and you're on every day, you get to really know individuals in your server, but when you introduce something like LFD, you aren't forced to interact with peple on your server, therefore, you are under no obligation to not act like a douchebag.

The only thing I can think of in your case, you're one of the few people on a server that has stood the test of time, and has kept a large majority of people from back in Vanilla, and they have respected what your server stood for from the get go.e on the other hand, I started on Ner'zhul, and I can tell you, there are hardly any players from Vanilla, or even BC for that matter. The only guilds that are around fro back ten are now just casual guilds, and they do not raid as a guild anymore, or there are only 4-5 people that are left, and most of those people I don't know from back in 2005 and on.

TL;DR shit ain't the same.

[TaurenNinja]

I started playing "only" in WoTLK but I have read a lot of opinions and facts about Vanilla + TBC.
I think that most of the opinions saying that everything was better back then is really just nostalgia since the game did become a lot better over time.

If people were to play on a Vanilla server these days they'd probably instantly quit over things like *serious* class/ability imbalances, boring boss mechanics, the amount of time it takes to form groups, and how random it is (read: luck-dependant and very time consuming) to get some of the more special gear you'd need for some fights (like gear with a lot of X resists).
If you look at things like that from today's perspective, it's just bad game design. Back then, it was OK because WoW had no real competitor and developers and players alike were still learning on how to do this stuff the best way.

There were some very few things that were good back then though, I'd imagine... in particular:

- The difficulty of the "world content" - so basically mob and elite mob difficulty in the open world while questing. When I started, some mobs were still a respectable force as well, and when you had a quest to kill an elite mob it was a challenging encounter to face. Not challenging in the way heroic raids are, for example, but you know at least they were no pushovers and you probably died at least once or you used some more preparation like grouping up with 1 or 2 additional players, using potions/buffs and so on. Not really difficult but at least it made for an interesting encounter.
Also, you had to be a bit careful not to pull too much during questing. Now you can just AoE pull everything in range and bomb everything down.
Then, at some point during WoTLK (or was it 4.0?), every world mob suddenly became as dangerous as a level 1 pig in Durotar. And if a mob was elite, there was some way (provided by the quest) that severely weakened him to become as dangerous as a level 1 pig in Durotar.
So that's really the thing that probably annoys me the most about the game. I still like questing *IF* the story is good but every encounter basically feels boring and the same. This also means that every mob basically feels the same no matter what it is.
I think that's also the main reason why people would think that "WoW is easy" - these are people who believe that with the nerfs to world content and LFD-5man-dungeons, WoW has become easy. I don't like that statement very much, since there's still hard content to do (heroic raiding, challenge modes, arena), but yeah those two aspects of the game have indeed become easier. On the other hand, these two very things have made it casual friendly which can be seen as a good thing as well. There are probably a lot of casual players who do NOTHING ELSE except questing and 5man dungeons and for them it was probably too frustrating before. Hardcore players still have their content, so it shouldn't matter too much.

- Lack of LFR/LFD meant that it was easier to get to know people from your server. I don't think LFR/LFD are bad per se, I think they're great, and I wouldn't want the game to lose these features. But it comes with said drawback.

For most other stuff, I think the game has improved a lot over time, and I'm very happy about how the game currently plays out. I can do challenging stuff when raiding with my guild or doing PvP or challenge modes, but some days I can also lean back and do something casually like hunting some exotic achievements, questing solo, doing pet battles, playing the AH and so on. WoW has evolved to offer a lot of diversity and I like that. And the game has become a bit more real-life friendly. There's less time-consuming (not skill-involving) grinding involved in every area. Sure, there's still a bit, but it's just the right amount. It's not overwhelming like it probably used to be. So one can concentrate more on the things one really likes doing. Since we aren't getting younger and don't mysteriously gain more free time, it's also a good way to keep the aging player base still playing. If there was like 2-3 hours of mandatory grind involved every day to stay competitive it would be a game for school children or unemployed ones only.

[Deleted]

The community has grown A LOT since vanilla, and if 1st grade school taught us anything, more people = higher chance that some are retards.

[Tsuna]

That being said, I dont ever want to see Vanilla servers, nor BC servers, nor WotLK. What I would pay 1,000,000,000 Internet dollars for would be to become a noob to video games (in particular MMO's), because thats when I had the most fun playing games.

Amen. Being the fool that leveled by grinding skeletons in wpl, the fool that never realized what the talent point system was til lvl 40, the fool that go wrecked by Drakkisath and Beast repeatedly but still had fun doing, was a precious experience. WoW didn't change as much as people like to claim, but the people that inhabit it's world have grown up. Different things become precious to us over time, I value my guildies that I've enjoyed years with far more than raiding or pvp now, the WoW "community" may or may not have become worse over the years but it's still a strange sort of home to me.

