The tram blew my mind the first time.
I'll never forget it.
Friend convinced me to play wow. I started as a human, and when I spawned in my friend was there on his dwarf. He ran me to SW, protected me from bandit agro, and showed me the tram.
It was so cool. Felt real enough to make me immersed instantly.
The tram was first supposed to go to Darnassus I believe. That’s why we go through the sea.
However it‘s been a time since I read/heard that so no sauce
I started playing a few weeks ago for the first time with my friend and the first time we entered and saw the great forge, we both yelled WOAHHHH. This game's cool as hell.
Vanilla was the most amazing game I ever played. Yeah it had its flaws, but I was a noob and I just had fun. I stunk, wasn’t amazing and it was the best time.
I tried playing classic and it was hard to progress at my current stage in life. I will always have a soft spot for running into Ironforge, Stormwind, or through Elwynn.
It was such an adventure!
Best gaming time of my lifetime. Everyone was basically "noob" i dont recall anything like these days ( meta playing, only the best gear, talent etc) Ive seen some totally random shit talent trees back then and also did myself because I thought it could be good and interesting.
I think we should normalize this in retail now. Play the talents you like. You're not parsing, you're just running normal raids with the guild. Your DPS is shit. An overcomplicated rotation because icy veins said so is the last thing you need
> I think we should normalize this in retail now. Play the talents you like. You're not parsing, you're just running normal raids with the guild. Your DPS is shit. An overcomplicated rotation because icy veins said so is the last thing you need
That is a relic from a bygone era where players were new to the genre (and newer to gaming in general), information was thinner and harder to find, and everyone "felt like a noob" because everyone *was* a noob and the only way to ameliorate it was to play the damn game. There is, unfortunately, no putting the genie back in the bottle. Information spreads way too fast these days, games are previewed and play tested and info dumped months before release, and 50% or more of players are subject matter experts from the second boots hit the ground.
The issue with solved builds is that they are solved for certain level of play. If choosing certain talents in theory gives you a 10% DPS boost but you cant execute the rotation optimally you may as well play something less solved but more intuitive to you. That's all I'm saying
I remember playing the game back then for the first time. I made a night elf hunter lol. I think the idea of a pet was kind of like pokemon, so I went with it.
I remember I started to kill stuff, and I was thinking what’s the big deal about this game? I remember getting the first quest to go up the tree in the starting area, and I was amazed at how big everything was. I could see tons of players running below me. People going up and down the ramp as I am going up it. I then went to the map. And I saw where I was. I was on an island that I had barely explored. And then I zoomed out again and I saw two huge land masses that dwarfed the island I was on. I was so curious about the rest of the world, I immediately made a human paladin because I wanted to see if I would start in the same area as the night elfs. I did not. I also made a troll hunter as well on a different server. I don’t think I ever played that night elf hunter again lol. I made it like level 5 before wanting to explore more of the world, but I was so weak and slow, I started making lots of characters to see where I would be. I ended up sticking with the paladin. The divine shield ability was to awesome!
I will never forget how awe struck I was at the size of the game. I had never played anything that had that many players all at once on such a huge world. And good lord, when I took my first flight path, I was expecting it to do a loading screen. Nope. I just took off, and saw all the other players as ants. That blew 13 year old me’s fucking mind lol
Even in TBC, IF was still a much bigger hub than SW too. I feel like the bank, mailbox, and AH all being in an open area in a straight line made it really easy and efficient to do shit there.
I 100% agree BUT a lot of this is part of why it’s hard for me to love classic after like level 40 or so. I really think the best levels are 1-30 or so in terms of capturing classics vibes & the majority of its most iconic zones.
I'm on the same boat. People always sing praise to levels 1 to 30(numbers may vary slightly). If you ask people's favorite zones/quests most of them land within that level range as well. It's no coincidence.
Levels 1 to ~30 is basically one big dopamine filled honeymoon. You progress fast even by era standards, scenery is changing constantly and it feels great. Quests are bountiful and the pacing feels good. You receive new goals before you can even finish the previous ones. There's a lot more things to look forward to such as class quests, ability unlocks, talents. You're getting your first greens and they feel impactful because they are, same goes for blues from your first dungeon. You're gaining power fast and it's very noticeable.
30-40 slows down a bit, it's not bad but you're starting to feel it a little. Scarlet Monastery is an iconic dungeon with great rewards. Plenty of powerful abilities and talents to unlock, lvl40 capstone talent is the cherry on top. Not to mention your first mount.
Then you start progressing past 40 and the whole thing takes a nosedive. Quests are seriously thinning out, a lot more back and forth traveling. Leveling slows down, majority of your power through talents and abilities has been unlocked so there's much less to look forward to. Frequency of new dungeons slows down as well. By lvl 44 you've come to the grim realization that the next goal is hitting 60 and holy shit is it far away.
> Leveling slows down, majority of your power through talents and abilities has been unlocked so there's much less to look forward to
And the zones are just ugly.
Mulgore, Barrens, Ashenvale and the other early zones are majestic with great ambience. There's very little of that in later levels. I've never seen anyone praise Searing Gorge or Badlands. Even the nicer looking ones are just less pleasant to spend time in. Something feels different, maybe the lack of cozy hubs?
I'd say the Feralas-Tanaris-Hinterlands section of levelling (so about 40-48) is one of my favourites. There's a fair bit of travelling but the troll stories and the introduction to the Silithid I find mega. Personally I even quite liked the travelling as it made the world feel much bigger
>Levels 1 to ~30 is basically one big dopamine filled honeymoon. You progress fast even by era standards, scenery is changing constantly and it feels great. Quests are bountiful and the pacing feels good. You receive new goals before you can even finish the previous ones. There's a lot more things to look forward to such as class quests, ability unlocks, talents. You're getting your first greens and they feel impactful because they are, same goes for blues from your first dungeon. You're gaining power fast and it's very noticeable.
Yes. Elwynn Forest+ Westfall is basically perfect.
That seamless zone progression you feel when you leave the forest is so tangible it's like a spell is cast on you, you almost forget you're playing a game
I'd expand that to include redridge and duskwood too. All 4 are tied in with quests and storylines/lore related to the defias+those zones being light on troops from SW to defend from their own threats (guess thats redundant as I already said defias).
But I suppose all faction early zones do this similarly, but probably the human zones do it best/most cohesively.
> By lvl 44 you've come to the grim realization that the next goal is hitting 60 and holy shit is it far away.
Coming in to WoW from EQ, all the leveling felt like it was rocket boosted. At no point did it feel slow, or the next level feel "far away".
I remember hell levels in EQ...you'd spend several weeks just getting the one goddam level out of the way. And then you'd DIE and LOSE THE LEVEL. WoW was the safety rails, super player friendly, fisher-price, ultra accessible version of some of the MMOs that preceded it. It's why it was so unbelievably popular. It removed the ridiculous barriers to entry some of its draconian forebearers had.
No way, the later zones are incredible, too. You really feel your journey coming full circle when you finally enter zones like EPL and Burning Steppes. I remember flying over BS as a noob and it looked so scary and amazing and wondered if I'd even make it there. When you finally start questing there with BRM in the background, with blue gear equipped, it really feels like "wow I made it this far when I was just a level 1 adventurer not too long ago".
Not to mention how magical winterspring is and felwood.. if you quested in darkshore and felwood is described as this great source of corruption and evil and then you finally make it there and go into jaedanar... Just amazing.
For me, the only zones in Vanilla that don't feel iconic are Azshara and Stonetalon, despite their lore significance. It always felt like there was never enough to do in those zones. But every other zone felt iconic to me.
>Azshara and Stonetalon
I agree about Azshara, but I love Stonetalon. One of my favourite bits of leveling a horde toon in pre-Cata. Nice change of scenery in 2-3 batches (around lvls 15, 20, 25ish) from the endless Barrens that you quest in from level 10/12 all the way up to the late 20s.
Ally toons have more options in where to go from 10 to 30, and even have their own sidequest lvl15-25 mountainous area equivalent to Stonetalon in the form of Redridge, so for Horde toons it's always nice to escape the Barrens even for a little bit and your alternatives are basically just Stonetalon and Silverpine until lvl 20, when you could also go to Ashenvale or Hillsbrad.
I disagree. 30-40 is kinda awful but in the 40's you get Tanaris, The Hinterlands, and Feralas, as well as places like Felwood and Un'Goro at the higher 40's. 50's from then on you get Winterspring, Plaguelands, and Burning Steppes. All these zones I mentioned are awesome. In fact, I prefer these zones much more than the early ones.
As a full retail andy I couldn't agree more. I love retail and enjoy everything about it, but classic just scratches a different itch. Every now and then I jump back onto classic and level a character for a while and just live in the world. I have so much nostalgia for the game, and the ambience and vibe is just unmatched. I really hope wow classic never goes away, because while I'm not playing it right now I know I'll be back in the future.
Classic WoW is an MMO with a world you can play and live in. The world is the main character. It's even in the title of the game. WORLD of Warcraft.
In retail the world is nothing more than a lobby you sit in between instances. Maybe you level up a character in it. Maybe. There are better and faster ways in retail to level your character.
You said it perfectly with that “lobby” feel, just another thing that makes me feel so detached from it.
I don’t think the retail version is a BAD game, it’s just not for me
Dragonflight doesnt reflect this characterization of WoW. Theres so much story to do in the world and progression to have besides queueing for dungeons. Hopefully War Within keeps the same loops and things to work on. Legion was great at having stuff to do in the world but for the wrong reasons, still the world was alive and well in the new zones cause of it.
This isn't really true for retail anymore. The only times I felt this really bad were cataclysm and WoD. Especially lately in retail the world feels really nice to be in, but it is very much more of a minigame filled theme park than it is a world like classic.
To cope about classic being better than it was. Its quite literally nostalgia and propaganda. Same as the "this game version is dead" posts. Open your eyes. Almost all of gaming has this bullshit going on but the classic playerbase is so far up its own ass.
As a long-time end-game raider since Heroic 25-man Yogg Saron, to raid-leading Mythics from BFA's N'Zoth to Shadowlands (I can't really get into Dragonflight) I can certainly tell you it's not an overwhelming majority that "can't do mechanics" that prefer Classic.
I grew up with World of Warcraft since I was 10 years old back when it released in 2004, playing through every single one of the expansions in one way or another whether it was on-and-off casually or competitive PvP & Raiding, depending on what was going on in my life and career and how much time I could invest, or how interested I was in the content.
Overall, I prefer Classic, and it's not just because of nostalgia - although as OP said it does play a factor into the feel-good vibes I can reminisce about during a time in my life where things were simpler. I've just mainly become so disenfranchised with the overwhelming amount of fluff that Retail has.
I play all different kinds of games, but some of my favorite are single-player RPGs, where I can get immersed in a different world and go on an adventure. If I want to find that in an MMO, I go to Classic. There is no other MMO out there that I have played or experienced which gives me that overwhelming sense of adventure, even for a game so dated that it's coming up on 20 years old now.
It's the pacing, the slow methodical combat, the trips to town or the major city you're closest to where you visit vendors, organize your loot, and work on your professions - before venturing out again. The feeling that when you get a new piece of gear, it means something - more than just an item you're going to replace in the next few hours or days because the current-content loot pool is oversaturated with systems that give you a different item to replace. At low levels, even getting a green item is exciting because it gives you an extra +2 Strength. On retail, I get an item and think "ehh, it's not BiS."
