Vanilla WoW and why it is considered the best.

[romz]

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.

The same can be said about people who started in WOD or MoP going to Wrath or cata

[-Notorious-]

I actually started playing WoW in Vanilla, and it was, without a doubt, much worse than both TBC and Wrath. Indeed, I would say it was equal to Cataclysm (Cata PvP was far more fun than Vanilla), and superior than only MoP+(MoP is the start of the downfall of WoW, though I still love the beauty of the game here).

Some of the things I hated:
-Terrible leveling rate, it's almost impossible to actually have a real life and get to level 60 in anything less than a month. Which leads me to...
-Terrible raids. They were so, so large, and required 40 players to complete. FORTY. I despised how much time one would need to do a freaking raid, and so I started doing PvP, until I realized...
-PvE gear is so, so significantly more powerful than what one could buy with PvP, that you can't even be useful in PvP. The class trinkets from Blackwing Lair were the most overpowered thing, until of course Naxx came along with a grind fest to acquire Tier 3 and then let players literally one shot the low geared folk.
-Finally, classes were unbalanced. I'm not sure any thought actually went into classes being balanced.

That said, not everything was complete dark. If it were, WoW wouldn't have survived. Some things I liked were:
-No flying mounts. I feel flying mounts took a lot more out of the game than even Blizzard expected. Distances just became a lot smaller, and World PvP really shrank a lot after Vanilla...
-Working for gear. While I hated having to put up organizing 39 people to do a raid (only for the item I need, inevitably going to someone else, because freaking 40 man raids) I liked how gear wasn't handed to you the way it is in Cataclysm+. That said, I think TBC and WotLK do an excellent job here as well, so its not necessarily just vanilla that had this aspect done well.

tl;dr Too many issues with Vanilla. It was a good start for a game, but to say it was the best this game has been is a big BIG overstatement (in my humble opinion). I feel both TBC and WotLK added significantly more to the game in terms of balance and raid sizes (<3 Karazhan and Zul'Aman).

Just my two cents :)

[Modinstaller]

I started in late TBC and was so young and inexperienced at video games that I didn't manage to get my gnome rogue beyond lvl 40. Actually, leveling was pretty boring to me. I remember people from my guild telling me to go to Tanaris, but it seemed far away and I didn't want to go there at all, for some reason. World pvp and battlegrounds were way funnier to me, so that's what I was doing all day. That, and making tons of alts of every class and race possible because I was very curious and liked learning other classes. And my guild was also creating events that gave me some of the best WoW memories I have. It was unfortunate that, at that time, you wouldn't get levels in battlegrounds, but that's what eventually made me quit. That, and the fact that it was ****ing expensive as **** and I always felt like I was robbing my parents when asking them for 1 more month.

Even so, these are the best times I've ever had playing any video game, and I'll always remember them. Like op stated, that's just nostalgia, and I know I can never go back to that. I think if I had started earlier, during vanilla, I would've thought exactly the same.
However, I believe wotlk is funnier than tbc. Since then I had time to play both tbc and wotlk extensively, and I like wotlk better. Mainly, what's more attractive to me is that all specs are worth something and itemization isn't ****. Blizzard doesn't want to give int to enh shamans/feral druids anymore, and their kit makes way more sense, as an example. Everything seems much more fun to play. Not to mention that they improved on the graphics and soundtrack as well.
Also, I tried playing on a vanilla server long ago, and I was absolutely disgusted. It was so hard and took sooo long to level, and I don't believe I was even bad at it, no, since I remember soloing hogger with a mage. Then again, that's not the same vanilla as you all remember, because it was a private server and I don't remember it being really populated. In any case, I think I gave up at westfall, because it was way too slow and uninteresting for me, since I had already done all this at much faster rates and with more buttons to press.

I believe every expansion both brought good things to the game, and took good things from the previous version, and I'm not unsatisfied with what they've done till wotlk. I have yet to really play newer expansions, but I remember being both disappointed at things like shadowstep being given to lvl 10 rogues, and amazed at the beauty of Pandaria. Yet again, good and bad things. I think it all comes down to everyone's taste in video gaming, and I don't understand why some people are always waging wars to impose their own taste to everyone else. If you prefer vanilla, then that's cool with me, and I prefer wotlk.

