WoW: My Nostalgia - A trip down Azeroth Lane

[BeastmasterGuardian]

I came in at the tail end of Classic and remember a lot of things about the first time I rolled a character on Azeroth. Here are some of my memories about "the good ole days". Feel free to add to them with your own:

1. Mounts - Walked til lvl 40. Ran from South Shore to SM everyday to grind up to 40 and have enough gold to pay for my nightsaber and the training to go along with it. 300g was a lot of Money back then.

2. Basic Campfire - Had to carry Simple Wood and Flint & Tinder just to make a fire to cook with.

3. Hunter Pets - Jumping down in Wailing Caverns or Blackrock Depths and having the pet go the long route and pull 200 mobs. Good times.

4. Gathering - Nothing more fun than getting 3 fails at mining, skinning, or herbing before finally getting 1 of anything. Would take a whole day just to gather a hundred ore.

5. Flight paths - There were none in Elwynn Forest and only 1 in each zone. There was no FP or Stormwind Charger to go from Goldshire to Eastvale logging.

6. Special items - Getting all the way to Zul Farrak and forgetting the Mallet to summon the boss.

7. Addons - Back when Thottbot, Questhelper, and Cartographer were the only thing that told you what you were looking for and where you might find it.

8. Bags - As a Hunter, I gave up a bag slot for a quiver and would occasionally run out of arrows and have to use my Axes til I got back to a vendor.

9. Leveling - No BoAs, no RaF, no SoR, and no Guild perks. The XP you got was either regular or rested. There was no bump in XP gain.

10. Weapon/Unarmed skills - Everytime you'd switch from one weapon type to the other, you would have to equip the weapon and go level your skill with it. Also, remembering to level your unarmed skill, so when you go disarmed in a fight, you could still at least do damage.

There are probably another hundred things I remember about starting out, but I just can't sit and list them all. Fun times

[ralphie]

10. Weapon/Unarmed skills - Everytime you'd switch from one weapon type to the other, you would have to equip the weapon and go level your skill with it. Also, remembering to level your unarmed skill, so when you go disarmed in a fight, you could still at least do damage.

Fist weapons also required unarmed skill.

[Anathaema]

The mallet one actually made me do the quest because none were having it on them ever

You forgot carrying the mounts and pets in the inventory, all of those 16 slots maximum each.

[BeastmasterGuardian]

I left out a ton of things I was just tossing out some of the more obvious stuff. Bit of a headache this morning and thought maybe making a list would help take my mind off it.

[Darsithis]

I came in at the tail end of Classic and remember a lot of things about the first time I rolled a character on Azeroth. Here are some of my memories about "the good ole days". Feel free to add to them with your own:

1. Mounts - Walked til lvl 40. Ran from South Shore to SM everyday to grind up to 40 and have enough gold to pay for my nightsaber and the training to go along with it. 300g was a lot of Money back then.

2. Basic Campfire - Had to carry Simple Wood and Flint & Tinder just to make a fire to cook with.

3. Hunter Pets - Jumping down in Wailing Caverns or Blackrock Depths and having the pet go the long route and pull 200 mobs. Good times.

4. Gathering - Nothing more fun than getting 3 fails at mining, skinning, or herbing before finally getting 1 of anything. Would take a whole day just to gather a hundred ore.

5. Flight paths - There were none in Elwynn Forest and only 1 in each zone. There was no FP or Stormwind Charger to go from Goldshire to Eastvale logging.

6. Special items - Getting all the way to Zul Farrak and forgetting the Mallet to summon the boss.

7. Addons - Back when Thottbot, Questhelper, and Cartographer were the only thing that told you what you were looking for and where you might find it.

8. Bags - As a Hunter, I gave up a bag slot for a quiver and would occasionally run out of arrows and have to use my Axes til I got back to a vendor.

9. Leveling - No BoAs, no RaF, no SoR, and no Guild perks. The XP you got was either regular or rested. There was no bump in XP gain.

