Vanilla WoW and why it is considered the best.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Introduction------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this thread, I will try to establish the arguments from many players who experienced Vanilla and who (well most) consider it to be The Best time of WoW. However it is important to note that no matter what arguments are being presented here, it will all essentionally come down to a matter of opinion and not any facts. I want to make it clear that this thread is not a "My Opinion > Yours".
This is a thread for debate, but also most importantly, this is a thread for clarification for those (that never experienced Vanilla) who are curious about why people consider Vanilla to be the best even tho it lacked many great game mechanics Wotlk and TBC had to offer.
And if you did not bother to read anything, or bothered to get involved then please, dont post it because its isnt interesting to anyone.
First impression
I believe most of you, if asked which expansion was the best wow, will name the first one that you played (when you were introduced to the game), and these same people will generally loathe the next expansion for "dumbing down and ruining the game" .
Those who started to play during Mist will say that one was the best. Those who started to play during Wotlk will say that one was the best, and those who started to play during TBC will say that one was the best. This is something most Vanilla players should have to agree on. In the end its Nostalgia > All.
WoW was new and the graphics were amazing for its time, and the concept of MMORPG had not had its major breakthrough yet (the main flagships were still Runescape and Tibia).
By only watching the WoW vanilla trailers on youtube, you can kinda get the idea that even the game developers were impressed by what they had achieved and saw their creation as more than just a game.
Horde and Alliance, a real rivalry
There was a distinguished border between Alliance and Horde, where some zones would be dominated by the other, and there was a real sense of struggle across the world. Hell even before BG was introduce, the only pvp you would get was raiding territories and towns of the other faction.
There were no shared cities like Shattrath and Dalaran. Horde had their turp and Alliance had theirs. In fact, the only time you would even meet one of the opposing faction would be in a skirmish somewhere in the wild. If there is rivalty in today, is because you choose it.
It isnt forced upon you like it was in Vanilla, today you are generally used to have hordes and alliance being right next to each others questing and doing dungeons or checking the bank.
Today there is also a feeling that there are actually no real difference between the two, other than skin and outfit. In Vanilla they even had different classes.
Alliance was characterized of the typical fantasy good guys with Humans, Elves and Dwarfs, and characterized by their typical enviroment with dwarfs in the mountains, elves in the forest, and humans in the fields. This, while Horde was characterized of the typical bad guys with Orcs, Trolls and Undead. They didnt have any damn Elves themsleves, and Alliance didnt have Space men in their ranks. The game felt like it made sense even if you did not study any relevant lore.
World PvP, Mounts and Items
Flying mounts. I dont need to explain this as many people who never even experienced Vanilla feels that the world shrunk in size, lost its feeling of epicness, and that world pvp became less inovating with the presence of everyone having a flying mount. And I cant really stress the whole "everyone has one" enough. In vanilla having a mount was a serious thing, just as having just a single epic item. You did not have a mount until level 40, assuming you could afford one, and most people ended up having to walk until they were at least level 50.
You may think "well then it would take ages to reach endgame, how stupid is that!" but Vanilla was never about this to begin with, and I will get to this point later on.
Today if you dont have 25 mounts you havnt really progressed (I will touch on this subject later as well). In vanilla, only the most dedicated would have an epic mount as only one mount would cost nearly 5000 gold, and back in those days, 5000 gold was A LOT, most players would only see that ammount once in their lifetime.
So you can imagine that once you had your 5000 gold, you nearly spent a day just to carefully select which colour you wanted your Tiger in. This added more color to the game as having something to ride on made you slightly more of a special soldier within your faction (Unlike today where your character is just the jack-of-all-trades super hero with everything down in his pockets).
This goes for epic as well, having just one epic item could result in shock and awe from any player around you. Anyone could tell from a clear distance if you were wearing an epic item just by looking at the skin module from your character. To obtain an epic item would require immensive cooperation, dedication, and tough skill from you and your team. Today, epics are treated like a stamp collection, and can be found by anyone almost anywhere.
Items does not reveal anything from the look of your character anymore, as even green Items makes you look like a brick wall (unless someone inspects you and sees its green items).
Why is this an issue? well it doesnt have to be as I said in the introduction, but for some its just another piece of a larger puzzle gone missing from the soul of the game.
Quests and Endgame content
Take a look at endgame dungeons such as Blackrock Depths, Blackrock mountain (UBRS, LBRS), Stratholm etc, in comparison to Nexus, AZ and HOL and you will notice a pattern. WOTLK endgame dungeons were designed for repetetive use, while Vanilla dungeons were designed to be utter hell. First one is characterized by stuff such as simple layout and mobs that doesnt require CC tactics but just facerolling through, while the other is characterzied by complex layout and mobs that generally required good coordination. This was intentional and can be seen as yet another piece of the puzzle that destroyed the heart and soul that was put into the game.