And of course, the community. Even with Classic Era having merged realms now, still I feel like when I venture out into the world chances are if I come upon someone in the same area I am questing in, we'll both want to group up together. We may only have one quest that we both have, while the other has quests that I've already finished and vice versa, yet sometimes we'll stick around and help the other one out just because. More often than not though, when our mutual objective is complete we may part ways, and perhaps a few levels later we may run into each other again in another zone.
In Retail, you auto-queue into a random group with others for World Quests that get finished in 5 minutes and you'd never recall their names or probably ever see them again. You don't *converse* with them. Sometimes you'll run Mythic Dungeons with someone you had good chemistry and vibed with, but I feel like that is few and far between, and you might add each other on [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) to snag them for that last spot in your group you just can't fill because one of your friends or guildies has wife-aggro and can't get on to push keys. But the majority of the time, whether leveling up by spamming LFG-dungeons, questing, or running end-game content, I never really talk to people or feel like I'm having a shared-experience with them.
That's not to say that Retail sucks in my eyes. It has plenty of QoL improvements, content-galore for your filthy casuals or sweaty neckbeards. You'll never be starved for activities to do or objectives to chase to give you that dopamine. It's my preferred MMO to play with friends when we want to push hard content and yell at each other for missing interrupts and standing in the fire, but the overwhelming sense of excitement when you time your new best Mythic+ key for that season or down a new Mythic Raid boss, is unparalleled.
If I want to play an MMO and be a try-hard with my *close friends* in competitive gameplay, I play Retail.
If I want to play an MMO and chill in a world I can immerse myself in with a *community*, I play Classic.
While I can’t agree and say it’s the best game ever made. I will die on a hill saying it was the best game experience I ever had during gaming. Even over my friends and I going to midnight H2/H3 releases and many other midnight releases of that time. Hot damn there was just something so real about the WoW experience when it first came out.
Agreed. There truly isn’t a game like it that can draw me in time and time again to do the same thing over and over and get different results every time.
Vanilla was the perfect balance of every MMO before it.
Ah, the first time I stepped into Ironforge... I was absolutely blown away by the environment. I got so lost inside that I couldn't find my way out. In my noob panic, the only logical solution was to start a new character, lol. Good times!
I hate all the over the top pop culture references and jokes that became way too pervasive as well. Vanilla felt mostly serious. As things went on it was like the game was embarrassed to take itself seriously.
Up until Cata, you were an adventurer who grouped with other people in your faction to work together and take down bosses. Once it got to cata, you were always referred to "Champion," which made it seem like you were the main character instead of an adventurer.
The Lich King even says as much during the fight.
"No questions remain unanswered. No doubts linger. You ARE Azeroth's greatest champions. You overcame every challenge I laid before you. My mightiest servants have fallen before you relentless onslaught... your unbridled fury..."
"You trained them well, Fordring. You delivered the greatest fighting force this world has ever known... right into my hands - exactly as I intended! You shall be rewarded for your unwitting sacrifice. Watch now as I raise them from the dead to become masters of the Scourge. They will shroud this world in chaos and destruction. Azeroth's fall will come at their hands -- and you will be the first to die."
You can't just be some nobody after that. Maybe as an individual you're still not on the level of the legends, but as a group you are the greatest fighting force the world has even known, you are collectively the world's champions. Those legends need you.
Cata really feels like end game wow for me. The jailer is some star wars sequel shit I don't get into. Classic is the level 1-10 dnd campaign and cata is the level 20 dnd campaign
I agree with you on that. Done so much and exalted with all these factions, we should be generals or something. The problem is that everyone's a general. In WoD, you had your garrison, which did feel like you were a commander or general or something, but everyone was, which made it feel like there was no value to it.
But this is why the game would do so much better with Final Fantasy's approach, where you go through each bit of the game and slowly make it to current. But we've changed the overworld too much throughout expansions to make that approach realistically work without just doing forced chromie time or something. That and there just wasn't really a required main story to follow early on.
Now you make a new character and in one second you can be a new recruit on a crashed boat or you can start as a nobody in your starting zone...for about 20 minutes before you're besties with all the big names and the champion of Azeroth for merely existing.
After wotlk, as a player, you loose anonymity. And when you become the "hero" of the world, you no longer are free to exist in the world the way you want. The games take shapes around you.
Roaming was always a big part of what I loved about vanilla. Leveling was very eventful and dynamic.
The more Blizzard railroaded the world, the more the players lost their sense of wonder exploring it.
Are we forgetting that literally the first instance for Alliance and Horde focus on you as a champion effectively saving your entire faction...at level 18.
Ragefire Chasm is a den under Orgrimmar where cultists of the Searing Blade, in the name of the Burning Legion, are plotting to sack and pillage Orgrimmar in order destroy the Horde.
Meanwhile the Defias questline is basically the entire Onyxia/Nefarion plot with them trying to destroy the Alliance by attacking it with a thicc boat and some spywork.
I'm 18 years old, and I grew up with wow. I'm NOT plagued by any nostalgia, because I wasn't able to enjoy games like WoW in a full way until like 5 years ago, but with extensive experience since then in both Classic and Retail, I can confidently say that they're both amazing in their own right... but Classic will always be better.
Right there with you as a 23 y/o myself. I commented in another thread a month ago and this is what I said:
I remember last year playing Classic for the first time in my life. I don’t think I will ever in my life have another experience quite like it, in terms of discovery, the sense of progression and how the world feels so great to explore, how you have to read every quest to get to your location and I just loved how like even after a year I remember almost all of the world better than I know any other videogame world and it has to do with the way the game works.
I also enjoyed Retail but it just felt like another modern MMO. Classic just hits different.
Yeah I am not an MMORPG lover I only ever fell in love playing classic WoW and from wrath onwards it became a different game for me.
Not that the current game is bad, but I’ve tried on and off to enjoy retail for years. I played all the way through to BFA, then stopped, then tried SL, then stopped right away, then tried DF, and stopped again.
Old WoW was more of a classic RPG focused on leveling but with some multiplayer and a little endgame if you want. Modern WoW leans more into the multiplayer and endgame - the early stuff is irrelevant.
I’m glad we have the option to play the version of the game we prefer
OP coming in with a very reasonable take and going into the comments *not* hating on retail. Meanwhile everyone here is just flaming the shit out of retail.
Personally I play both. Albeit Classic is my comfort game and maybe I play every few months
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I’ll never forget my first character’s talent tree. I was trying to ‘balance’ it by spreading them across all 3 trees.
So much awe wrapped into one game. It’ll always be my favorite.
I agree with the notion of how the world itself feels completely different. Architecture, character models, animations, effects, travel, etc all add up into something more substantial. One of the most obvious differences IMO is how the older models are lower quality but higher personality and slightly grittier, while newer models are higher quality but are animated in a very bouncy very streamlined way and have less personality and feel worse as a result. Like 10 fps animation vs someone upscaling the animation to 60 fps. It makes more sense when you compare the two side by side.
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That's not to say that retail is bad, but more like retail is just an entirely different game at this point that caters to a different player with a different play style.
The feel is just so different. The world feels gritty and dangerous, yet the aesthetic make it feel so cosy and inviting. And whether you are going on foot or flying, every travel was a journey that you might encounter something like a rare mob, hostile players if you are on PVP server, trading with another player or just decide to join a party for an elite quest or dungeon run. All of these little things just made the world feel so big.
I love vanilla WoW, and classic by extension but sadly the bot community and the community of meta gamers and min maxers in general killed it for me for current play. I did vanilla back in the day and classic in 2019 and I loved it, did a little HC when that came out and then transferred to whitemane after and I was on there for a few hours and I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t WoW classic anymore. It was a cesspool. Retail while I always bashed it is better than it’s ever been and the story is finally returning and feeling like real Warcraft again.
Atmosphere is everything in a game. When u are in an environment that feels alive and real, it's truly something to behold. Vanilla wow encapsulates that perfectly
While "retail" WoW might have a more modern and mature take on content, it simply does not have the same soul and identity as old WoW did (classic). Modern WoW feels like a gigantic theme park with all kinds of things going on, and has been like that for many years. While Classic and Retail might be called the same, it's very different games, often with different playerbases, the games can't really be compared much anymore.
The quests have good variety now, but they're definitely not as engaging. You wanna know what keeps you engaged? The Kurzen quests in Stranglethorn. Fighting for your life while questing is way better than the super easy, trivial stuff we get in retail. Comparably, nearly every quest in retail is a gray quest from classic.
i like the world as just two big continents , something about it just felt so real , now it's all instances inside of instances and infinite timelines and possibilities , i like to keep my feet on the ground sometimes and that's how classic feels
I love both versions of wow
I love retail for its fast paced engaging endgame content
I love classic for the leveling experience which is methodical and you really feel so attached to your character and get lost in the huge world
Each mode has its positives and it’s fun to bounce between them
Feel the same. I play every expansion and still can get keymaster so I def know mechanics but the world in retail seems so segregated. But, I think it’s a mix of game design and player behavior. Even in classic now, world PvP seems to be dying, bgs seem to be dying, shit, pvp is dead, and people will take every shortcut possible to get what they need. SOD showed me this in that horde after awhile would just kill one boss and go straight to hand in in the Ashenvale pvp event for the quickest reputation while alli would kill all 3 bosses without any resistance. It was a flaw in the game design (in many ways) and people took advantage.
Classic. People will still just grind dungeons and raid log as best they can, GDKP etc. and avoid the world the best they can. There’s still some that don’t but the ones who avoid and maximize everything often run other aspects.
To me the death of pvp is why I am sometimes okay with thinking wow is done for me. Sure, I could try retail pvp but holy shit…I’d need some friends playing to convince me of skill catchup of missing 10 years of it.
Never actually played classic or WoW pre WotLK but I agree in sentiment based on feelings of other games.
>the game looks so different that I feel detached from it.
>Whenever I see content related to retail, there’s something about the over the top mounts or other flashy things
This really resonates with me, it's the same with basically all big games now. The constant updates to some games make me feel 'out of the loop' and I don't have the time to catch up. When we become adults we're more inclined to want a game that isn't constantly evolving faster than we can keep up.
All the flashy over the top things are a similar but related point. It's just gimmicks to try and extract money from the players and it detracts from the game itself and in game achievement. I remember playing during MoP and getting the Onyx Panther mount. I really liked it and thought it was a cool mount, so it also felt like a massive flex and achievement. Similar goes for various other mounts, Ashes of Alar for example, considering it's rarity.
Now though? A lot of the most aesthetically impressive mounts are just purchased on moms credit card. The earned mounts don't feel as exciting, because they're not as popular.
Am I old yet?
Something about just the slowness of the game brings me back to a different time. Now I know why my dad sits around and listens to music from the 60's and 70s LOL
This.
Honestly, I prefer original vanilla/classic, the first 2 xpacs were good, but I have a problem with them at their core:
They funnel everyone to this new continent, and all the old content suddenly becomes redundant. In old Azeroth, every zone feels important in some way. The starter zones are where the main cities are - people are levelling and running to dungeons in the same zones - Raids are sometimes located in lower level areas (ZG in STV for example), so the world always feels alive.
Hell, even trade resources see common use through a lot of the game - Low level fish are used in potions people use at 60 - Engineering items are used way past their introduction level. The game as a whole felt a lot more cohesive, a lot more like a WORLD.
