Vanilla WoW and why it is considered the best.

[Imperiet]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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.

[taavidude123]

Vanilla is my third favorite WoW version/expansion. Its decent, but defiently not the best. IMO Vanilla is kinda overrated. Raids were pretty bad. You were clearing trash for 7 hours, because back in Vanilla and BC raids were trashfests. The social aspect is really overrated. People are saying that people were much nicer in Vanilla, but if look at alot of the ninja loot/wipe rage videos most are from Vanilla. Also so many guilds were disbanded just, because they couldnt beat a boss which was really stupid. Alterac Valley however felt like an actual war, because it lasted for a crap ton of time and i think that is pretty cool, but at the same time it can be kinda annoying when you have to sit there for a few days. Also i really hate some old zones. Westfall before the cataclysm was one of the worst zones ever, because mobs were insanely overpowered there. I prefer dungeon finder over trying to find a group in trade chat for a few hours and then walking to the dungeon. Well about the Alliance-Horde rivarly was more intense back in Vanilla cause there wasnt much anything else to fight. The raid bosses storywise werent that much of a danger so Horde and Alliance were able to fight each other. However in Wrath or Cata you had very dangerous villains and Horde and Alliance couldnt really risk fighting each other when there were very powerful villains out there.

[Baleroc]

A few issues to start:

1) you say that Vanilla brings lots of nostalgia. True. However: that is exactly the problem.

I have learned my lesson from this, and you should too. I have played Vanilla, burning crusade and wrath. I thought wrath was amazing and didn't experience enough content.

I heard all the people on retail years on say how amazing wrath was. So, I decided to go here to play it to satisfy that need.

So what? You may ask.

Well, since playing Wrath for 2 years I now find it boring, repetitive, and nothing fun anymore.

You see, it may be great at first, but that feeling of nostalgia and greatness will subside after a while, and it will lose its specialty. Sometimes it's best to memorise the times, than to experience them again. Seeing them again will show you times you absolutely hated. With nostalgia, you only remember the times that were fun.

2) Competition. I'm not sure how this influences Warmane, but there is already a Vanilla server with over 9000 players at peak times in one realm, so that is a factor in this.

[Imperiet]

Vanilla is my third favorite WoW version/expansion. Its decent, but defiently not the best. IMO Vanilla is kinda overrated. Raids were pretty bad. You were clearing trash for 7 hours, because back in Vanilla and BC raids were trashfests.

Vanilla and BC raids did not take 7 hours to clear trash. Tho I agree that I enjoy the WOTLK concept of getting straight to the boss, but Vanilla and TBC raids did focus a lot on atmosphere and the sheer greatness of a place, and doing something togheter with 39 other people was very atmospheric.
TBC veterans will reflect their time in Black Tempel as something much grander than their time in ICC.

Also so many guilds were disbanded just, because they couldnt beat a boss which was really stupid.

So you favor the "how fast can you beat it" instead of "will you be able to beat it" game concept?

The social aspect is really overrated. People are saying that people were much nicer in Vanilla, but if look at alot of the ninja loot/wipe rage videos most are from Vanilla.

The game mechanics had not been properly developed to prevent ninja looting yet (and other aspects), pretty much anyone could Ninja.
Thats why many troll videos such as the famous Leeroy etc comes from Vanilla times.

I dont think people were that much nicer in Vanilla than in TBC and WOTLK. They are still pretty nice.

Alterac Valley however felt like an actual war, because it lasted for a crap ton of time and i think that is pretty cool, but at the same time it can be kinda annoying when you have to sit there for a few days. Also i really hate some old zones. Westfall before the cataclysm was one of the worst zones ever, because mobs were insanely overpowered there.

Mobs in Westfall were no more overpowered then mobs in Loch Modan or Hillsbrad Foothills.

I did not even remember old AV until you brought it up, but yeah it was pretty insane how the same match would last for 18 hours because there was no reinforcement timer and the battlle ended whenever a general was killed. A plus for WOTLK I guess for creating a time limit.