[taralej]

cba reading all the replies, so I'll just leave my opinion.

Vanilla is not the best. Whoever claims that, has no idea about the game and has probably never really played vanilla for long enough. Unbalanced and limited PvP, extremely constrained PvE.

PvP - Basically there were just 3 battlegrounds - WSG, AB and AV - there was still no timer on them, so if people couldn't get objectives the battleground could just last for hours. It wasn't unusual for a premade team to join WSG, then start camping the GY for hours and hours. AV was full with mobs that could kill normal players, it was complete chaos and usually an AV would last more than 30 minutes. The closest thing to arenas you could get was the Gurubashi arena where people would do skirmishes in order to get that stupid chest in the middle. All classes were able to pretty much two-shot everything: Charge + Mortal Strike crit + auto-attack crit was usually a one-shot for a clother; Premeditation + Ambush + Cold Blood Eviscerate was the same; a Frost mage's shatter combo was enough to kill most enemy players outright; Affliction warlocks' DoTs were so strong they were DoTing everyone without even needing to focus on a specific target and collecting free kills with very little help needed from other players; hunters could chain-trap enemy melee classes forever with absolutely no counter to this, except Free Action Potion; Enhancement shamans could one-shot people with a good enough two-hander and a Windfury proc; Retri paladins were running around immune to all CC and dealing double-attacks with Reckoning. Was there any class I missed? I think you get the idea.

PvE - gear was horribly itemized, with spirit on warrior and rogue gear, druid and pala gear had a bit from all stats, making it jack of all trades & master of none, set bonuses sometimes made zero sense at all and sometimes they were extremely overpowered. There were no emblems so if you wanted to gear up, you had to do specific dungeons for specific bosses for specific items... and if the item didn't drop, you would just have to do it again until it dropped. Blizzard only started experimenting with this in Zul'Gurub, together with some exclusive item enchantments - these were all ideas that they improved and implemented later on in the game. Also, dungeon sets required an absurdly long and expensive quest chain to complete compared to the low quality the sets had. Classes were limited to having only one viable spec for PvE, mages were forced to play Frost for MC, BWL and Onyxia because everything there was almost immune to fire damage and arcane had only one damage spell - Arcane Missiles, classes that were able to heal were basically forced to play healers, Fury Warriors had no sets for them and had to collect individual items to be viable for PvE. Overall, there were classes and specs that were "the best" DPSers for vanilla and no other could even come close, for example Affliction warlocks who ruled the DPS meters and even had to stop DPSing sometimes because of too much aggro.

Overall, people liked vanilla because it was "new", it was the hype, and now they're nostalgic about it. Vanilla was a lot of fun, yes, but it is not "the best" of WoW by far.

Edit: I made the effort to read OP's post. Vanilla was NOT HARD. It was just new and people knew nothing about the game and thus underperformed in every way possible - PvP, PvE tactics, rotations, stats priority... everything. The PvE tactics on vanilla are some of the most straightforward and simple tactics in the game.

[taavidude123]

Classwise Vanilla was pretty terrible. Classes in a nutshell (in a raid):
Warlock: **** i need to get some stones to summon.
Hunter: Brb. Forgot to buy arrows.
Shaman: Why the hell does Shaman never gear never drop? Why do we keep getting Paladin gear if Horde doesnt have Paladins?
Paladin: Why the hell does Paladin gear never drop? Why do we keep getting Shaman gear if Alliance doesnt have Shamans?
Warrior: The rage generation is too low....
Priest: Why did Blizzard add Shadow Priest when we are forced to only play Holy or Disc??
Druid: Why is Feral so ****???
Mage: I love to be the most important class in the game.

[Tomerz]

dude vanilla was a grindfest nightmare. It was addicting as hell because you could never complete anything lol

[Neiras]

tbc is my favourite expansion because blizz corrected a lot of mistakes they made in vanilla and it wasnt total easy mode like it is now

[toniplavna]

This is the best post I ever read here from 2008-2009. Totally agree on most what people said here.