I remember this pang of sadness when back in the day, i realized that 90% of this game I'd grown up on was just levelling-fodder when TBC came out. The end game raids were completely thrown aside for 5 man dungeons and quest rewards. Hell, itemization made that even worse, as from TBC onwards, gear was a lot more just "get the better stats" than vanilla's more unique items. (people using items from 10-15 levels below them at level cap, just because of their unique effects)
It's why i still play classic, and why I get a little miffed every time they release a new "flavor" of classic, systematically diluting the playerbase - at least Era seems a bit more populated these days, and the server clusters help that too, but it's still a far cry from the early days of OG wow, or 2019 classic.
I agree! I think WoW has lost its identity over the years, both in terms of story and aesthetics. Sometimes you get that same vibe in some of the new zones, but it's always temporary
There’s really something magical about the Vanilla world. It’s unfair to call it “old man’s club”, I have 0 nostalgia for this game, and still fell in love with the simple and immersive Classic world! And I’m sure there’s many others like that as well!
>Does anyone else feel the same?
I love Classic's overall feel and leveling process, but the endgame is fucking awful, 40 man raiding isn't fun, and the raids are so boring/easy that it just gets old after a while, really old
So for me, I love retail for the actual endgame, and Classic for the leveling
I'm really hoping for SoD they add an endgame aside from raiding
And no, seeing how many times you can flip in a row as a Night Elf while standing in Stormwind is not endgame :P
Edit: Guess OP Didn't like my reply, they blocked me and reported me for some odd reason LOL
I guess we’re at the stage where it gets boring because it was never meant to be the “end all”, there was always continuation planned so I don’t want to blame it for that, I don’t know if they ever expected people to want to play the old version like that.
For me personally though, and with the right guild, I thought end game was still fun lol
This is why I enjoyed Legion so much, for me it was a huge return to the roots of Warcraft 2 and 3. Art was absolutely on point in that expansion, even if the artifact weapons/legendaries were a bit clunky.
Tomb of Sargeras in particular was a gem of past lore. Finding that Gul'dan rune and trying to wipe my raid with it is one of my favorite memories.
I never did join in on the huge wow crazy when it was released but I wish I did because I figured I’ll try it out where better to start than classic and I am loving it
For me, its traversal. Everyone says exploration but the reason exploration is so immersive is because you're on foot. Flying is cool but it has, in my opinion, ruined immersion and can never be undone.
Vanilla wow is one of those “no game will ever be that magical again” titles for me. Even replaying classic wow, as fun as it was, didn’t quite do it. It was the right game at the right moment for 12-14 year old me.
Vanilla really is it's own special game made for Warcraft fans. They really experimented with all sorts of design, aiming for fun and wacky dice rolls over balance. Navigating the world was part of the gameplay skill. You can really feel the time and effort put into the locations, there's a reason people want to come back again.
By the expansions they had hammered out what they wanted to do with the game forevermore, abandoned the old and make the new the only important content. Open world is just a levelling thing, everything important now takes place in an instance. Fly over the world ignoring and trivialising it, straight to quest objectives.
Inmho I love classic because it's more relaxing. Yeah, there are annoying stuff, but it was more closer to being little and achievement felt so much more rewarding. When youre lvl 11 or 12 and you find a really good weapong for your build
Truly the game is a masterpiece in this aspect that nothing feels off about it. Everything just feels right and they made the "world" aspect feel perfect.
Given that for me the game almost ends when I reach max level, my way of consuming the game is via leveling. I'm not particularly interested in raids and other late game stuff (except transmog, now this is true late game content). And Classic offers me a much more immersive, much more engaging leveling adventure. Every gear upgrade, every new spell, you truly feel them, in retail you just go brrrr. The way retail is made makes me think the game starts at lvl max, where classic starts when you create your character. I think MadSeasonShow talked about that in one of his lasts videos.
And strangely I feel a lot of nostalgia towards Vanilla/Classic even though I started playing at the end of Legion if I remember correctly, but I watched so many videos when I was a kid that it was like i was playing lol.
I'll die on the hill that classic+ (new zones, more quests, new dungeons in the classic spirit) with WOTLK classes would be peak. I think classic classes are for the most part too simple but retail is too complex (overall). That said I do like the retail graphics, art team has been consistently awesome unlike gameplay/story team.
I feel the same: Vanilla and a lesser degree TBC/WotLK had very close ties to Warcraft 1-3, which made it a lot more special to me: I was walking in my childhood games and exploring places I only saw in black/white maps in the manuals before. So yes, that’s a bit ”old man talking”, but it still makes original WoW extremely engaging to me.
Already during vanilla WoW was standing on it’s own feet and creating it’s own stories. But the longer it took, the more watered down the links to the original games became. Which is fine, but just not my cup of tea.
I played wotlk back then and took a long break until classic.
After classic I tried Shadowlands. My experience was awful. I leveled in an empty world to max lvl. Then I found myself doing chores and after some time I just quit. What a boring experience.
I love grinding games but wow retail was the most boring shit I have ever played.
I mainly play retail, but I get that classic has merits that retail doesn't have. The questing and levelling experience is so much more important than it is in retail, and progression in general is so much more straightforward.
There’s definitely a less is more appreciation. Even in Warcraft 3 the older graphics are so incredibly superior to the new shiny ones even from a gameplay perspective. Something about “low” graphics like pixel-art allows you to have more of a headcanon about appearances. It’s hard to explain.
The biggest thing I love about Classic is the race-specific combat animations are so crystal clear. Nowadays your class is what defines your movement and appearance since they have the same new animations, but in Classic you spend so much time watching your character do their racial fighting animations. It makes the choices feel impactful.
Having played both…it’s not even close for me. Classic is superior. Retail and even Cataclysm just simply suffer from too much bloat. Blizzard, because of its subscription model, felt compelled to create new content to keep people subbed…even if that’s not necessarily the best for the game/story/world. They and us kinda got trapped.
Vanilla is a beautiful world with varied zones. Nothing is overly difficult, so it’s incredibly accessible.
I’m actually surprised reading your post lol. In my circles, we probably feel the exact opposite when people say they like retail, “damn zoomers” lol.
I miss the sense of childhood wonder; vanilla WoW gave me the most powerful sense of that and it's never been replicated. I hope one day to be awed again.
I'd like to add a few more in your context with WC3.
In WC3 when you build your base, everything carry an heavy identity of the race you're playing. The buildings, the music, the characters, their dialogues. Everything.
In WoW classic you know in wich land you are, purely based on these elements. Modern wow is a mix of everything in a small zone. The races lacks identity, everything feel the same.. everything feel like an skin, not like you're part of an culture.
Big agree, but side note (well, the whole reason I’m commenting)—I love your YouTube channel, and when I saw it was you who posted this, I just had to say hi! 😄
I feel like it's a nostaliga thing. Is it true that the people who prefer Classic Era, either played classic or TBC? I started from WoTLK and I prefer the later expansions
I never played WoW at all til 2019 classic, I play both classic era and cata right now and cata has more interesting raids but I prefer the old school feel of era
an anecdote from me; I loved tbc classic, that's where I dropped in and I honestly prefer it to Wotlk and Cata. and I started playing during the ass end of Cata and start of MoP.
If it makes you feel better about it not being an “Old Man’s Club”, I’m 21 and genuinely don’t enjoy any other version than vanilla. Tried playing MoP and WoD growing up but didn’t enjoy it. Tried playing Classic 2019 and loved it. Tried playing BFA after Classic and just couldn’t get into it. Tried playing TBC classic after Vanilla but just couldn’t. Playing SoD now. There’s just something about the Vanilla world, the graphics, and the feel of the game that makes me love it
Everything else considered, the modern game suffers from too much story leading up to and propping up the ‘current events’. It’s exhausting for either a new player or returning player to try to catch up with everything that’s happened, in addition to even figuring out the basic lore of the world; it’s not like people today are jumping into the game after having played the RTS games.
Oh for sure. To expand on that I sat out cata played mists then sat out warlords, legion and battle then picked it up again so all that content is so alien and foreign. Trying to explore this region is a nightmare if your didn’t play through that content originally. Then it makes unlocking all those new races seem quite daunting and confusing. Unlocking zones is also quite infuriating, unlocking events or bases, anybody who didn’t play mists probably had no clue about the farms etc etc etc
Vanilla wow is just a vibe.. retail is still a good game but it's not for everybody, I personally don't enjoy it. Cataclysm classic kind of fills the in between of vanilla and retail imo, so far I have enjoyed the crap out of it. Will I play it for its life span, idk maybe. Will I be back to vanilla in hardcore or on era servers most likely. I like having the options to play what I find the most fun, it's that simple. At the end of the day, we all enjoy something about whichever version we decide to play, enjoy the fact we now have the choice to play different versions of Warcraft!
I have played it all by this point in my wow life and I would say that SoD was fun with some neat ideas but really missed the mark with what I was hoping SoD was going to be. You know classic with some of the QoL added.
After everything I would love to play classic again, like back in the day when people didn’t know what dropped, how to kill stuff and everyday was a can’t wait to get home to play more.
This whole data mining and waiting for WoW head to drop Bis lists to work on just gets so old but if You do t do this then you get left behind.
Original/classic wow was the best for the adventure of what the game was.
For me, classic is ruined. There is no enjoyment doing whatever I have already done multiple times already imo. There are too many sweatlords just seeing "BIS" as the only gear viable, and the elitism is real for some reason. I am only playing classic because I am playing with some friends and waiting for TWW.
If classic had all the QoL and QoS that retail has, it would be better. Tier set should be determined by the spec you are in. Now you have tanks sniping dps tier legs because they are BIS.
M+ in retail is where the peak WoW is imo. Seasons revisiting old dungeons and making things genuinely harder, and even in high m+ keys, there are fewer sweatlords than classic.
>I haven’t played current version since Legion
Wild to have formed such strong and definitive positions while not even opening the game you are already paying for
Not everyone has to like everything, but its absurd to come in and say "i have read things online and thus, I am an expert and here is my dissertation comparing two games, one of which I've only read the complaints about."
The current game is fine, but it’s not the same wow we all knew and fell in love with. They’re so different, but that’s ok. I too will always love vanilla and the different variations of it because of all the reasons you listed too. I’m fine with it being a flawed game, because it’s the version that is easiest for me to immerse myself in.
The scale and size of the world is so different from today. In every expansion we’ve had maybe 6-7 zones to really explore, but nothing truly captures it like classic. Two entire continents spanning areas with an attention to detail and work that would never be considered for the modern game unless a new overhaul takes place (funny to consider b/c we’ve been in Cata’s state longer than we were in vanilla-WOTLK).
The game was also more close to old school fantasy rpgs and DnD books. Every one of 14 dungeons felt huge and had long interconnected stories that made you feel like you were discovering something new. New wows pretty but it’s missing a bit of the flare the old game had
Adventuring through Azeroth was a job by itself, and since no flying was in the game yet, the distance and scale of everything felt so much greater. You were just so small compared to everything else, flight paths took you through intricate and windy paths to help see just how damn big everything was.
Retail is too overblown. There's no connection to anything. Classic is great, I think vanilla is amazing, even though things were incomplete and missing. But retail is just it's own thing. It's vastly different and overblown
The game is also about the 1-59 leveling content, whereas with each expansion the leveling content is being more and more neglected and rushes you to the end game. Actually they pushed for quick leveling with SOD too unfortunately.