[Deleted]

If I'd still care about community, I'd think differently, but I voted 'Better than it was'.

I agree, the mechanics, the casual content, LFR, LFD, JPs & VPs, Tokens, xrealms. they added a lot of convenience to the game, which I'm really grateful for. It's a perfect fit for me. But only in the sense of gaming.

From the community PoV it's awful, and all thanks to LFR/LFD and xrealms. It begins with players only being called by their class. As I first encountered this, I actually found it rude: 'Hey warr, c'mon, go faster'. DAMN YOU, I HAVE A NAME (ingame). It goes on with ppl joining and leaving rnd dungeons and raids without ever uttering a word. Why should they? But it just gives you a feeling of being pretty much alone in this game. I had great chats, discussions, laughs back in vanilla. IN DUNGEONS. That's pretty much gone.

Not that I actually miss it, but in a sense of community, this game suffered badly. Still, since I don't raid anymore, since I'm not in a guild anymore, I can cope with it

[Seegtease]

It's true that some things were harder back then, but not universally everything.

Some things were legitimately harder. The game had a much steeper learning curve, for one.

Then there were a lot of things that weren't really challenging, just more tedious or time-consuming.

And some things, like boss complexity and individual player "rotations" are a lot more challenging today.

Pretty much the whole game was harder or equal.

Fact is, in current WoW, the only things you can do that offer legitimate challenge are hardmodes, or challenge modes. Anything else is significantly easier than Vanilla.

In Vanilla, leveling was significantly harder. Not only did it take longer, but enemies aggro'd differently, and would often come with 2-4 in a pack, with not much you could do to separate them (talking solo, not dungeons). Back then, if you pulled 2-3 mobs, depending on the class, you were probably dead unless you were very skilled and very lucky. Now we get sad when we only pull 3, and prefer to fight 4+ at a time on most classes.

I recall many bad experiences on my rogue trying to kill a 3-4 pack. I would use my crappy stealth that didn't work for beans back then to try and get close enough to sap one, and if I managed that, I would use evasion to last long enough to kill one, then I would run away and reset the others. Then I would have to repeat that a few times, use pots as needed if I had any, and do it quickly enough so they don't respawn. Then I could loot the treasure chest they were guarding, mwahaha!

I mean, I enjoyed it. It was hard, but it was fun.

I like a lot of what modern WoW has to offer, but I don't agree with every change they've made. I like quality of life increases, such as easier travel, dungeon queues, more reasonable mount prices, among other things. But I feel like leveling is no longer a challenge. You don't have to overcome any real hurdles during the process. It's just a race to get to max level, and nothing really matters until you do. Gear comes and goes quickly making it almost pointless to concern yourself with upgrading and enchanting while leveling. In Vanilla, it was good to get geared while leveling to alleviate some of the difficulty and danger of over-pulling.

I can't comment much about raiding, since I was leveling so damn slowly and came in so late that I missed that part of Vanilla, but there's more to the game than just raiding, though many people would disagree with me.

[endersblade]

Why do so many people always write "then" when it should be "than" ?!?!?! I see this all the time.

And on the flip side of that, people who write 'than' instead of 'then'. Both of them drive me insane.

For all the people who say, 'Vanilla was good back then, but looking back it was actually terrible' or some such nonsense...WoW wouldn't have gotten off the ground had Vanilla not been good. The game was essentially an EQ clone to begin with. As we've seen, games copying other games doesn't always work out. So what kept the players around? It wasn't the customer service, server stability, server queues or myriad bugs, that's for sure.

As a veteran MMO player (UO FTW) WoW didn't feel like something new and mold-breaking back then. But it was still a great game, and I've stuck with it all these years, minus a few breaks here and there. I've played on Vanilla private servers, and it's refreshing to go back to a more simpler time. Argue, bitch, moan and complain all you want, Vanilla WAS a damned good game.

[Ettan]

Some was better and some was worse.
But overall I really enjoyed vanilla. And would pick it any day over wow in its current state.
The fast phased bursty pvp w/o resil in vanilla I really enjoyed, healers that was balanced around 1v1 and not 3v3 = fun pvp.
It was rather unbalanced with many dead specs but anyone could dominate if geared/skilled and talented correctly.
All of the classes where unbalanced in one way or another, and in a strange kind of way that sort off made the game balanced.
(It was so unbalanced it was balanced).

