It was common for particular bosses to straight up destroy guilds because people couldn't get past them. Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, and C'Thun as examples.
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Try to explain to me WoW vanilla
- Thread starter MrMatt555
- Start date
It was common for particular bosses to straight up destroy guilds because people couldn't get past them. Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, and C'Thun as examples.
rackham
Banned
Also, having a Warlock in your group was almost necessary or at the very least, preferred.
You HAD to travel the dungeon. There was no summoning stone or LFG option so everyone had to make their way there on foot/mount/flight path- UNLESS you had a warlock who would travel there with two other people so they could summon you.
This was very useful if you had an entire group except a tank or healer, who were pretty hard to come by because gear for those classes were hard to find. You would have to have someone in a main city spamming trade chat and look for a tank or healer.
If you had one person looking for them then you could have the rest of the group travel to the dungeon with the Warlock ready to summon.
If you had a raid, lol. Forget about it. A warlock was absolutely necessary to summon 30+ other people.
You HAD to travel the dungeon. There was no summoning stone or LFG option so everyone had to make their way there on foot/mount/flight path- UNLESS you had a warlock who would travel there with two other people so they could summon you.
This was very useful if you had an entire group except a tank or healer, who were pretty hard to come by because gear for those classes were hard to find. You would have to have someone in a main city spamming trade chat and look for a tank or healer.
If you had one person looking for them then you could have the rest of the group travel to the dungeon with the Warlock ready to summon.
If you had a raid, lol. Forget about it. A warlock was absolutely necessary to summon 30+ other people.
TemplaerDude
Member
Never played post-Cataclysm, don't intend to. Sounds like a different game altogether, my memories don't need to be tarnished with what they've done to it.
Not to derail the thread, but being a bounty hunter and going after Jedi in SWG pre-NG was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.
I remember getting Sulfuras the game first legendary on my shaman and then having a team of healer backing me up in battle ground. Any class wearing clothes or leather were getting one shotted with a good windfury (up to 3 extra attack on one swing) proc through power word shield.
It was a good experience at the time but I wouldn't put up with it these days. The balance was terrible.
A lot of MMO magic can't be replicated of you miss the original launch until I'd say swtorthen they mostly all went generic imo.
It was a good experience at the time but I wouldn't put up with it these days. The balance was terrible.
A lot of MMO magic can't be replicated of you miss the original launch until I'd say swtorthen they mostly all went generic imo.
SuperSonic1305
Member
I remember having to buy your moves and they were expensive.
Frozenprince
Banned
A legacy Vanilla/launch BC server is something I've always wanted to get into and play but I always figured if I did one it would break the illusion I had of what the game used to be when I stopped after a decade right around Pandas
I was a guild leader and MT for a raiding guild for a little while and damn it was a lot of fun but there were some really painful things about the game.
We upgraded to ventrillo from Teamspeak and everyone was like wow thats what you really sound like.
Getting 40 people coordinated and online at the same time was very tough sometimes. First time we took out Lucifron (first MC boss) we only had 29 people. I felt bad for warlocks having to summon people constantly at the entrances.
The gold was a killer in the game, you could never have enough. Repairing equipment was just about the most disheartening thing in the game.
Craziest thing I ever saw was our MC raid got bugged somehow and a Night Elf got stuck in our instance (We were Horde).
Onyxia (Raid Boss) was a bugged fucking mess for us. First time we killed her she got stuck in the north wall of the arena and couldnt move. I still dont think I ever knew a clear way to avoid her deep breath.
We upgraded to ventrillo from Teamspeak and everyone was like wow thats what you really sound like.
Getting 40 people coordinated and online at the same time was very tough sometimes. First time we took out Lucifron (first MC boss) we only had 29 people. I felt bad for warlocks having to summon people constantly at the entrances.
The gold was a killer in the game, you could never have enough. Repairing equipment was just about the most disheartening thing in the game.
Craziest thing I ever saw was our MC raid got bugged somehow and a Night Elf got stuck in our instance (We were Horde).
Onyxia (Raid Boss) was a bugged fucking mess for us. First time we killed her she got stuck in the north wall of the arena and couldnt move. I still dont think I ever knew a clear way to avoid her deep breath.
