Vanilla - I miss the good times

[thefunk]

Just ran BRD for the first time with 75 pally & 50ish shamans (group of 5) and realised life was much more fun back in vanilla. Great designs and atmosphere that I find lacking in both expacs. I'm getting worried about the changes in cata but i guess this is inevitable.

Well i'm having a blast revisiting/trying new things in vanilla that the grindfest in northrend is on hold. My worry is once the 1st team hits 80 i'll get frustrated and bored with dungeon/daily grinds and start going to the gym. Or even socialise.

What I don't get is why Blizzard are making things easier to level in the expansions (faster respawn times, levelling in 1 area at a time, slightly more cohesive dungeons in terms of player levels) but then make it basically a grind fest. I think they've lost the magic of vanilla.

Anyone else still exploring the old world, or is it now all about fast levelling, end-game and gear?

[grumpyfish]

Hi your post had me thinking same line that the old content was special. I suppose the downside was that sometimes it was frustrating trying to find a group with staying power to actually get somewhere ! Too many times you would circle the prison complex to then find someone had to leave. Only ever seen the whole of BRD by multi boxing.

[rocnroll]

It seems faster because Blizz wants the user to get to the current end game. I'm an explorer and enjoy taking in the sights (which is why I finally moved from PVP to PVE). There are some great instances in vanilla WoW and I learned a lot leveling through instances. I would hate to get to 80 with a new class and not know how to play the class in an instance, especially with the current attitude about gear score. Oh wait, I multi-box! I'm still working out playing multiple classes, so I still raid solo with my Priest from time to time.

[Zal]

Since i've actually played since the game was released I don't miss vanilla at all. Sure some things were better..... nothing that comes to mind, but back then stuff was more of a grind fest then now. 40 man raids = ~10 people always afk, 5 man dungeons = took hours on end to complete, farming gold = daily quests didn't exist and you'd be lucky to find a good spot to farm since EVERYONE was out farming. Not to mention it took me about 3 months before i got my first lv 60 back then, a level every 3 or more days sucks hell.

[Khatovar]

I'm with Zal on this one. I did NOT enjoy logging on at 10am, immediatly getting pushed into a guild group for Blackrock and spending the next 8 hours running BRD and UBRS. I did not enjoy being a druid who was only useful if spec'd Innervate. I didn't enjoy spending as much time farming mats for raiding as I did raiding {Fire res pots and the never-ending Incendius farms for Fire Res of the Appropriate Class bracers, anyone?}

The only thing that was actually fun back in those days was PvP, where you could spend hours defending/assaulting at SS/TM. And it was fun because it was all regular people looking to have some fun. No one got anything out of it and it wasn't gear vs gear.

[thinus]

When one of my fire elementals chase a healer around in a BG I have deja vu of Baron Geddon when the tank dies.

[Fuzzyboy]

I'll have to chime in with Zal and Khato here. Class balance was pretty horrible back then and 40-man raids are very impersonal. I didn't mind the grind though - i don't really care if I spend my time grinding mobs/mats or grinding dailies.

I think having been a boxer back then could have had some fun advantages, but aside from that, I really like what they did with BC and WotLK (minus vehicles) and I'm looking forward to Cataclysm. I like the idea of re-creationg old content instead of just making new. It's a shame that BC is practically empty except for the odd person levelling up - I'd love to see vanilla-territory repopulated :-)

[mebben]

I agree with Fuzzyboy, Zal and Khatovar. WoW is a much better place for me nowadays. I enjoy the fact that you can be casual and still have fun. The change from 40 man to 25/10 man was the best thing they ever did :)

[alcattle]

I started very late in Vanilla. I do not think AVs that took days would be fun at all.

[Zamok]

Am with the not so keen on Vanilla.

I raided pre-bc the raids were tough and I enjoyed that part the rest of the game was a grindfest.

As a personal preference I think the gearing has become a bit easy but this suits me as a multiboxer with 4 teams. Very much a fan of dailies,I still have nightmares about the old grinds for mount money for alts.