In a perfect world I wish they would just have kept adding to vanilla, never lifting the level cap over 60, just added content to vanilla and kept the gear inflation more or less dead flat. With wotlk tbc cata all being implemented in the form of patches. First raid -> last raid, slight to no increase in ilevel, instead raids would gradually be tuned harder and harder as you progressed with gear remaining dead flat, the gear would be mere cosmetic/ prof of achievement.
Pvp gear should just be made unable to use in raids, kept at a level slightly higher than the pve gear. And it should never improve, ever.
New season -> no better stats, just new cosmetics.
That would completely eliminate the gear element from pvp, and make it skill based. It would also allow the pve players to get into pvp without much difficulty. And for good pvp players just grant them unique item models/skins/mounts/titles as rewards.

[inboundpaper]

Its still a fun game, but you can only change so much, and 8 years is a really long friggin time. The game won't be the same to you as it was 8 years ago.

[marikae]

I started playing a month or two after release, from me Vanilla had a hell of a lot more nostalgia to it...

PVP - Rank 10 (Lieutenant Commander)
PVP was very different, the grind for ranks was awful and I remember people aiming for Grand Marshal would literally PVP all day, you get in the top PVP group (which was something of an honor, especially being bitched at by Swifty for not keeping him healed in a 2 vs 6 fight) and just steam roll the opposition who often would just leave when they saw who they were against.

Alterac Valley would last for days, you could leave for a day or so and join the same game. Korrak would often obliterate everyone, handing in the items for upgrades actually mattered. Summoning Ivus could actually turn the tide, until a horde player would kite him to Drek or worse Ivus would bug the hell out and do nothing.

I can remember in AV, having the entire raid inspired to follow two Grand Marshall paladins just because they had golden armor on and actually winning the game because of it.

PVE - MC/BWL/AQ up to C'thun/Naxx (Cleared spider wing and the first two bosses from the other wings)
Very different feeling towards epics because not everyone had them, getting full tier 2 felt like an achievement (won a few pieces of t3, meh at pally t2.5). The two main guilds I was in never had any issue getting 40 people together for raids, although we certainly carried a few people. Raid bosses weren't particularly hard until the later half of AQ and Naxx, where carrying people became less and less of an option. I can still remember attempts at realm first on an impossible C'thun and how people seem to go crazy over how many wipes there were. One of the funniest moments was our raid leader kiting Patchwerk with a hunter in the room after Anub, it took something like 3 hours and getting hit once would have been the end of it.

There was certainly a dependency on having the right classes, be in right specs, having the right resistance gear, etc.

AQ gate quests were fun, get the top 2-3 guilds on the realm to help get one person the staff. The gate opening event was hilarious because it was so laggy the realm had to be restarted a few times, everyone was wiping on the wandering elites.

Dungeons

Pugging dungeons kinda sucked, spamming "LFM" just to get enough numbers (15) for UBRS was awful although I don't remember why I bothered, probably to fill time. CC was normally (this is back before the change from 10 to 5) required unless the group had a few people in epics, in which case the dungeons were generally a waste of time (gear up alts and friends in MC).

Now

It's been kinda sad watching Blizzard try to balance everything around arena and e-sports, horde gaining paladins and alliance gaining shaman, I made it to around 2000+ rank in BC arena but never really got into it.
It's even worse seeing the raid content get watered down so everyone can experience it. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing but for me personally, I don't feel the need to even raid with a guild anymore (it used to be like having a second job) as I can just get the experience and items in LFR while still playing with friends, who cares if they're 'welfare' epics as they look the same and they will be replaced in a few patches anyway.

/End old timer rant.

Marikae (not to be confused with bigbanger), Paladin. Darkspear - End Result, JubeiThos - Fade.

[velde046]

As for raiding, I don't care what you say raiding in vanilla was a lot harder. BWL,AQ40 and Naxx esp Naxx were not a joke. Normal and hard mode were not separated like they are now. You went to raid and it was ALL hard mode. Only a hand full of guild in Vanilla ever got passed AQ40 and even less to actually get through Naxx.

Do you consider that a good or a bad thing then? I think it is better now, since I firmly believe that people should be able to see all the content.

The game has not been dumbed down? Did you even play vanilla? Sorry but i could not go to a vendor and get free tier loot for just running 5 mans. I could not run LFR and AFK for free loot. I could not AFK bgs without being black listed by the entire server.