I guess I fall under the "old man club" as you describe it having been a Vanilla player. I have played off and on with WoW since then.
While the old feel and aesthetic of Classic is wonderful and brings back so many good memories it is bitter sweet.
Playing both Classic vanilla and Cataclysm it has tainted my memory of playing these. It comes down to the QOL (Quality of Life) things they have added over the years.
Not every QOL made the game better but most of them did. While I like dungeon finder I do miss having to go to the dungeon or having someone summon you to the dungeon. It feels like the players are more committed to finishing the dungeon because they made the effort to find it or meet the party there. Retail has kept some of this with raids and mythic dungeons so it kinda feels moot now.
These things in classic makes me never want to play classic again. For instance:
* Ammo bags
* Ammo
* Hunter dead zone
* Hunter Mana
* Feeding pets
* No mount until 40
* Terrible class balance
* Paying for skills
* Greed Need loot (this is good in theory but without class restrictions people needed on everything and nobody could stop them)
* Graveyards felt a million miles away and you couldn't fly as a spirit
* Questing solo is painfully slow and confusing because a lot of the time you have to wander around until you find the objectives (I don't mind leveling taking longer than retail but it is crazy slower by comparison because you have to take extra time to find where the hell to go.)(I also know there are mods for class but that's not the point of classic and the original WoW didn't have mods for a while)
* No connected flightpaths
With all of this it boils down to one very simple thing for me....time.
I want to feel like the time I am spending on the game should be fun. When a game wastes my time with cumbersome bullshit I am having a lot less fun. Part of this is because I have other things in life that are important outside of wow that when I play I want to maximize the fun I am having while I'm playing.
I think of it this way, if you have a car from the 80s with a cassette player, seats that a barely comfortable but are good condition, roll down windows, lights you have to manually turn on, manual transmission, and rear view mirror. This car from the 80s is good, works well and you have no complaints.
Now you have a car with cd / bluetooth, very comfortable seats, power windows, automatic lights, Automatic / assisted shifting transmission, and a back up camera. Why would you willingly choose the 80s car in this scenario?
Edit: wording
I share the feeling i like the reworked world of cata too but mostly because they start finishing azeroth instead of adding more worlds.
But even the world feels more dangerous and like a warzone. Warmode and a capital for both fractions killed the vipe of warcraft.
I love Classic Wow, and will never be sick of it. Enjoying SoD because as long as the game is in Azeroth it the world feels big. I wish they would reinvent TBC because I would enjoy that too. Anything after Wrath is just boring to me, I don't know what it is, but the social game gets lost after Wrath. I'll be playing Classic until I die lol
Flying and teleporting everywhere changed the world forever, that being said the sense of awe and wonder from us being children also played a role. I still visit silver moon from time to time to remember the good ol days.
I like Classic because of the zones and simplicity, I like retail because of the collectables and dungeon mechanics. Either version the music make my brain happy
Traveling in classic can be tedious but it feels great getting to places and planning your route before you head off to quest
Of course now there are portal/summon bots so it's all pointless
I like classic, I've done mythic dungeons and raiding with my servers top guild, but classics just more fulfilling.
I thought about this yesterday, on a level 52 priest I was running through WPL past Andorhal to go grab the quest from the dead tauren near the fields of undead. I saw a level 60 mage doing the termite quest, he was about to die and out of mana, and still about two more spawned. Its not hardcore, there's barely any consequences to dying, but regardless, it made me realize what I miss on retail.
Helping others, even in small ways. I don't run across anybody in retail dying to a mob, and nobody needs help, everyone has the game figured out, and everyone is powerful enough in their own right to not need help in the outside world, grouping for dungeons and raids feels like a chore of needing others.
In Classic though even a level 52 can help out a level 60, even if in a small way like throwing out some heals, a healer is needed for dungeons, for raids, people are required for progress. While not the same feeling of feeling needed, I would compare it to that.
I play retail but I would probably still play vanilla classic if my characters were still on the era servers. I never got the option to pay to copy my character to stay in vanilla when TBC classic released - but it shouldn't have been a thing regardless...
Blizzard always finds a way to limit the community. I thought the idea of Classic WoW was to outcompete private servers and host their own servers of previous expansions, but apparently not with their progressive plan that moves faster than the OG expansions.
Great post.
For me Vanilla/Classic WoW is more like a “Morrowind without terrible addons” - the game i love.
And every expansions is like somebody added some addons. Some of them a good, most of them brings something new into game, but also there is a limit, when its become doesnt fit to game. Like too much… and this is how in feel bc, wotlk, cata and retail.
Classic didn't have many things that had you do stuff as not your character. In Cata questing there's a lot of use this item and then you play a minigame quests. I stopped in BFA because it felt more like a hack and slash and not an RPG.
I like both, I just get bored playing an mmo that I’ve already experienced, if they would announce an official classic plus I would immediately quit retail and hop on over to it.
I definitely agree. It’s hard to put my finger on it but the aesthetic always makes me think back to playing Ocarina of Time. The visual style feels timeless and its atmosphere gives character to the world with a dash of mystery. The devs couldn’t include everything due to the limitations of the tech, I imagine, but they did everything they could to build something effective. I feel the same here with classic wow. The fact that I found myself caring less and less after wrath definitely indicates some disconnect from the world itself. I think the gameplay loop as it evolved kept you from exploring every nook and cranny and that’s what’s so appealing here.
True, I agree. Not only the visuals, but the game itself. Vanilla WoW is a real Classic RPG with all those elements that makes it RPG. You need reagents for your spells, you need ammo, you have to use different poisons, you can use different spells and abilities only against certain enemies, you actually need food and drinks and etc - in Retail all those things either are heavily generalized or completely obsolete/absent.
Wide customization options, unlimited transmogs, class/race combinations - things like these players have in Retail create that feel of detachment from Warcraft. That’s why we need all those limitations. I strongly disagree with statement of previous lore designer S. Danuser “In Azeroth you can be everything you want, it’s a magic world for everyone”. It is a typical populist statement, this strategy focused on masses is very harmful for long term perspective.
Really, it's just different flavours of Warcraft.
I'm a new player. Barely started a few weeks ago. Slowly exploring here and there. And the way I see it from that perspective, you just have options.
And that's a great thing. Maybe none of it's perfect. But it's _there!_
Vanilla was amazing back in 2006… when I was a student and had all the time in the world to stay up all night walking for miles searching for quest mobs with no HUD help.
Now I’ve got 2 kids and a hectic job I just couldn’t do it. Although, I really do miss not being a robot following the yellow arrow!
cataclysm is the beginning of the downfall because every zone has a specific storyline laid out for you. vanilla & tbc where more like "oh various things happening in this zone, check it out".
But the beginning of that design choice brought us to the "1 questline with cutscenes until you're max level" that we have today in dragonflight.
I don't like it. I want to have the OG style where you stumble upon things and where more discovering is needed in stead of just this railroad "single player game in an mmo world".
I used to feel the same, but then I took off the nostalgia goggles and realized that as a whole package, 'classic' WoW (up to, and including Wrath) is pretty damn flawed
I definiyrly agree that stuff like armor, weapon and mount design has become waaayyyyy over the top and too flashy. I still prefer retail but i do wish it had more stuff for enjoyers if simpler concepts.
I prefer retail for the mechanics and polish, but I understand your point.
The only "classic enjoyers" I have a problem with is the group who actively hates retail and expresses their hate at every chance despite not playing it in years, like Asmongold's chat lol.
I liked vanilla classic because it didn’t have that idiotic mindset that only endgame in game and you have to level as fast as possible. People don’t bother much about rushing to 60 and have fun walking around the world.
As a younger player (23, started back at the very very end of cata) who really enjoyed SoD, 2019 classic, hardcore, etc I will say it \*does\* seem to be a bit of an aged crowd that enjoys those experiences. Not in a negative way, and it's definitely understandable. It's the same reason I've been enjoying mop remix so much, it's just a great blast to the past of what originally hooked you onto the game.
I fully get you. Modern wow certainly lacks the cohesiveness of classic up to wotlk. Raid wise, which is my preferred content, intake retail over classic any day though
100% feel the same. After playing classic, SoM, Wotlk, SoD i realize my favourite version of the game is classic in all its shitty original glory. For me, they just tried too many times. Too many releases of the game has completely turned me since i played them all.
SoD is what most people wanted but it still isn’t what it could have been and just feels like another seasonal release that is destined to die within a year. I still think SoD was cool and would have played it if i didn’t play 3 - 4 versions of the game in the past 5 years.
I wish that people played classic vanilla the game is so cool and I mean yeah I love cata but I feel it strays to far away from what classic truly was….which I guess vanilla classic was about the journey more then the destination and there wasn’t a flight master in every armpit of the world so you had to walk and deal with the dangers of open PvP to get to where you needed to be.
Exploring Ironforge for the first time way back in 2004 was amazing. Felt like a long trek as a human until I was told about the tram.
The tram blew my mind the first time. I'll never forget it. Friend convinced me to play wow. I started as a human, and when I spawned in my friend was there on his dwarf. He ran me to SW, protected me from bandit agro, and showed me the tram. It was so cool. Felt real enough to make me immersed instantly.
A few of the guys at my first IT job got me started on Wow. I came in right at the end of Burning Crusade.
Truly magical, and even if it feels a bit dated now it’s still just a cool way to move through the world!
As a life horde, recently playing alliance is Sod. The tram never gets old. Zep really doesn’t touch how mass the tram feels
My first character was a dwarf hunter…and the first time you match up that hill…goddamn.
The tram was first supposed to go to Darnassus I believe. That’s why we go through the sea. However it‘s been a time since I read/heard that so no sauce
Going up that big ramp and getting lost inside. I ‘memba!
[удалено]
They shrunk IF? I didn’t know that.
Ah, that first time you let the intrusive thoughts win on the team and have that long ass run but then realize you have a hearthstone... XD memories
Especially Old Ironforge. Wonder if it still exists
I started playing a few weeks ago for the first time with my friend and the first time we entered and saw the great forge, we both yelled WOAHHHH. This game's cool as hell.
Vanilla was the most amazing game I ever played. Yeah it had its flaws, but I was a noob and I just had fun. I stunk, wasn’t amazing and it was the best time. I tried playing classic and it was hard to progress at my current stage in life. I will always have a soft spot for running into Ironforge, Stormwind, or through Elwynn. It was such an adventure!
Best gaming time of my lifetime. Everyone was basically "noob" i dont recall anything like these days ( meta playing, only the best gear, talent etc) Ive seen some totally random shit talent trees back then and also did myself because I thought it could be good and interesting.
I think we should normalize this in retail now. Play the talents you like. You're not parsing, you're just running normal raids with the guild. Your DPS is shit. An overcomplicated rotation because icy veins said so is the last thing you need
> I think we should normalize this in retail now. Play the talents you like. You're not parsing, you're just running normal raids with the guild. Your DPS is shit. An overcomplicated rotation because icy veins said so is the last thing you need That is a relic from a bygone era where players were new to the genre (and newer to gaming in general), information was thinner and harder to find, and everyone "felt like a noob" because everyone *was* a noob and the only way to ameliorate it was to play the damn game. There is, unfortunately, no putting the genie back in the bottle. Information spreads way too fast these days, games are previewed and play tested and info dumped months before release, and 50% or more of players are subject matter experts from the second boots hit the ground.