I prefer dungeon finder over trying to find a group in trade chat for a few hours and then walking to the dungeon.

A common missconception from those who never played Vanilla. Finding a group didnt take hours, nor did it take hours to walk to the dungeon. Most dungeons had nearby flight paths.

You would normally meet up and go there togheter. It was seen more of a shared experience rather than "get it done asap so I can get on with my stuff"

Well about the Alliance-Horde rivarly was more intense back in Vanilla cause there wasnt much anything else to fight. The raid bosses storywise werent that much of a danger so Horde and Alliance were able to fight each other. However in Wrath or Cata you had very dangerous villains and Horde and Alliance couldnt really risk fighting each other when there were very powerful villains out there.

World PvP wasnt more intense because of the storyline. Thats a really dumb way of looking at it.
World PvP was more intense because of the various reasons I listen, not because players "had to deal with Deathwing first before the world was going to end soon!!".

Well, since playing Wrath for 2 years I now find it boring, repetitive, and nothing fun anymore.

You see, it may be great at first, but that feeling of nostalgia and greatness will subside after a while, and it will lose its specialty. Sometimes it's best to memorise the times, than to experience them again. Seeing them again will show you times you absolutely hated. With nostalgia, you only remember the times that were fun.

A valid argument and I realized this as I was writing my text as well. I would probably struggle myself with going back to Vanilla because memories will never meet expectations.

PS: If you played for 2 years then you should be bored lol, that goes for most games I guess.

[taavidude123]

I did play Vanilla. And it did take forever to find a group. I still think the dungeon finder is 10 times better than finding groups yourself. Also storywise the World PvP not being crazy does make sense. Also who cares if World PvP exists or not? Most world PvPers are some douchebag gankers anyway. And well PvP sucks anyway.

[giggles]

that............honestly sounds amazing. ive been meaning to try vanilla. and on flying, i really dont like it but i feel like i have to use it cuz otherwise someone is just gonna swoop down n kill me and its kinda a shame.

[Dantril]

Good read, op.

[Selaya]

Vanilla was fun in 2004 because no1 had a clue how anything works and everything was basically unchartered.
Take that away and you`re left with an imbalanced, shallow and rather badly designed game that doesn`t really offer anything else

[Imperiet]

Vanilla was fun in 2004 because no1 had a clue how anything works and everything was basically unchartered.
Take that away and you`re left with an imbalanced, shallow and rather badly designed game that doesn`t really offer anything else

Weird because I played in 2006 and it was still fun, it was probably more chartered than WoD is today and it certainly was not badly designed.

In 2004 you couldnt even raid or explore half of the vanilla content. Why the f*** are you even using this year as an argument?
It's like saying that WoW sucked in 2007 cause you couldnt do ICC. I guess your point is that wow will always be imbalanced, shallow and rather badly designed until the next expansion is out... A valid argument and duly noted.

[Sixtyninee]

Aw man, just when I thought you guys were done with factual opinions.

[HonoR95]

Vanilla was fun in 2004 because no1 had a clue how anything works and everything was basically unchartered.
Take that away and you`re left with an imbalanced, shallow and rather badly designed game that doesn`t really offer anything else

Pretty much what I was going to say.
Class design was a joke at this time, same as TBC.

As a Warlock/Hunter in TBC, you would literally spam A SINGLE SPELL throughout the whole fight and whole expansion and be TOP DPS.

Vanilla is the biger joke because half specs are garbage and useless. TBC is the same but slightly better.
I looked up on youtube hunter Onyxia video, and that is the biggest snorefest I've ever seen.
You run out of the mana after few rotations. What monkey did design that game?

Only in WotLK did class design become somewhat good instead of complete garbage.

[Watamote]

I understand the whole nostalgia thing. Trouble is, it's only nostalgic for the people who were lucky enough to play it all when it was new. Back in 2004, I was busy playing a whole different online game (FFXI) and didn't have time to try WoW until around 2010. I'll never get to REALLY know what WoW was like back then.