There's a difference between 'dumbing down' stuff or making it more accessible, and that's what Blizzard has done over the years. Now in MoP I think they are getting close to the sweets spots. There's enough challenging stuff for the 'hardcore' raiders and there's LFR for people that don't have the time to do progression raiding.
Of course there's the people that abuse the system and leech the others while AFK, but to be honest the game has not dumbed down, it has become more accessible for a wider target audience.

---------- Post added 2012-11-26 at 11:16 AM ----------

This game from its inception was designed to be played with friends. If you played solo, you had a tougher time playing the game, and justifiably so.

Hmmm I think it stated clearly on the box with the hardware requirements, "requires group of friends to be played optimally". True you had a tougher time playing solo, but justifiable??? Hell no. That's one thing they also adressed. One might debate if that worked out, but the fact you made it justifiably tougher is just ignorance in my opinion.

[glycerethe]

This poll is dumb because EVERY OTHER non-vanilla wanabe will vote that WoW has gotten better.

And to make a post right after MoP release(which is going to attract alot of 10yo kids), is just a suicide act.

[BeastmasterofBladesEdge]

Things change for better or worse. Fact is, we are all still paying to play and discuss it. I would say regardless of what happens in WoW, we will all just keep right on playing.

[CrazyCraftLady]

I started playing a month or two after release, from me Vanilla had a hell of a lot more nostalgia to it...

PVP - Rank 10 (Lieutenant Commander)
PVP was very different, the grind for ranks was awful and I remember people aiming for Grand Marshal would literally PVP all day, you get in the top PVP group (which was something of an honor, especially being bitched at by Swifty for not keeping him healed in a 2 vs 6 fight) and just steam roll the opposition who often would just leave when they saw who they were against.

Alterac Valley would last for days, you could leave for a day or so and join the same game. Korrak would often obliterate everyone, handing in the items for upgrades actually mattered. Summoning Ivus could actually turn the tide, until a horde player would kite him to Drek or worse Ivus would bug the hell out and do nothing.

I can remember in AV, having the entire raid inspired to follow two Grand Marshall paladins just because they had golden armor on and actually winning the game because of it.

PVE - MC/BWL/AQ up to C'thun/Naxx (Cleared spider wing and the first two bosses from the other wings)
Very different feeling towards epics because not everyone had them, getting full tier 2 felt like an achievement (won a few pieces of t3, meh at pally t2.5). The two main guilds I was in never had any issue getting 40 people together for raids, although we certainly carried a few people. Raid bosses weren't particularly hard until the later half of AQ and Naxx, where carrying people became less and less of an option. I can still remember attempts at realm first on an impossible C'thun and how people seem to go crazy over how many wipes there were. One of the funniest moments was our raid leader kiting Patchwerk with a hunter in the room after Anub, it took something like 3 hours and getting hit once would have been the end of it.

There was certainly a dependency on having the right classes, be in right specs, having the right resistance gear, etc.

AQ gate quests were fun, get the top 2-3 guilds on the realm to help get one person the staff. The gate opening event was hilarious because it was so laggy the realm had to be restarted a few times, everyone was wiping on the wandering elites.

Dungeons

Pugging dungeons kinda sucked, spamming "LFM" just to get enough numbers (15) for UBRS was awful although I don't remember why I bothered, probably to fill time. CC was normally (this is back before the change from 10 to 5) required unless the group had a few people in epics, in which case the dungeons were generally a waste of time (gear up alts and friends in MC).

Now

It's been kinda sad watching Blizzard try to balance everything around arena and e-sports, horde gaining paladins and alliance gaining shaman, I made it to around 2000+ rank in BC arena but never really got into it.
It's even worse seeing the raid content get watered down so everyone can experience it. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing but for me personally, I don't feel the need to even raid with a guild anymore (it used to be like having a second job) as I can just get the experience and items in LFR while still playing with friends, who cares if they're 'welfare' epics as they look the same and they will be replaced in a few patches anyway.

/End old timer rant.

Marikae (not to be confused with bigbanger), Paladin. Darkspear - End Result, JubeiThos - Fade.

I was just talking about this the other day, epics are no longer epic. I remember working hard for my devout back in the day and even that set was an achievement. I miss feeling like you have to work for what you get in the game.

[Fr3nzy]

I was just talking about this the other day, epics are no longer epic. I remember working hard for my devout back in the day and even that set was an achievement. I miss feeling like you have to work for what you get in the game.

You still do have to work for what you get in WoW, just because LFR gear is purple doesn't mean it's the best. If I inspect someone and they have a "Heroic Elite" item, I'll be pretty damn amazed, even if it is the same color as the LFR gear.

