Reminders of what vanilla was like

[Sturmbringe]

Then you raided after class rewamps.

You are talking about "Class Reviews" back in Vanilla? I raided before the "Hunter Class Review" and I still never ran out of mana. The only way I can see one running OOM is raiding without mana pots which means one is a scrub and a bad raider.

I will bother to address the rest of your BS b/c I see the shit you throw caught on other clueless posters.

Vanilla class design was different than Retail. There were no "pointless" specs. There was one tree for levelling, one tree for PvP and one tree for Raiding.

Beast Mastery was the levelling spec, Survival was the PvP spec and Marksmanship was the Raiding spec. It is that simple. There were no redundant specs, just bad players who didn't understand class design.

So much for your BS.

[evogsr]

Didn't see it mentioned in the OP, but didn’t hunter pets not automatically level up to what the player was when they were tamed? If a hunter was level 48 and tamed a level 13 pet, they had to level up the pet, yes?

Yes. Hunters had to level up each pet. Certain rare pets had more nuanced distinction for pvp. Broken Tooth for example was highly annoying for casters to deal with.

[garicasha]

Yup I'll add that.
@Nomads...your post is thoughtful, but the aspects of the game you liked are still present, but not in the same place. Mythic+ requires every bit as much teamwork as the old dungeons. However, the difficult parts of the game have been moved to max-level and leveling is no longer a challenge. To declare that the social aspect was removed after you did one Deadmines run is like declaring Japan overrated after deboarding a plane in Tokyo.

[Wardrake]

Didn't see it mentioned in the OP, but didn’t hunter pets not automatically level up to what the player was when they were tamed? If a hunter was level 48 and tamed a level 13 pet, they had to level up the pet, yes?

correct, yes.

[Nomads]

Yup I'll add that.
@Nomads...your post is thoughtful, but the aspects of the game you liked are still present, but not in the same place. Mythic+ requires every bit as much teamwork as the old dungeons. However, the difficult parts of the game have been moved to max-level and leveling is no longer a challenge. To declare that the social aspect was removed after you did one Deadmines run is like declaring Japan overrated after deboarding a plane in Tokyo.

Oh I'm sure it's still there. I just dont want to have to wait until raids to get there. End game raids have basically become dungeons. Dungeons have become the elite quests. Elite quests have been removed. I simply dont like this change in the design of the game.

I dont see why questing has to be this boring grind just to get you to level cap so you can start playing the "real" game. I enjoy leveling, running dungeons, getting blue gear, and finishing the zone storylines. But retail WoW had badically turned leveling into one longass tutorial to get you ready to do group content at level cap.

[garicasha]

Well that's kind of why they made it go so much faster, because there's so much more content to go through.

It would be interesting if they added a mythic+ feature to lowbie dungeons. I could see that being really popular.

[Gref]

a week ago, resubscribed to wow again. Was too lazy to level my warrior from 85 so opened a demon hunter.
I am in suramar now, pulling mobs right and left at least 4 minimum as I understood killing mobs one by one is an incredibly stupid and time wasting stuff. Pull everything, use eye beam to metamorph press 2-2 -3-3 rinse and repeat.

Now I remember the lost coin or something similar quest that sends you to raptor nesting area.

"Ok, better stick to the left as much as you can, If I can pull that patrolling raptor alone then approach the box from this angle I should be able to pick it without pulling the other 2 raptors".

I prefer the barrens one over that mindless mob pulling anytime.

I tried running dungeons too. I don't even know the name tho. You follow some nagas into portal at the end of a quests with the help of that ghost night elf. Since I have no idea I entered and waiting for tank to pull the first 2 nagas and guess what? everybody mounted up and running all the way down to god knows where. All the mobs running after us to the boss and same eye beam rinse and repeat. whole dungeons the same thing rinse and repeat.

Now where is the immersion? where is observation? where is caution? where is play god sake? what happened to this game?

I left the game when the siege of orgrimmar raid hit the servers. thanks to the game being so dull apart from normal story line questing.
But holy shit it is ridiculous right now.

Going jenkins in a dungeon? what the fuck? killing mobs in masses? wth? I am not saying you couldn't do these in mop, you could but in these numbers?