[Skoobydoo]

dude vanilla was a grindfest nightmare. It was addicting as hell because you could never complete anything lol

exactly....you always had something to do.also raiding was not that big of a deal back then it was more like bonus and only very very little % of population was clearing raids.
also you had that open world feeling that dont exist in WOW anymore.been part of the WORLD was content on its own.they slowly replace all this with instant queue,cross-realm and garrison.and you dont even need to grind anymore anything.you can even buy honor and CP with gold......

p.s. still TBC for me was the best expansion of all.

[taralej]

exactly....you always had something to do.also raiding was not that big of a deal back then it was more like bonus and only very very little % of population was clearing raids.

That's the thinking of a casual player. Raids were a big deal - it's just that most players sucked and couldn't do them, or weren't even attuned for them.

[Skoobydoo]

That's the thinking of a casual player. Raids were a big deal - it's just that most players sucked and couldn't do them, or weren't even attuned for them.

the idea that raids have anything to do with been hardcore or casual is absurb.

[Marcuuus]

Tried vanilla, liked some things, disliked other. Overall, i'd say Wotlk (for me personally) is the best. Vanilla has too many balance issues, lacks a LOT of polish and just doesn't offer anything. PvP = whoever nolifes it more gets a higher ran...PvE = very few mechanics in encounters and each class pretty much only has 1 working spec. 10 min corpseruns ain't entertaining either.

[Imperiet]

Thank you -Notorious- and Modinstaller and Taralej for your constructive arguments.

I agree 100% with your criticism of class customization. Vanilla was inferior to WotlK in terms of classes as they were very simplified and only had 1 specc to offer.

exactly....you always had something to do.also raiding was not that big of a deal back then it was more like bonus and only very very little % of population was clearing raids.
also you had that open world feeling that dont exist in WOW anymore.been part of the WORLD was content on its own.they slowly replace all this with instant stuff ......

p.s. still TBC for me was the best expansion of all.

Exactly my point. It seems that the majority of complaints in this thread is the lack of (what I said in my first post) "Not about numbers, quick progression or statistics". People are arguing over the lack of game mechanics available, and how it took so long to level up. F***k sake guys when will you understand that Leveling up WAS the game. I said earlier that each zone wasnt an obstacle, it was a chapter.

You guys regard lvling as something you just have to put up with and would welcome any kind of way to make it smoother and faster and just get it done, I guess this is the pattern Blizzard had been going with on their expansions, just to make questing and leveling less relevant and just get it over with without too much trouble or even working togheter with people. The open world experience was the soul of the game that has been lost ever since TBC came out and every player was shuffled into a concentrated area (outland, Northrend etc) and world roaming (leveling, questing etc) has just become less relevant to the game.

Your attitude is the problem, to just get on with it and start the whole loop of emblem farming, accumliate gold, daily rep & daily proffession & daily BG & daily HC, farm the gear, mounts, titles etc.

It has become clear that blizzard has adopted this attitude to just make leveling less relevant to the game and encourages you just to faceroll everything on your own. Even in WotlK I notice how nobody is interested in low level dungeons because they are just not necessary anymore. People are better off just facerolling on their own cause its faster and more reliable. Low level dungeons just lost their relevance.

[-Notorious-]

F***k sake guys when will you understand that Leveling up WAS the game. I said earlier that each zone wasnt an obstacle, it was a chapter.

You guys regard lvling as something you just have to put up with and would welcome any kind of way to make it smoother and faster and just get it done, I guess this is the pattern Blizzard had been going with on their expansions, just to make questing and leveling less relevant and just get it over with without too much trouble or even working togheter with people.

And what you fail to understand is that many of us (specially those who have played Vanilla) already levelled. Then did it again. Then again. By now I've lost count of how many times I've levelled a character. It gets boring, very very quickly. I, personally, have levelled not only on retail, but on over 6 private servers now, plus alts on them all. Why in the world would I ever want to level again on a vanilla realm at x1 rate. I think you can understand my point of view on that aspect.

