Reminders of what vanilla was like

[Watchers]

Thats why TBC was better

[meheez]

Fuck i cant change bags without first emptying them on private server

[mvaliz]

Yes, vanilla was pretty bad. TBC was an absolute pinnacle of wow.

Please don't speak like it's an absolute value. I believe Wrath and Pandaria were "pinnacles" of WoW, but that's just my opinion, and will state it as MY opinion out of respect for what others believe who are different than mine.

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Good post.

It is indeed a very heartwarming and wonderful written post that touches all the feels. ^_^

...of course, it's totally completely wrong in a very rose-colored glasses way - But it is wonderfully poetically written. :P

Why is it wrong? Simple, because games have EVOLVED past what he's talking about. lets take this example:

And yet people wanted to play it for hours and hours, wanting to improve their characters, willing to grind factions for weeks for one or two powerful items or profession recipes. Players were willing to spend many hours running dungeons hoping that one boss would drop that one item, often getting no upgrades at all. People were willing to grind a bunch of gold just to be able to skill all spells to max rank. They'd run outleveled dungeons because of resist gear, they'd farm for hours just to get all pre-raid preparations ready. Healers grinding mobs horribly slowly because of respecc-costs. They'd hunt every single area of the game in order to reach hit caps or other plateaus in stats. Despite travel being slow, repetitive, with flight points far inbetween, players were almost always out in the world doing something to improve their characters. Players wanted to beat this massive, dangerous and unfair game world.

There's a couple factors you need to consider for this.

People did these things because, to put it plainly, there wasn't any other game out there by comparison. They didn't "Grind" away because it was "rewarding or fun". they did it because it was the only way to get the shiny thing - but it was done as LESS of a grind compared to other games at the time, namely EQ, so that's why they did it.

I was around that time and remember what EQ fans who didn't want to migrate to WoW said. Want to know what EQ fanatics said about WoW? It was a "Dummed down version of EQ and DIDN'T feel rewarding!" >_<

Another thing you have to remember, players who played in Vanilla - who "farmed for hours" - had the time to do that. It's been almost 15 years. They've got families and jobs to do now! Ain't nobody got time for that shit! >_< Now... maybe some no-lifers in college and adults who failed at life may love it, I'll give you that...

And this idea that "players were almost always out in the world doing something else" is complete bunkam. They were either farming Tubers in Dire Maul, Tribute Runs in Dire Maul, or hanging around Orgrimmar or Ironforge (back before linked auction houses) spamming chat looking for groups for Blackrun Mountain groups.

They'd hunt every single area of the game in order to reach hit caps or other plateaus in stats

...wha? o_O No they didn't. If they were low in a given stat (usually unarmed, because who the hell used unarmed aside for rogues with fist weapons! >_<) they'd go and grind the shit out of some lowbie mobs.

Everything he said about "rewarding, challenge, time investments, blah-de-blahblah..." can be applied to 1980s Pac-Man. And yet, nobody is clamoring for a new Pac-Man game yet or to re-release Pac-Man. Sure, it's fun to revisit on a rasberry pi once every year or so, but we've moved on.

While it is heartfelt and written, what that person wrote was very VERY skewed. Even when you go back to Vanilla, you're going to smile and remember that 1st day you were there the first moment you bring your character into Elwynn Forest! ^_^ But then, in less than an hour, you will be disheartened when you realize you're walking into Elwynn forrest... again! You will know where EVERYTHING is! Nothing is new anymore. You will know to either go to Westfall or Redridge from there. You will know Hogger. you will know the Deadmines will be your first "real" 5 man dungeon, ect... I mean, spit, even "5 man dungeon" wasn't a thing back in launch as people RAIDED the dungeons with 20+ pugs back when they could!

[garicasha]

Oh man I forgot that druids could only cast entangling roots outside, which meant it didn't work in basically any of the end-game dungeons.

Also I need to put in the Sunken Temple rewards...don't remember them being so powerful. Priest prayer beads are better than Talisman of Ephemeral Power (although they stack), mages have 2 very unique possible rewards and rogues also have an option for an item that increases stealth.

https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Sunken_Temple_rewards

[MrKnubbles]

You know how boring most classes are right now? Well, it's way worse in Classic! Everything is so slow and tedious.

[Kraenen]

...
But it's a shitty MMORPG in comparison to Classic.

Good ideas overall. On another side, a person can be sucked into these things through psychological manipulation, and there's a balance between work & reward vs a smooth ride & enjoyment. Sometimes it seemed like the amount of hours were just not very proportional to the reward given.

[Bodakane]

Please don't speak like it's an absolute value. I believe Wrath and Pandaria were "pinnacles" of WoW, but that's just my opinion, and will state it as MY opinion out of respect for what others believe who are different than mine.