I fondly remember when Ally and Horde guilds had reputation on their own side and for the realm. I specifically remember an instance when the best geared and known shaman went out solo to take on a smallish group of alliance dudes.
They backed up as he made his way to them.
I loved the difficulty and diversity of those original end game dungeons. The five man and the smaller 10-15 man groups for things like UBRS.
They backed up as he made his way to them.
I loved the difficulty and diversity of those original end game dungeons. The five man and the smaller 10-15 man groups for things like UBRS.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Open PvP was a thing and corpse camping.
Certain zones were more gank prone than others like Stranglethorn Vale.
Certain zones were more gank prone than others like Stranglethorn Vale.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
That there was a community. Multiple ones, one per server.
Novel Mike
Member
What was it like? For its time it certainly felt more like a natural world then any MMO I had played to date. At the point when this game out the WoW quest system was a revolution, many games before it just had you grind mobs down over and over again to gain levels, making quests gave the world and its characters life and although the quests were generally basic they rewarded you with big boosts of exp and new gear so you always felt like you were growing your character as you played and they also helped to guide your character along a natural path for progression as you leveled.
The biggest change is the simplification of the game, the original game was fairly complicated compared to now. Every level past 10 you'd get a talent point and you'd have talent trees to be able to slightly upgrade your character every level. Now you get talents every 15 levels which certainly have bigger effects but theres a reason people miss the old talent trees, sure it was easy enough for people to post what the 'best' build was for each class and what not but that still didn't stop people from at least trying to do some interesting things. Not vanilla specifically but the old talent system brought out things like Shockadins, Fan of Kniving Rogues, Rogue tanks, ect. There was some crazy things you could do, many were unfortunately nerfed but a few of the ideas lived on.
It wasn't just talents though you used to have various resistance on gear and would need specific types of gear for raiding generally several sets among other things. World PVP was also pretty big with epic fights between Southshore and Tarren Mill in one of the first areas where horde and alliance shared a zone, fly points were the only good means of travel, You got your first mount at level 40 which only had a 60% speed increase but it felt like you could go anywhere with a 100% speed mount at 60 which as other said was crazy expensive. Now you can get a mount at level 20 for all players but theres also a Bind on Account mount you could get that lets you use a mount at level 1.
Speaking as a Rogue its one of the biggest that was changed in terms of class mechanics. We used to be able to disable traps, find locked boxes out in the open to pick and raise our personal lock-picking skill, then you had poisons which we had to craft instead of being an instant ability that they eventually came and then they just stopped using them for some of the specs in the current game. Rogues were also able to completely wreck people in 1v1 pvp with stunlocking which frustrated the hell out of players and really started a meme about people hating Rogues. Also class quests, you got a lot of abilities this way and depending on the class you at times had to travel all around the world to complete them.
Pretty much the entire game is dramatically different then it used to be, in both good and bad ways.
The one thing that people do seem to forget a lot of the time about vanilla though was that... the game was completely fucking broken almost all of the time. Server disconnects, lag, ect. were more constant then you might think, then you had various classes that had specs with abilities that didn't work as intended others had entire specs that just were not viable and you couldn't get a group because you weren't the right spec. Certain bosses didn't work properly or would glitch out and be damn well near impossible to kill, ect. The game had a LOT of issues looking back on it...
But it was still so damn amazing for its time. It felt rewarding to level and earning that first mount at 40 really felt like a right of passage. Each class really felt like it had its own identity Rogues had its own skills and professions that no one else had and each class had their own unique twist in that way. The game was much less grindy then many other MMO's of its era but at the same time it never felt easy, you'd need to group up to get many quests done in order to complete a zone and actually know how to play your character to complete even some of the earlier dungeons.
I think the best way to say it is that the game really did reward you for the time you put into it... but it still demanded a hell of a lot of that time.