10. Weapon/Unarmed skills - Everytime you'd switch from one weapon type to the other, you would have to equip the weapon and go level your skill with it. Also, remembering to level your unarmed skill, so when you go disarmed in a fight, you could still at least do damage.

There are probably another hundred things I remember about starting out, but I just can't sit and list them all. Fun times

Some of these things are things I wouldn't mind seeing again in the game, even if they're slightly annoying to have. Immersion can be an enjoyable thing. Other aspects, not so much. For instance, gathering. It's ridiculous that you would "fail" to gather...how hard is it to pick a flower? Lack of quest pointers is another. Realistic, but a huge hindrance to a smooth game experience. The weapon skills, while useful, were a slight problem as the expansions opened up the weapon drops you could get and normalized their damage. Nothing was more annoying that getting a new weapon and forgetting to up the skill just before raid

[NightZero88]

Seeing a red bar at level 2 in Mulgore within the first 30 minutes of playing the game. Attacking it to discover it was a player who camped my corpse for an hour making me almost quit the game and being confused as hell about how I got flagged.

[Grocalis]

Since we are going back in time, I can point out what happened when I started back in Beta.

1 - Skill Points. Extra skills like mount riding and professions didn't cost gold, but instead cost a currency called Skill Points. You gained 1 point per every 500 experience, and it kept counting up even after you reached the experience cap. Using Skill Points you were able to get all professions, and even bonus abilities like camp fire, torch making, and even all the creature tracking abilities, which existed before the hunter class even came out. I remember my rogue had alchemy, herbalism, mining, and engineering. before beta ended they changed to a two profession max, with some of the old ones becoming secondary skills, and removed all skill points.

2 - Undead were undead. They didn't have to breath while underwater, were immune to general CC effects, but on the flip side could be affected by skills that only worked on undead. Paladins would utterly obliterate them, while classes that relied on CC during combat like Mages threw fits. Before the game came out they decided to instead make them humanoid.

3 - Undead could speak common. If you played Alliance and came across an undead player, you could speak with him and have a conversation. Often times if a Horde and Alliance team ran into eachother, and didn't start PVPing, the undead member of the team would be used as a translator. Due to trash talking and griefing the undead language was changed to Gutterspeak.

4 - In PVP, CC lasted the full duration. Nothing better then having a mage sheep you and then waiting nearly a minute for it to wear off while he danced next to you. On the flip side, my rogue sure had a lot of fun sapping people and then doing the same thing. It didn't take them long to add both a PVP limited duration, and diminishing returns.

[yjmark]

i remember thinking that 'rested xp" could only be gained by lying in a bed. So I would go lie down in a bed before logging out.

And buying awesome "white" gear from vendors to upgrade stuff.

[Vyrd]

-two massive gold sinks, regular mount training and epic mount training. warlocks and paladins had it ezmode for getting their mounts, only cost them training at lvl 40 and a quest at 60. on my paladin i spent a day or two fishing deviates in WC to pay for my charger quest mats.
-water dismounting you
-hour long hearthstone cds
-ghetto hearthing. enter a dungeon in a group. leave group. you were teleported to your home location.
-unstuck hearthing. upon first use, unstuck would move you forward a few yards. second use it hearthed you.
-reagents for everything. priest candles, druid seeds, shaman anhks, paladin symbols.
-warlock soulshards. 'ok raid invites starting in 10m'. start going to farm up a fuckton of soulshards. there was no soulwell or lock stone. soulstones required a shard. healthstones required a shard per. summon required a shard per summon. an old joke in vanilla was warlocks had 3 buttons. drain soul, summon ally, and create healthstone.
-3 bubbles on paladins. divine shield, BoP, divine protection. 4 if you count divine intervention
-throwing weapons having charges of 200.
-guns requiring bullets, for all classes
-bows requiring arrows, for all classes
-druid powershifting was not in the game. if you were in bear form and needed to go travel form, you had to cancel bearform, then activate travel form.
-druid shapeshifting quests.
-lvl 50 class quests.
-lvl 60 class weapon quests.
-hunter pet loyalty and happiness system.
-hunter traps only placeable out of combat
-hunters having a deadzone
-disarm was only a warrior ability
-vanish never worked
-kick dealt damage
-warriors had to stance dance to access lots of their abilities. intercept, pummel, shield wall, shield block, retalliation, etc.
-raiding attunement quest chains

