If The Cataclysm Revamp Never Happened...

[Deleted]

it was the first lazy expansion with reused dungeons, no new continent, streamlined questing and LFR

[taliey]

Oh right, because people were so eager to do the then vanilla questing during BC and WOTLK.

[Akka]

It is pretty amazing when you sit down and look at some of this stuff years later just how early some of it started. I personally didn't see it then, I saw it as refinement, but looking back now I can definitely understand how someone who loved the Vanilla experience wouldn't be that happy with TBC and certainly not Wrath.

Yes, I remember being pretty much Cassandra already back then. I found problem in arena gear undermining PvE one, the reduction of leveling XP and the increasing power of badge gear.
I loved TBC, but these flaws always marred the picture, and they went ever increasing.
And the 3.0 was definitely something I hated. It was all the WotLK shit hitting the fan and ruining the game.

What's worse is realizing you probably were part of the reason some of this stuff happened, I know I was one of the ones barking about the hybrid tax back then, Warriors being the only raid tank, etc. Makes me shake my head at myself tbh.

Making tanking more varied was actually a good thing and a strength of TBC. Same for making all the spec at least decent. So I can't complain about these ones.
I also asked to reduce raid size, and honestly on this one I still think it's better to have 10 and 20-men than 40 and 20 (though I like "fixed size" raids).

But I was guilty of whining about raid gear in Vanilla, and on this one, yeah, I want to come back and slap myself. The rest of the shit happened without my blessing, my conscience is clear !

[Armourboy]

Yes, I remember being pretty much Cassandra already back then. I found problem in arena gear undermining PvE one, the reduction of leveling XP and the increasing power of badge gear.
I loved TBC, but these flaws always marred the picture, and they went ever increasing.
And the 3.0 was definitely something I hated. It was all the WotLK shit hitting the fan and ruining the game.

Making tanking more varied was actually a good thing and a strength of TBC. Same for making all the spec at least decent. So I can't complain about these ones.
I also asked to reduce raid size, and honestly on this one I still think it's better to have 10 and 20-men than 40 and 20 (though I like "fixed size" raids).

But I was guilty of whining about raid gear in Vanilla, and on this one, yeah, I want to come back and slap myself. The rest of the shit happened without my blessing, my conscience is clear !

The raid sizes I didn't have a fight in, but I tend to agree that I do like the 10/20 format better than the old 20/40 one. Odds are that was due to being in a rather small guild and 10 man sizes fitting us better ( I freaking loved Kara ), and I agree, I like the fixed size myself. This " well we got X amount of people which means we need another healer so you can't go " isn't really any better than just knowing you don't have a spot.

In all honesty though I didn't cry a whole lot about things back then, I think mainly because I didn't feel confident enough to know what I wanted. Oddly enough, I don't think most people then did either

[Izalla]

Do you think some would even scream for Vanilla today?

No revamped zones/quests etc. just usual progression

Many view Cataclysm as the culprit of WoW's decline. What do you think?

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Just a quick question: Do you know of any quests or other features which the Cataclyms removed from Outland and Northrend?

To rephrase this question:
Was there something introduced with BC and WotLK which Catacylsm got rid of - Aside from the main Klaimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Continents?
- were there any other revamps happening in the zones of the previous two expansions?

I think there are definitely some people who would not be as interested in vanilla if Blizz hadn't removed so much of the original world. I for one really miss certain zones and even quests that I can never ever visit again without vanilla servers, and I only started a couple months before 3.1. The fact that you can never go home again, so to speak, makes vanilla more appealing for anyone with nostalgia for the old stuff, or interest in seeing it for the first time for those who started in 4.0 and beyond. It's probably a small minority though, given how much of the desire for vanilla is based on things like the raiding scene, grinds, time consumption, and RPG elements.

[WhiteEagle888]

no and oh surprise the demand for bc and wotlk realm is not nearly as high as classic

"thanks" four your "informative" answer, mate :P
Surprise: I know the demand is not as high

And was only asking to make sure Cataclysm only changed the Classic places, thereby alleviating the need for said BC WotLK servers.
I wouldn't want a separate bunch either.

[deniter]

As much as i enjoyed playing Burning Crusade, the first signs of downfall were noticeable even in that expansions. It was the first time when your questing was zone by zone rather than worldwide and started to feel linear already. At the end of the expansion we got first daily quests and even an island of its own for daily quests only.

In WotLK they took this on a new level where quests were more numerous and practically every one of them rewarded you with a green item of your choice. That started to feel like a chore very quickly. Also, daily quests were there from the very beginning and reputations were trivialized.