Modern WoW is just to easy. You queue into groups and generally just run through the dungeon without ever really having to try, you queue for a raid and can auto attack and let everyone else do the work and generally not even be at risk of dying in most cases, ect. Legion had some good ideas and some great effort put behind it but the game evolving as it did ended up losing a lot of what made it so fun in the first place as they added all of these new quality of life changes. The group finder was a great and useful tool but it also caused a lot of problems because some people just flat out suck at playing their class or even understanding basic concepts (like don't stand in fire) and this caused people to endlessly complain about how 'difficult' dungeons were, which in turn made Blizzard cave and nerf dungeons to the point where now they provide no challenge even in a party that just hit max level. Then you have Raid finder which I like the idea behind (giving a chance for everyone to see raid content) but same kind of thing, if anything was even remotely difficult the playerbase would whine and complain until Blizzard nerfed it making it so you don't even need to remotely learn any mechanic to complete it which is just stupid and not at all what the raid experience is.
You didn't have dual-spec back in those days, either. So if you were a Priest in a raid guild, speccing Shadow was basically out of the question. You resigned yourself to healing. You'd have main tanks specced into Arms because Protection was laughably useless for damage/PVP and the hit in tanking ability wasn't even that bad.
You could respec but that shit cost 50g which was a lot back in those days. Trying to do something like respeccing before every raid or PVP would have been completely out of the question unless you had access to guild funds or something.
You could respec but that shit cost 50g which was a lot back in those days. Trying to do something like respeccing before every raid or PVP would have been completely out of the question unless you had access to guild funds or something.
Nightmares of Hillbrad Foothills
Coriolanus
Banned
Honestly, it was kinda shite.
WoW was seen at the time as the eZmode mmo, mostly because other mmo's had even more grind and punishment for failure. Want to raid? Go fuck around with a horrendously boring attunement quest, then go farm fire resist gear, then go experience the joy of being part of a herd of 40 cats. Oh, you wiped? Well fuck bro, enjoy the massive downtime until the group is ready to have another go at it.
Also, this was a time where there were still some folks that would try to play with dial-up. And bosses were designed in such a way that one player in the 40man could most certainly cause a wipe for the whole goddamn group. Fun combo, that.
The pvp grind for HWL/GM gear was utter insanity. You either cheated and let other players hit your account or you'd never get it. Pvp was monstrously imbalanced.
Wanna go to some other place in the continent? Dont have a mage to port to the capital? Enjoy alt-tabbing while your flying taxi slooooowly travels across the skys. You also had to retab back into the game to pay the taxi to the next point too, until blizz added a way to pay for the whole route.
The delays to make up a group to hit a silly 5man dungeon...gods. People shouting in LFG hoping that someone would show up, then having to travel to the goddamn place. If you were a warlock you just knew you'd be on your way and some fuckers wouldnt even try to go because "lol, lock will sumon", then you'd be sitting there all alone with your thumb up your ass, telling the twats that you needed two more. Fuck your sense of community, gimme my instant pugs with instant summon to dungeon erry day and twice on sundays.
Oh, and what about them rep grinds eh? Ffs, people farmed FURBOLG REP cuz they had fuckall else to do.
I still don't know how i sank a thousand hours into the thing. One of the few things i regret doing in my life.
that depended entirely on how early you started to sell things in the AH. Started playing the game well before AQ was out, leveling blind, hitting the AH every chance i got. Had more than enough money to mount up.
Became even easier once twinking became popular.
WoW was seen at the time as the eZmode mmo, mostly because other mmo's had even more grind and punishment for failure. Want to raid? Go fuck around with a horrendously boring attunement quest, then go farm fire resist gear, then go experience the joy of being part of a herd of 40 cats. Oh, you wiped? Well fuck bro, enjoy the massive downtime until the group is ready to have another go at it.
Also, this was a time where there were still some folks that would try to play with dial-up. And bosses were designed in such a way that one player in the 40man could most certainly cause a wipe for the whole goddamn group. Fun combo, that.
The pvp grind for HWL/GM gear was utter insanity. You either cheated and let other players hit your account or you'd never get it. Pvp was monstrously imbalanced.
Wanna go to some other place in the continent? Dont have a mage to port to the capital? Enjoy alt-tabbing while your flying taxi slooooowly travels across the skys. You also had to retab back into the game to pay the taxi to the next point too, until blizz added a way to pay for the whole route.
