Some vanilla servers (the good ones) are done in progression style. They are ROCKING busy! I am blown away how professionally run the one I am playing on is. I got chills how well it brought back the vanilla experience.
These guys are keeping vanilla up and later adding a BC server you can copy your characters too and still play both. This only makes sense as they are different games at their core.
The popularity of these quality vanilla servers shocked me. Blizzard is losing incredible amounts of business not offering the same service seeing how it's THEIR software. Hopefully they wake up and realize a shit ton of players want to play the game they fell in love with and not be forced into new versions against their will.
I foresee Vanilla, BC and Wotlk servers popping up with few bugs and all the previous content, treating each version as if they were separate games. It is as if this should have been done all along since the beginning.
You are instantly reminded that Wow used to be a totally different game than it is today. I would prefer efforts made to correct some issues outside of normal patches but I understand the effort to keep things as authentic as possible too.
I am having trouble comprehending this. I played WoW at launch, and for several years thereafter. Maybe a lot has changed. But my experience of early WoW was coming off of other games, like EQ, where what people are calling "vanilla WoW" seemed like a rocket sled to me at the time.
I was never max level in EQ. I was never max level in CoH. But I was quickly max level in WoW. Mostly by soloing. Also, unlike those other games, I participated in pretty much everything the game offered at end game while I was playing.
Back in those days what everyone was talking about was how much easier the game was than most games made before it.
Now don't get me wrong. WoW was, and likely still is, a very fun game. I enjoyed it and thought it was well done. And certainly it contains some very challenging content in some places at end game that takes a good group or guild to defeat. I'm not saying it's a cakewalk. But this "when I played WoW we walked 20 miles in the snow" stuff is hard for me to get my head around as someone who was there.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Okay so I listened to some old music, a genre I haven't listened to since I was about 21 years old (I am now 28 and like a lifetime of experiences later) and it sparked some very strong feelings. Especially since this was around the time of my first GF and the Wow days. Anyways in my nostalgia induced state of mind I came across this and read the entire thread, late in the night (3 am). It turned out to be very interesting and brought back even more nostalgia with memorable times of Vanilla WoW. There are many good thoughts here and I thought it too good to be forgotten in time, as it were. After reading I am curious of any of you play on a Vanilla server as of now? I checked it out myself and it seems there is one with quite a big community which seems professional. I could not see if it was EU or US but I asked that on Reddit.
I never thought I'd go back to MMOs after GW2 (my last MMO many years after I originally quit my "MMO career"), and even less so WoW, as I found both those options always led to me going "I've been through this so many times and it's just like a craving that never sates me anymore)- as if you have an addiction but the addiction doesn't actually please you anymore, even if you want it to. Very sad in a way, I miss those times when it was so new and fun. Either way it was surprising to find now late in the night that I might actually go back, even if I can't allow myself to play a lot, I just can't. I think the reason is not that I got bit by the craving once again, but rather that a very unique opportunity like vanilla wow seems possible again, that makes me even consider it. I'd like to find out what that will be like. It won't be this fast-food experience of MMOs today I am pretty sure, more like the exploring, big world experience, and that really entices me right now, being that little humble rogue again and gradually progress with talents, items, and just do fun social group play. Damn son!
Also I like some others here are at that point where I actually have free time again, things have stabalized in my life for the first time in many years and I got the time for hobbies but none of them really fill a lot of time. In those cases a MMO could be fun, if it actually feels fun to play. Just pass an hour or two now and then, no harm in that. So if this "new vanilla" concept really works I'm then I'm very psyched. I feel like a kid now just by the thought. Thing is when I played Vanilla and some exps after I was mostly just a kid who didn't care about school enough to be there half the time, and I played way too much. It was more addiction than fun- well except the new vanilla experience obviously. It got worse immedietly after, or maybe with the exception of BC which I quite enjoyed for a while, but WOTLK wasn't my cup of tea really, I tried but all I really felt was that I now have to rush to progress, to beat the new raids, it seemed like what everyone was interested in, gearing up. Fuck the social aspect as long as I get there as quickly as possible, or get geared asap.. sigh.