[Gadzooks]

The only thing I miss from the 1.x days is the design of the game encouraged guilds to build for longevity, not filling a slot on a 10-25 man, and that's it. There were big, established guilds on my servers that had been around since day one, with 100, 200, 300 members.

Now, not so much. The smaller group sizes in BC blew a lot of guilds up, and they never really came back.

Community meant a lot more too. Now, it's every player for himself, it seems.

And, to be honest, while I do enjoy leveling, and exploring, a lot of the wandering I did was because I had nothing better to do in between guilds and raiding. Farming was pretty much all you could do, and there was'nt as much world to go around back then.

Now, it's pretty hard to say you have nothing to do - there's always things like cooking, fishing, first aid (I havent leveled it on any of my toons, don't see the point with a dedicated healer and two back up healers in the group), rep grinds, Loremaster, dungeonmaster, all the goofy achievements, and you can basically have Outlands to yourself for whatever you feel like doing.

1.x had it's day. It was a different game, a different community, and a different mindset. The game is what the players make of it, and these days, if you're not 80 and rocking epics every slot, you're a loser. That's what makes the game suck.

And seriously? The blackrock/scholo/strat/dire maul grind to get into MC? 100x worse than the Heroic grind. No way I'd want to go back to that. Endless runs to hopefully get my set piece to drop, only to have someone else win it? Don't miss that, at all. I don't miss MC trash packs at all.

Put it this way - I ground out Dark Iron rep for my guild, all the way to exalted. I paid my dues, and then some. I have no wish to return to that kind of thing. I cackled maniacally when I retrained from blacksmithing in BC and walked away from Dark Iron forever.

I don't miss BC, either, really. Parts of it are still fun, but Gruul put me off raiding, I never got past that gearcheck/wipefest. It's kind of why I don't feel bad for not getting into Ulduar when it was current - been there, done that, and I can watch a successful clear on YouTube anytime I want, I don't have to sacrifice my free time to see it.

The one thing I love about the game is it's a constantly changing labratory for Blizzard to try new things, mix things up - the abandoned content used to bother me, until I realized how much they've added to the game since 1.x - and how I would'nt want to give any of it up.

Oh - and one thing that makes me NEVER want to return to the old days, is I played back when you had to take each flight point in order, you could'nt click on your end-destination and just go get a sammich. You had to remount at each point - flying from Winterspring to Sith was *painful*. Mages were a LOT more popular then, you can imagine.

[SideWays]

I'll have to chime in with Zal and Khato here. Class balance was pretty horrible back then and 40-man raids are very impersonal. I didn't mind the grind though - i don't really care if I spend my time grinding mobs/mats or grinding dailies.

Well honestly I dont think class balancing gets better now that every class has AoE and can be replaced by nearly every other class without any problems (Of course it wasnt better in vanilla, but atleast it wasnt all the same).. Theres a reason to choose a specific class :/

I hated the grindfest back in the days, but I really enjoyed every second in a raid or in a battlefield.. Another multiboxer and I tried Naxx a few days ago (hes rly rly bad gear, mine is quite good).. There was no progression raiding, it was like oneshot, twoshot on every boss we tried (did everything except Thaddius, Gluth).. I rly miss the times when we had to work for epics :(

It was something really special for me.. Nowadays its gone which is basically the reason for me to multibox :d

[Fuzzyboy]

Well honestly I dont think class balancing gets better now that every class has AoE and can be replaced by nearly every other class without any problems (Of course it wasnt better in vanilla, but atleast it wasnt all the same).. Theres a reason to choose a specific class :/

I hated the grindfest back in the days, but I really enjoyed every second in a raid or in a battlefield.. Another multiboxer and I tried Naxx a few days ago (hes rly rly bad gear, mine is quite good).. There was no progression raiding, it was like oneshot, twoshot on every boss we tried (did everything except Thaddius, Gluth).. I rly miss the times when we had to work for epics :(

It was something really special for me.. Nowadays its gone which is basically the reason for me to multibox :d

They just recolored the blue items :-) Seriously - purple is just a color, epics are as easy to obtain as rares was in vanilla, it's just a change of mindset really. And there's plenty of challenge for both boxers and non-boxers if you want it. Glory of the Hero/Raider, hardmodes etc.