The delays to make up a group to hit a silly 5man dungeon...gods. People shouting in LFG hoping that someone would show up, then having to travel to the goddamn place. If you were a warlock you just knew you'd be on your way and some fuckers wouldnt even try to go because "lol, lock will sumon", then you'd be sitting there all alone with your thumb up your ass, telling the twats that you needed two more. Fuck your sense of community, gimme my instant pugs with instant summon to dungeon erry day and twice on sundays.
Oh, and what about them rep grinds eh? Ffs, people farmed FURBOLG REP cuz they had fuckall else to do.
I still don't know how i sank a thousand hours into the thing. One of the few things i regret doing in my life.
that depended entirely on how early you started to sell things in the AH. Started playing the game well before AQ was out, leveling blind, hitting the AH every chance i got. Had more than enough money to mount up.
Became even easier once twinking became popular.
Nice summary. I forgot to mention also that there was huge server lag the first few weeks or months, so when you tried to loot anything, any mob, etc. You generally had to wait several (5-10) seconds. It was kind of excruciating.
Where is Mankrik's wife?
Frozenprince
Banned
It was a glorious social experiment (read: full of racists).
Now every chat is like that, if anybody is chatting at all which lol yeah.
RenegadeXV8
Banned
Yup. I remember a dungeon group needed an extra DPS and I happened to be the only one to answer the call since it was like 3 AM. Turns out the other 4 dudes in the party were in a top-tier raiding guild and they liked my performance enough that afterwards I was invited to their weekly raid clears.
Reputation was a huge deal back then. Now, there's no real consequence to being a huge asshole or stealing loot.
One of the raiding guilds I was in completely died at Nefarian. Our mages had such terrible DPS, they couldn't kill the adds fast enough, but no one was allowed to post DPS meters because one of the officers happened to be a mage. A ton of drama unfolded when someone posted them anyway after a failed attempt, and that was that.
Vael was the worst in my opinion. Such a short fight but god damn that was a tough fight to get right.
Razorgore really exposed the poor players in your guild.
Never really got to C'Thun but I heard stories.
I remember the first time we went up against Patchwerk and we got slaughtered so quickly... I about had enough of the game at that point.
Nefarian was such a goddamn cool encounter. Every class having their own unique mechanic for it (for instance, mages would get a debuff that randomly polymorphed players around them during the second phase, forcing the 2-3 of us to book it towards a tiny ass room on the other side of the arena) was so ace.
I wish I still had the screenshot of my guilds first kill, all posed by his corpse
Ricerocket
Member
Vaal fight suffered from lag for months on my server but yea the fight was a tightly tuned rotation of tanks working down the threat meter to make sure they had him and dps didn't pull.
Chrommagus was a bitch if he had Time Lapse + Ignite which meant GG tank and no one could figure nef's pattern and once you have black + red combo, it was like sigh... BWL was rough to raid back then based on RNG.
Chrommagus was a bitch if he had Time Lapse + Ignite which meant GG tank and no one could figure nef's pattern and once you have black + red combo, it was like sigh... BWL was rough to raid back then based on RNG.
My first guild died at Razorgore. My second guild died at C'Thun just before BC came out. I quit the game shortly after.
C'Thun was some nonsense because you needed 40 people spread out into sets of 8 perfectly spaced Pentagons, then his eyebeam thing forced the whole guild to run around to the other side of the room and set back up into those perfect pentagons again. I don't know if there was any need to be that coordinated in future fights with new expansions but that was ridiculous back then.
If you played a Paladin (which I did and still do), Druid, or a Shaman - life was pretty much garbage unless you absolutely loved healing. Despite the fact that all three classes had DPS and/or tanking specs, it didn't matter. If you could heal - that was your job in dungeons and raids. You were a healbot/cleansebot and there was no negotiating otherwise unless your guild had very generous leadership. Granted this was largely because the non-healing specs for hybrid classes were hilariously terrible for the majority of vanilla.