As I said I was this kid with way too much time, around 16-22 years of age. In the time after that I have played some MMOs but nothing like before and not for long periods of time, and I had big periods where I was all about real life and no gaming. Fast-forward to now, 28 years of age and once again there is more free time, life is more settled, so yeah. This all brings me to what some others said, im really at that point where I wish for a fun game to play, to actually enjoy when I have some free time and feel like it, but I just can't seem to find one. GW2 is as close as I have got to this in recent times, and it lasted me about 2 months until I felt like all I did was once again grind for gear just for the sake of it. I quit when I asked myself why are grinding for gear when you're not even having fun anymore, do you really want to waste your life on a game for that?
Thing is I immensely enjoyed GW2 up until level cap, I truly got that new feeling like the first time you enter an MMO, or when you're young and play games, and I literally never get an excited feeling playing any game anymore, haven't since forever. I've seen it all, played too much. The reasons specifically that I enjoyed GW2 where things that are actually touched upon here as the traits of Vanilla WoW. Exploration, story, immersion (very much so), fun, I was so enthralled up until level cap, but then the immersion faded.
Blizzard took the state of the art of at least six other working MMOs and threw the features into a pile.
Then they picked up each piece, one by one, and looked at ways to implement something better. Sometimes they reversed decisions of other companies, sometimes they just rubbed a high gloss on FeatureX.
Mixed in their very best lessons learned from Diablo2 about interacting with actual players... Then Blizzard pitched it to the hungry, hungry millions of fans they already had and snatched up the fans that the slumbering SOE let slip from their grasp.
Right place, right time, a brilliantly strategic opening date, the first major AAA producer to actually use the potential of Eastern sales...
And a behemoth is born.
It could be replicated, in another genre, by any company that already had several big hits and an enormous and rabidly loyal pre-existing fan base.
But it won't be replicated in MMORPG-space. That well's been tapped.
As someone who played at release of Vanilla WoW (was in college at the time) and am still MMOing today, I just have to say this:
I attribute a LOT of Vanilla WoW's "success" to the fact that most of us had absolutely no clue wtf we were doing.
Before WoW, the largest MMO playerbase in the US was Everquest at a whopping 300,000 players. The rest of the MMOs out at the time trailed behind, including my own Ultima (which I swapped over to WoW from).
Now, the EQ players, and I suppose some Asheron's players, were the probably most comfortable with the game's system since the devs were ex EQ devs. The rest of the 1,000,000 or so first year players were either from Ultima and other top down clickers, noobs to MMOs, or slithered out of the woodworks from some little known games most of us had never heard of (or MUDs).
For the most part, this game was new and shiny to a large portion of us. We were still figuring things out, and the people around us were doing the exact same thing. Asking a question in general chat got a slew of incorrect answers and usually sent you off trying to figure out wtf was happening. The world was HUGE by MMO standards of the time, and the Internet wasn't quite as resourceful about getting the maps and quests out to everyone as it is today. The game had a particular air of mystery to it, at least to us non EQ players.
And that's the problem. This was what... 12 years ago? Over the past 12 years, we've all kind figured this whole MMO thing out. We log into the game and probably already looked up what the world map looks like, at the very least. We know what classes use what stats because the beta and alpha players have given us the rundown, and we know where the grind spots are because our websites and addons tell us. Even if you aren't actively looking that information up, general chat is filled with knowledgeable players who are actively telling us all about it every chance they can get.
There is no mystery anymore, and I think that was one of the most powerful tools Vanilla WoW had in its armory.
I am having trouble comprehending this. I played WoW at launch, and for several years thereafter. Maybe a lot has changed. But my experience of early WoW was coming off of other games, like EQ, where what people are calling "vanilla WoW" seemed like a rocket sled to me at the time.
I was never max level in EQ. I was never max level in CoH. But I was quickly max level in WoW. Mostly by soloing. Also, unlike those other games, I participated in pretty much everything the game offered at end game while I was playing.
Back in those days what everyone was talking about was how much easier the game was than most games made before it.