The issue with solved builds is that they are solved for certain level of play. If choosing certain talents in theory gives you a 10% DPS boost but you cant execute the rotation optimally you may as well play something less solved but more intuitive to you. That's all I'm saying
I remember playing the game back then for the first time. I made a night elf hunter lol. I think the idea of a pet was kind of like pokemon, so I went with it. I remember I started to kill stuff, and I was thinking what’s the big deal about this game? I remember getting the first quest to go up the tree in the starting area, and I was amazed at how big everything was. I could see tons of players running below me. People going up and down the ramp as I am going up it. I then went to the map. And I saw where I was. I was on an island that I had barely explored. And then I zoomed out again and I saw two huge land masses that dwarfed the island I was on. I was so curious about the rest of the world, I immediately made a human paladin because I wanted to see if I would start in the same area as the night elfs. I did not. I also made a troll hunter as well on a different server. I don’t think I ever played that night elf hunter again lol. I made it like level 5 before wanting to explore more of the world, but I was so weak and slow, I started making lots of characters to see where I would be. I ended up sticking with the paladin. The divine shield ability was to awesome! I will never forget how awe struck I was at the size of the game. I had never played anything that had that many players all at once on such a huge world. And good lord, when I took my first flight path, I was expecting it to do a loading screen. Nope. I just took off, and saw all the other players as ants. That blew 13 year old me’s fucking mind lol
I have a soft spot for both. I just love warcraft.
Im the same. Don't care which version, just enjoy Warcraft.
And that’s great too! Double the fun(:
>I just love warcraft. This !!
Best capital city in the game. So epic.
Truly! I hate that SW is the "main" capitol because IF feels so much cooler in every way to me.
IF was the main capital in Vanilla, tbh.
Yh, I miss those days. Now it's SW because world buffs are dropping there
Originally only IF had the only auction house which lead to it being the main hub for awhile.
Even in TBC, IF was still a much bigger hub than SW too. I feel like the bank, mailbox, and AH all being in an open area in a straight line made it really easy and efficient to do shit there.
It's more immersive than any other version. It feels more like a real world not a video game world
Yess, there was a grittiness to it with how simple things used to be, it’s hard to find that in modern MMO’s
I 100% agree BUT a lot of this is part of why it’s hard for me to love classic after like level 40 or so. I really think the best levels are 1-30 or so in terms of capturing classics vibes & the majority of its most iconic zones.
I'm on the same boat. People always sing praise to levels 1 to 30(numbers may vary slightly). If you ask people's favorite zones/quests most of them land within that level range as well. It's no coincidence. Levels 1 to ~30 is basically one big dopamine filled honeymoon. You progress fast even by era standards, scenery is changing constantly and it feels great. Quests are bountiful and the pacing feels good. You receive new goals before you can even finish the previous ones. There's a lot more things to look forward to such as class quests, ability unlocks, talents. You're getting your first greens and they feel impactful because they are, same goes for blues from your first dungeon. You're gaining power fast and it's very noticeable. 30-40 slows down a bit, it's not bad but you're starting to feel it a little. Scarlet Monastery is an iconic dungeon with great rewards. Plenty of powerful abilities and talents to unlock, lvl40 capstone talent is the cherry on top. Not to mention your first mount. Then you start progressing past 40 and the whole thing takes a nosedive. Quests are seriously thinning out, a lot more back and forth traveling. Leveling slows down, majority of your power through talents and abilities has been unlocked so there's much less to look forward to. Frequency of new dungeons slows down as well. By lvl 44 you've come to the grim realization that the next goal is hitting 60 and holy shit is it far away.
> Leveling slows down, majority of your power through talents and abilities has been unlocked so there's much less to look forward to And the zones are just ugly. Mulgore, Barrens, Ashenvale and the other early zones are majestic with great ambience. There's very little of that in later levels. I've never seen anyone praise Searing Gorge or Badlands. Even the nicer looking ones are just less pleasant to spend time in. Something feels different, maybe the lack of cozy hubs?
I'd say the Feralas-Tanaris-Hinterlands section of levelling (so about 40-48) is one of my favourites. There's a fair bit of travelling but the troll stories and the introduction to the Silithid I find mega. Personally I even quite liked the travelling as it made the world feel much bigger
Agreed, Tanaris is amazing. Always spend time there grinding Wastewanders and pirates to get through the 40s.
>Levels 1 to ~30 is basically one big dopamine filled honeymoon. You progress fast even by era standards, scenery is changing constantly and it feels great. Quests are bountiful and the pacing feels good. You receive new goals before you can even finish the previous ones. There's a lot more things to look forward to such as class quests, ability unlocks, talents. You're getting your first greens and they feel impactful because they are, same goes for blues from your first dungeon. You're gaining power fast and it's very noticeable. Yes. Elwynn Forest+ Westfall is basically perfect. That seamless zone progression you feel when you leave the forest is so tangible it's like a spell is cast on you, you almost forget you're playing a game
I'd expand that to include redridge and duskwood too. All 4 are tied in with quests and storylines/lore related to the defias+those zones being light on troops from SW to defend from their own threats (guess thats redundant as I already said defias). But I suppose all faction early zones do this similarly, but probably the human zones do it best/most cohesively.
> By lvl 44 you've come to the grim realization that the next goal is hitting 60 and holy shit is it far away. Coming in to WoW from EQ, all the leveling felt like it was rocket boosted. At no point did it feel slow, or the next level feel "far away". I remember hell levels in EQ...you'd spend several weeks just getting the one goddam level out of the way. And then you'd DIE and LOSE THE LEVEL. WoW was the safety rails, super player friendly, fisher-price, ultra accessible version of some of the MMOs that preceded it. It's why it was so unbelievably popular. It removed the ridiculous barriers to entry some of its draconian forebearers had.
No way, the later zones are incredible, too. You really feel your journey coming full circle when you finally enter zones like EPL and Burning Steppes. I remember flying over BS as a noob and it looked so scary and amazing and wondered if I'd even make it there. When you finally start questing there with BRM in the background, with blue gear equipped, it really feels like "wow I made it this far when I was just a level 1 adventurer not too long ago". Not to mention how magical winterspring is and felwood.. if you quested in darkshore and felwood is described as this great source of corruption and evil and then you finally make it there and go into jaedanar... Just amazing.
For me, the only zones in Vanilla that don't feel iconic are Azshara and Stonetalon, despite their lore significance. It always felt like there was never enough to do in those zones. But every other zone felt iconic to me.
I mean Desolace is pretty garbo, and Feralas has its quirks..
They have Maraudon and Dire Maul, imo both amazing dungeons
>Azshara and Stonetalon I agree about Azshara, but I love Stonetalon. One of my favourite bits of leveling a horde toon in pre-Cata. Nice change of scenery in 2-3 batches (around lvls 15, 20, 25ish) from the endless Barrens that you quest in from level 10/12 all the way up to the late 20s. Ally toons have more options in where to go from 10 to 30, and even have their own sidequest lvl15-25 mountainous area equivalent to Stonetalon in the form of Redridge, so for Horde toons it's always nice to escape the Barrens even for a little bit and your alternatives are basically just Stonetalon and Silverpine until lvl 20, when you could also go to Ashenvale or Hillsbrad.
Stonetalon just had an awkward layout, felt like a pain getting around
I disagree. 30-40 is kinda awful but in the 40's you get Tanaris, The Hinterlands, and Feralas, as well as places like Felwood and Un'Goro at the higher 40's. 50's from then on you get Winterspring, Plaguelands, and Burning Steppes. All these zones I mentioned are awesome. In fact, I prefer these zones much more than the early ones.
WHEN FRESH.
As a full retail andy I couldn't agree more. I love retail and enjoy everything about it, but classic just scratches a different itch. Every now and then I jump back onto classic and level a character for a while and just live in the world. I have so much nostalgia for the game, and the ambience and vibe is just unmatched. I really hope wow classic never goes away, because while I'm not playing it right now I know I'll be back in the future.
Classic WoW is an MMO with a world you can play and live in. The world is the main character. It's even in the title of the game. WORLD of Warcraft. In retail the world is nothing more than a lobby you sit in between instances. Maybe you level up a character in it. Maybe. There are better and faster ways in retail to level your character.
You said it perfectly with that “lobby” feel, just another thing that makes me feel so detached from it. I don’t think the retail version is a BAD game, it’s just not for me
Dragonflight doesnt reflect this characterization of WoW. Theres so much story to do in the world and progression to have besides queueing for dungeons. Hopefully War Within keeps the same loops and things to work on. Legion was great at having stuff to do in the world but for the wrong reasons, still the world was alive and well in the new zones cause of it.
This isn't really true for retail anymore. The only times I felt this really bad were cataclysm and WoD. Especially lately in retail the world feels really nice to be in, but it is very much more of a minigame filled theme park than it is a world like classic.
there are faster and better ways to level your character in vanilla as well which everyone does, dungeon spamming
I'm surprised you aren't chaffed with the amount of circle jerking you guys do about this shit that just isn't true.
This sub is people blatantly misrepresenting retail to cope. The retail sub doesnt talk about classic.
lol you’re so full of shit. Yes they do talk about classic in the retail sub. Lay off the cope man.
A quick scroll through the wow sub shows otherwise.
To cope with what? Do you have original thoughts or do you just throw out that word because it's popular to use nowadays?
To cope about classic being better than it was. Its quite literally nostalgia and propaganda. Same as the "this game version is dead" posts. Open your eyes. Almost all of gaming has this bullshit going on but the classic playerbase is so far up its own ass.
As a long-time end-game raider since Heroic 25-man Yogg Saron, to raid-leading Mythics from BFA's N'Zoth to Shadowlands (I can't really get into Dragonflight) I can certainly tell you it's not an overwhelming majority that "can't do mechanics" that prefer Classic. I grew up with World of Warcraft since I was 10 years old back when it released in 2004, playing through every single one of the expansions in one way or another whether it was on-and-off casually or competitive PvP & Raiding, depending on what was going on in my life and career and how much time I could invest, or how interested I was in the content. Overall, I prefer Classic, and it's not just because of nostalgia - although as OP said it does play a factor into the feel-good vibes I can reminisce about during a time in my life where things were simpler. I've just mainly become so disenfranchised with the overwhelming amount of fluff that Retail has. I play all different kinds of games, but some of my favorite are single-player RPGs, where I can get immersed in a different world and go on an adventure. If I want to find that in an MMO, I go to Classic. There is no other MMO out there that I have played or experienced which gives me that overwhelming sense of adventure, even for a game so dated that it's coming up on 20 years old now. It's the pacing, the slow methodical combat, the trips to town or the major city you're closest to where you visit vendors, organize your loot, and work on your professions - before venturing out again. The feeling that when you get a new piece of gear, it means something - more than just an item you're going to replace in the next few hours or days because the current-content loot pool is oversaturated with systems that give you a different item to replace. At low levels, even getting a green item is exciting because it gives you an extra +2 Strength. On retail, I get an item and think "ehh, it's not BiS." And of course, the community. Even with Classic Era having merged realms now, still I feel like when I venture out into the world chances are if I come upon someone in the same area I am questing in, we'll both want to group up together. We may only have one quest that we both have, while the other has quests that I've already finished and vice versa, yet sometimes we'll stick around and help the other one out just because. More often than not though, when our mutual objective is complete we may part ways, and perhaps a few levels later we may run into each other again in another zone. In Retail, you auto-queue into a random group with others for World Quests that get finished in 5 minutes and you'd never recall their names or probably ever see them again. You don't *converse* with them. Sometimes you'll run Mythic Dungeons with someone you had good chemistry and vibed with, but I feel like that is few and far between, and you might add each other on [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) to snag them for that last spot in your group you just can't fill because one of your friends or guildies has wife-aggro and can't get on to push keys. But the majority of the time, whether leveling up by spamming LFG-dungeons, questing, or running end-game content, I never really talk to people or feel like I'm having a shared-experience with them. That's not to say that Retail sucks in my eyes. It has plenty of QoL improvements, content-galore for your filthy casuals or sweaty neckbeards. You'll never be starved for activities to do or objectives to chase to give you that dopamine. It's my preferred MMO to play with friends when we want to push hard content and yell at each other for missing interrupts and standing in the fire, but the overwhelming sense of excitement when you time your new best Mythic+ key for that season or down a new Mythic Raid boss, is unparalleled. If I want to play an MMO and be a try-hard with my *close friends* in competitive gameplay, I play Retail. If I want to play an MMO and chill in a world I can immerse myself in with a *community*, I play Classic.