For example, the Paladin DPS spec, Retribution, literally relied on only two abilities - Seal of Command (which gave you a 1-in-8 chance to get a critical strike) and Judgement (a basic holy damage spell). Oh, and auto-attack, we were lucky enough to have auto-attack. As you can imagine, it took ages to kill damn near anything. I think it wasn;t until patch 1.11 or so that we finally got Crusader Strike.
I still remember when Blizzard began making the tanking/healing specs or Pallies, Druids and Shamans actually worthwhile and a chunk of the community just complained to no end about it. They were so used to the hybrid classes being relegated to healing roles that once we started being able to take the place of Warriors or Rogues, it was like their world had been turned upside down.
Folks can talk up about how great vanilla was, and parts of certainly were, but as someone who loves playing hybrid classes, fuck ever going back to vanilla. It was great in its day, but I have zero interest in being forced to play the game a certain way again.
For example, the Paladin DPS spec, Retribution, literally relied on only two abilities - Seal of Command (which gave you a 1-in-8 chance to get a critical strike) and Judgement (a basic holy damage spell). Oh, and auto-attack, we were lucky enough to have auto-attack. As you can imagine, it took ages to kill damn near anything. I think it wasn;t until patch 1.11 or so that we finally got Crusader Strike.
I still remember when Blizzard began making the tanking/healing specs or Pallies, Druids and Shamans actually worthwhile and a chunk of the community just complained to no end about it. They were so used to the hybrid classes being relegated to healing roles that once we started being able to take the place of Warriors or Rogues, it was like their world had been turned upside down.
Folks can talk up about how great vanilla was, and parts of certainly were, but as someone who loves playing hybrid classes, fuck ever going back to vanilla. It was great in its day, but I have zero interest in being forced to play the game a certain way again.
World PvP on PvP servers. As a horde player, I remember actually disliking the alliance. Also had a lot of fun going over to the alliance areas and causing problems.
Gold was hard to come by and getting a mount was a pretty big deal.
Leveling to 60 took along time. It made people who didn't have a max character "look up" to the people level 60 players in raid gear.
40 man raids. On PvP servers, just getting to the raid could be an adventure and needed some coordination if the opposite factions were raiding at the same time.
Sense of community. People had reputations and if yours was ruined you might as well move to another server.
Gold was hard to come by and getting a mount was a pretty big deal.
Leveling to 60 took along time. It made people who didn't have a max character "look up" to the people level 60 players in raid gear.
40 man raids. On PvP servers, just getting to the raid could be an adventure and needed some coordination if the opposite factions were raiding at the same time.
Sense of community. People had reputations and if yours was ruined you might as well move to another server.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
The game was a phenomenon. You might say that about PUBG or Overwatch today, but in 2004-2006- Everybody was talking about WoW, all the fucking time. It was a total pop culture event that changed the world.
It blew MMORPGs up intensely. Many WoW gamers had not played it before, so those of us who were passionate about the genre at the time, saw WoW as an awesome thing. It was going to bring in masses of people from Blizzards fanbase and that would help MMOs.
Well, we weren't wrong, but not many of us expected the game could be such a big hit, that it sort of killed MMORPGs by having everyone trying to copy it.
Vanilla was a simple game. It was very slow progression wise. The game didn't launch with enough quest, to get to 60 without quest. Not long after launch they added a whole bunch more.
Vanilla had consistently server problems and server queues for a very long time after launch.
gamespy, had this very popular WoW comic that was read by tens of thousands, and there was this insanely popular warcraft video site. Xvid type affairs, back from when people were stilling use Xfire.
What did Vanilla feel like? It was most def. something very special to be a part of. There was a magic to it, but it wasn't the game itself. It was the "honeymoon" experience of so many people being drawn into a ever changing virtual world.
Those of us who had played MMOs from earlier than WoW recognize the same feeling in those games. Coming from SWG, WoW felt too simple for me. But SWG had a lot of problems and I was a warcraft fan, so I dont regret jumping on the bandwagon.
But don't kid yourself- Vanilla SWG is the craziest shit you can possible imagine. In my mind there is no contest in that regard.
Gold was hard to come by. I farmed demon mobs in Felwood for what felt like weeks to get felcloth and runecloth and junk to sell to get my first mount. What pushed me over was an epic ring, Freezing Band, that pushed me over enough. And man I was so happy to get my first mount.