Now don't get me wrong. WoW was, and likely still is, a very fun game. I enjoyed it and thought it was well done. And certainly it contains some very challenging content in some places at end game that takes a good group or guild to defeat. I'm not saying it's a cakewalk. But this "when I played WoW we walked 20 miles in the snow" stuff is hard for me to get my head around as someone who was there.
Because the alternative, at the time, was walking 40 miles in the snow and then having to do a corpse run back to your body to get your gear back if you died along the way. Back then, the concept of "Quality of Life" anything in MMOs was practically unheard of. Freedom of movement and choice were the #1 goals of every game, trying to basically be online Dungeons and Dragons. WoW came along and was like "Yea... what if we forget all of that, give up a little bit of that freedom and gain a whoooooole bunch of 'ease of use' in our play?". Apparently that formula worked well.
Then they expanded on the Quality of Life stuff until they hit the perfect middle ground in WotLK. Then they kept going with even more QoL stuff until it started to feel like a mobile game you'd play on your phone by Pandaria. And then they KEPT going even more with it until it kind of just does everything for you and really just need to follow the arrows and hit no more than 6 buttons.
So, yea... compared to what Everquest entailed, Vanilla WoW was a cakewalk. But compared to what the current game is? I hope you like snow.
Vanilla wow was shit, it was your mindset and expectations that were different.
I felt the same about an old mmo I played, it was fucking awful in reality but I still look back on it fondly. If any modern mmo tried to be like vanilla wow it would have half of one persons leg playing it.
As someone who played at release of Vanilla WoW (was in college at the time) and am still MMOing today, I just have to say this:
I attribute a LOT of Vanilla WoW's "success" to the fact that most of us had absolutely no clue wtf we were doing.
Before WoW, the largest MMO playerbase in the US was Everquest at a whopping 300,000 players. The rest of the MMOs out at the time trailed behind, including my own Ultima (which I swapped over to WoW from).
Now, the EQ players, and I suppose some Asheron's players, were the probably most comfortable with the game's system since the devs were ex EQ devs. The rest of the 1,000,000 or so first year players were either from Ultima and other top down clickers, noobs to MMOs, or slithered out of the woodworks from some little known games most of us had never heard of (or MUDs).
For the most part, this game was new and shiny to a large portion of us. We were still figuring things out, and the people around us were doing the exact same thing. Asking a question in general chat got a slew of incorrect answers and usually sent you off trying to figure out wtf was happening. The world was HUGE by MMO standards of the time, and the Internet wasn't quite as resourceful about getting the maps and quests out to everyone as it is today. The game had a particular air of mystery to it, at least to us non EQ players.
And that's the problem. This was what... 12 years ago? Over the past 12 years, we've all kind figured this whole MMO thing out. We log into the game and probably already looked up what the world map looks like, at the very least. We know what classes use what stats because the beta and alpha players have given us the rundown, and we know where the grind spots are because our websites and addons tell us. Even if you aren't actively looking that information up, general chat is filled with knowledgeable players who are actively telling us all about it every chance they can get.
There is no mystery anymore, and I think that was one of the most powerful tools Vanilla WoW had in its armory.
The fact that it was new and fresh made it look so much better and exciting to play indeed.. I am an old EQ player and DAoC player however.. and even to me WoW had many many great ideas that improved the game over the even more grindier EQ and DAoC. It was fun to play back then..
But when compared to todays MMO's Vanilla has grown old... some parts of it i would like could be rentered in todays MMO's as an option... i espescially miss the freedom of character development... But i think the upcomming legion will again put MMO's on a higher level if you can addapt to the changes... Its a casuall players MMO for sure, which now again suits me as i am way more casuall these days
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Talents was a good idea in theory - but they messed it up. Beyond that, they also ruined progression by having too many levels without significant upgrades.
Yes, the current quests are a complete joke - but they fit the overall pace very well.
I don't mind flying mounts - but I think it's a terrible, terrible mistake that they're as common as pie. It really should be a monumental achievement reserved for people who're extremely dedicated and skilled.
I don't mind flying mounts - but I think it's a terrible, terrible mistake that they're as common as pie. It really should be a monumental achievement reserved for people who're extremely dedicated and skilled.