[xrayEU]

This is a tricky question.
The game has evolved significantly in 8 years as it should, the game was more grindy back in the days and it was more adventure to explore the game.
Now it's a lot more features which is good because a game needs to evolve and get new features to survive, and the game is aimed towards a bigger crowd than before.

Even how much I loved this game back in Vanilla/TBC I still really enjoy this game but in another way I guess.

[khalltusk]

The only thing I miss from vanilla is the "new" feeling of the game. It was my first MMO with swords and board since UO and certainly my first where instead of role playing I was doing PVE raid content etc. Aside from that I don't really miss that much at all in fact I vastly prefer the game now.

The only other thing I can say I miss are big world events like the opening of AQ gates. The firelands one is quite cool and a step in that direction and the new dailies will hopefully be similar in scope.

The epics are no longer epics is moot. By the end of vanilla a lot of players were going into MC pugs on the server I was on, sure they were not as easy to obtain as now but thats not a bad thing. As a raiding guild it was harder to gear new players up than now and we spent more time gearing up new recruits and losing our best geared guys to guilds that were clearing aq40 and most of nax while we were bwl and mc cleared and doing up to battle guard in aq40 and 1 or 2 bosses in naxx.

Now sure epics are not too hard to obtain (I'd say harder than cata as you need to get rep from dailies for a lot of the epics out side of raids where as in cata you bunged on a tabard and got rep as you got heroic blue loot)

[azzgunther]

The epics are no longer epics is moot. By the end of vanilla a lot of players were going into MC pugs on the server I was on, sure they were not as easy to obtain as now but thats not a bad thing. As a raiding guild it was harder to gear new players up than now and we spent more time gearing up new recruits and losing our best geared guys to guilds that were clearing aq40 and most of nax while we were bwl and mc cleared and doing up to battle guard in aq40 and 1 or 2 bosses in naxx.

This is about the struggle and the rewards inherent to succeeding in the face of adversity. Epic items were very difficult to get in Vanilla - don't water that point down by saying they "were not as easy". When you finally got a major upgrade it was a great feeling. I still remember, over seven years later, the feeling of getting my Azuresong Mageblade in MC and turning in my Hear of Hakkar for the server's first Zandalarian Hero Charm. 20 people came with me after the raid just to watch. Which brings me to the next point, addressed to everybody who says the community isn't different...

About five of those people weren't even in my guild. They flew down from Stormwind because they thought it was cool that we killed Hakkar and wanted to be part of the little ceremony with the NPCs. I got congratulations in a thread on the realm forums the next day and people I'd never talked to were giving kind words to my guild and me. Those realm forums had at least 20 threads updated within the last few hours - they were active. Then there's the standard stuff we hear: server-wide vents for PvP, blacklisting certain players from an entire server, and a sense that people know you and you know them. It really was a different atmosphere and that's the biggest thing WoW has lost. It existed because of the innate fish bowl that we were all stuck within and also because we were forced to interact to get quests and dungeons done.

Those two things are what I miss most about Vanilla. The sense of accomplishment is largely gone from the game for me and that's probably largely due to outgrowing it but I believe there's an added bit of juice when you drag 40 people, coordinated by class officers because there were 5+ of each class, through a difficult boss fight that most of them had never encountered anything of the like. When you got rewarded with a very rare purple it was a big deal.

The rest of Vanilla I don't really miss. I can appreciate things about it but they've come a long, long way in making the game function better. Because of the improvements - of which have been covered ad nauseam in the thread already - I voted "no difference". The changes largely offset, and what is gained balances what was lost.

[Hotsforyou]

I think game play mechanics are far better today. My only real complaint is LFR and LFG. On a lower popular server i feel that they have devastated the community and created lazy players who will drop group if they cant get a summon to the raid or 5 man. I have seen this quite often. Really irks me.

I do wish we could get more class specific quests with specific rewards for that class. Big, long epic chains that mean something.

There is a few things i would not mind from vanilla but overall the game has improved. Love the raid mechanics.

Crafting should play a bigger role in the game i think. a lot of the "MMO" feeling has gone. I think that is mainly due to LFR and LFG (IMO).

[shise]

In my opinion MoP bring the W O R S E PvP ever. Yep, ever.


PVE. In my opinion is the second best in terms of diffuculty, right after TBC. In terms of raid mechanics or design it's also right after TBC. When it comes down to Lore it's the third after Wotlkand TBC.


To be honest, I thought MoP was going to be a bad joke... but it turns out to be greater than expected. Imo, the best expansion after BC and WotLK (Wraht lore and design kinda saves it besides it's joke dificulty)