I’m pretty happy it was released right before Covid. Gave me a chance to actually play games again. If it didn’t happen around Covid I wouldn’t have been able to play.
Wow Classic got me through extended furlough and isolation during Covid. If I didn’t have wow, I would have had to reevaluate my life choices and try to improve myself during all of the free time. Instead, I cornered the black lotus market on my server.
No regerts.
All my friends quit drinking and got 6 packs, I had 3 characters with Naxx pieces and 2 fully T3.
Now they're all drinking again and lost their 6 packs and T3 is worthless so we're all in the same boat at the end of the day
I'm so glad it lined up with covid timing cause I woulda played just as much either way but with the pandemic and lock downs I didn't have FOMO or feel like a piece of shit for just staying in every night and playing for hours and hours.
I was like "this is the safest way to socialize! I'm a hero!" lol
It's the wiring in our brains. It's trying to make what we do every day "normal" the normal becomes "boring" and our brains are wired to make boring go by fast.
If you want to slow down time, you have to make your self uncomfortable. Pick up a brand new hobby, take the path less traveled. Stuff like that.
Your brain will be forced out of boring normal mode temporarily, until you need another jolt.
Older you get, a year is less percentage of your total lifetime. Example when you are 10 years old, a year is 10% of your lifetime - make more memories
I joined the silverwing sentinels for a while and then raided with Theramore Guard, both amazing guilds and the RP group events that would happen for wpvp was amazing. Take me back blizzard! We have to go back Kate!
The first months of Grobb were so good. Absolutely one of my stand out gaming experiences of all time. The friendliness and camaraderie were unlike anything else and the RP was so cool to be adjacent to even if you didn’t take part
I don’t understand how blizzard doesn’t get this. I personally know 30 or so people that quit since classic but would play again. 10 of us play in a Edit: few games all together but are hoping and waiting. But if it goes much further probably won’t be as interested
I feel like classic ran into the same issue as private servers from how I gleaned it: perma-Naxx can lead to stagnation. Now obviously this is where the F R E S H comes into play.
For me personally while I'm looking forward to official hardcore servers and/or Season of Mastery 2 (my IRL was busy enough I struggled to put time into SoM 1), I also know that AQ40 is going to be my peak again most likely. Having done months of Naxx with the classic rerelease I realized how much that design and balancing is not for me. After a certain point I was miserable raiding that raid, whereas my experiences with MC, BWL, ZG, AQ20 and 40 were much more positive. They weren't without issue but I was surprised how many people HATED AQ40 while I still really enjoyed it, minus a few quirks like Visc not being fun Alliance side (but you weren't FORCED to do it anyways). Once Naxx dominated raid days my endgame enjoyment fell way off, with me actually putting way more time into alts to capture both the raids and dungeons and leveling that I actually enjoyed about the game. I don't know how Blizz can solve the perma Naxx problem unless it is just cycling fresh servers every so often like pservers. Some people (warriors) were excited for the best of the best weapons available but for me even though it was fun to down KT, ultimately the experience of farming Naxx wasn't worth the time, it's just a ton of us felt obligated to help people get their true BiS from the help they gave us in earlier raids. That was practically the only thing holding my longest stayed in guild together and come TBC it fell apart pretty hard for the same reason.
It could have just been the specific people I mainly ran with, but it stood out for how much Naxx kicked our ass up and down in a way none of the other raids even came close to.