Many people would still end getting them, and the world would be ruined the same. And considering the tremendous advantage they give, notably for PvP but also PvE, adding them so that really only some "elite" can get them would have been an even worse idea.
I don't know what you mean by "elite" - but I think if you set yourself apart in terms of skill and capacity, it's appropriate that you get rewarded accordingly.
One of my main problems with MMOs in general, though, is that the only way to set yourself apart seems to be in groups.
I think that's a mistake. I think solo players should be able to do that as well.
Also, there's a gargantuan difference between a truly skilled player and the average player - so no, I don't think "many" would end up getting them.
Vanilla WoW was great because we were all a lot younger. Takes a lot more to impress us now plus we can't all spend hours in the game grinding the same dungeons as we have life commitments. The new younger gamer has come along but with different tastes - it's the 'want it now' group who prefer the instant and casual gratification, including console and mobile gaming.
You can't bring back the past so you just enjoy what this new normality is or move along.
I've expressed my opinion about vanilla WoW
many times already, so i won't do it again because probably nobody gives
a damn anyways. But i will say this: i really hope everyone on this
thread played vanilla WoW for a couple of months, then come here and
type their thoughts about it. You won't believe how much everyone's mind
can change after that experience - the game is very, very fun... for a
while. Then it becomes a nightmare.
Beware of nostalgia, it can cloud your
judgement. I've played Vanilla WoW recently in a private server and
while i can say i had a lot of fun, it didn't lasted for long. The
grinding can be nice for a while but eventually it burns away pretty
fast, i tell you - specially when you have to do a dungeon for like two
hours and if someone makes a mistake it adds another half an hour of
tedius corpse running. Also, elite quests are awesome... except when
there's like 10 in the same zone and you can't find anyone to help you. Maybe
it was nicer when we were younger because we had more time to spare,
now if i have to spend way too much on a game to see some progress i
feel like i'm just wasting my precious, short work-free moments.
The more MMO's are designed for casual or solo play the less
players need each other. Add "features" like a cross server dungeon
finder and the likelyhood of ever meeting the same players twice drops
dramatically, allowing people to behave like utter dicks with no
consequences.
I think that's the main issue here. Back in the day, when the servers
were smaller and the content was "harder", forming a group and doing
your job was essential. Today you just press a button, the group is
ready, and you just roflstomp everything in a few seconds. Why would you
care about everyone else? They may as well be bots for all you know.
I
played in a private vanilla server of WoW a while ago for a whole year,
and there were like 200 people in total, 100 online at peak times. If
you acted like a dick there, good luck finding another group the next
time. You HAD to work your way in the dungeons, and you HAD to be nice
with your teammates, just as we do IRL, otherwise they would just kick
your ass and call someone else, forever sending you into a pariah state.
I played in a private server a couple of years
ago, it was based in vanilla and 99% bug free - i think the only thing
that was sorta broken was Warriors charging sometimes through the floor,
but nothing else. Every single thing was working, up until Drums of War
patch (AQ was still in development tho), and the staff didn't accepted
donations in any form, not even to help the server. That means, no help
for anyone except to solve tickets, and it was good. I had a lot of
fun... for a while. Leveled two characters to 60, one of them a Paladin
(yes, it was soulcrushing), completed the Charger quest, collected the
dungeon set and upgraded a couple of parts. I didn't raided mostly
because i lacked the time for it, but most of the population was in MC
every week. These servers are awesome, but i guarantee that you get
tired very fast. Not only because you're stuck in time and feels like
groundhog day, but also because MMOs are all about progression, and if
you know that there's a line that will stop you and never change, trust
me - you're gonna get tired pretty fast. Specially if it's something
that you have already done in the past.
I'm not even gonna
mention how hard is to retake old habits like forming a group in chat,
grinding like a bot for crappy resistance items, or corpse walking (a
true nightmare). It's not until you have to suffer them again that you
know how terrible those things were, and i wouldn't have them in my
games again. Also mixing the mechanics of today with yesterday's is a
recipe for terribleness - something that you can understand when you
play the timeless dungeons in the special weekends, which are laughable
compared to what they were in their first days.
