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I see official servers launch at the end of August for Vanilla World of Warcraft.
Anyone going back for old times sake? If so what will you be rolling etc?

Im 50/50 at the moment.

If it was any cheaper I might consider it, but as it's apparently still the cost of a full WoW subscription I think I'm out. Plus my wife would probably divorce me.

I'm on the fence - I will probably give it a few weeks play, pretty much like I do every expansion.

Depends if my friends come back. Ultimately, with WoW, it's not the game, it's the people you play with.

Also on the fence. No active account at the moment, but I might try Classic for a month.
The gameplay sucked hard, but it was still kinda fun back in the days.
I just wished they would've kept cosmectics from the current WoW, like the updated models, transmog options, etc.
Probably going to chose the RP realm.

I'm probably with Blizzard on this one: "you think you do, but you don't". Why anyone would want to go back to Vanilla's (lack of) quality of life boggles my mind.

Hope you don't like retribution pala, or affli lock, or moonkin, or...

Never underestimate the power of nostalgia!

Heck look at all the super old games that get a re-release and still sell decently well even though they lack a lot of modern features.

I mean you can pretty much get the experience right now with the private servers that are available. Sure some of them are buggy, but better than paying subscription for an old service that hasn't received any of the QOL changes mainstream WoW has.

I thought about it just to mess around but when I tried to log in it asked for an authenticator that is probably two devices/phones back at least and somewhere in storage if not recycled. When I wanted to put in a ticket to remove the authenticator it wanted a scan of my Drivers License which is a big no from me.

 Ahtman wrote:
I thought about it just to mess around but when I tried to log in it asked for an authenticator that is probably two devices/phones back at least and somewhere in storage if not recycled. When I wanted to put in a ticket to remove the authenticator it wanted a scan of my Drivers License which is a big no from me.

Did the same thing when the Kung Fu Panda expansion dropped, and haven't tried since.

This does kind of appeal admittedly, but I know the second that I get into a raid/party and I don't see the player names and hear the voices on Ventrillo(or whatever is the new voice chat hotness) that made WoW and up to half way through Lich king such a special time of gaming, I'll want to uninstall. Kind of makes me sad that I didn't keep in touch with that group.

Here I am thinking "go back to WoW" was an insult for people who suck at EVE, but now people are proudly using the phrase and talking about playing that game? I don't understand...

As bad as WoW is now, it was a thousand times worse at launch. I have no fond memories of the broken, barely-playable wreck that was WoW at launch.

 Melissia wrote:
As bad as WoW is now, it was a thousand times worse at launch. I have no fond memories of the broken, barely-playable wreck that was WoW at launch.

They're using the last patch of Vanilla as the basis of the game, not replicating the launch state.

It still had issues back then even at the final patch. The devs admitted tbat they were actively trying to "encourage" paladins to heal during Vanilla. Party Finder was the horrible summoning stones at the entrance of every instance. The high level dungeons were fun, but took a very long time to run. I could go on, but I think you get the general idea.

Seeing as i purposely got myself banned from WoW, this is an easy no.

Haha do tell.
What did you do to get banned?

Eumerin wrote:
It still had issues back then even at the final patch. The devs admitted tbat they were actively trying to "encourage" paladins to heal during Vanilla. Party Finder was the horrible summoning stones at the entrance of every instance. The high level dungeons were fun, but took a very long time to run. I could go on, but I think you get the general idea.

Some of the things you're calling issues are features players want in the game. I started playing in Wrath of the Lich King when there was no cross server play and no Party Finder teleporting you to the dungeon. Setting up a party to do a dungeon with random people did take a lot of time, but there was an option - join guild and/or make friends in the community. If you were a douchebag in a PUG, people would remember your name and trash you in trade chat. Your servers had personality (and personalities - people who organized stuff on the server like world PvP, city raids or such) that you see far less of these days in WoW.