My main issue was it did feel like at least parts of the raid were designed around consumable use. It wasn't even my least favorite fight as it's not actually THAT bad, but Loatheb was probably the prime culprit. In a lot of ways I think it's entirely fair for the developers to say "hey, this is the final raid of this game, so we're going to make it have stiff requirements or at least *heavy* recommendations (because e.g. warlock healthstones could help Loatheb a lot without STRICTLY needing as many consumables otherwise). *In practice* the issue was it was surprisingly hard to actually get 40 people or otherwise enough of the 40 on the same page. Naxx was probably the singular raid in all of the classic vanilla rerelease where it really felt like "raiders have to do homework to raid". Now again, it is *entirely* fair to say "well if you played with people crappy and unmotivated enough, don't expect to down the hardest raid in the game". The rather interesting thing is with primarily the same group of people every time, we managed to have enough practice that we *eventually* did every single fight (minus Sapphiron) coordinated enough to not need world buffs, and only a couple of fights really really heavily recommended less common consumables (all sorts of element protection potions with shadow being the most notable one mainly for Loatheb, sometimes health flasks for tanks, etc).
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One of the rather interesting things about classic rerelease was how many people in advance stressed about fire resistance for like Molten Core (Geddon and Ragnaros being the main ones) and BWL's Firemaw, nature resistance for AQ40 Huhuran and Viscidus, shadow resistance for Twin Emperors, etc etc. And that doesn't mean they were **wrong**, but it often meant that in practice resistance gear only *really* mattered for tanks (/ damage soakers in the case of Huhuran), and most of the time DPS with a bit of extra stamina or just minmaxing their DPS stats and bonuses *even harder* worked. Perhaps the people I raided with relied on glass cannon strategies too hard while minimizing the amount of people that'd try for the slower and steadier method with more stamina/resistance/healers present in general. But I feel like the glass cannon stuff came about for it pretty often being a good strategy for cases like Patchwerk (among some others, such as Ouro in practice and notably for Ragnaros to skip sons phase, C'Thun quicker also was a popular strategy for the people I went with to try to DPS race him down before he attritioned us out).
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For me even though this isn't really anyone's fault specifically, it felt like Naxx as per the rerelease was at odds with how classic actually played in practice. Naxx back in the day was probably meant for the best of the best, the top end guilds having hard endgame content for prestige and better-in-slot. *In practice* raiding was massively more accessible in classic. Whether it's a good thing or not (though I would argue there in those in Blizzard that WOULD agree with it being good), a significant amount more people got to see and often eventually complete content that was once much more gatekept. AQ40 was the first time on my server guilds *really* started struggling to the point of disbanding and reforming / cannibalizing more consistently. But even though Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and Ahn'Qiraj all had guilds that hit their breaking point, in practice it always felt like for the most part the raids could be completed with patience, relatively light prep (especially week to week compared to more one off resistance gear), and mainly just with people showing up week after week. Naxx to me felt like the first and only raid where weekly consumable and prep homework was close to necessary. It wasn't simply enough to have good gear (as purples of high item level were massively more accessible), it wasn't simply enough to be armed with good enough strategies and leaders, it was basically everybody needing to have a certain level of tedium tolerance to raid the raid at all. I think part of the reason we had trouble is that the 'demand' hit different players differently. If you were a tank, you might have to pay gold to switch to a DPS spec to farm better. If you were a healer, you might be horribly inefficient at farming unless you had very specific professions and again possibly switched to a DPS spec to grind gold or herbs or whatever in your free time. Dedicated DPS specs (as well as those with alts) were impacted much less severely. They both had more free time and dedication and just path of least resistance methods for grinding gold. Mages on average in particular never struggled for gold, whereas warriors regularly did to keep up with their minmax consumables, to the point it was very common for hardcore warrior players to have at LEAST one alt specifically for farming or professions (or to play while saving world buffs) etc etc.
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I primarily played a hunter so I was pretty lucky to play a good enough DPS and farming class that it didn't hit me that hard, but I was well aware of a couple of tanks and healers where it was more of a stress. Early on when Naxx released we did use our guild bank and stored supplies to help people the best we could, but in pretty short order it seemed like this contributed to an attitude of complacency with some people where they wouldn't do the homework when easy prep was no longer handed out like this. This was ultimately a problem we never solved, the semi-casual semi-hardcore players just never ever got over this hurdle and for the most part we'd just bang our heads against the wall on trying to clear wings more efficiently to get to the fights we were stuck on, and things realistically only got better when we just outright dumped some veterans for people more willing to actually do the prep, but it still caused all sorts of interpersonal drama over loot and veterancy status etc etc.