So i can't say Cataclysm revamp was the reason for me to quit, while it most certainly was the last straw.

[WhiteEagle888]

I think there are definitely some people who would not be as interested in vanilla if Blizz hadn't removed so much of the original world. I for one really miss certain zones and even quests that I can never ever visit again without vanilla servers, and I only started a couple months before 3.1. The fact that you can never go home again, so to speak, makes vanilla more appealing for anyone with nostalgia for the old stuff, or interest in seeing it for the first time for those who started in 4.0 and beyond. It's probably a small minority though, given how much of the desire for vanilla is based on things like the raiding scene, grinds, time consumption, and RPG elements.

I miss Thousand Needles the most xS
Though I advocated way before these separate servers were announced for an inclusion of the old zones and quests into the Caverns of Time.

Nearly everything would have been there apart from the talent tree change in MoP.

[Izalla]

I miss thousand needles the most xS
Though I advocated way before this separate servers were announced for an inclusion of the old zones and quests into the Caverns of Time.
Nearly everything would have been there apart from the talent tree change in MoP.

Me too! The changes there were so drastic they may as well have just blasted the zone right off the map like the Stormwind Park! The first thing I think of doing when being able to revisit vanilla is to hike straight to Thousand Needles. It would be a dream come true for me if Blizz could like, add all the old zones back when they implement them into the vanilla server, in the same way that you can visit "old Theramore" after Garrosh blew it up, and Blasted Lands before WoD, and soon to be Silithus before BfA. I'm glad Blizz decided to keep those versions around. I hope if the TBC starting zones ever get updated to current story that they preserve the old versions too (they are still my favourite starting experiences, before Cata and after it).

[WhiteEagle888]

Me too! The changes there were so drastic they may as well have just blasted the zone right off the map like the Stormwind Park! The first thing I think of doing when being able to revisit vanilla is to hike straight to Thousand Needles. It would be a dream come true for me if Blizz could like, add all the old zones back when they implement them into the vanilla server, in the same way that you can visit "old Theramore" after Garrosh blew it up, and Blasted Lands before WoD, and soon to be Silithus before BfA. I'm glad Blizz decided to keep those versions around. I hope if the TBC starting zones ever get updated to current story that they preserve the old versions too (they are still my favourite starting experiences, before Cata and after it).

Yeah, they most likely will get preserved if an update like that would happen.

Even now with the BfA reveal during Blizzcon they announced that the visual updates for zones will be based around character level.
Lower level characters see the older zones, Higher levels the new ones. I also hope Zidormi will be there to "change the perspective" for high level characters though.

So it seems they learned their lessons from Cataclysm.

[jakeic]

TBC was not without fault, but it certainly was the best wow experience. I honestly can't think of anything that I hated that the TBC included, badge gear was not all that great if I remember correctly and more served as a jumping off point for alts, and epic honor gear served very little purpose in pve aside from possibly a weapon. I actually enjoyed the arena, battlegrounds lost their luster with cross realms (don't get me wrong here, battlegrounds were better without the 2 hour queue times, but they lost something when you no longer knew who you were fighting). I suppose I was not a fan of the flying mount.

The thing about TBC that I disliked was that I felt like it was missing that larger than life feeling that vanilla had, which was cultivated by the things others mentioned here (multiple zone quests, crazy dungeon quest chains, epic quests for classes, sprawling dungeons, etc). The other part that seemed missing was that since the Outlands were only featured in the expansion of WC2, much of the experience felt hallow to me, as I was familiar with the world of vanilla wow from playing previous Warcraft games. It probably didn't help that all the zones felt disjointed, as you have a barren wasteland of hellfire next to zangamarsh and it's crazy mushrooms.

At the time, I remember being incredibly excited for WotLK. I had not been following to closely to the news at the time, however I felt like TBC had brought about some great changes and the beginning of the expansion was a lot of fun and that certainly blizzard would be moving away from some of the less favorable aspects of the later TBC patches and breathe fresh life into the game. However, we got WotLK with its awful Naxx knock off and DKs. So I pretty much blame WotLK for everything.

Ideally, I would prefer TBC servers over vanilla servers, classes fit together better and played smoother, while also offering some great raids (Kara and BT and Sunwell) while still offering a pvp experience that isn't completely meaningless and forgotten. But starting wow classic at TBC seems like an odd choice.

[Wries]

I joined in TBC and even then I saw plenty of "vanilla realms pls" threads.

[ddsad2212]

People would always have wanted it. Vanilla is a completely different game to now and so people would always have wanted to retry it. I've played plenty of games from 2002 and before over the last couple of years, if someone told me I was no longer able to play say MGS 1 I'd be pissed. This seems completely normal.

