What made classic wow better than current?

[kurtpal]

I'm still waiting for a valid reason why Plainsrunning should have stayed in the game.

Sure, it doesn't have its place in the game. But at least it was different, these days every class has everything. rogues have heals? everything has a silence and a slow? hell, death knights have more spells than mages, and their class is named after magic.

[Kyanion]

I don't know why I put it in the thread, and I don't know why u are still complaining about it. it was just something I added, there are hundreds of other things they have removed that make retail wow look like an absolute joke in comparison to vanilla. there is simply no arguement.

Legion is an absolutely pathetic expansion and the current devs simply have no idea what they are doing.

I am not going to listen to you or kyanion as you seem intent on loving retail wow and hating vanilla, its actually pathetic bickering over what iteration of wow was the better version, sub numbers alone prove that point.

Umm as I've stated many times before I played day 1 in Vanilla and loved many things about it. However I am not blinded to all future expansions of the game because of my love of Vanilla. Sure retail WoW has done many things wrong but there are plenty of things they got right and I still enjoy the game, mainly the raiding. It isn't a "pathetic expansion" and it surely isn't a WoD.

And to your final point, sure sub numbers alone prove a point that TBC and WotLK were more popular than Vanilla. Guess they should start at TBC and WotLK servers and skip over Vanilla, right? Or if I'm being a true smartass they should also start in Cata over Vanilla because Vanilla never had as many subs as Cata. Hell even MoP had more subs for nearly all of that expansion than Vanilla did.... So what point are you trying to prove exactly?

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, it doesn't have its place in the game. But at least it was different, these days every class has everything. rogues have heals? everything has a silence and a slow? hell, death knights have more spells than mages, and their class is named after magic.

I still have Solar beam as a moonkin, such silence. much wow. So you want to go back to abilities you rarely or never used? Woo I love having a bar off to the side of my screen I never use 99% of the time. Such choice.

[Deleted]

Yeah totally mystified with Youtube.

Answer me this. If the game had kept to a 40 man exclusive model where only a few people were seeing the raids do you think that would have been sustainable today? Especially when more casual friendly MMOs are coming out.

I believe it would be sustainable if Blizzard released a new MMO. WoW is damaged to no point of going back.
No one can live without transmog, people would rage if LFR was removed, people would rage at all the changes and would leave for good at this point.

[kurtpal]

That doesn't answer my question then.

you're getting so stupidly technical that If I was to stoop to your level, I would point out that you never asked a question.

[Kyanion]

I believe it would be sustainable if Blizzard released a new MMO. WoW is damaged to no point of going back.
No one can live without transmog, people would rage if LFR was removed, people would rage at all the changes and would leave for good at this point.

Wow isn't damaged to no point of going back. Dear god do you see how much money that game still brings in? There is no reason to remove Xmog or LFR. What the fuck are you even going on about now?

[Darktbs]

I'm genuinely curious as to why people hate transmog. It literally affects nothing.

"Muh immersion" probably.

[FelPlague]

I don't know why I put it in the thread, and I don't know why u are still complaining about it. it was just something I added, there are hundreds of other things they have removed that make retail wow look like an absolute joke in comparison to vanilla. there is simply no arguement.

Legion is an absolutely pathetic expansion and the current devs simply have no idea what they are doing.

I am not going to listen to you or kyanion as you seem intent on loving retail wow and hating vanilla, its actually pathetic bickering over what iteration of wow was the better version, sub numbers alone prove that point.

you say vanilla is amazing and has no faults
but then complain about stuff that was removed in vanilla
"wtf its bullshit they removed the survival skill"
"wtf its bullshit they removed plainswalking"
"wtf its bullshit they removed bucklers and buckler rogues"

[Doctor Funkenstein]

The #1 reason was due to the original "holy trinity" philosophy of group design. Each of the three roles had a vital role to play, each relying on the other two, but with consequences attached.

To better explain since I doubt most of the people here even remember how it used to work, the healer's role was to keep everyone alive, but the threat they generated from their heals (and especially overhealing) was massive. So not only did they have to pay attention to everyone's health and debuffs, they had to pay attention to their thread, while the rest of their team did everything they could to minimize their own incoming damage. The less damage they took, the less damage that had to be healed, and the less chance of the tank losing thread with the healer getting one or two shot as a consequence.