As for the replacement thing (with classes) I think it's a good thing. Because I box I don't LFG, obviously, but it's hard enough getting a good group together without worrying about getting just the right setup - I think the development is positive for the most part. I just wish there was a server for boxers and/or with an age-restriction of 20+ :P

[Alemi]

I started very late in Vanilla. I do not think AVs that took days would be fun at all.

I miss the epicness of AV, but the length of the battles was a bit much. Blizzard's massive change towards the end of vanilla was a bit of a knee-jerk imho. I did like the lieutenants and how they controlled respawns in towers and how destroying towers spawned marshalls as opposed to how the marshalls/towers work now. Now it's just nuke the archers and they never come back and wait for towers to be destroyed.

Fun moments of "HEAL LOK" as he barrels through a turtle were great; along with "stealth" teams and sending out wind riders/griffins. 4 hour battles for Snowfall GY, not so much fun.

[Coltimar]

I had tons more fun in vanilla WoW. I did all of the dungeons, literally, hundreds of times and had fun doing so. The raids were fun. It kind of reminded me of work where you would collaborate with a ton of people on a job, then go have fun with a few 'coworkers' afterwords farming rep, mats or dungeons for fun. May sound like a bad analogy but I have always loved going to work.

[Zal]

I just remembered the one good thing about vanilla, PvP ranks from BGs. My mage at the time (wasn't boxing yet) got to the Marshal rank, the step under the final rank i believe. Wait, that just means i spent 16 hours a day in AV to get that. Ok nevermind, i didn't like vanilla.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Detheroc&n=Zalrune

[Malekyth]

Absolutely, the game's gotten so much better since vanilla. I still have fond memories, but it's like the fond memories I have of Clash of the Titans, years before Lord of the Rings: if ever I dare look back at those days, I can now see how rough they were!

grumpy: me too, I don't think I ever got further than the Grim Guzzler before I multi-boxed it. Even then it took awhile before I saw the whole thing. In fact, I think I'd leveled well past BRD before actually completing it ... and a lot of that outleveled-XP was gained slogging through BRD! It's like a full zone, if you pretend each area is a quest hub. I have still have great fondness for the gargantuan, sprawling mess of BRD.

[Ualaa]

There's good and there's bad with any change.
Some things I liked about classic more then the current game.
And others is the reverse.

I hope Cataclysm leaves a ton of good options as far as leveling goes.

One of the changes which began to kill EQ for me, was taking low level (mid level whatever) instances, and making them challenging for end level toons, without giving anything back for the lowbies.
Cazic Thule and Mistmoore as end-game 6-man's, and just having less options leveling up sucked.

[Gadzooks]

I had tons more fun in vanilla WoW. I did all of the dungeons, literally, hundreds of times and had fun doing so. The raids were fun. It kind of reminded me of work where you would collaborate with a ton of people on a job, then go have fun with a few 'coworkers' afterwords farming rep, mats or dungeons for fun. May sound like a bad analogy but I have always loved going to work.

Coltimar, if you think about what you wrote, it's not the game you miss, it's the people. Would you have had as much fun if you'd had to run those instances hundreds of times with strangers, who don't talk to you?

That's what vanilla was for me - the game was worse, but the class of player was better. I ran those same instances with 2 guilds, one of which i was in for almost all of vanilla, and half of BC. We were a family, and I'd log in just to chit chat or do officer stuff, and later GM stuff when I ran it for a little while. It was'nt the game - we could have been playing Hello Kitty Island, it was the people. I *cared* about my guild, so logging in on a Saturday afternoon to attune a few in MC was no big deal, or running UBRS yet again to get someone their gear - no problem. I knew all 3 Blackrock instances like the back of my hand, had all of the loot tables for the bosses memorized, because one of my duties as an officer was to help build and gear an MC team.