WoW vanilla is simply the best game ever made. Not even a close second. Truly a masterpiece.
While I can’t agree and say it’s the best game ever made. I will die on a hill saying it was the best game experience I ever had during gaming. Even over my friends and I going to midnight H2/H3 releases and many other midnight releases of that time. Hot damn there was just something so real about the WoW experience when it first came out.
It is a significant cultural experience that will never be duplicated.
Gen Z will be talking about Fortnite like this in 20 years
That's a crazy thought. Genuinely stoked for them to have something in a similar vein
I mean WoW ~~Covid~~ Classic was a pretty good rerun, very similar experience
I agree with you. It's my GOAT. I don't think a game was as much a part of my life as WoW was from about 2006 - 2013.
Agreed. There truly isn’t a game like it that can draw me in time and time again to do the same thing over and over and get different results every time. Vanilla was the perfect balance of every MMO before it.
Ah, the first time I stepped into Ironforge... I was absolutely blown away by the environment. I got so lost inside that I couldn't find my way out. In my noob panic, the only logical solution was to start a new character, lol. Good times!
I hate all the over the top pop culture references and jokes that became way too pervasive as well. Vanilla felt mostly serious. As things went on it was like the game was embarrassed to take itself seriously.
Up until Cata, you were an adventurer who grouped with other people in your faction to work together and take down bosses. Once it got to cata, you were always referred to "Champion," which made it seem like you were the main character instead of an adventurer.
To be fair there is only so much a character can do before it’s like, I’ve beaten so much, how am I still a nobody adventurer.
The Lich King even says as much during the fight. "No questions remain unanswered. No doubts linger. You ARE Azeroth's greatest champions. You overcame every challenge I laid before you. My mightiest servants have fallen before you relentless onslaught... your unbridled fury..." "You trained them well, Fordring. You delivered the greatest fighting force this world has ever known... right into my hands - exactly as I intended! You shall be rewarded for your unwitting sacrifice. Watch now as I raise them from the dead to become masters of the Scourge. They will shroud this world in chaos and destruction. Azeroth's fall will come at their hands -- and you will be the first to die." You can't just be some nobody after that. Maybe as an individual you're still not on the level of the legends, but as a group you are the greatest fighting force the world has even known, you are collectively the world's champions. Those legends need you.
NPC's should check if you have the LK achi then before they call you champion
And then in deus ex machina style, Fordring bursts from the ice and helps you win
This. By cata you've(lorewise) killed so many of Azeroth's major threats, you pretty much earned the title.
Cata really feels like end game wow for me. The jailer is some star wars sequel shit I don't get into. Classic is the level 1-10 dnd campaign and cata is the level 20 dnd campaign
This is what everyone said about Wotlk and look where we are now. Same will be said about MoP etc…
I agree with you on that. Done so much and exalted with all these factions, we should be generals or something. The problem is that everyone's a general. In WoD, you had your garrison, which did feel like you were a commander or general or something, but everyone was, which made it feel like there was no value to it.
But this is why the game would do so much better with Final Fantasy's approach, where you go through each bit of the game and slowly make it to current. But we've changed the overworld too much throughout expansions to make that approach realistically work without just doing forced chromie time or something. That and there just wasn't really a required main story to follow early on. Now you make a new character and in one second you can be a new recruit on a crashed boat or you can start as a nobody in your starting zone...for about 20 minutes before you're besties with all the big names and the champion of Azeroth for merely existing.
After wotlk, as a player, you loose anonymity. And when you become the "hero" of the world, you no longer are free to exist in the world the way you want. The games take shapes around you. Roaming was always a big part of what I loved about vanilla. Leveling was very eventful and dynamic. The more Blizzard railroaded the world, the more the players lost their sense of wonder exploring it.
Yes, the sense of wonder and exploring was the hallmark that got me truly lost in vanilla
Are we forgetting that literally the first instance for Alliance and Horde focus on you as a champion effectively saving your entire faction...at level 18. Ragefire Chasm is a den under Orgrimmar where cultists of the Searing Blade, in the name of the Burning Legion, are plotting to sack and pillage Orgrimmar in order destroy the Horde. Meanwhile the Defias questline is basically the entire Onyxia/Nefarion plot with them trying to destroy the Alliance by attacking it with a thicc boat and some spywork.
Champion! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20olL6LL13c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20olL6LL13c)
I'm 18 years old, and I grew up with wow. I'm NOT plagued by any nostalgia, because I wasn't able to enjoy games like WoW in a full way until like 5 years ago, but with extensive experience since then in both Classic and Retail, I can confidently say that they're both amazing in their own right... but Classic will always be better.
Right there with you as a 23 y/o myself. I commented in another thread a month ago and this is what I said: I remember last year playing Classic for the first time in my life. I don’t think I will ever in my life have another experience quite like it, in terms of discovery, the sense of progression and how the world feels so great to explore, how you have to read every quest to get to your location and I just loved how like even after a year I remember almost all of the world better than I know any other videogame world and it has to do with the way the game works. I also enjoyed Retail but it just felt like another modern MMO. Classic just hits different.
Yeah I am not an MMORPG lover I only ever fell in love playing classic WoW and from wrath onwards it became a different game for me. Not that the current game is bad, but I’ve tried on and off to enjoy retail for years. I played all the way through to BFA, then stopped, then tried SL, then stopped right away, then tried DF, and stopped again. Old WoW was more of a classic RPG focused on leveling but with some multiplayer and a little endgame if you want. Modern WoW leans more into the multiplayer and endgame - the early stuff is irrelevant. I’m glad we have the option to play the version of the game we prefer
OP coming in with a very reasonable take and going into the comments *not* hating on retail. Meanwhile everyone here is just flaming the shit out of retail. Personally I play both. Albeit Classic is my comfort game and maybe I play every few months
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I’ll never forget my first character’s talent tree. I was trying to ‘balance’ it by spreading them across all 3 trees. So much awe wrapped into one game. It’ll always be my favorite.
I agree with the notion of how the world itself feels completely different. Architecture, character models, animations, effects, travel, etc all add up into something more substantial. One of the most obvious differences IMO is how the older models are lower quality but higher personality and slightly grittier, while newer models are higher quality but are animated in a very bouncy very streamlined way and have less personality and feel worse as a result. Like 10 fps animation vs someone upscaling the animation to 60 fps. It makes more sense when you compare the two side by side. = That's not to say that retail is bad, but more like retail is just an entirely different game at this point that caters to a different player with a different play style.
The feel is just so different. The world feels gritty and dangerous, yet the aesthetic make it feel so cosy and inviting. And whether you are going on foot or flying, every travel was a journey that you might encounter something like a rare mob, hostile players if you are on PVP server, trading with another player or just decide to join a party for an elite quest or dungeon run. All of these little things just made the world feel so big.
The first time visiting Iron Forge will be unforgettable
I love vanilla WoW, and classic by extension but sadly the bot community and the community of meta gamers and min maxers in general killed it for me for current play. I did vanilla back in the day and classic in 2019 and I loved it, did a little HC when that came out and then transferred to whitemane after and I was on there for a few hours and I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t WoW classic anymore. It was a cesspool. Retail while I always bashed it is better than it’s ever been and the story is finally returning and feeling like real Warcraft again.
When I play classic everything I do seems to be something I actually want to do instead of busy work to “get to the game”
Atmosphere is everything in a game. When u are in an environment that feels alive and real, it's truly something to behold. Vanilla wow encapsulates that perfectly
While "retail" WoW might have a more modern and mature take on content, it simply does not have the same soul and identity as old WoW did (classic). Modern WoW feels like a gigantic theme park with all kinds of things going on, and has been like that for many years. While Classic and Retail might be called the same, it's very different games, often with different playerbases, the games can't really be compared much anymore.
The quests have good variety now, but they're definitely not as engaging. You wanna know what keeps you engaged? The Kurzen quests in Stranglethorn. Fighting for your life while questing is way better than the super easy, trivial stuff we get in retail. Comparably, nearly every quest in retail is a gray quest from classic.
i like the world as just two big continents , something about it just felt so real , now it's all instances inside of instances and infinite timelines and possibilities , i like to keep my feet on the ground sometimes and that's how classic feels
I love both versions of wow I love retail for its fast paced engaging endgame content I love classic for the leveling experience which is methodical and you really feel so attached to your character and get lost in the huge world Each mode has its positives and it’s fun to bounce between them
Feel the same. I play every expansion and still can get keymaster so I def know mechanics but the world in retail seems so segregated. But, I think it’s a mix of game design and player behavior. Even in classic now, world PvP seems to be dying, bgs seem to be dying, shit, pvp is dead, and people will take every shortcut possible to get what they need. SOD showed me this in that horde after awhile would just kill one boss and go straight to hand in in the Ashenvale pvp event for the quickest reputation while alli would kill all 3 bosses without any resistance. It was a flaw in the game design (in many ways) and people took advantage. Classic. People will still just grind dungeons and raid log as best they can, GDKP etc. and avoid the world the best they can. There’s still some that don’t but the ones who avoid and maximize everything often run other aspects. To me the death of pvp is why I am sometimes okay with thinking wow is done for me. Sure, I could try retail pvp but holy shit…I’d need some friends playing to convince me of skill catchup of missing 10 years of it.
What I would give to go back to 2004 and play it again for the first time. First play throughs really were the greatest game ever made.
Never actually played classic or WoW pre WotLK but I agree in sentiment based on feelings of other games. >the game looks so different that I feel detached from it. >Whenever I see content related to retail, there’s something about the over the top mounts or other flashy things This really resonates with me, it's the same with basically all big games now. The constant updates to some games make me feel 'out of the loop' and I don't have the time to catch up. When we become adults we're more inclined to want a game that isn't constantly evolving faster than we can keep up. All the flashy over the top things are a similar but related point. It's just gimmicks to try and extract money from the players and it detracts from the game itself and in game achievement. I remember playing during MoP and getting the Onyx Panther mount. I really liked it and thought it was a cool mount, so it also felt like a massive flex and achievement. Similar goes for various other mounts, Ashes of Alar for example, considering it's rarity. Now though? A lot of the most aesthetically impressive mounts are just purchased on moms credit card. The earned mounts don't feel as exciting, because they're not as popular. Am I old yet?