There was definitely a sense of tension and wonder when going into PVP enabled zones (when on a PVP server). I remember seeing Horde players coming down the road in Ashenvale on their mounts, and trying to hide (and failing because, y'know, glowing name above my head and all).
There was the rite of passage for all Night Elves, the Menethil-Ironforge run.
Duskwood felt so much scarier the first time you enter and these god damn humanoid wolves come tearing out of the forest.
The sense of scale was quite something too, though after so much time has passed, I am so thankful for the better flight system and flying mounts.
There was definitely a sense of tension and wonder when going into PVP enabled zones (when on a PVP server). I remember seeing Horde players coming down the road in Ashenvale on their mounts, and trying to hide (and failing because, y'know, glowing name above my head and all).
There was the rite of passage for all Night Elves, the Menethil-Ironforge run.
Duskwood felt so much scarier the first time you enter and these god damn humanoid wolves come tearing out of the forest.
The sense of scale was quite something too, though after so much time has passed, I am so thankful for the better flight system and flying mounts.
Paladins were only on the Alliance, and Shaman were only on the Horde. The lack of flying mounts meant the world felt massive. It took forever to obtain pretty much anything, so there was an actual sense of accomplishment. Having tier gear meant you were among the elite, and it was a symbol.
I speel my dreenk
Member
Being part of the top guild (fun and almost entirely non-asshole-ish) on a pvp server competing with other guilds, Horde and Alliance, for both server-first raid bragging rights and world bosses was just the best.
Like others said above: community mattered. You had to deal with people on your server, for better and worse.
Original Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch (especially as a druid), and to a lesser extent Arathi Basin, was some of the most fun I ever had in the game.
I don't expect there to ever be anything like it (or early MMOs in general) again.
Like others said above: community mattered. You had to deal with people on your server, for better and worse.
Original Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch (especially as a druid), and to a lesser extent Arathi Basin, was some of the most fun I ever had in the game.
I don't expect there to ever be anything like it (or early MMOs in general) again.
No need to edit, I mean, there's a reason why "where is mankirk's wife" became memetic.
Also another thing that led to Barren's chat being what it was was due to the level range involved there, as I recall. Due to the size, you ended up spending a LOT of time there. It was something like for levels 10-25.
Oh yeah, Paladin and Shaman were faction specific classes back in those days. That lead to maximum complaining where one faction always said the other faction-specific class was OP.
So you would have Horde players complain about all the nice raid buffs that Paladins would give like Blessing of Kings and Alliance players would complain about Windfury totem. (Truthfact: Raiding on Alliance actually was easier because Windfury totem would lead to Rogues or DPS warriors pulling threat so it wasn't actually used in raids. Didn't stop the Alliance players from complaining about it, though.)
So you would have Horde players complain about all the nice raid buffs that Paladins would give like Blessing of Kings and Alliance players would complain about Windfury totem. (Truthfact: Raiding on Alliance actually was easier because Windfury totem would lead to Rogues or DPS warriors pulling threat so it wasn't actually used in raids. Didn't stop the Alliance players from complaining about it, though.)
Speaking of factional things, remember how priests all had race-unique spells?
Dwarf and Undead priests everywhere.
Frozenprince
Banned
Playing a Dwarf and ranging on foot all the way from Ironforge to the Corssroads only to see a lone Ally Paladin kiting and PvP'ing half a dozen Horde players is something I'll always look back on fondly.
The scope was so damn impressive back then because you had to do everything yourself. Now you barely even need to pay attention to the game itself to play it unless you're raiding. It's really sad.
Karsticles
Member
World PvP wasn't just high-level characters ganking lowbies in the wild.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
-You were on foot until lvl 40, from there you could get a mount that had 60% increased speed. At max lvl you could buy a 100% mount but that cost a tremendous amount of gold at the time.
-There were quests that took almost an hour to complete because you had to travel from one continent to another just to do a delivery.
-If you were a Warlock you were a god in PvP.
-If you were a Warrior you were a tank, period. Arms and Fury weren't viable.