These days, your LFG party is usually a collection of randoms with zero patience or willingness to communicate. Running a dungeon has become a daily chore you'd rather get over with ASAP with as little human interaction as physically possible. That's why illegal WoW Vanilla servers were popping up - people missed the community that Blizzard's ease of play improvements had rendered unnecessary.

Blizzard was still right in saying that people "Think they want it, but don't really" because of the many other issues that were in Vanilla that made game progression difficult - especially if you were using one of the badly balanced classes/specs, but a lot of people seem willing to overlook these issues (especially with the knowledge of what worked in Vanilla) to get back a sense of server community.

You have different memories than I do. I remember someone in Trade chat (the go to channel for LFG stuff) shouting that he wanted a mage and not a warlock for Dire Maul because warlocks weren't as good. And then reversing himself and demanding warlock only, no mage when it was pointed out that warlocks were better against the specific enemies in Dire Maul. I remember running my warlock to remote dungeon entrances, and then waiting there alone while the rest of the party played a form of chicken in which they waited to see which two party members would give in first and run to the entrance to summon the other two members with the warlock summoning spell. I remember posting a good paladin tanking build on EQ Paladins, and being complimented on it, only to see it completely destroyed by a paladin talent reshuffle a few weeks later.

As for parties communicating... i think that has more to do with how the dungeons have changed. It used to be that you'd pause before each pull, mark targets for spells like polymorph, and only pull afterwards. That gave people time to talk. But that was gone the last time I played, and had been gone for some time.

Much of what I liked about TBC (when I started) and early WoW in general isn't really replicable, at least on any long-term basis. Plus, lots of the gameplay and micromanagement has since been improved (though not necessarily perfected, especially RE: balance), and playing it now feels a lot more fluid.

Similarly, though, most of the issues I have with current WoW can't really be fixed just by going back to the 'good old days'. I personally feel that WoW peaked with WotLK/Cataclysm/Mists of Pandaria in terms of general gameplay/world & questing/group content respectively, but even those expansions had drawbacks.

WotLK was still a bit of a tireless grind in a world that wasn't spectacular to travel through. Cataclysm's dungeons and raids were absolutely dire. Pandaria's entire premise was based on a joke I can't find it within myself to take seriously to any degree, and the world+content was about as fun and enthralling of a journey as one through the intestinal system of something unpleasant and best left further unimagined.

It's for those reasons I doubt I'd ever want to go back and re-do them--re-do any of them. I already experienced all the good playing them would be able to give me, and IMO it's not worth also re-experiencing the bad and the ugly. I fondly remember running from Ironforge to Scarlet Monastery too many times to have been worth the effort, but that fondness is the kind that's backed up by the knowledge I never have to do it again.

From a storytelling point of view, Pandaria was one of the best. The zones were made up of nice little coherent chapter arcs that guided you around the area in a nice progression and filled you in on the world as you went.

Vanilla on the other hand was about going to a zone hub, and getting sent (to walk) back and forth a couple times to the same place, then repeating in a new place and another spot and maybe you'll accidentally stumble across some of the other quest givers as you go.

Vanilla was really exceptional at completely wasting your time on meaningless crap. At no point is the setting or the characters relevant to the random tasks you're given.

For example, I'm pretty sure I didn't know the dragons were intelligent or actually not evil until half-way through Cataclysm, because the actual game (not the novels) never bothered to mention it. They were just random crap to kill on the fringes of a couple zones, and a couple dungeon and raid bosses.

Voss wrote:

For example, I'm pretty sure I didn't know the dragons were intelligent or actually not evil until half-way through Cataclysm, because the actual game (not the novels) never bothered to mention it. They were just random crap to kill on the fringes of a couple zones, and a couple dungeon and raid bosses.

There was an injured blue dragon whelpling that you helped in Upper Blackrock Spire.

Also, if you did Chromie's questline in the Plaguelands, she mentioned that she was a member of the Bronze Dragonflight masquerading as a gnome.