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It is indeed a very heartwarming and wonderful written post that touches all the feels. ^_^

...of course, it's totally completely wrong in a very rose-colored glasses way - But it is wonderfully poetically written. :P

Why is it wrong? Simple, because games have EVOLVED past what he's talking about. lets take this example:



There's a couple factors you need to consider for this.

People did these things because, to put it plainly, there wasn't any other game out there by comparison. They didn't "Grind" away because it was "rewarding or fun". they did it because it was the only way to get the shiny thing - but it was done as LESS of a grind compared to other games at the time, namely EQ, so that's why they did it.

I was around that time and remember what EQ fans who didn't want to migrate to WoW said. Want to know what EQ fanatics said about WoW? It was a "Dummed down version of EQ and DIDN'T feel rewarding!" >_<

Another thing you have to remember, players who played in Vanilla - who "farmed for hours" - had the time to do that. It's been almost 15 years. They've got families and jobs to do now! Ain't nobody got time for that shit! >_< Now... maybe some no-lifers in college and adults who failed at life may love it, I'll give you that...

And this idea that "players were almost always out in the world doing something else" is complete bunkam. They were either farming Tubers in Dire Maul, Tribute Runs in Dire Maul, or hanging around Orgrimmar or Ironforge (back before linked auction houses) spamming chat looking for groups for Blackrun Mountain groups.


...wha? o_O No they didn't. If they were low in a given stat (usually unarmed, because who the hell used unarmed aside for rogues with fist weapons! >_<) they'd go and grind the shit out of some lowbie mobs.

Everything he said about "rewarding, challenge, time investments, blah-de-blahblah..." can be applied to 1980s Pac-Man. And yet, nobody is clamoring for a new Pac-Man game yet or to re-release Pac-Man. Sure, it's fun to revisit on a rasberry pi once every year or so, but we've moved on.

While it is heartfelt and written, what that person wrote was very VERY skewed. Even when you go back to Vanilla, you're going to smile and remember that 1st day you were there the first moment you bring your character into Elwynn Forest! ^_^ But then, in less than an hour, you will be disheartened when you realize you're walking into Elwynn forrest... again! You will know where EVERYTHING is! Nothing is new anymore. You will know to either go to Westfall or Redridge from there. You will know Hogger. you will know the Deadmines will be your first "real" 5 man dungeon, ect... I mean, spit, even "5 man dungeon" wasn't a thing back in launch as people RAIDED the dungeons with 20+ pugs back when they could!

A-fucking-men.

[Kreo]

It was inconvenient, rough, unpolished, unfair, unbalanced, messy, wonky, buggy, and sometimes outright broken.

And yet people wanted to play it for hours and hours, wanting to improve their characters, willing to grind factions for weeks for one or two powerful items or profession recipes. Players were willing to spend many hours running dungeons hoping that one boss would drop that one item, often getting no upgrades at all. People were willing to grind a bunch of gold just to be able to skill all spells to max rank. They'd run outleveled dungeons because of resist gear, they'd farm for hours just to get all pre-raid preparations ready. Healers grinding mobs horribly slowly because of respecc-costs. They'd hunt every single area of the game in order to reach hit caps or other plateaus in stats. Despite travel being slow, repetitive, with flight points far inbetween, players were almost always out in the world doing something to improve their characters. Players wanted to beat this massive, dangerous and unfair game world.

Because the game felt rewarding as a result of those hardships you overcame, at every point as you reached a new milestone for your character, hit a certain amount of crit/hit chance. Whenever you got a certain weapon or trinket, or reached the point of being able to go into the next tier of content, content you were previously, for a long time, too weak to even attempt.

The game felt like a real MMORPG.
Live/Retail does not. BFA is the culmination of misguided good intentions and too many cooks trying too many ingredients. The attempted removal of all inconveniences, all major grinds, removal of unfairness and "mandatory" things, or "needlessly complicated" things like haste plateaus and so on.

In a vacuum, BFA is overall a better video game, it's more polished, has better graphics, it has better coding, a crapton of systems behind the scenes keeping the game being a smooth experience for the players. It's more fair, it offers something for every kind of player there is. It's better balanced, it manages to juggle 36 specs and make sure they can all be used, to just slightly varying degrees,for leveling, PvE and PvP. It keeps content accessible to people no matter their time available, it has challenges from the 2h/week player up to mythic-raider-as-a-part-time-job player.
Live/Retail is a work of art in many ways.

But it's a shitty MMORPG in comparison to Classic.

Pretty much this.
Playing on LH atm, leveling paladin. It's such a pain in the ass, but that pain feels great. I love every aspect of it, every little thing is making you stronger, little by little. Green item? Awesome! Copper node? Yea baby! Got another talent point? Can't beat that!