DPS had a similar dilemma. They had to do as much damage as they could safely do without pulling aggro, but they also had to pay attention to crowd control, their positioning, and their defensive cooldowns in order to minimize their damage. If they did too much damage and lost aggro, boom, one or two shot. If they didn't do enough DPS, failed to keep up with their CC, or failed to make use of their defensive cooldowns, the healer would run out of mana and boom, everyone dies. They didn't just get to stand there and go "HERP A DERP, watch me mash da buttunz!" They had to pay just as much attention as everyone else in the party.

The tank had a completely different set of problems. AoE threat generation was minimal, so they had to not only direct the DPS into which target(s) to focus on so that they, too, could focus most of their threat-generating attacks, but they had to switch between all the other active, non-CCed opponents in order to keep them from peeling off and one-shotting the healer. They also regularly had to make use of line of sight and positioning so that the CCing DPS could do their secondary jobs without accidentally breaking it, and they had to have an itchy trigger finger on their taunt button(s) just in case they did lose aggro for a moment. If they did and didn't catch it fast enough, certain disaster wasn't far behind.

Gear mattered for overall speed and efficiency and allowed for more mistakes, but it didn't do much to help with some of the core issues that made each role important. Tanks still didn't have reliable AoE threat generation, and healers and DPS could still get three- or four-shot instead of one- or two-shot if they didn't pay attention. So the roles were consistently important from start to finish, and it was in everyone's best interest to make sure everyone else was evenly geared, with a clear priority on tanks and healers over DPS all else being equal. Because if anyone fell too far behind, the group's synergy would quickly fall apart.

But then Blizzard lost their fucking minds and listened to the ADHD players who cried about all of that being "too hard" and that it took "too long" to do a dungeon let alone a raid. And so now we got this dumb-down bullshit where tanks can pretty much just fall asleep and rely on their AoE threat generation to get the job done, healers barely have to heal except in the hardest content or if everyone gets bored and decided to pull 5-6 groups at once, and DPS acts like braindead fucktards. SO MUCH FUN!!! Wheeee! <eye roll>

The #2 reason is due to the complete and utter lack of server communities and ability to change your name/server/faction on a whim. There's no consequences for being a complete and total jackass, loot ninja, or other toxic behavior. None whatsoever. SHOCKING toxic behavior went out of a control as a result. Who possibly could have seen that coming?

Sure, there were still assholes, ninjas, and other twats around, but if they got too bad they'd either have to go start over (either with a new character or, preferably, on another server) or try to change their ways, least they get stuck only grouping with newbie players or those who were equally shitty human beings. Likewise, excellent players developed equally excellent reputations and had little trouble finding a group once they developed a decent enough friend's list.

But nope, none of that matters because -- once again -- ADHD wins out. "Whaa, I have to actually work to form a group, and someones we can't find enough people at 3:41am on a Wednesay! Crai crai, please give me instant gratification with on consequences for being a fucktard! Pweeeeeeeeaaaaaassssee!"

Just... ugh.

The worst part is that I genuinely believe that Blizzard -- especially their current group of dipshit developers -- truly, truly have no idea what happened. Just like the vast majority of current players, including the equally vast majority of players here who'll try and tell me how wrong and stupid I am.

[Kyanion]

I'm genuinely curious as to why people hate transmog. It literally affects nothing.

I mean I guess they want all the raiders to look the same? I really don't get it either. I personally don't care what my gear looks like. I'd wield a dead fish and rags if it gave me more dps.

[MoanaLisa]

Nothing more. I could say Fangio was the best F1 driver. It's still an opinion.

Fangio at Nurburgring in 1957 isn't an opinion though

[Kyanion]

I always use Tier for my mogs. Shaman uses Tier 1, Hunter uses Dungeon Tier 1 replica and Mage uses Tier 7 25 man set.

I've used the same Xmog since the system came out really. I get the appeal and why people love to have tons of options and change up their characters but I could live with or without it. But at this point it would be silly to remove the system like someone else suggested earlier.

[MoanaLisa]

I'm genuinely curious as to why people hate transmog. It literally affects nothing.

I do remember when they first announced it there were some epic threads on the main boards about high-end raiders dressing in the equivalent of overalls, straw hats and carrying pitchforks for weapons. General opinion was that would soil the game irretrievably.

Some people take their raiding too seriously.

[Barnabas]

The game had a slower pace.

[Deleted]

Wow isn't damaged to no point of going back. Dear god do you see how much money that game still brings in? There is no reason to remove Xmog or LFR. What the fuck are you even going on about now?