Would I do that for strangers? Hell no.

The raids themselves are really not "fun", after a few runs. There is no "fun" in MC, except the moment of the kill when you pull the handle on the loot slot machine, and see what you got. The fun was the same old jokes from guildies, the goofing around, the comraderie. In all honesty, BWL is a major pain in my ass and I'll be happy never to see it again. ZG was just as annoying - I still want to go back and burn that fucking bat boss down a few times, for all of the wipes and frustration she caused us. We HATED ZG, but it was the gear we needed, so we went, and we had fun because we knew each other, even though we'd spend two hours wiping.

My best memory pre-boxing was in my old guild, where me and 4 others went to Setthek Halls Heroic, and never got to the first boss after an hour (okay, maybe more than that) because we were laughing so hard at each other. That's what will bring me back to a game time after time - the instance itself, whatever. :D

I honestly think a lot of people are giving the game entirely too much credit, when the people you played with deserve it - and that experience CAN be repeated now, in this era of pugging and greed and idiocy, it just may take more work to find a guild you're comfy with.

[Coltimar]

They same people were around when the content changed. We just didn't enjoy it together any longer.

[Ogloo]

for some reason i looovoeee BC, all the instances/areanas and everything looked cool

full of wonder and stuff ;0 when does BCcysm come out? lol

[rocnroll]

Coltimar, if you think about what you wrote, it's not the game you miss, it's the people. Would you have had as much fun if you'd had to run those instances hundreds of times with strangers, who don't talk to you?

That's what vanilla was for me - the game was worse, but the class of player was better. I ran those same instances with 2 guilds, one of which i was in for almost all of vanilla, and half of BC. We were a family, and I'd log in just to chit chat or do officer stuff, and later GM stuff when I ran it for a little while. It was'nt the game - we could have been playing Hello Kitty Island, it was the people. I *cared* about my guild, so logging in on a Saturday afternoon to attune a few in MC was no big deal, or running UBRS yet again to get someone their gear - no problem. I knew all 3 Blackrock instances like the back of my hand, had all of the loot tables for the bosses memorized, because one of my duties as an officer was to help build and gear an MC team.

Would I do that for strangers? Hell no.

The raids themselves are really not "fun", after a few runs. There is no "fun" in MC, except the moment of the kill when you pull the handle on the loot slot machine, and see what you got. The fun was the same old jokes from guildies, the goofing around, the comraderie. In all honesty, BWL is a major pain in my ass and I'll be happy never to see it again. ZG was just as annoying - I still want to go back and burn that fucking bat boss down a few times, for all of the wipes and frustration she caused us. We HATED ZG, but it was the gear we needed, so we went, and we had fun because we knew each other, even though we'd spend two hours wiping.

My best memory pre-boxing was in my old guild, where me and 4 others went to Setthek Halls Heroic, and never got to the first boss after an hour (okay, maybe more than that) because we were laughing so hard at each other. That's what will bring me back to a game time after time - the instance itself, whatever. :D

I honestly think a lot of people are giving the game entirely too much credit, when the people you played with deserve it - and that experience CAN be repeated now, in this era of pugging and greed and idiocy, it just may take more work to find a guild you're comfy with.

Yeah, I hated that bat boss. I remember during BC that four of us (well geared) cleared most of ZG (we skipped the Troll boss) and of course when we were ready to fish up the boss that drops the Polymorph Turtle spell, mages suddenly appeared. Sorry about the boss names, I'm too lazy to look them up. :)

Now days, most just run it for the achievements and the mounts.

[bartholomeo]

I hated the endless runs in Stratholme and Scholomance.

LFM Strat scarlet side, 45min run...

[Fef]

I loved the levelling in vanilla WoW. I still love the levelling now. I hated getting to level 60 to find that I had nothing to do past level 60 (not ready to accept raid constraints). Multiboxing gives me acces to some level of content past cap-level, and this makes me very happy.