[Shivala]

-two massive gold sinks, regular mount training and epic mount training. warlocks and paladins had it ezmode for getting their mounts, only cost them training at lvl 40 and a quest at 60. on my paladin i spent a day or two fishing deviates in WC to pay for my charger quest mats.
-water dismounting you
-hour long hearthstone cds
-ghetto hearthing. enter a dungeon in a group. leave group. you were teleported to your home location.
-unstuck hearthing. upon first use, unstuck would move you forward a few yards. second use it hearthed you.
-reagents for everything. priest candles, druid seeds, shaman anhks, paladin symbols.
-warlock soulshards. 'ok raid invites starting in 10m'. start going to farm up a fuckton of soulshards. there was no soulwell or lock stone. soulstones required a shard. healthstones required a shard per. summon required a shard per summon. an old joke in vanilla was warlocks had 3 buttons. drain soul, summon ally, and create healthstone.
-3 bubbles on paladins. divine shield, BoP, divine protection. 4 if you count divine intervention
-throwing weapons having charges of 200.
-guns requiring bullets, for all classes
-bows requiring arrows, for all classes
-druid powershifting was not in the game. if you were in bear form and needed to go travel form, you had to cancel bearform, then activate travel form.
-druid shapeshifting quests.
-lvl 50 class quests.
-lvl 60 class weapon quests.
-hunter pet loyalty and happiness system.
-hunter traps only placeable out of combat
-hunters having a deadzone
-disarm was only a warrior ability
-vanish never worked
-kick dealt damage
-warriors had to stance dance to access lots of their abilities. intercept, pummel, shield wall, shield block, retalliation, etc.
-raiding attunement quest chains

the level 60 mount for paladin DEFINITELY did not only require a quest.

[luccadeo]

-two massive gold sinks, regular mount training and epic mount training. warlocks and paladins had it ezmode for getting their mounts, only cost them training at lvl 40 and a quest at 60. on my paladin i spent a day or two fishing deviates in WC to pay for my charger quest mats.
-water dismounting you
-hour long hearthstone cds
-ghetto hearthing. enter a dungeon in a group. leave group. you were teleported to your home location.
-unstuck hearthing. upon first use, unstuck would move you forward a few yards. second use it hearthed you.
-reagents for everything. priest candles, druid seeds, shaman anhks, paladin symbols.
-warlock soulshards. 'ok raid invites starting in 10m'. start going to farm up a fuckton of soulshards. there was no soulwell or lock stone. soulstones required a shard. healthstones required a shard per. summon required a shard per summon. an old joke in vanilla was warlocks had 3 buttons. drain soul, summon ally, and create healthstone.
-3 bubbles on paladins. divine shield, BoP, divine protection. 4 if you count divine intervention
-throwing weapons having charges of 200.
-guns requiring bullets, for all classes
-bows requiring arrows, for all classes
-druid powershifting was not in the game. if you were in bear form and needed to go travel form, you had to cancel bearform, then activate travel form.
-druid shapeshifting quests.
-lvl 50 class quests.
-lvl 60 class weapon quests.
-hunter pet loyalty and happiness system.
-hunter traps only placeable out of combat
-hunters having a deadzone
-disarm was only a warrior ability
-vanish never worked
-kick dealt damage
-warriors had to stance dance to access lots of their abilities. intercept, pummel, shield wall, shield block, retalliation, etc.
-raiding attunement quest chains

You must not have played a lock or pally back then. Materials and all for the lock mount at least was around 800-900 gold. Which was huge back then. Not to mention the time wasted running dungeons for materials.