WoW had now become a game of repetetive module where a player would be entrenched in a loop to progress with the game (with the intention to make the player depended on continuosly playing wow), while back in Vanilla, this was never the real objective from the programmers, wow had clearly been designed with a different agenda where you were part of a world when inside BlackRock Depths, and not to just farm it fast for the daily reward.
Vanilla endgame was not characterized by the notorious Daily quests eithers, because there was always more to explore and more quest lines to finish and attunements to complete for the encounter with the very last enemies of the game.
In fact, quests were much richer in their story and offered more diversity than they did in TBC and WOTLK. From TBC Horde and Alliance quests became identical, yet again removing the unqiue feeling of the factions. If you are in Hellfire or in Nagrand, you are still virtually doing the same thing the other faction is doing, and you were both progressing for the same story.
In Vanilla there was a clear difference, I would even go as far as to say it was almost a different game when played on a different faction. Humans were plagued by the collapse and inner turmoils of the towns around their zones, which had all been orchestrated by Onyxia who had infiltrated the royal court.
Night elves were still struggleing with recovering their land from the invasion and to stop the horde expansion.
Orcs and Taurens were working togheter to tame their hostile lands they settled in, while slowly discovering the great menace Netharion inteded for the horde, as well as the silithids that were slowly devouring the land.
Today, wow is so completely swamped in its own lore, its pretty much impossible to really know what is going on unless you are a dedicated follower.
You go from solving the mysteries of the quests presented in Vanilla, to suddenly forget everything and crusade against Illidan to suddenlty abandon this and fight through Northrend and all her subplots before Arthas ( and from then to Deathwing to Pandas to Illidan again etc) . You really have no idea what the f*** is going on if you were new even if you actually tried. WoW just completely lost any real theme in its story.
In Vanilla, Warcraft 3 was still fresh in our memories, and World of Warcraft never created its own story like they started with in TBC.
Everything you did in Vanilla made sense and never really interfered with the previous story from previous Warcraft games. The story (Onyxia, Silithids, Dark horde and Dwarfs power struggle etc) never really violated where Warcraft 3 left us.
This you can tell when you play endgame Dungeons such as BRD, it doesnt try to be anything else but just the world you're in. Its not meant to be farmed every day like Gundrak is.
Finally, old zones from vanilla and TBC are largely abandoned with the majority of players roaming in Northrend and Dalaran.
Not about numbers, quick progression or statistics
This is probably the most major point most Vanilla players will hold on to, and probably the hardest point for non vanilla players to really relate to. As soon as I mention the fact that there was not only no RDF but there was also was no summoning stones available, the general opinion from those who joined wow after Vanilla will be "dude f*** that, thats not an argument, thats just trash".
Wow wasnt about facerolling through everything to start farming endgame content, it wasnt about collecting Gearscore, mounts, emblems, achievments, daily quests and rep farms. I guess vanilla wow did not really have any end game purpose except to defeat the very last boss just like with any other computer game or just hang out with other players, and that was in a strange way good.
Players didnt compare themsleves to each others the same way with the ammount of mounts, exalted reps, ratings, Item values or farmed content.
WoW was hard because it was built to be hostile towards solo and casual players and encouraged you to embrace the gaming world if you wanted to move forwards.
There were no quest finders, you literally had to get involved and read every single quest log in order to find out where the quest even was and how to complete it (unless you checked the internet for coordinations and descriptions if you really couldnt solve it). Every zone was a chapter rather than just another obstacle, and it was definetly better to group with people and find the quest togheter than to go full solo and just faceroll everything ASAP like its done today.
When automaic quest finder and helper was implemented in the game, they lirerally tell you "look just get this done, we'll help you so you can move on".
Again, WoW was HARD. As with the point I made about obtaining epic items and accumulating gold, the same goes for defeating bosses. Today it is measured in how many achievments you got from TOC and NAXX boss kills or how fast you can do a LK run. In Vanilla, having even seen Ragnaros was not a certainty, and try to ask players how many times they've killed C'thun...
Thank you
I am sure a lot of people who reads this will disagree and be very citical to my points. The very reason with this thread was for an open discussion so please share your thoughts. Most of all to also make others understand why Vanilla players hold Vanilla wow in such a high regard.
I appologize for any spelling errors or grammar misstakes. English is not my first language so please bare with me :)
As a final statement I would like to recognize that Vanilla also had many bad aspect and TBC and WOTLK brought some good ones with them such as Arena and just an improved class complexity, and it would be hard to return to Vanilla even if I would.