Recalling some of my own thoughts about this issue... Funny how i start with "I've expressed my opinion about vanilla WoW
many times already, so i won't do it again because probably nobody gives
a damn anyways." :pleased:
Vanilla wow was fun but my complaints originally were always about the desparity between factions.
Vanilla WOW the horde really was the afterthought realm. During beta all you ever saw was Alliance this and that and finally in the last couple months Oh and we're making the horde playable. I read that originally this wasn't going to be the case the Horde was going to be raid zones.
1. Every Horde major city had mutiple entrances that were unguarded. Alliance in vanilla could ride directly without difficulty to Thralls chamber. Cairne Bloodhoof had an elevator behind his hut. Undercity had a backdoor that lead right to Sylvanas. Alliance had patrolling guards, elites at entrances and mutiple bottlenecks. After about a year Blizzard changed the Horde cities adding all kinds of guards.
2. Population disparity. A problem in every single faction based MMO. Too many people join one side and steamroll the other. People see what side is winning & bandwagon there making it worse. My server had close to 90% alliance they could have 50+ people at every Horde levelling area.
3. Greed. Having come from everquest & daoc where the communities were pretty tight knit I never experienced so many "I want what I want when I want it now," mentalities in any game until I came to WOW. People who'd befriend you when you benefited them and jump ship to the next gravy train when it suited them.
Positives;
1. The content was great from low level up to 60. Managing to get through Scarlet Monastery was an awesome achievement for my guild at the time. I still remember doing Stratholme & UBRS in raid groups noiw they're 5 man's. Our first attempt at stratholme our guild wiped at the entrance.... thats how it was in vanilla.
2. The cartoonish graphics. I actually prefer this & really liked it. I don't like when MMO's try to be too realistic they tend to come off looking like retarded manequins.
3. Massive world.
4. The main developer/designer for WOW came from Everquest. Arguably one of the best MMO's of its time. He was one of the leading uber guilds from EQ & when he was recruited to WOW he made the game everything that EQ should have had but never implemented. This is why it was so successful. Other game companies should take note of that.
The early days of WoW is certainly a gaming experience I look back on and smile. I personally don't know if Vanilla WoW is better then the current state of the game, but I know I had more fun playing it. I do think there are many factors involved, chiefly among them is time. It's been over ten years of changes in the gaming industry, the world, and most importantly me. As result, my expectations have certainly changed in games. If Vanilla WoW was brought back tomorrow, I can't say for sure that I would play it. I'm just not sure.
Comments
These guys are keeping vanilla up and later adding a BC server you can copy your characters too and still play both. This only makes sense as they are different games at their core.
The popularity of these quality vanilla servers shocked me. Blizzard is losing incredible amounts of business not offering the same service seeing how it's THEIR software. Hopefully they wake up and realize a shit ton of players want to play the game they fell in love with and not be forced into new versions against their will.
I foresee Vanilla, BC and Wotlk servers popping up with few bugs and all the previous content, treating each version as if they were separate games. It is as if this should have been done all along since the beginning.
You are instantly reminded that Wow used to be a totally different game than it is today. I would prefer efforts made to correct some issues outside of normal patches but I understand the effort to keep things as authentic as possible too.
You stay sassy!
I was never max level in EQ. I was never max level in CoH. But I was quickly max level in WoW. Mostly by soloing. Also, unlike those other games, I participated in pretty much everything the game offered at end game while I was playing.
Back in those days what everyone was talking about was how much easier the game was than most games made before it.
Now don't get me wrong. WoW was, and likely still is, a very fun game. I enjoyed it and thought it was well done. And certainly it contains some very challenging content in some places at end game that takes a good group or guild to defeat. I'm not saying it's a cakewalk. But this "when I played WoW we walked 20 miles in the snow" stuff is hard for me to get my head around as someone who was there.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I never thought I'd go back to MMOs after GW2 (my last MMO many years after I originally quit my "MMO career"), and even less so WoW, as I found both those options always led to me going "I've been through this so many times and it's just like a craving that never sates me anymore)- as if you have an addiction but the addiction doesn't actually please you anymore, even if you want it to. Very sad in a way, I miss those times when it was so new and fun. Either way it was surprising to find now late in the night that I might actually go back, even if I can't allow myself to play a lot, I just can't. I think the reason is not that I got bit by the craving once again, but rather that a very unique opportunity like vanilla wow seems possible again, that makes me even consider it. I'd like to find out what that will be like. It won't be this fast-food experience of MMOs today I am pretty sure, more like the exploring, big world experience, and that really entices me right now, being that little humble rogue again and gradually progress with talents, items, and just do fun social group play. Damn son!