I would still play BfA, but raids only takes 6 hours, plus 3 hours RBG, and 1 hr M+ for a weekly chest. Nothing else really holding in awesome yet boring BfA, even if it's polished like a mirror.

[salate]

I just remembered... VANILLA HAD A MOONWALK
*shocking trruth*

[Watchers]

Omg, melee is french and spanish refering to close combat ...

[RealRevChris]

So? So? So? So? So? So?

[garicasha]

Was wondering when someone would bump this again!

I’m gonna update it some more in the next few days!

ONE MONTH!!!

[kunah]

Was wondering when someone would bump this again!

I’m gonna update it some more in the next few days!

ONE MONTH!!!

Very interesting and generally realistic read.

If nothing else, I hope it sets expectations and helps people get their heads screwed on right or they are going to have bad time.

[1 + 1 = 3]

I'm levelling a toon on the ptr, only server i can play, since i'm unsub, and it's still boring as hell.

Can't wait for Classic !! HYPE.

[SirBeef]

The game was designed for immersion at the expense of player convenience.

And right from the get go you are wrong.

WoW was totally designed for player convenience from the get go. Although that looks totally different from today, that does not mean it was not the case back then. For example, outside of dungeons, raids, and some 3-5 player elite quests, everything in the game was solo-able. That was something that could not be said of previous entries to the MMO genre. WoW removed the exp loss death penalty. The added ! & ? over quest givers heads to help find them more easily. WoW added rested experience bonus to encourage logging off from time to time.

Those plus many others is what made WoW the baby's first MMO meme. Now by today's standards, Vanilla is considered a hardcore grind-fest, which is laughable and really points out people who never played it fore real. As time went on, more player convenience features were added, that still doesn't mean WoW was not originally designed around it, which it was.

[Oozlz]

Holy wall of text.

1. Everyone knows most/all of this already.
2. So?
3. People still play most/every version of most video games ever created. Vanilla was more popular than the last 3 expansions.

[cocomen2]

In times of Vanilla there was like 3-5 popular MMO games, nowday inet full of cool and deepshit games 1000+mmos (dead,live) you can waste 1-3 hours just by watching cinematics for each game.... no time to play and try all of this shit).
Still gona wait for these tasty tears of players on classic server "OMG,WTF How it killed me......" with 80% pvpers playing warriors(engineers).

[javabn]

I had so much fun reading this and remembering. The long corpse runs. The hours long LBRS run for attunement where I opened every pull with an MC because the tank was weak and we laughed each time as the Ogres jumped off the platforms. The challenge just getting to the dungeon entrances. This is great stuff and why I want to do it all over again. So much of this forum is focused on raiding that I think many miss-remember that only a small percentage of all players raided. It's nice to read about all the other stuff.

[Choda]

And right from the get go you are wrong.

WoW was totally designed for player convenience from the get go. Although that looks totally different from today, that does not mean it was not the case back then. For example, outside of dungeons, raids, and some 3-5 player elite quests, everything in the game was solo-able. That was something that could not be said of previous entries to the MMO genre. WoW removed the exp loss death penalty. The added ! & ? over quest givers heads to help find them more easily. WoW added rested experience bonus to encourage logging off from time to time.

Those plus many others is what made WoW the baby's first MMO meme. Now by today's standards, Vanilla is considered a hardcore grind-fest, which is laughable and really points out people who never played it fore real. As time went on, more player convenience features were added, that still doesn't mean WoW was not originally designed around it, which it was.

I find myself reminding people of this a lot. When it came out WoW was the most casual MMO on the market. Lineage would eat you up and spit you out compared to WoW. They even had a "negative rested" state that decreased XP gained to discourage long play sessions. This was removed in the beta if I'm not mistaken.

That being said I do believe the convenience stuff has gone too far.

[Sensa1]

Here's my advice:

1) Search the forums, here and elsewhere, and read all the very well documented differences (outright flaws & QoL items) between Classic and Retail (many outlined by the OP).

2) Decide which of those things you basically can't live without

3) Decide the number of "can't live without items" (QoL changes for lack of a better description) that will so take away from your gaming experience that you wouldn't enjoy Classic

4) Add up the number of things in Classic you just can''t live without you that you determined in Step 2. If that number equals or exceeds the number you arrived at in Step 3 - don't play Classic.

5) Classic isn't changing - it's a static concept - no amount of protestations to modify it with, for a lack of a better phrase, Retail QoL changes are going to happen so don't waste your time and energy or start playing with the exception that these changes will be implemented.

Classic isn't for everyone. No one is being forced to play it. Take it or Leave it. If you don't enjoy it there's always Retail or other games to play. Simple really.