Did you actually play "Vanilla" WoW?

[Terumi]

I agree with your sentiments exactly, Vanilla WoW made you work like hell to reach 60 and boy did it feel good when you reached it. However, I never really had to grind the way I do in Aion even back then.

[freida]

If you look back objectively, vanilla wow had way more flaws than Aion does now. Horrible class balance. Useless talent trees. Terrible itemization. Horrendous crafting system.

But whatever it did right, it was pure magic. The world had an epic feel. Dungeons and raids were fun and challenging. Combat was simple but fun. Epic AV's were priceless memories. But more importantly, vanilla wow existed at a time when mmo gamers were a less jaded lot.

If there ever was a "golden" period in mmo gaming, it was during that time and I feel that has a lot to do with how we perceive it today.

All the people who hate wow now were once madly in love with it. It was a genre defining game.

[Marina]

WoW is Darwinism, find out what people like and elaborate on that to survive.
Aion is religion, if you don't like it you'll get burned at the stake by fanatics.

ok, this is so awesome im going to post it somewhere else too where it baits more flames.

[Saintsinner]

In Vanilla WoW you didnt have to Rift to PvP. You PvPed all the time cause both sides leveled in the same places, making PvP more prevalent and exciting.

In Vanilla WoW you didnt have more bots than players playing the game.

In Vanilla WoW you didnt have level capped players in 3 weeks because people botted 24/7 to get there.

In Vanilla WOW you knew Blizzard was there and watching, and you knew they cared. This was Blizzard afterall. Blizzard ALWAYS communicated with it's player base. WTF is NCsoft doing? I've heard word one from them? And no GM support for a pay to play MMO? To me it seems that NCsoft is a snatch and grab kinda company that wants money but doesn't wanna spend money. NCsoft seems like a second rate company, while Blizzard is head and shoulders above them.

Not having 24/7 GM support in a pay to play MMO is just disgusting.

-------------------------

Originally Posted by Bollah

I did. It is amazing how the game has changed if you compare the masterpiece that is Vanilla WoW to the garbage that is WotLK. If WotLK was released as a stand alone game it would probably be the worst MMO every, even worse than AoC.

Great points. To me BC was the pinnacle of MMO gaming. The PvP was really good, resilience worked wonders and the raids were super hard. There was nothing Carebear about WoW raids or PvP. But Wotlk killed everything they had accomplished. PvP was garbage again and the raids were laugh out loud horrible.

Imo the main reason Wotlk is so terrible is because the best Blizzard Devs were sent to work on the new MMO.

Uladuar was reminiscent of older times, but was quickly nerfed into the ground because it was "too hard". If Blizzard continues to cater to cry babies, their new MMO won't be worth buying either.

[Beelzebot]

I still remember:


-AV literally lasting for days

-Questlines like "In Dreams" or "The Battle of Darrowshire"

-standing on top of the pyramid in Zul'Farrak

[Saintsinner]

Originally Posted by Searinox

.

However in later expansions casuals who are online 2 hours aday tops have pretty equal gear to a person playing 15 hours aday.. to me atleast it doesnt sound fair. Obviously companies want to make the casuals happy, afterall they are the majority.

If you play Video games 15 hours a day and many of you do, you seriously need to take a look at your life cause man you'r wasting it. Contribute to society and stop being sponges. Because no one can support themselves and play 15 hours a day. IMO its people that dont work and play all day everyday that ruin MMOs. Lets face facts, most people HAVE to work, and we should not suffer having jobs. I'm not saying hand everything to us, but make things more based on skill or no skill, not time or no time.

Why does something taking an extreme amount of time equate to being skilled? it doesn't. Why does anyone have a problem with skill > time? Because you dont have to have to have skill to get the best gear this way. So it isnt the best players with the loot, its the people with the most time to spend playing. So should anyone respect or strive to be you? or pity you? I am the latter. I sadly have a job, ya I know it sucks to be a contributing membr of society and I guess I am a carebear because I have a job, and because I go to work everyday like a good american I shouldnt be able to play MMOs because I am "carebear"even though I played Hardcore D2 and always play on the toughest servers like FFA AoC PvP and hardcore D2.