The open world experience was the soul of the game that has been lost ever since TBC came out and every player was shuffled into a concentrated area (outland, Northrend etc) and world roaming (leveling, questing etc) has just become less relevant to the game.

Yes, I agree with this. Like I said, I do believe adding flying mounts was a big mistake, but there's sadly nothing to be done about this now. The game felt a lot larger without flying mounts, and really made getting from point A to point B much more interesting. I also dislike how Cata+ allowed all mounts to reach a speed of 310%, which made travelling even easier. Not to mention adding portals to basically all the corners of the world in Cataclysm, meaning one need only set their hearthstone at a city which has a SW portal to access almost all of the world immediately. There is very little travelling done in the game, and it certainly takes away from the game.

Still, one can overlook this aspect of the game for far more balanced classes, and more interesting PvE and PvP.

Your attitude is the problem, to just get on with it and start the whole loop of emblem farming, accumliate gold, daily rep & daily proffession & daily BG & daily HC, farm the gear, mounts, titles etc.

No offense, but this is almost ironic. Vanilla is known exactly for grinding, day in, day out. You are required to farm Naxx an ungodly amount of time, just to get your T3 set. What happens if you don't farm your T3 set? You are a liability to your raiding team, and will be one-shotted in BGs.

The game has never had farming be as bad as it was in Vanilla, and I think on this much you can agree...

It has become clear that blizzard has adopted this attitude to just make leveling less relevant to the game and encourages you just to faceroll everything on your own. Even in WotlK I notice how nobody is interested in low level dungeons because they are just not necessary anymore. People are better off just facerolling on their own cause its faster and more reliable. Low level dungeons just lost their relevance.

I would argue Blizzard tried to improve on the game, and responded on what the people wanted. In TBC that was new content. In LK that was easier levelling experience. In Cataclysm, it was more streamlined PvP and faster travelling. In MoP it was Pandas (we all wanted them, don't lie to yourself now :D). In WoD is when Blizzard made the mistake of adding garrisons.

I still think WotLK is the best expansion in terms of balance, and even MoP isn't half bad for me, but maybe that's because I've always treated WoW as a social guild.

Hope this wasn't too much text to read :)

Tl;dr Veterans are tired of levelling and the thought of Vanilla at x1 is nauseous. Vanilla had far more brainless farming than any other expansion. We all love Pandas.

[Skoobydoo]

I would argue Blizzard tried to improve on the game, and responded on what the people wanted. In TBC that was new content. In LK that was easier levelling experience. In Cataclysm, it was more streamlined PvP and faster travelling. In MoP it was Pandas (we all wanted them, don't lie to yourself now :D). In WoD is when Blizzard made the mistake of adding garrisons.

I still think WotLK is the best expansion in terms of balance, and even MoP isn't half bad for me, but maybe that's because I've always treated WoW as a social guild.

Hope this wasn't too much text to read :)

Tl;dr Veterans are tired of levelling and the thought of Vanilla at x1 is nauseous. Vanilla had far more brainless farming than any other expansion. We all love Pandas.

yes but this is the problem blizzard try to give people what they want.and what people want? fas gearing,fast leveling,teleports to dungeon so we dont have to walk,less abbility so they dont get confused,easy raids so they can do it aswell( i am talking about LFR)...and what happen at the end?wow become a game that you get bored to dead after only few weeks.even for pvp players is bad.you can but honor and CP with gold !!!!!you dont even need to do arena or bgs to get your pvp gear in WOD !!! where is the logic in that LOL.
i agree WOTLK is pretty balanced however i dont think balancing is main factor when we talk about mmoprg.first thing they need to do it MAKE THE GAME FUN TO PLAY,balancing come after that.look what happen with all this balancing in WOD or look Legion alpha...holy **** classes are absolutly the same.all classes have identical ability ,there is almost no utility at all,and classes in general dont have anything unique anymore as they had it before.holy **** legion they remove TOTEMS FROM SHAMAN !!! HELLO TOTEMS !!!!