Also I like some others here are at that point where I actually have free time again, things have stabalized in my life for the first time in many years and I got the time for hobbies but none of them really fill a lot of time. In those cases a MMO could be fun, if it actually feels fun to play. Just pass an hour or two now and then, no harm in that. So if this "new vanilla" concept really works I'm then I'm very psyched. I feel like a kid now just by the thought. Thing is when I played Vanilla and some exps after I was mostly just a kid who didn't care about school enough to be there half the time, and I played way too much. It was more addiction than fun- well except the new vanilla experience obviously. It got worse immedietly after, or maybe with the exception of BC which I quite enjoyed for a while, but WOTLK wasn't my cup of tea really, I tried but all I really felt was that I now have to rush to progress, to beat the new raids, it seemed like what everyone was interested in, gearing up. Fuck the social aspect as long as I get there as quickly as possible, or get geared asap.. sigh.
As I said I was this kid with way too much time, around 16-22 years of age. In the time after that I have played some MMOs but nothing like before and not for long periods of time, and I had big periods where I was all about real life and no gaming. Fast-forward to now, 28 years of age and once again there is more free time, life is more settled, so yeah. This all brings me to what some others said, im really at that point where I wish for a fun game to play, to actually enjoy when I have some free time and feel like it, but I just can't seem to find one. GW2 is as close as I have got to this in recent times, and it lasted me about 2 months until I felt like all I did was once again grind for gear just for the sake of it. I quit when I asked myself why are grinding for gear when you're not even having fun anymore, do you really want to waste your life on a game for that?
Thing is I immensely enjoyed GW2 up until level cap, I truly got that new feeling like the first time you enter an MMO, or when you're young and play games, and I literally never get an excited feeling playing any game anymore, haven't since forever. I've seen it all, played too much. The reasons specifically that I enjoyed GW2 where things that are actually touched upon here as the traits of Vanilla WoW. Exploration, story, immersion (very much so), fun, I was so enthralled up until level cap, but then the immersion faded.
Then they picked up each piece, one by one, and looked at ways to implement something better. Sometimes they reversed decisions of other companies, sometimes they just rubbed a high gloss on FeatureX.
Mixed in their very best lessons learned from Diablo2 about interacting with actual players... Then Blizzard pitched it to the hungry, hungry millions of fans they already had and snatched up the fans that the slumbering SOE let slip from their grasp.
Right place, right time, a brilliantly strategic opening date, the first major AAA producer to actually use the potential of Eastern sales...
And a behemoth is born.
It could be replicated, in another genre, by any company that already had several big hits and an enormous and rabidly loyal pre-existing fan base.
But it won't be replicated in MMORPG-space. That well's been tapped.
I attribute a LOT of Vanilla WoW's "success" to the fact that most of us had absolutely no clue wtf we were doing.
Before WoW, the largest MMO playerbase in the US was Everquest at a whopping 300,000 players. The rest of the MMOs out at the time trailed behind, including my own Ultima (which I swapped over to WoW from).
Now, the EQ players, and I suppose some Asheron's players, were the probably most comfortable with the game's system since the devs were ex EQ devs. The rest of the 1,000,000 or so first year players were either from Ultima and other top down clickers, noobs to MMOs, or slithered out of the woodworks from some little known games most of us had never heard of (or MUDs).
For the most part, this game was new and shiny to a large portion of us. We were still figuring things out, and the people around us were doing the exact same thing. Asking a question in general chat got a slew of incorrect answers and usually sent you off trying to figure out wtf was happening. The world was HUGE by MMO standards of the time, and the Internet wasn't quite as resourceful about getting the maps and quests out to everyone as it is today. The game had a particular air of mystery to it, at least to us non EQ players.