I will welcome the slow and tactical approach to wow. It is not a strategy game of course but sheep, sap, shackle move slowly, random fears pull other shit etc and somehow managing the situation felt great back in those days. Plus, I would welcome the communication once again between party members.

The game was incredibly grindy but rewards were necessary and satisfying.

I am great fan of wow's lore and been keeping with it outside the game up until now. That being said, I will continue playing the retail too to follow on the story in game again once more.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

You are talking about "Class Reviews" back in Vanilla? I raided before the "Hunter Class Review" and I still never ran out of mana. The only way I can see one running OOM is raiding without mana pots which means one is a scrub and a bad raider.

I will bother to address the rest of your BS b/c I see the shit you throw caught on other clueless posters.

Vanilla class design was different than Retail. There were no "pointless" specs. There was one tree for levelling, one tree for PvP and one tree for Raiding.

Beast Mastery was the levelling spec, Survival was the PvP spec and Marksmanship was the Raiding spec. It is that simple. There were no redundant specs, just bad players who didn't understand class design.

So much for your BS.

So in your eyes there were no issues with the following specs?:
Ret paladin, Prot paladin, Feral (cat dps) druid, Balance druid, Arcane Mage, Disc Priest (you only wanted one per raid for spirit buff- which didn't require a full disc tree) and pretty much all dot specs because of debuff cap on mobs.

Talking about raiding.
Certain specs only usable for leveling (or pvp) just shows how badly designed and balanced the specs were back then. You could even just look at tier sets from the raids and understand the limitations you had...

[Nomads]

I am great fan of wow's lore and been keeping with it outside the game up until now. That being said, I will continue playing the retail too to follow on the story in game again once more.

Not really worth it, man. I cannot stomach retail anymore, basically for all the reasons you listed. All flash and no substance. I don't know how people stick with it currently, BUT i guess their numbers are at their lowest point they've ever been, so I guess not many people do.

[blankfaced]

Oh I'm sure it's still there. I just dont want to have to wait until raids to get there. End game raids have basically become dungeons. Dungeons have become the elite quests. Elite quests have been removed. I simply dont like this change in the design of the game.

I dont see why questing has to be this boring grind just to get you to level cap so you can start playing the "real" game. I enjoy leveling, running dungeons, getting blue gear, and finishing the zone storylines. But retail WoW had badically turned leveling into one longass tutorial to get you ready to do group content at level cap.

I'm sorry, but nothing about the game has changed in that regard. Leveling has always just been a grind to get to end game, except maybe the first few patches of Vanilla.

[Nomads]

I'm sorry, but nothing about the game has changed in that regard. Leveling has always just been a grind to get to end game, except maybe the first few patches of Vanilla.

No sir. There are statistics from vanilla showing that the majority of players NEVER even made it to 60. Most played casually, rolling alts, running dungeons with their friends, etc. Getting to 60 was a pretty huge accomplishment back in the day. Hence, the large number of videos on youtube where players filmed their reactions when they hit that final "Ding". A lot of players considered that the end of the game.

I think a lot of people don't remember this. Kinda like no one seems to remember that like 1% of the population raided Naxx past Spider Wing.

[Gref]

Not really worth it, man. I cannot stomach retail anymore, basically for all the reasons you listed. All flash and no substance. I don't know how people stick with it currently, BUT i guess their numbers are at their lowest point they've ever been, so I guess not many people do.

Well I am not excited to play retail either. But I have some time for myself these days and said why not. But really, for example I will clock out soon and go back home but I am not excited to log in in the slightest. Probably will play something else.

[Deleted]

Certain specs only usable for leveling (or pvp) just shows how badly designed and balanced the specs were back then.

To me that is good design. 'Every spec can do everything' is just boring and bland, it's much more interesting to have specialized roles. But this is of course personal preferences, which is exactly why Blizzard is making WoW Classic for those of us that don't enjoy the "well designed and balanced" specs in retail.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

To me that is good design. 'Every spec can do everything' is just boring and bland, it's much more interesting to have specialized roles. But this is of course personal preferences, which is exactly why Blizzard is making WoW Classic for those of us that don't enjoy the "well designed and balanced" specs in retail.