-If you were a Paladin you were a secondary healer at best. Priests were the best healers.
-Local zones chat channels were more active, due to people spamming "LFG" for a particular dungeon. For raids, people would sit on capital cities and spam on Trade chat for hours.
-Certain class specs were mandatory for some bosses, like Viscidus in AQ40, you needed Frost damage otherwise the boss was unbeatable.
-There were quests that took almost an hour to complete because you had to travel from one continent to another just to do a delivery.
-If you were a Warlock you were a god in PvP.
-If you were a Warrior you were a tank, period. Arms and Fury weren't viable.
-If you were a Paladin you were a secondary healer at best. Priests were the best healers.
-Local zones chat channels were more active, due to people spamming "LFG" for a particular dungeon. For raids, people would sit on capital cities and spam on Trade chat for hours.
-Certain class specs were mandatory for some bosses, like Viscidus in AQ40, you needed Frost damage otherwise the boss was unbeatable.
WaterAstro
Member
Before, you would talk with your friends, and make new friends, organize a party, have fun in a community, go to raids.
Now, you hit the LFR button, read pop up instructions, roll your face on your keyboard.
Now, you hit the LFR button, read pop up instructions, roll your face on your keyboard.
Yep. That warlock steed was so badass. The thunder crack on summoning and the fire was the envy of a lot of younger players.
I got really excited when I got some purple priest vestments. Also, I apparently got a rare pet baby black dragon drop.
I dropped off a bit before the first expansion and never got back on. Reading about the world changes through Cataclysm sounded crazy and I imagine it's almost a different experience.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
The day Horde got shamans our best DPSes all agreed straight up said "there goes our DPS up 25%" from Blessing of Salvation alone.
Lord of Ostia
Member
The main difference was that the majority of the world had to be physically traversed, most times on foot because mounts were expensive and required level 40, so everything felt huge and sprawling and getting anywhere felt like a journey. It was common once you hit level 10 or so as an Alliance character to travel to Westfall to quest since you had access to the Deadmines there (there was no instant travel to dungeons back then) and so if you were a Night Elf you had a long, arduous, and dangerous track across half the world. It was common for players to pay people to escort them from Teldrassil to Westfall.
Another big difference was that communication with the community on your server and in your faction was required. You had to actually talk to people to find dungeon groups, complete groups quests, PVP, crafting, trading, you name it. Since servers were largely self contained for all activities (and the population was much smaller) people and guilds became well known and had reputations among the playerbase on that server. This made the game have a great sense of community. Now everyone is so isolated in the game.
The other major difference was that everything took forever and it was a real grind to level up, to find worthwhile gear, to complete dungeons, etc. Quests didn't award enough experience to get you to the next area, so you had to kill mobs or run dungeons in order to advance your character. Gear was harder to come by, making quest rewards fairly valuable even if the stat bonuses they granted were small. Getting to the level cap would take you so long on your first character, but it was a real achievement.
40 man raids were a total clusterfuck, but in kind of an amazing way. 25 mans are probably a better experience overall, but getting 40 players together and working together for hours straight to beat a raid was an incredible feeling.
Another big difference was that communication with the community on your server and in your faction was required. You had to actually talk to people to find dungeon groups, complete groups quests, PVP, crafting, trading, you name it. Since servers were largely self contained for all activities (and the population was much smaller) people and guilds became well known and had reputations among the playerbase on that server. This made the game have a great sense of community. Now everyone is so isolated in the game.
The other major difference was that everything took forever and it was a real grind to level up, to find worthwhile gear, to complete dungeons, etc. Quests didn't award enough experience to get you to the next area, so you had to kill mobs or run dungeons in order to advance your character. Gear was harder to come by, making quest rewards fairly valuable even if the stat bonuses they granted were small. Getting to the level cap would take you so long on your first character, but it was a real achievement.
40 man raids were a total clusterfuck, but in kind of an amazing way. 25 mans are probably a better experience overall, but getting 40 players together and working together for hours straight to beat a raid was an incredible feeling.
Yeah it wasn't just the attitudes of the playerbase. The tier sets you got in raids said hybrid classes heal and Warriors tank. You didn't get a choice.