I'd like to say that there was at least one more dragon pretending to be an elf somewhere in Vanilla. But I can't remember where that might have been off the top of my head.

Wrath of the Lich King also had you working directly with the dragonflights. In fact, that was a major part of one of the zones.

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:

For example, I'm pretty sure I didn't know the dragons were intelligent or actually not evil until half-way through Cataclysm, because the actual game (not the novels) never bothered to mention it. They were just random crap to kill on the fringes of a couple zones, and a couple dungeon and raid bosses.

There was an injured blue dragon whelpling that you helped in Upper Blackrock Spire.

Also, if you did Chromie's questline in the Plaguelands, she mentioned that she was a member of the Bronze Dragonflight masquerading as a gnome.

I'd like to say that there was at least one more dragon pretending to be an elf somewhere in Vanilla. But I can't remember where that might have been off the top of my head.

Wrath of the Lich King also had you working directly with the dragonflights. In fact, that was a major part of one of the zones.

It was. So 'intelligent' was incorrect on my part, at least by Wrath. But I figured the Dragon Temples involved some sort of Faustian bargaining due to the threat of the LK.
Alexstraza as a forced breeder and pacifist rather than a partner to the Dragonmaw orcs was a weird (and creepy) revelation when I finally came across it. As was Red Dragons as the healers and lifegivers rather than D&D style ravening destroyers (which is what they had originally seemed to be).

But most of my Vanilla memories of dragons are killing whelps in the eastern hills of the desert zone south of Loch Modan and the random green things (and respawning rare dragon) in the very east of Ashenvale. They were just random hostiles with no reason given. But the whleps had a decent chance of dropping a rare sword for no reason, so there was a vague reason to slaughter them, while doing the mining circuit of their little valley.


Chromie... I don't think Chromie was in the pre-Cata version of the Plaguelands. I remember just dealing with a family member or ghost or something. That whole area was severely overhauled, and though I remember that little valley with ghost girl having more elites (which were actually a challenge in the Vanilla/BC time frame), so I only did it once or twice.

There were a couple elf dragons running around. But mostly you had to know who they were already to know they were actually dragons.

Chromie was in the pre-Cata Plaguelands. WotLK was her second appearance. She was hidden away on the upper floor of one of the buildings in Andorhal, and fairly easy to miss if you didn't look around carefully. The mechanics used in her quest were a bit buggy, iirc.

The Red Dragonflight lore dated back to Warcraft 2. The fact that Alexstraza was enslaved by the Dragonmaw was basically a throwaway line in that game for the dragon-producing building that explained why the Horde had dragons in their army. Something similar was used with the Netherflight in Burning Crusade, and there was a long optional reputation quest chain about freeing the Netherwing dragons from enslavement by Illidan's armies. Incidentally, Deathwing also first appeared in Warcraft 2. Specifically, he was in the expansion as the dragon hero character, and was merely described as a particularly sadistic dragon who'd attached metal plates to his flanks and willingly served the Horde..

Now through the main part of Vanilla, yes you are correct. Most of the dragons that you met were targets to be killed with prejudice before they did the same to you. IIRC, the quest given by the injured blue dragon whelpling (Awbee) gave you a teleport to your destination - a blue dragon masquerading as a high elf - because otherwise you'd be forced to fight your way through a long cave filled with lots and lots of hostile blue dragonkin. The four green dragon world bosses at least had an excuse - they had been corrupted by the Emerald Nightmare. But I don't recall that a reason was ever given for killing the blue dragon world boss aside from, "Well, you can. And he drops loot."

Eumerin wrote:
You have different memories than I do.

I was lucky enough to start with a couple of co-workers also playing, and they got me into a decent - as in, full of good people - guild. You're right in that dungeons have changed - trash pulls are generally a lot easier and require next to zero crowd control, to the point where tanks will pull multiple groups at once - something they learn not to do the hard way in The Burning Crusade/WotLK Timewalking dungeons.