[justamemory]

Originally Posted by Marina

WoW is Darwinism, find out what people like and elaborate on that to survive.
Aion is religion, if you don't like it you'll get burned at the stake by fanatics.

ok, this is so awesome im going to post it somewhere else too where it baits more flames.

lmao classic

[Morthas]

Omg thiz thread brought tears in my eyes, such a good times good ol vanilla bur, that will NEVER return, NEVERRR

*wtb time-machine*

[Meglivorn]

I play wow since 2004 middle summer. I did all raid up to naxx in vanilla (-AQ40. The guild cleared it many times, I never becouse timing problems - never was a hc raider, 3 raid day / week is more than enough for me).
And no. Wasn't better, wasn't harder. Only people knew the game, the mechanic less. The most changes in the game is the convinient things (portals, drinks, faster craft, gathering, getting mounts much early, etc.) and the "free epics" which are not free and actually you have to play to get it, cant buy it for money (gold buyers can't buy epics, the most they can do that but a position in a raid and take the loot). But those "epics" are just purple name items, nothing like those you can get in the actual end content.
And all these changes are for the game be more accessible, fun (faster gethering, crafting), or the alts and new players have easier way to join the actual content (by fasten levelup, and get some starting gear without a half year farming of a raid instance nobody wants to go in.

The old raid bosses weren't more complex or harder than the today bosses. Ulduar maybe the best ever in the game. Onyxia is a great exapmle, she's been upgraded to 80, but have totally the same mechanics (it's even harder with additional spawns in the air phase). Yet it's easy, easier than Gruul was in TBC.

It's true that the normal modes are sometime easy. But work months on something, have the design, the models, the plans, the animations, the fight mechanics and all - and then only the 5% of the players actually sees it becouse its too hard... just plain waste of time and resources. So there is normal modes, 10 man versions, to everyone who willing to do it will be able to. And if you want challange, turn on the hard modes, and go for achievements. They WILL BE hard, and still a competition for the world first, even the first 10 success.

I don't say wow is perfect. It has many flaws, and the developement sometimes goes to the wrong way (I don't like the idea of the new lfg system, the 5man instances are way too easy (for me the release Magister Terrace is the best. It was a quick wipe even in t5 gear if didn't pay attention). I liked the tactical, cc based fights, not the todays "pull them and AoE" setting.

But overall no. Vanilla WoW wasn't better, wasn't harder and greater. This is just the nostalgie of the 'good old times' when the loot were more shiny, the monsters more scary and even the cookies were more tasty than now.

[Morthas]

Originally Posted by Saintsinner

If you play Video games 15 hours a day and many of you do, you seriously need to take a look at your life cause man you'r wasting it. Contribute to society and stop being sponges. Because no one can support themselves and play 15 hours a day. IMO its people that dont work and play all day everyday that ruin MMOs. Lets face facts, most people HAVE to work, and we should not suffer having jobs. I'm not saying hand everything to us, but make things more based on skill or no skill, not time or no time.

Why does something taking an extreme amount of time equate to being skilled? it doesn't. Why does anyone have a problem with skill > time? Because you dont have to have to have skill to get the best gear this way. So it isnt the best players with the loot, its the people with the most time to spend playing. So should anyone respect or strive to be you? or pity you? I am the latter. I sadly have a job, ya I know it sucks to be a contributing membr of society and I guess I am a carebear because I have a job, and because I go to work everyday like a good american I shouldnt be able to play MMOs because I am "carebear"even though I played Hardcore D2 and always play on the toughest servers like FFA AoC PvP and hardcore D2.

Dude you talking to a brick wall, more then 7 years ago i played Lineage2 from 0800-0100 EVERY day, clanleading/seiging/olys (hero) etc etc, i didnt care what ppl think because they are nubs anyway, they dunno and they suck, so they dont care about your guru pep-get-a-RL-talk, those ppl dont need a live, cuz ingame they dont "die" and even more important, with soo many time in a game, its hard to stop playing @ that level (glad i became more serious, cause @ those time i messed up my carreer very bad).