[Shinrael]

You must not have played a lock or pally back then. Materials and all for the lock mount at least was around 800-900 gold. Which was huge back then. Not to mention the time wasted running dungeons for materials.

But you had something to do? And that something wasnt boring dailies? That something wasnt -1000 FPS drop in raids, it wasnt flythrough questlines. It required you to read quests to know where the thing is. That I miss the most...or maybe exploration? Even with 10 characters at max level there were still zones you had not fully explored and zones that you had not visited at all. I like WoW as it is. But truth is even if I like it, I have no desire to play it. Pet battles is the only reason I am still actively playing.

^^

[Deleted]

- Collecting things like for quests or professions (ore, herbs) sometimes wasn't easy. It was on the minimap yes but some of them weren't easy to see. They weren't gleaming at all so you sometimes needed to scroll in very much.
oh and of course:
- 40 man raids. You don't have these anymore these days.
- being a mage I remember haveing my bags full of water & food for those raids. I already began to make those before the raid had started so we were able to start in time. Was lucky I wasn't the only mage but we were all busy with this. Nowadays well.. we all know it

[luccadeo]

But you had something to do? And that something wasnt boring dailies? That something wasnt -1000 FPS drop in raids, it wasnt flythrough questlines. It required you to read quests to know where the thing is. That I miss the most...or maybe exploration? Even with 10 characters at max level there were still zones you had not fully explored and zones that you had not visited at all. I like WoW as it is. But truth is even if I like it, I have no desire to play it. Pet battles is the only reason I am still actively playing.

^^

I completely agree. I miss class quests.

[jjcoola998]

I remember trying to find a group as fury in classic/early TBC was impossible. No one believed warriors could do damage.

Other big memory from the period for me was discovering deadwind pass (as a human) and wondering if ANYONE would ever be able to explore that place!

[Marypoopins]

hit lvl 40, and never did a damn thing after that, just rode around on my wolf

[Enthusiastic Steward]

Flight paths had to be selected individually at each stop and were not chained together. Ugh.

[DeadmanWalking]

But you had something to do? And that something wasnt boring dailies? That something wasnt -1000 FPS drop in raids, it wasnt flythrough questlines. It required you to read quests to know where the thing is. That I miss the most...or maybe exploration? Even with 10 characters at max level there were still zones you had not fully explored and zones that you had not visited at all. I like WoW as it is. But truth is even if I like it, I have no desire to play it. Pet battles is the only reason I am still actively playing.

^^

I'd rather do every boring daily in hell for the rest of eternity than have to deal with the crap again.

[fraks]

My first character was a paladin. I remember applying for a casual "raiding" guild around level 45, and getting so excited to hit level 55 so I could join a raid. We'd muster up maybe 15-18 people to hit up AQ20 or original ZG.

My job as a vanilla paladin was simple; buff, buff, buff, cast judgement on boss so casters could wand for mana, buff, toss a heal or two.

Ah good times.

[yjmark]

But you had something to do? And that something wasnt boring dailies? That something wasnt -1000 FPS drop in raids, it wasnt flythrough questlines. It required you to read quests to know where the thing is. That I miss the most...or maybe exploration? Even with 10 characters at max level there were still zones you had not fully explored and zones that you had not visited at all. I like WoW as it is. But truth is even if I like it, I have no desire to play it. Pet battles is the only reason I am still actively playing.

Exploration was an effect of the game being new. It's impossible to get that back.

Also, the Pally Charger mount questline was horrible except for the last part. Trying to get those stupid drops from Stratholme.....yuck. Begging groups to help you out. That was probably the worst quests I had ever done. That being said, the last part in Scholo was probably the best battle I've had in all of WoW. I remember doing it with 5 Paladins

And MoP actually has much more to do than any other expansion. Not sure how you think that there is less to do in MoP than before...