And that's the problem. This was what... 12 years ago? Over the past 12 years, we've all kind figured this whole MMO thing out. We log into the game and probably already looked up what the world map looks like, at the very least. We know what classes use what stats because the beta and alpha players have given us the rundown, and we know where the grind spots are because our websites and addons tell us. Even if you aren't actively looking that information up, general chat is filled with knowledgeable players who are actively telling us all about it every chance they can get.
There is no mystery anymore, and I think that was one of the most powerful tools Vanilla WoW had in its armory.
Then they expanded on the Quality of Life stuff until they hit the perfect middle ground in WotLK. Then they kept going with even more QoL stuff until it started to feel like a mobile game you'd play on your phone by Pandaria. And then they KEPT going even more with it until it kind of just does everything for you and really just need to follow the arrows and hit no more than 6 buttons.
So, yea... compared to what Everquest entailed, Vanilla WoW was a cakewalk. But compared to what the current game is? I hope you like snow.
I felt the same about an old mmo I played, it was fucking awful in reality but I still look back on it fondly. If any modern mmo tried to be like vanilla wow it would have half of one persons leg playing it.
But when compared to todays MMO's Vanilla has grown old... some parts of it i would like could be rentered in todays MMO's as an option... i espescially miss the freedom of character development... But i think the upcomming legion will again put MMO's on a higher level if you can addapt to the changes... Its a casuall players MMO for sure, which now again suits me as i am way more casuall these days
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Yes, the current quests are a complete joke - but they fit the overall pace very well.
I don't mind flying mounts - but I think it's a terrible, terrible mistake that they're as common as pie. It really should be a monumental achievement reserved for people who're extremely dedicated and skilled.
One of my main problems with MMOs in general, though, is that the only way to set yourself apart seems to be in groups.
I think that's a mistake. I think solo players should be able to do that as well.
Also, there's a gargantuan difference between a truly skilled player and the average player - so no, I don't think "many" would end up getting them.
You can't bring back the past so you just enjoy what this new normality is or move along.
Recalling some of my own thoughts about this issue...
Funny how i start with "I've expressed my opinion about vanilla WoW many times already, so i won't do it again because probably nobody gives a damn anyways." :pleased:
Vanilla WOW the horde really was the afterthought realm. During beta all you ever saw was Alliance this and that and finally in the last couple months Oh and we're making the horde playable. I read that originally this wasn't going to be the case the Horde was going to be raid zones.
1. Every Horde major city had mutiple entrances that were unguarded. Alliance in vanilla could ride directly without difficulty to Thralls chamber. Cairne Bloodhoof had an elevator behind his hut. Undercity had a backdoor that lead right to Sylvanas. Alliance had patrolling guards, elites at entrances and mutiple bottlenecks. After about a year Blizzard changed the Horde cities adding all kinds of guards.
2. Population disparity. A problem in every single faction based MMO. Too many people join one side and steamroll the other. People see what side is winning & bandwagon there making it worse. My server had close to 90% alliance they could have 50+ people at every Horde levelling area.
3. Greed. Having come from everquest & daoc where the communities were pretty tight knit I never experienced so many "I want what I want when I want it now," mentalities in any game until I came to WOW. People who'd befriend you when you benefited them and jump ship to the next gravy train when it suited them.
Positives;
1. The content was great from low level up to 60. Managing to get through Scarlet Monastery was an awesome achievement for my guild at the time. I still remember doing Stratholme & UBRS in raid groups noiw they're 5 man's. Our first attempt at stratholme our guild wiped at the entrance.... thats how it was in vanilla.
2. The cartoonish graphics. I actually prefer this & really liked it. I don't like when MMO's try to be too realistic they tend to come off looking like retarded manequins.
3. Massive world.
4. The main developer/designer for WOW came from Everquest. Arguably one of the best MMO's of its time. He was one of the leading uber guilds from EQ & when he was recruited to WOW he made the game everything that EQ should have had but never implemented. This is why it was so successful. Other game companies should take note of that.