[Marina]

Originally Posted by Meglivorn

I play wow since 2004 middle summer. I did all raid up to naxx in vanilla (-AQ40. The guild cleared it many times, I never becouse timing problems - never was a hc raider, 3 raid day / week is more than enough for me).
And no. Wasn't better, wasn't harder. Only people knew the game, the mechanic less. The most changes in the game is the convinient things (portals, drinks, faster craft, gathering, getting mounts much early, etc.) and the "free epics" which are not free and actually you have to play to get it, cant buy it for money (gold buyers can't buy epics, the most they can do that but a position in a raid and take the loot). But those "epics" are just purple name items, nothing like those you can get in the actual end content.
And all these changes are for the game be more accessible, fun (faster gethering, crafting), or the alts and new players have easier way to join the actual content (by fasten levelup, and get some starting gear without a half year farming of a raid instance nobody wants to go in.

The old raid bosses weren't more complex or harder than the today bosses. Ulduar maybe the best ever in the game. Onyxia is a great exapmle, she's been upgraded to 80, but have totally the same mechanics (it's even harder with additional spawns in the air phase). Yet it's easy, easier than Gruul was in TBC.

It's true that the normal modes are sometime easy. But work months on something, have the design, the models, the plans, the animations, the fight mechanics and all - and then only the 5% of the players actually sees it becouse its too hard... just plain waste of time and resources. So there is normal modes, 10 man versions, to everyone who willing to do it will be able to. And if you want challange, turn on the hard modes, and go for achievements. They WILL BE hard, and still a competition for the world first, even the first 10 success.

I don't say wow is perfect. It has many flaws, and the developement sometimes goes to the wrong way (I don't like the idea of the new lfg system, the 5man instances are way too easy (for me the release Magister Terrace is the best. It was a quick wipe even in t5 gear if didn't pay attention). I liked the tactical, cc based fights, not the todays "pull them and AoE" setting.

But overall no. Vanilla WoW wasn't better, wasn't harder and greater. This is just the nostalgie of the 'good old times' when the loot were more shiny, the monsters more scary and even the cookies were more tasty than now.

Vanilla WoW was better than WOTLK the same way the wheel is still the bigger invention compared to rubber tires.

[Elenion]

Originally Posted by Mendolus

I played vanilla Warcraft starting in the fall of '05 until around the beginning of '08 when I finally quit playing full time. I gave TBC two different tries at serious play, but both times I burned out after only 4-5 months.

As far as vanilla Warcraft is concerned, there is really no comparison. Vanilla Warcraft was easily the most exciting period in my gaming life, as it was the first time I was really involved in a true MMO and it was such a golden age for the game as a whole.

In vanilla Warcraft, people stood for things, gear meant something and was a sort of status symbol, and there were conflicts over progression and goodhearted competition between the top endgame guilds. Now it is a nameless see of no-name guilds who have all cleared the content in the game, and all act like they are now entitled to wave their epeens around and treat everyone else like second class citizens. I still remember in vanilla Warcraft when people with the best gear were by and by personable and would actually go out of their way to help others out. Now you ask for a run from anyone with a single purple, and they /spit on you and call you a nub.

I was once purpled out on more than one character and occasion myself as well, but as long as I was in a good mood and asked in a courteous manner, I would usually go on runs, or help with stuff that would not directly benefit me.

As far as Aion is concerned, thus far I see no evidence that the ambiance and player base mimic vanilla Warcraft in any way, BUT the grind and the content issues, and the lack of diverse gear itemization is similar to vanilla Warcraft when I started playing it. In the fall of '05, the best you could do were dungeon blues (most of the crafting stuff at all but the endgame were just questing quality) or raiding gear (world drops at the time were fairly rare and an epic world drop was unheard of except by hearsay and rumor). Getting the best PvP gear was an arduous and sometimes ridiculous process which basically required you camp the BGs every night for 5-6 hours for weeks on end (more like months actually) to get rank. But it also meant that people like Pat (Tauren Warrior on Arthas) were some of the most famous individuals in the game at that time because they had the full PvP set, the best one you could get. No one else (that I ever saw milling around in the major cities) on the server had the full set for the longest time as Pat dominated our server's rankings for months.