[JCD000]

Agreed with the BC comments, yes although it was close to Vanilla in some ways, it was still way more streamlined. I think in hindsight, WoW could have been released b2p like GW1 and the average gamer would have had more than enough content for years, then have WoW 2 5+ years later with upgraded graphics/mechanics and like 60 new levels. Even today in retail the average person doesn't do much raids so they could have made more sideways leveling and innovative gameplay rather than rehasing the expansion rush to endgame on an island. Of course that's easier said than done, and would have made them way less money.

[Cæli]

"thanks" four your "informative" answer, mate :P
Surprise: I know the demand is not as high

And was only asking to make sure Cataclysm only changed the Classic places, thereby alleviating the need for said BC WotLK servers.
I wouldn't want a separate bunch either.

well as far as I know it's really no, I cleaned all tbc and wotlk content + cata except archeology that I hadn't finished

[Macaquerie]

TBC was not without fault, but it certainly was the best wow experience. I honestly can't think of anything that I hated that the TBC included, badge gear was not all that great if I remember correctly and more served as a jumping off point for alts, and epic honor gear served very little purpose in pve aside from possibly a weapon. I actually enjoyed the arena, battlegrounds lost their luster with cross realms (don't get me wrong here, battlegrounds were better without the 2 hour queue times, but they lost something when you no longer knew who you were fighting). I suppose I was not a fan of the flying mount.

The thing about TBC that I disliked was that I felt like it was missing that larger than life feeling that vanilla had, which was cultivated by the things others mentioned here (multiple zone quests, crazy dungeon quest chains, epic quests for classes, sprawling dungeons, etc). The other part that seemed missing was that since the Outlands were only featured in the expansion of WC2, much of the experience felt hallow to me, as I was familiar with the world of vanilla wow from playing previous Warcraft games. It probably didn't help that all the zones felt disjointed, as you have a barren wasteland of hellfire next to zangamarsh and it's crazy mushrooms.

At the time, I remember being incredibly excited for WotLK. I had not been following to closely to the news at the time, however I felt like TBC had brought about some great changes and the beginning of the expansion was a lot of fun and that certainly blizzard would be moving away from some of the less favorable aspects of the later TBC patches and breathe fresh life into the game. However, we got WotLK with its awful Naxx knock off and DKs. So I pretty much blame WotLK for everything.

Ideally, I would prefer TBC servers over vanilla servers, classes fit together better and played smoother, while also offering some great raids (Kara and BT and Sunwell) while still offering a pvp experience that isn't completely meaningless and forgotten. But starting wow classic at TBC seems like an odd choice.

I think what really differentiated Vanilla and BC from Wrath was that the first two definitely followed a consistent approach all the way through while Wrath seemed like a completely different game at the end than it was at the beginning. The whole model of "10 man is normal, 25 man is heroic with loot one tier ahead" lasted for precisely zero tiers, and by the end we had four difficulty levels of ICC with the predictable gear inflation that ensued.

[WhiteEagle888]

well as far as I know it's really no, I cleaned all tbc and wotlk content + cata except archeology that I hadn't finished

Nice, thanks.
Tried to dig through some old files and removed quests myself I didn't find anything either.
Let's hope nothing will be lost from WoW ever again.

[Warrax]

I agree that it slowly started during BC, at least the game was still overall hard. WoTLK was when everything turned easymode from the start (cough Naxx in greens, easy heroics, at least we had hard modes but it was still easy...so easy that you could pug Hard modes...that was a first). Cata made 1-60 much easier, heroic dungeons were fun and challenging enough...until they nerf them because people complained (damn you noobs...)

[Flarelaine]

Do you think some would even scream for Vanilla today?

No revamped zones/quests etc. just usual progression

Many view Cataclysm as the culprit of WoW's decline. What do you think?

Cata is the biggest single culprit. Before that, I could always check back to low-level zones for some nostalgia and then they were taken away.

But of course much of Vanilla had been chipped away... The Cataclysm revamp was just more sudden, drastic and visible.

[Deleted]

I think it was WotLK which was the culprit, Cataclysm just cemented the deal.

Yep, that's pretty much who I feel about it too.

WoTLK brought:
- LFD
- Massive nerf to content. Mobs in world got nerfed not once, but twice. Faceroll leveling content started in WoTLK, not Cata
- Many modes for same content. 4 modes of ToC say "hi"
- Achievements. Seemed like fun at beginning, but it was start of "link achiev or no inv!!!" stupidity. In long term it created more problems than helped

Cataclysm just followed trend set by WoTLK.