So you like the idea that if you want to be a top dps in raids you're shoehorned into 3-4 talent specs out of 20+ available? If you want to tank there's only one viable option? If you wanted to heal you even had some races that were predetermined for you (Dwarf Priest for Alliance)... this isn't good design at all!
Imagine buying a case of beer and you could only drink 5-6 of them and the other 20 had yeast floats, bad seals, cracked bottles or other faults- but you'd still have to pay the full price for the 26 beers?

For me the good thing about Vanilla was the close knit realm communities that developed before we got flying mounts, cross realm activities and "Queue from anywhere" bullshit. However the actual game wasn't that good, it was good because the community made it good and WoW appealed to a lot of people with a fairly new game genre (at the level it was). For me Blizzard should make Classic WoW a "remake" or "2.0" Vanilla, meaning they stick to the roots with the low "quality of life" changes they added later but at the same time they should improve the class balance- or rather complete class/spec designs and move on from there. How Prot Paladins didn't have a taunt as a good example of a BIG issue that needed to be resolved, making strength give Prot Paladins Spellpower to help their threat would also be good.

[Niwes]

@garicasha:

stopped reading after the fifth miss information (1/3 text).

maybe your recall is damaged or you smoked too much pot at that time. but you talk, besides also a lot of true things, much BS.

the only one i remember at the moment is the „shamans all were restos in raid“. maybe while MC or BWL. cant remember because in that time i was rogue and the game was new. but in AQ20 and AQ40 we had a ele shaman in our raid, that did HELL of dmg and also supporting. i cant remember we ever had said „stop playing this toon“.

[Deleted]

So you like the idea that if you want to be a top dps in raids you're shoehorned into 3-4 talent specs out of 20+ available? If you want to tank there's only one viable option? If you wanted to heal you even had some races that were predetermined for you (Dwarf Priest for Alliance)...

Yes, these are all fine by me. Note that these apply mainly to raiding, which is a small part of the game (in which the majority doesn't take part). Some other specs are better for PvE, or soloing, or grinding, or 5-mans. I understand some people dislike this design, which is perfectly reasonable and they can play retail—it's a "bad design" for you, but not for me because we enjoy different designs.

Imagine buying a case of beer and you could only drink 5-6 of them and the other 20 had yeast floats, bad seals, cracked bottles or other faults- but you'd still have to pay the full price for the 26 beers?

Ok, but I fail to see what this has to do with anything. A more apt analogy would be to complain in an open bar event that only the beer and wine gets you drunk, and the coffee and soft drinks are "broken" because they don't get you drunk.

[garicasha]

I do miss the tactical parts of leveling.

But as far as class balance, my opinion was that at the time Blizzard was striving for every spec to be viable from the get-go. But due to the massive number of classes and abilities, as well as a lack of experience for what raid encounters would be like (and which abilities would be good/great), it didn't turn out that way.

One concrete example would be healing spell downranking. Low-ranking spells getting all of the benefit from +spellpower on items while having a mana cost tuned for level 20 players was almost certainly never playtested.

Also added this map of Molten Core, note how the patrol routes extend from the entrance in the upper left all the way through half the zone. https://ibb.co/mabW9b

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I do miss the tactical parts of leveling.

But as far as class balance, my opinion was that at the time Blizzard was striving for every spec to be viable from the get-go. But due to the massive number of classes and abilities, as well as a lack of experience for what raid encounters would be like (and which abilities would be good/great), it didn't turn out that way.

One concrete example would be healing spell downranking. Low-ranking spells getting all of the benefit from +spellpower on items while having a mana cost tuned for level 20 players was almost certainly never playtested.

Also added this map of Molten Core, note how the patrol routes extend from the entrance in the upper left all the way through half the zone. https://ibb.co/mabW9b

Exactly!
Vanilla was in large parts experimental and unfinished- I hope Blizzard remake Classic to their modern standards and experiences.

[kubasniak]

If so negative etc then do not play it. Play on retail and play BFA.

[xmancho1]

If so negative etc then do not play it. Play on retail and play BFA.

If you are playing classic, you are playing retail, you are paying for it Just saying So stop using this stupid term.