Vanilla is definitely a time-sink, though. I think a lot of people don't realize what they're in for in that regard - someone who played Vanilla in their teenage years probably doesn't have the same amount of free time 15 years later. I'm skipping Vanilla since I've let my sub lapse until the next expansion anyways. I'd rather be painting minis.

The main thing I missed about Vanilla Wow were the extremely customizable characters. Sure, you could end up with an absolutely worthless creation, but I played a frost mage, and I was wildly different from the full fire mages, or the POM Pyroblast dual talent tree builds. Modern wow there aren't really any bad choices (or choices- what are they down to , 5 talents from 50?), but on the other hand a mage is a mage, with very little differentiation from spec choices.

 Ratius wrote:
Haha do tell.
What did you do to get banned?

I really didn't do anything that crazy, most MMOs tend to ban you when you charge back purchases or payments. The interaction with Blizzard CS however, was absurd.

Ok simple enough i played WoW back in Vanilla before BC and then when WotLk before the expansion after that. I decided i would get back into WoW, level up old classic characters (my original raiding character was a Paladin with the original Judgement set....)

Anywho i saw that there was a deal running when they announced the last expansion that you could get the base game and then get the last 2 expansions for "free" if you pre-ordered the expansion that was coming out. I like free things so i pre-ordered super early to take advantage of getting the last 2 expansion free that way i could play and by the time i hit max level i would be up to speed with the game, my characters would be max level and i could have geared them up. I also dropped the cash for a 6 month sub because i figured i would be playing for a while.

Flash forward a month and a half and i realized why i never really stuck around with WoW. So i do what i would do with any other game with a pre-order and i requested a refund....and was denied. So i requested again and was denied again. So i escalated the refund request and was told because i had gotten "free" stuff i was not able to get a refund and was promptly denied a refund again. So i escalated the ticket yet again and explained to the CS agent that if they look at every character i have they would see that NONE of them were even high enough level to experience the "free" content and thus the "free" content was not used. This CS agent looked into my account and agreed that i never used the free expansions so i was able to get a refund.

I then asked what could be done with my remaining 4 months of sub time as it is never able to be refunded. I asked if my remaining sub time could be converted to the tradeable game time tokens so i could give them away. I was told that this was not possible. So i decided after all of the run around and BS that i went through i put in a charge back with PayPal and got a full refund on my game time even though i was into my 2nd month of a 6 month subscription.

I have to presume that would result in a ban.

Couple friends are talking about going back to it, but I'm skeptical. I imagine after three months there are going to be a bunch of abandoned level 20s and 30s rotting on people's accounts, and I'm not sure if I want to go back to the grind that vanilla was.

Like multiple people have said, it's not about the game, it's about the people you play it with - which, honestly, is the only reason I'm considering a sub again. But there's a rather nagging voice in my head telling me that games like this are better left where they are; in the nostalgia. So, I dunno.

I'll be giving it a try. I've no delusions about making server firsts or being the best at my class. I do know the raids by heart though, having gone though them in the beginning. But, yea, it was definitely a time sink.

A few friends sent me whatsapp pics of server login times.

One was 160 hours and another was #5000 in the queue

Stay consistent Blizz

Its only on some realms and particularly so on the first day at peak hours.

For folks not trying to play with streamers or whatever, it's much less congested (to the point of new queues at all). The holiday weekend may change that again, but so far Blizzard is being sensible. There's weight to the very real rationale by blizzard that even more realms would end in a realm shift and forced migration, which would piss off players who are actually intent on sticking with classic



Besides, login day queues are very classic wow

Because social media has changed, things will be different in this one - there will be less talent hunting in game, as it's likely more pre-formed groups out of game will exist.

The popularity of it says something.

One thing is that there were a lot of plot hooks that got changed/unused in time. I remember finding Upside-down Sinners under Karazhan and it was pretty freaky, but they re-did that entire lot even though they had made a dungeon for parts of it before.