Vanilla - I miss the good times

[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-s...eroc&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.

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.