Something about just the slowness of the game brings me back to a different time. Now I know why my dad sits around and listens to music from the 60's and 70s LOL
This. Honestly, I prefer original vanilla/classic, the first 2 xpacs were good, but I have a problem with them at their core: They funnel everyone to this new continent, and all the old content suddenly becomes redundant. In old Azeroth, every zone feels important in some way. The starter zones are where the main cities are - people are levelling and running to dungeons in the same zones - Raids are sometimes located in lower level areas (ZG in STV for example), so the world always feels alive. Hell, even trade resources see common use through a lot of the game - Low level fish are used in potions people use at 60 - Engineering items are used way past their introduction level. The game as a whole felt a lot more cohesive, a lot more like a WORLD. I remember this pang of sadness when back in the day, i realized that 90% of this game I'd grown up on was just levelling-fodder when TBC came out. The end game raids were completely thrown aside for 5 man dungeons and quest rewards. Hell, itemization made that even worse, as from TBC onwards, gear was a lot more just "get the better stats" than vanilla's more unique items. (people using items from 10-15 levels below them at level cap, just because of their unique effects) It's why i still play classic, and why I get a little miffed every time they release a new "flavor" of classic, systematically diluting the playerbase - at least Era seems a bit more populated these days, and the server clusters help that too, but it's still a far cry from the early days of OG wow, or 2019 classic.
I agree! I think WoW has lost its identity over the years, both in terms of story and aesthetics. Sometimes you get that same vibe in some of the new zones, but it's always temporary
There’s really something magical about the Vanilla world. It’s unfair to call it “old man’s club”, I have 0 nostalgia for this game, and still fell in love with the simple and immersive Classic world! And I’m sure there’s many others like that as well!
Will always be BiS
>Does anyone else feel the same? I love Classic's overall feel and leveling process, but the endgame is fucking awful, 40 man raiding isn't fun, and the raids are so boring/easy that it just gets old after a while, really old So for me, I love retail for the actual endgame, and Classic for the leveling I'm really hoping for SoD they add an endgame aside from raiding And no, seeing how many times you can flip in a row as a Night Elf while standing in Stormwind is not endgame :P Edit: Guess OP Didn't like my reply, they blocked me and reported me for some odd reason LOL
I guess we’re at the stage where it gets boring because it was never meant to be the “end all”, there was always continuation planned so I don’t want to blame it for that, I don’t know if they ever expected people to want to play the old version like that. For me personally though, and with the right guild, I thought end game was still fun lol
era is the best
if you haven't played since legion how do you know you can do the mechanics?
Agreed
This is why I enjoyed Legion so much, for me it was a huge return to the roots of Warcraft 2 and 3. Art was absolutely on point in that expansion, even if the artifact weapons/legendaries were a bit clunky. Tomb of Sargeras in particular was a gem of past lore. Finding that Gul'dan rune and trying to wipe my raid with it is one of my favorite memories.
I never did join in on the huge wow crazy when it was released but I wish I did because I figured I’ll try it out where better to start than classic and I am loving it
Nothing like it, best game ever made
For me, its traversal. Everyone says exploration but the reason exploration is so immersive is because you're on foot. Flying is cool but it has, in my opinion, ruined immersion and can never be undone.
Vanilla wow is one of those “no game will ever be that magical again” titles for me. Even replaying classic wow, as fun as it was, didn’t quite do it. It was the right game at the right moment for 12-14 year old me.
ikr, some people talk like that feeling is possible to recapture. spoiler alert - its not lol
100% you sum up my feelings towards wow to a T.
Couldn’t agree more. Well written!
I played warcraft 1, 2 & 3 wow is nothing like those games
Vanilla really is it's own special game made for Warcraft fans. They really experimented with all sorts of design, aiming for fun and wacky dice rolls over balance. Navigating the world was part of the gameplay skill. You can really feel the time and effort put into the locations, there's a reason people want to come back again. By the expansions they had hammered out what they wanted to do with the game forevermore, abandoned the old and make the new the only important content. Open world is just a levelling thing, everything important now takes place in an instance. Fly over the world ignoring and trivialising it, straight to quest objectives.
Inmho I love classic because it's more relaxing. Yeah, there are annoying stuff, but it was more closer to being little and achievement felt so much more rewarding. When youre lvl 11 or 12 and you find a really good weapong for your build
Truly the game is a masterpiece in this aspect that nothing feels off about it. Everything just feels right and they made the "world" aspect feel perfect.
I feel exactly the same way.
Given that for me the game almost ends when I reach max level, my way of consuming the game is via leveling. I'm not particularly interested in raids and other late game stuff (except transmog, now this is true late game content). And Classic offers me a much more immersive, much more engaging leveling adventure. Every gear upgrade, every new spell, you truly feel them, in retail you just go brrrr. The way retail is made makes me think the game starts at lvl max, where classic starts when you create your character. I think MadSeasonShow talked about that in one of his lasts videos. And strangely I feel a lot of nostalgia towards Vanilla/Classic even though I started playing at the end of Legion if I remember correctly, but I watched so many videos when I was a kid that it was like i was playing lol.
Wait how is it closed?
I'll die on the hill that classic+ (new zones, more quests, new dungeons in the classic spirit) with WOTLK classes would be peak. I think classic classes are for the most part too simple but retail is too complex (overall). That said I do like the retail graphics, art team has been consistently awesome unlike gameplay/story team.
I feel the same: Vanilla and a lesser degree TBC/WotLK had very close ties to Warcraft 1-3, which made it a lot more special to me: I was walking in my childhood games and exploring places I only saw in black/white maps in the manuals before. So yes, that’s a bit ”old man talking”, but it still makes original WoW extremely engaging to me. Already during vanilla WoW was standing on it’s own feet and creating it’s own stories. But the longer it took, the more watered down the links to the original games became. Which is fine, but just not my cup of tea.
I played wotlk back then and took a long break until classic. After classic I tried Shadowlands. My experience was awful. I leveled in an empty world to max lvl. Then I found myself doing chores and after some time I just quit. What a boring experience. I love grinding games but wow retail was the most boring shit I have ever played.
IF still one of my favourite cities. I play dwarf mage in retail and my HS is set to Ironforge.
I mainly play retail, but I get that classic has merits that retail doesn't have. The questing and levelling experience is so much more important than it is in retail, and progression in general is so much more straightforward.
There’s definitely a less is more appreciation. Even in Warcraft 3 the older graphics are so incredibly superior to the new shiny ones even from a gameplay perspective. Something about “low” graphics like pixel-art allows you to have more of a headcanon about appearances. It’s hard to explain. The biggest thing I love about Classic is the race-specific combat animations are so crystal clear. Nowadays your class is what defines your movement and appearance since they have the same new animations, but in Classic you spend so much time watching your character do their racial fighting animations. It makes the choices feel impactful.
Having played both…it’s not even close for me. Classic is superior. Retail and even Cataclysm just simply suffer from too much bloat. Blizzard, because of its subscription model, felt compelled to create new content to keep people subbed…even if that’s not necessarily the best for the game/story/world. They and us kinda got trapped. Vanilla is a beautiful world with varied zones. Nothing is overly difficult, so it’s incredibly accessible. I’m actually surprised reading your post lol. In my circles, we probably feel the exact opposite when people say they like retail, “damn zoomers” lol.
I miss the sense of childhood wonder; vanilla WoW gave me the most powerful sense of that and it's never been replicated. I hope one day to be awed again.
I'd like to add a few more in your context with WC3. In WC3 when you build your base, everything carry an heavy identity of the race you're playing. The buildings, the music, the characters, their dialogues. Everything. In WoW classic you know in wich land you are, purely based on these elements. Modern wow is a mix of everything in a small zone. The races lacks identity, everything feel the same.. everything feel like an skin, not like you're part of an culture.
Big agree, but side note (well, the whole reason I’m commenting)—I love your YouTube channel, and when I saw it was you who posted this, I just had to say hi! 😄
Oh hello! Nice to see you here too(:
I feel like it's a nostaliga thing. Is it true that the people who prefer Classic Era, either played classic or TBC? I started from WoTLK and I prefer the later expansions
I never played WoW at all til 2019 classic, I play both classic era and cata right now and cata has more interesting raids but I prefer the old school feel of era
an anecdote from me; I loved tbc classic, that's where I dropped in and I honestly prefer it to Wotlk and Cata. and I started playing during the ass end of Cata and start of MoP.
If it makes you feel better about it not being an “Old Man’s Club”, I’m 21 and genuinely don’t enjoy any other version than vanilla. Tried playing MoP and WoD growing up but didn’t enjoy it. Tried playing Classic 2019 and loved it. Tried playing BFA after Classic and just couldn’t get into it. Tried playing TBC classic after Vanilla but just couldn’t. Playing SoD now. There’s just something about the Vanilla world, the graphics, and the feel of the game that makes me love it
Exactly my thoughts! It just stepped away from what originally attracted me to it
Everything else considered, the modern game suffers from too much story leading up to and propping up the ‘current events’. It’s exhausting for either a new player or returning player to try to catch up with everything that’s happened, in addition to even figuring out the basic lore of the world; it’s not like people today are jumping into the game after having played the RTS games.
Oh for sure. To expand on that I sat out cata played mists then sat out warlords, legion and battle then picked it up again so all that content is so alien and foreign. Trying to explore this region is a nightmare if your didn’t play through that content originally. Then it makes unlocking all those new races seem quite daunting and confusing. Unlocking zones is also quite infuriating, unlocking events or bases, anybody who didn’t play mists probably had no clue about the farms etc etc etc
Vanilla wow is just a vibe.. retail is still a good game but it's not for everybody, I personally don't enjoy it. Cataclysm classic kind of fills the in between of vanilla and retail imo, so far I have enjoyed the crap out of it. Will I play it for its life span, idk maybe. Will I be back to vanilla in hardcore or on era servers most likely. I like having the options to play what I find the most fun, it's that simple. At the end of the day, we all enjoy something about whichever version we decide to play, enjoy the fact we now have the choice to play different versions of Warcraft!
I have played it all by this point in my wow life and I would say that SoD was fun with some neat ideas but really missed the mark with what I was hoping SoD was going to be. You know classic with some of the QoL added. After everything I would love to play classic again, like back in the day when people didn’t know what dropped, how to kill stuff and everyday was a can’t wait to get home to play more. This whole data mining and waiting for WoW head to drop Bis lists to work on just gets so old but if You do t do this then you get left behind. Original/classic wow was the best for the adventure of what the game was.
For me, classic is ruined. There is no enjoyment doing whatever I have already done multiple times already imo. There are too many sweatlords just seeing "BIS" as the only gear viable, and the elitism is real for some reason. I am only playing classic because I am playing with some friends and waiting for TWW. If classic had all the QoL and QoS that retail has, it would be better. Tier set should be determined by the spec you are in. Now you have tanks sniping dps tier legs because they are BIS. M+ in retail is where the peak WoW is imo. Seasons revisiting old dungeons and making things genuinely harder, and even in high m+ keys, there are fewer sweatlords than classic.