For instance, when I was running Scholomance for my Dreadmist Mask in the spring of '06, I had to run it +50 times to get it to drop for me. This is not a joke, I ran it so many times that towards the end I would /kneel in front of the boss during every run before we pulled, and randomly switch between cursing the Blizzard developers or praying to the boss to drop the f$*%ing helm already or I would go insane. In the process, I saw the Headmaster's Charge staff drop not once but twice. This staff at the time had a drop rate of somewhere around 0.00001% and I saw it twice. When I got the staff, there were only a couple of people on Horde side that had it on the entire server, and the game had been out more than a year. Nowadays you ask someone to run an instance more than a handful of times and your item does not drop and they act like you're ruining their life because the gear didn't fall out of the sky into your lap and everything else in the game does (tokens anyone?).

You do not see that kind of stuff in Warcraft today, they upped the drop rate on the staff and other items like it to above 0.001% so now you even see tanks and melee wearing it just to mock the fact that it dropped so often that no one in their group rolled on it so they nabbed it for fun.

Aion seems somewhere in the middle of this, I get plenty of green drops constantly, but I have yet to get a single blue drop from LVL1-20. Maybe I just have not played enough or there are so few blue drops below 20 that I haven't seen them yet, but it does remind me of vanilla Warcraft in that respect.

I agree days of vanilla WoW were unique and memorable, I also remember Headmaster's Charge was awesome looking staff with extremely low drop rate. I also remember there are always that one particular blue gear set that took forever to drop, just because you were in the instance.

However, they moved on their policy on item drop rate to something more "accessible" for the most part. But some items will always take you 2-3 months to even see it drop because it's suppose to be random even in current expansion. They also moved away from having gear = status symbol to achievement titles and unique 310% mount, and recent addition of "heroic" level gear for clearing hard mode bosses. They also made raiding gear look different from PvP gear to set them apart. Many things were added since TBC when people started complain about wanting to look unique and separate from those of casual and PvPers, so it is not so bad as you make it sound.

Difference in vanilla WoW and Aion is, WoW let you at least get useful/decent loot for amount of time you spent if not you still have favorable chance next time. Aion is like winning a lottery with only 1st prize as a reward.

[Dabrixmgp]

The same can be true about pre Kunark Everquest. Here there are a few quests in EQ there were ZERO everything was a grind. And at least the downtime here is negligible in EQ you had to meditate by staring at your spellbook for like 10 mins to get all your mana back.

No instances meant once you got to the lower guk stage I remember wait lists that were sometimes 10-12 hours long. Also there were only a handful of camps that could get you to level 50. That means only 1 group per camp. LDCs and Bats n Bugs in SolB, Lower Guk live side near King, and Frenzy Camp, and Ghoul Lord on dead side were the only spots you could get reasonable exp to level to 50. I know some people camped the chick at the portal to fear but again only 1 person could do that.

Also people complain about lack of content at 50 here. Plane of Fear and Plane of Hate were added later and the gear was horrible with some of the stats not even matching the classes it went to. For example Blighted, the necromancer gear, had agi,dex,str on it when Int was the only stat they used.

I dont even think we have had our first major patch yet and people are saying OMG the game is dead and the Devs dont listen. If come February and things still havent changed then I will find something new but anyone who expects a game to be perfect not even 2 months after launch is just an idiot or the only game you have ever played is post 2.3 WoW which is even worse.

[justamemory]

Chocolate WoW > Vanilla WoW imo

[Aseenus]

The best part about vanilla WoW was that it didn't have flying. Aion came stock with flying.. I don't know why I thought it would be any different.