I even joined a Vanilla private server a few times to try it out for myself after so many people told me it was the best. I couldn't bring myself to play it beyond maybe ten minutes. I just couldn't believe how broken and empty it felt. After reading the OP, I really want to try it again, however. Just playing on WotLK Lordaeron server again feels like playing a whole different game than the Cata and MoP servers I had been playing on lately. Having things made simplified is not necessarily a bad thing (ever hear of less is more?) Sometimes I even wish there was a version of the game that was simply Orcs vs Humans like in the original Warcraft game from 1994, which I loved and spent many hours playing.

I'm rambling. My original point is, unless we have a time machine and a way to erase what we already know about WoW, it'll be impossible to really appreciate vanilla the way people did in the beginning.

[cebolenkosi]

To the OP I have 2 things for you High Warlord and Grand Marshall the hardest grind for anyone who was serious about PvP back in Vanilla I've heard some pretty crazy stories of what people did to get one of the most sort after PvP ranks some people even account shared to get their High Warlord or Grand Marshall.

Also the only viable tanks in Vanilla were warriors and bear druids and they had no taunt abilities so in my opinion vanilla was pretty unbalanced tbh.

[romz]

Rogues, not being able to use poisons in dungeons/raids as it generated too much threat. You had feral druids doing bad DPS and Boomkins being called Oomkins. Leveling as a warrior was a tough ride. Mobs would easily over power you if there was 2+ mobs you aggro. Paladins seals lasted I think for 30 seconds or a minute making you have to refresh them every minute. This is just few of the problems Vanilla had. I could list more however, I'm sure you get the point.

[Imperiet]

Also the only viable tanks in Vanilla were warriors and bear druids and they had no taunt abilities so in my opinion vanilla was pretty unbalanced tbh.

Pretty much what I was going to say.
Class design was a joke at this time, same as TBC.

As a Warlock/Hunter in TBC, you would literally spam A SINGLE SPELL throughout the whole fight and whole expansion and be TOP DPS.

Vanilla is the biger joke because half specs are garbage and useless. TBC is the same but slightly better.
I looked up on youtube hunter Onyxia video, and that is the biggest snorefest I've ever seen.
You run out of the mana after few rotations. What monkey did design that game?

Only in WotLK did class design become somewhat good instead of complete garbage.

Rogues, not being able to use poisons in dungeons/raids as it generated too much threat. You had feral druids doing bad DPS and Boomkins being called Oomkins. Leveling as a warrior was a tough ride. Mobs would easily over power you if there was 2+ mobs you aggro. Paladins seals lasted I think for 30 seconds or a minute making you have to refresh them every minute. This is just few of the problems Vanilla had. I could list more however, I'm sure you get the point.

I agree with each and every one of you.
In fact this is exactly what I meant in my final statement when I said "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".

The fact that class designes were very simplified compared to WOTLK standards, and was very faulty would be one of the main reasons not to be able to enjoy Vanilla again.
In WOTLK you really need to read guides and just get your head into the game to be good, in Vanilla, guides just didnt exist and few people barely talked about rotations or which item perks to stack.

Classes were forced to play one role only. If your class could heal (Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman), then you were going to heal and that was final.
If a guild brought you as a feral dps to a raid, they were doing you a favor, not because you could pull the dps.
And there was only one tank in the game, and that was Warrior. If you rolled warrior, you rolled a tank.

I would have a hard time to enjoy Vanilla again because of this fact.

I even joined a Vanilla private server a few times to try it out for myself after so many people told me it was the best. I couldn't bring myself to play it beyond maybe ten minutes. I just couldn't believe how broken and empty it felt.

I dont think its possible to for anyone who played WOTLK first to go to a vanilla private server and enjoy it. Because you are so used to all the varioius game mechanics available and it would really be hard to just not try to achieve stats but just to enjoy the world.
You would immediately lose interest because there are no "Numbers, statistics and quick progression etc" available to challange your gameplay and to drive you forwards in this stripped version. Hell even I would probably find it very difficult because I am so used to WOTLK by now and everything that I can do with my character and push it into being. But that was the kind of game Vanilla was.