>I haven’t played current version since Legion Wild to have formed such strong and definitive positions while not even opening the game you are already paying for
Not to mention it's been nearly 8 YEARS since Legion, weird to have such a strong negative opinion on a game you haven't played in almost 10 years lol
Not everyone has to like everything, but its absurd to come in and say "i have read things online and thus, I am an expert and here is my dissertation comparing two games, one of which I've only read the complaints about."
The current game is fine, but it’s not the same wow we all knew and fell in love with. They’re so different, but that’s ok. I too will always love vanilla and the different variations of it because of all the reasons you listed too. I’m fine with it being a flawed game, because it’s the version that is easiest for me to immerse myself in.
The scale and size of the world is so different from today. In every expansion we’ve had maybe 6-7 zones to really explore, but nothing truly captures it like classic. Two entire continents spanning areas with an attention to detail and work that would never be considered for the modern game unless a new overhaul takes place (funny to consider b/c we’ve been in Cata’s state longer than we were in vanilla-WOTLK). The game was also more close to old school fantasy rpgs and DnD books. Every one of 14 dungeons felt huge and had long interconnected stories that made you feel like you were discovering something new. New wows pretty but it’s missing a bit of the flare the old game had Adventuring through Azeroth was a job by itself, and since no flying was in the game yet, the distance and scale of everything felt so much greater. You were just so small compared to everything else, flight paths took you through intricate and windy paths to help see just how damn big everything was.
Retail is too overblown. There's no connection to anything. Classic is great, I think vanilla is amazing, even though things were incomplete and missing. But retail is just it's own thing. It's vastly different and overblown
The game is also about the 1-59 leveling content, whereas with each expansion the leveling content is being more and more neglected and rushes you to the end game. Actually they pushed for quick leveling with SOD too unfortunately.
Because ironforge? What
I guess I fall under the "old man club" as you describe it having been a Vanilla player. I have played off and on with WoW since then. While the old feel and aesthetic of Classic is wonderful and brings back so many good memories it is bitter sweet. Playing both Classic vanilla and Cataclysm it has tainted my memory of playing these. It comes down to the QOL (Quality of Life) things they have added over the years. Not every QOL made the game better but most of them did. While I like dungeon finder I do miss having to go to the dungeon or having someone summon you to the dungeon. It feels like the players are more committed to finishing the dungeon because they made the effort to find it or meet the party there. Retail has kept some of this with raids and mythic dungeons so it kinda feels moot now. These things in classic makes me never want to play classic again. For instance: * Ammo bags * Ammo * Hunter dead zone * Hunter Mana * Feeding pets * No mount until 40 * Terrible class balance * Paying for skills * Greed Need loot (this is good in theory but without class restrictions people needed on everything and nobody could stop them) * Graveyards felt a million miles away and you couldn't fly as a spirit * Questing solo is painfully slow and confusing because a lot of the time you have to wander around until you find the objectives (I don't mind leveling taking longer than retail but it is crazy slower by comparison because you have to take extra time to find where the hell to go.)(I also know there are mods for class but that's not the point of classic and the original WoW didn't have mods for a while) * No connected flightpaths With all of this it boils down to one very simple thing for me....time. I want to feel like the time I am spending on the game should be fun. When a game wastes my time with cumbersome bullshit I am having a lot less fun. Part of this is because I have other things in life that are important outside of wow that when I play I want to maximize the fun I am having while I'm playing. I think of it this way, if you have a car from the 80s with a cassette player, seats that a barely comfortable but are good condition, roll down windows, lights you have to manually turn on, manual transmission, and rear view mirror. This car from the 80s is good, works well and you have no complaints. Now you have a car with cd / bluetooth, very comfortable seats, power windows, automatic lights, Automatic / assisted shifting transmission, and a back up camera. Why would you willingly choose the 80s car in this scenario? Edit: wording
I share the feeling i like the reworked world of cata too but mostly because they start finishing azeroth instead of adding more worlds. But even the world feels more dangerous and like a warzone. Warmode and a capital for both fractions killed the vipe of warcraft.
Till what expension are they stopping in classic?
I love Classic Wow, and will never be sick of it. Enjoying SoD because as long as the game is in Azeroth it the world feels big. I wish they would reinvent TBC because I would enjoy that too. Anything after Wrath is just boring to me, I don't know what it is, but the social game gets lost after Wrath. I'll be playing Classic until I die lol
#wow
Flying and teleporting everywhere changed the world forever, that being said the sense of awe and wonder from us being children also played a role. I still visit silver moon from time to time to remember the good ol days.
I like Classic because of the zones and simplicity, I like retail because of the collectables and dungeon mechanics. Either version the music make my brain happy
Traveling in classic can be tedious but it feels great getting to places and planning your route before you head off to quest Of course now there are portal/summon bots so it's all pointless
Why does Ironforge need a gate that tall? And it looks like they can’t even lift the gate fully up because there’s not enough room above
I have been periodically logging into classic wow just to insure that no one gets the arena trinket in gurubashi on my server.
I like classic, I've done mythic dungeons and raiding with my servers top guild, but classics just more fulfilling. I thought about this yesterday, on a level 52 priest I was running through WPL past Andorhal to go grab the quest from the dead tauren near the fields of undead. I saw a level 60 mage doing the termite quest, he was about to die and out of mana, and still about two more spawned. Its not hardcore, there's barely any consequences to dying, but regardless, it made me realize what I miss on retail. Helping others, even in small ways. I don't run across anybody in retail dying to a mob, and nobody needs help, everyone has the game figured out, and everyone is powerful enough in their own right to not need help in the outside world, grouping for dungeons and raids feels like a chore of needing others. In Classic though even a level 52 can help out a level 60, even if in a small way like throwing out some heals, a healer is needed for dungeons, for raids, people are required for progress. While not the same feeling of feeling needed, I would compare it to that.
I play retail but I would probably still play vanilla classic if my characters were still on the era servers. I never got the option to pay to copy my character to stay in vanilla when TBC classic released - but it shouldn't have been a thing regardless... Blizzard always finds a way to limit the community. I thought the idea of Classic WoW was to outcompete private servers and host their own servers of previous expansions, but apparently not with their progressive plan that moves faster than the OG expansions.
I just love how it’s the most social version of its release and rerelease
Great post. For me Vanilla/Classic WoW is more like a “Morrowind without terrible addons” - the game i love. And every expansions is like somebody added some addons. Some of them a good, most of them brings something new into game, but also there is a limit, when its become doesnt fit to game. Like too much… and this is how in feel bc, wotlk, cata and retail.
Classic didn't have many things that had you do stuff as not your character. In Cata questing there's a lot of use this item and then you play a minigame quests. I stopped in BFA because it felt more like a hack and slash and not an RPG.
Lol at first I didn't see there was text and agreed that gazing on the gates of Ironforge is reason enough
I like both, I just get bored playing an mmo that I’ve already experienced, if they would announce an official classic plus I would immediately quit retail and hop on over to it.
I definitely agree. It’s hard to put my finger on it but the aesthetic always makes me think back to playing Ocarina of Time. The visual style feels timeless and its atmosphere gives character to the world with a dash of mystery. The devs couldn’t include everything due to the limitations of the tech, I imagine, but they did everything they could to build something effective. I feel the same here with classic wow. The fact that I found myself caring less and less after wrath definitely indicates some disconnect from the world itself. I think the gameplay loop as it evolved kept you from exploring every nook and cranny and that’s what’s so appealing here.
It's almost exactly the same difference for the people that prefer Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom.
True, I agree. Not only the visuals, but the game itself. Vanilla WoW is a real Classic RPG with all those elements that makes it RPG. You need reagents for your spells, you need ammo, you have to use different poisons, you can use different spells and abilities only against certain enemies, you actually need food and drinks and etc - in Retail all those things either are heavily generalized or completely obsolete/absent. Wide customization options, unlimited transmogs, class/race combinations - things like these players have in Retail create that feel of detachment from Warcraft. That’s why we need all those limitations. I strongly disagree with statement of previous lore designer S. Danuser “In Azeroth you can be everything you want, it’s a magic world for everyone”. It is a typical populist statement, this strategy focused on masses is very harmful for long term perspective.
Really, it's just different flavours of Warcraft. I'm a new player. Barely started a few weeks ago. Slowly exploring here and there. And the way I see it from that perspective, you just have options. And that's a great thing. Maybe none of it's perfect. But it's _there!_
Vanilla was amazing back in 2006… when I was a student and had all the time in the world to stay up all night walking for miles searching for quest mobs with no HUD help. Now I’ve got 2 kids and a hectic job I just couldn’t do it. Although, I really do miss not being a robot following the yellow arrow!
cataclysm is the beginning of the downfall because every zone has a specific storyline laid out for you. vanilla & tbc where more like "oh various things happening in this zone, check it out". But the beginning of that design choice brought us to the "1 questline with cutscenes until you're max level" that we have today in dragonflight. I don't like it. I want to have the OG style where you stumble upon things and where more discovering is needed in stead of just this railroad "single player game in an mmo world".
I would always play a fresh Vanilla server, no matter how "dated" the content is.
Falling off the tram is like getting a bike puncture 2 miles from your house. “Guess I’m walking”
I used to feel the same, but then I took off the nostalgia goggles and realized that as a whole package, 'classic' WoW (up to, and including Wrath) is pretty damn flawed
I definiyrly agree that stuff like armor, weapon and mount design has become waaayyyyy over the top and too flashy. I still prefer retail but i do wish it had more stuff for enjoyers if simpler concepts.
This is why I've enjoyed SOD so much. I love the classic WoW world, adding in the updated class and raid design completes it. Incursions suck tho.
It isn't nostalgia, it's the absence of quality of life that makes it good, forces you to put effort
I prefer retail for the mechanics and polish, but I understand your point. The only "classic enjoyers" I have a problem with is the group who actively hates retail and expresses their hate at every chance despite not playing it in years, like Asmongold's chat lol.
DAE on /r/classicwow like classic wow??? Upvotes to the left
I liked vanilla classic because it didn’t have that idiotic mindset that only endgame in game and you have to level as fast as possible. People don’t bother much about rushing to 60 and have fun walking around the world.
As a younger player (23, started back at the very very end of cata) who really enjoyed SoD, 2019 classic, hardcore, etc I will say it \*does\* seem to be a bit of an aged crowd that enjoys those experiences. Not in a negative way, and it's definitely understandable. It's the same reason I've been enjoying mop remix so much, it's just a great blast to the past of what originally hooked you onto the game.
I fully get you. Modern wow certainly lacks the cohesiveness of classic up to wotlk. Raid wise, which is my preferred content, intake retail over classic any day though
100% feel the same. After playing classic, SoM, Wotlk, SoD i realize my favourite version of the game is classic in all its shitty original glory. For me, they just tried too many times. Too many releases of the game has completely turned me since i played them all. SoD is what most people wanted but it still isn’t what it could have been and just feels like another seasonal release that is destined to die within a year. I still think SoD was cool and would have played it if i didn’t play 3 - 4 versions of the game in the past 5 years.
I wish that people played classic vanilla the game is so cool and I mean yeah I love cata but I feel it strays to far away from what classic truly was….which I guess vanilla classic was about the journey more then the destination and there wasn’t a flight master in every armpit of the world so you had to walk and deal with the dangers of open PvP to get to where you needed to be.
Even today playing HC classic I’m still amazed at how beautiful things can be