It's not my fault i enjoy oldschool MMO's. Burning Crusade and day 1 Wotlk to be exact.

For me it would be perfect if they removed that stuff but it makes ZERO sense in a business view. Practically suicide to do those changes at this point.

But i also believe the future of MMO's is bright if someone discovers something revolutionary to the genre. Maybe the trick is to not go back in time...and instead go to the future

[Kyanion]

It's not my fault i enjoy oldschool MMO's. Burning Crusade and day 1 Wotlk to be exact.

For me it would be perfect if they removed that stuff but it makes ZERO sense in a business view. Practically suicide to do those changes at this point.

But i also believe the future of MMO's is bright if someone discovers something revolutionary to the genre. Maybe the trick is to not go back in time...and instead go to the future

There is nothing wrong with loving older parts of WoW and older MMOs like Everquest, the first Star Wars MMO, FFXI and so on. I mean if Wow was truly dying or not nearly as popular as it is then making time-locked servers for older periods of the game (like EQ does) would be totally fine. I just think it is a can of worms that would best be left sealed as long as the game is popular (and it totally still is despite what some say) and new content continues to be made.

As far as the future of MMOs? Give me VMMOs and I can die happy. I've seen all those anime series/light novels based around a concept. My body is ready. But since that type of stuff is years off let's be real here. Are there any really new challengers coming down the pipe? The elusive Star Citizen? Crowfall or whatever it is called? I don't see anything toppling WoW yet or forcing WoW to REALLY buckle down and innovate yet.

[proralph]

It's the lore I guess which has always given an edge to the classic WOW better than any other version

[Ickz]

The gaming community as a whole was a lot different in the early 2000s. Even if they released official legacy servers that were a 100% copy of vanilla, it would not be the same as the community is just different now - much more toxic, etc. It would be even worse now as there would be such a hardcore elitism due to having played everything before and knowing all the game mechanics already, etc.

[Charge me Doctor]

It's the lore I guess which has always given an edge to the classic WOW better than any other version

Lore in classic wow was all over the place, it was practically a joke.

[Deleted]

I'll show you some more stuff they have removed from the game, im posting it again because i want to know how people feel about this..




Rogues had to craft their own poisons with special labs spread across the world.

Rogues had to buy vanishing powder from vendors touse the vanish ability.

Rogues had to buy blinding powder from professions or auction house to be able to use the ability.

Rogues could deactivate traps.

Rogues had to train lockpicking by opening lockboxes around the world. Special gloves even existed to help you.

Stealth used to have levels and could be more or less effective. Items such as Nightscape Boots helped you being less detectable. Also, as they were sneaking, rogues moved slower when stealthed.

Hunter started without any pet and had a quest to teach them how to tame one, enhancing the link between them. Now they automatically start with one. Same for Warlock and their first demon.

Hunter could use Eyes of the Beast to see through the eyes of its pet.

Hunter's had to be out of combat to set traps.

Hunter's pet had an happiness bar and a loyalty property to manage by feeding them with appropriate food. If done wrong, the pet would do lesser damage or even leave you.

Hunters had 3 pets max. Each ones feel special. Now they carry a whole zoo in their bags.

Hunters couldn't attack in melee range with ranged weapons.

Hunters could use melee weapons alongside ranged weapons.


Bows and guns require ammunitions you had to craft/buy and put in special ammo bags. This could lead to awkward situations

Warriors and rogues were able to use ranged weapons.

Warlocks had to get and carry soulshards in special bags
.
Warlocks had a Detect Invisibility spell.

Warlock's Ritual of Doom needed four other people to summon the Doomguard... and one of them was randomly sacrificed! With great power came great responsability.

Warriors had different stances and had to switch between them during combat for maximum dps.

Shamans could use two handed weapons.

Death Knight's Raise Ally spell bring back people as... ghouls!

Druids turned into tree form to heal.

Priests had 2 uniques Racial abilities.

Mages, Warlocks and blacksmiths could craft various oils and grindstones to buff weapons.

Paladins could be played only by Alliance while Shamans were only for Horde.

Weapons require skills, including hand fighting. If you equipped a kind of weapon that you didn't know yet, you needed to use it a lot before doing max DPS. You also needed to see a weapon trainer first.

Speaking of trainers, you had to see a trainer in town to learn your new class skill/spell. Now it automatically spawn in your action bar as you level.
Some spells only worked on specific mobs, strengthening the lore. Paladin's exorcism for example was to be used against undead/demons while now it works the same on any mobs.

Magic/fire/frost resistance gears were useful against specific boss. Once again it strengthen the lore. Some mobs had fire resistance too and/or were weak against frost spells. Frost resistance gear was vital against Sapphiron etc.

Classes were a lot more different: in term of rotation, but also some didn't have any interrupt, or any cc, or any group buff etc. In the same way, lots of class, especially pure DPS, didn't have a single heal. Now almost every class has the same set of interrupt/cc/heal/group buff.

Mana and health regenerate way slower, so you NEEDED to stop and eat/drink every few fights. Food and drink actually mater, and mana for DPS caster mattered too. When's the last time you bought normal food in game?

Spell levels (Holy Light 1, Holy Light 2 etc.) existed and were useful to manage your mana.

Each classes has unique quests to unlock specific stuff: mounts for warlocks and paladins, postures for warriors, druid's forms, poisons and Certificate of Thievery for rogues etc.

Every classes had an extra equipment slot where you put your libram, sigil, throw, totem, idol, wand etc.

Original talent tree allowed hybrid class to freely mix healing, tanking and dps abilities (even if it wasn't often imba!).

According to your race or spec, different weapons meant different abilities: maces used to stun, axes had extra crit chance, swords were faster or had a chance to double strike...

There where specific class quests you could obtain through raiding and dungeons that lead you on epic journys throught the world and really tested your ability with that character, Rhok' delar was a epic bow but had legendary status to the hunters that used it.

Gear rarity actually mattered, green items where uncommon, rare items where actually rare and epic items where actually epic.

There was no transmog in vanilla or bc, so you could actually see the gear that players where wearing, you could tell if they where a fully kitted out pve raider, a veteran of pvp, or a dungeon goe just by looking at them. further adding to the immersion.

Gold was scarce, it took a LOT of time to save up 10g. Now you can literally make thousand of gold in a day.

Mounts had different speeds. Now they all go to your max speed. Also summoning mount took twice as long (3 sec vs 1.5 sec now).

Leveling took way longer, so the focus was more about the journey, less about the destination.

Quests most of the time had you traveling to different zones to finish different quests and pick up new ones, most of the time you never spent an enitre level in the same zone , you where constantly traveling from zone to zone as was everyone else, further adding to the immersion.

Mobs were harder to kill: you could fight a couple of them but pulling a whole group often meant death. Same for rare mobs that requiered a group. Now you can easily pull 5-10 mobs and solo any rare you encounter while leveling.

No instant mail, even to alts. Now there are mailboxes every 20 yards in every cities

You couldn't have Alliance and Horde chars on the same PvP server, which helped faction pride.

Keys existed. To open special doors you had first to find the key, ask a rogue to picklock it, have a blacksmith craft a key or use an engineer's charge.

Servers used to be completely separated. This made realm communities and personal behavior extremely important because if you did something like ninja loot, you were labelled as "that guy" and were responsible for your behavior. At the same time, everyone knew who the best players on the server were in PvE and PvP respectively. The server was your world.

Housing was tested in early alpha (as seen in this video): players could buy/build their own house in Stormwind/Goldshire.
Being part of the Brew of the Month Club rewarded you with a monthly sample beer.

Players used to be automatically dismounted when they entered waters... But gnomes were the only ones to be also dismounted in shallow waters, such as Zangarmarsh or Swamp of Sorrows.

Basic campfire required simple wood and a flint.

Reagents (candle, feather, stone...) were needed to cast lots of utility spells. Some could be simply bought but others needed farming all around the world.

Auction Houses were local. At start, only Ironforge (for Alliance) and Oggrimar (for Horde) had one. Also goblin's AH were neutrals so they were used by smugglers to trade rare items between factions.

You need to travel to dungeons and battleground. Now you don't even need to know where they are.

Breathing bar was shorter and quests that required you to go under water didn't auto-give you water breathing buff like now.

There was no instance in the world: If people were in the same place they see and could help each others.

Quests objectives weren't displayed on your map. Quest items didn't sparkle (or had an outline) and quest givers didn't show up on the minimap. Also quest mobs didn't have their names highlighted for you.

Lots of group quests so you have to, well, make group while leveling.

Four Dragons of Nightmare were hidden around Azeroth and required raid-sized groups to be defeated.

Some of the most powerful spells were only learnable from rares Codex. They dropped from dungeons or raids but weren't BoP so you could trade/sale them.

Expansions or some raids used to be announced with huge pre-release events, like The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj, Dark Portal Opens or The Scourge Invasion. This was abandoned after Cataclysm. They were truly massive as the whole realm was participating.

One of the most epic quest-chain had a cooking recipe reward. You needed a group to loot the mats from elite chimeras.

Rare recipes required you to travel all over the world, either to find/buy them or to do special quests and even dungeons to unlock them.
For example you needed a priest to mind-control a mini-boss to teach you Enchanted Elementium; now it's just a drop.

Some crafting recipes (Sulfuron Hammer, engineer Jeeves/Chopper, some food...) required lots of work and mats. Now it's just a couple, rarely 3, max.

Sound logical, but you actually needed a fishpole to fish, a knife to skin, a hammer for blacksmith etc.

You had to level gathering before getting to the next zone. Now tou can skin/gather in Draenor even if you're level 1.

You need the actual mats to be in your bag. Now you can have them in your bank and craft anything in the wild.

Alchemists and jewelcrafters needed alchemy labs to make some of the best flasks and reagents.

Some professions had sub-specialisations: Blacksmith could specialize in weapon-smith or armor-smith; Alchemist could become transmute, potion or flask masters; Engineers could focus on goblin or gnome recipes. (some of those specialisations still exist but aren't updated anymore)

Skinners could skin either normal leathers or scales (used for mail armor). Now only normal leather exist.

Some creatures (like Onyxia) required special tools to be skinned, which rewarded you with very rare scales to craft unique gear.

Blacksmiths and engineers could craft Skeleton keys and small bombs that you could buy to open lockboxes or doors.
Only enchanters could, well, disenchant items.

There used to be a weekly Kalu’ak Fishing Derby in Northrend.

In Alpha there was a Survival Skills profession used for making campfires and torches. Torches were used for scouting darker areas, such as Duskwood (you couldn't see anything past 20-30 yards in front of you).

Weather was alot more prominant in some zones barrens, for example was mostly sunny but sometimes rained, Felwood, it rained alot winterspring was often heavy snow, ect.

Night time on servers was alot darker than current wow.

World PvP ranks) with specific rewards like gear but also repair discount or access to a special World Defense channel.

Alterac Valley lasted for hours or days at a time, with lots of PvE quests included, You could even summon bosses to fight for your side! (You can still technically do it but it's not relevant anymore)

You could loose honor if you killed civilians from opposite faction.

You had halls of valour that you could enter in capital citys (sw, orgrimmar) after obtaining a certain pvp rank, that sold all of the high level pvp gear. it added to faction pride and made you feel like a real champion of your faction.

When hard raid mode was first introduced (in Ulduar), it was done via in-game action, ie: you had to do trigger specific things during an encounter. Now it's via a click on a menu. (this kind of gameplay removal -World of MenuCraft-)

Some raids couldn't be entered directly, you first had to do long and epic questlines to unlock them. Now you can even kill a boss before knowing about his story (Isthar in HFC for example).

Dungeons were real mazes that could take hours to complete. Now it's mostly 3 bosses separated by corridors that took less than 20 minutes to defeat.

No more reforging (too complicated for ppl, let's remove it? -blizzard)

No more gemming (finding a new piece of gear and gemming and and enchanting it it was so satisfying, why did they remove it??)

No more enchanting (we still have enchanting, it's just nowhere near as good as it once was)

Class / spec design sucks (rogues no longer feel like rogues, Shadow priests no longer feel like shadow priests etc)

No more PvP vendors

No more world PvP

No more Horde v Alliance city raids

There's no huge PvP area like Tol barad or wintergrasp.

World quests are just Daily quests.

No honor or conquest points.

No Valour points.

No justice points.

No exploration.

No RPG elements left in the game.

Leveling is just a stroll and takes a matter of hours to get max level, its literally trivial at this point.

The glyph system has been removed.

AP grind is a pointless waste of time.

Its just click a menu and be teleported here there and everywhere, you can literally sit in your capital city and level to max without moving a muscle, that, my friends is beyond a joke.

I mean jesus christ, the list is just endless.

[Kyanion]

Everything on that list is truly amazing stuff and RPG elements that adds to immersion. I'm really sad those days are gone, but maybe some day a new game will come that puts the RPG back in MMORPG

And yet again (not that I bothered to read that full wall of text) he lists things that never even made it into Vanilla. And sorry, I don't care how much you like immersion or whatever but you agree with that ENTIRE list? Uh huh sure.