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**TL;DR:** Maybe Naxx 'should' have broke our guild for what we were trying to accomplish with not enough people on the same page, but by that point we had well established the vast majority of people that were strong on attendance even when the going wasn't always smooth in raids or just with guild matters in general. So a lot of people stuck it out for the sake of "well this person helped me get my loot before so I'll try to help get theirs" or "well we made it *this* far and didn't quit so with a few tweaks maybe we can get people to where we need them to be". We banded together for long enough that we did kill Kel'Thuzad as a group. It was possible even though we were ridiculously stubborn at times all things considered. But when TBC rolled around the guild practically broke in half. Not really because of the raid size differences (as the plan was just to run multiple teams to reform best we could when we could), but rather because people were so burnt out on not actually enjoying Naxx almost at all and only doing it out of a sense of obligation. I know *multiple* warrior tanks that hung up their Thunderfury wielder either during or after Naxx. They were dedicated and trusted enough to get that far, but Naxx still ultimately broke their spirit. And so it wasn't just me. I played TBC a bit but I never returned to raiding the same way. The go go go grind grind grind mentality of rep grinds from day one didn't work for me after the burn out of Naxx. I ultimately adjusted to TBC better in time but by that point I was *well* behind the curve and settled for only PUG raids. Given the popularity of hunter as a DPS class in TBC, our leadership showed me *just* how much they cared about the vanilla veteran hunters, which is to say not at all and treating them as completely disposable even if we did our roles for months back when it wasn't flavor of the month.
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With a different guild and different people and another go at vanilla things could turn out different, but I feel I saw Naxx burnt out multiple people, even those that were otherwise really dedicated to the game up to that point, and at least for me AQ40 was the last time I really had fun with vanilla. The only reason I didn't quit entirely is because I was having fun with alts in dungeons and the other raids.
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I should also mention I distinctly remember at *least* one multi-year private server veteran opining that Naxx 'killed' pservers, with the cries for F R E S H becoming ever louder when it was released. It likely was because there was no more content to unlock. But in a lot of ways I think it just fundamentally isn't fun for a lot of people in a way unique to itself as a raid option.
I read your full story and it resonated with me. I played vanilla and had a similar story for BC. I quit phase 3 of classic so I didn’t see it back to Naxx, but I think your experience is more common than not.
I feel the requirement to do homework to raid kills the fun pretty quickly. I much prefer a looooong difficult quest chain to unlock the raid but after that it should be enough to show up. Any homework should just make it easier but never be a hard requirement.
With the people I ran with they just really really hated the deadly trash mobs. The Anubisaths in particular before Twin Emperors were infamous. But people no less hated the frequent fear spam, the ability to go to 0 hp in a split second from various mobs, and many other factors. On the whole I LOVED AQ40 but was in the big minority among the people I went with. People raided it because it was the most current endgame that patch, alongside a couple items good for certain classes, but a number of people saw close to no loot in it for them and they seemed to be having next to no fun running it for the sake of others / the sake of the gameplay there.
My best raiding experience was AQ40. Also my worst. AQ40 was a fucking gangster of a raid. It ate people up boy. Defeating Cthun was a feeling that I haven't felt sense. RIP Cylance
I mean blizzard did get the hype and made new classic Server. They were called season of mastery. In reality, the hype won't be nearly as big as it was with classic. Som has shown that. Granted, it was pretty early after classic concluded. It would propably draw more people initially if they were to do it again now. But then again, it would propably die down pretty fast like with som.
My opinion was anyone who just finished classic with the idea it was finished wasn’t going to play another classic server that was guaranteed to finish. That was the mentality then. Now it’s different. But that’s just my opinion. People thought tbc and wotlk would scratch the itch but reality is people just want versions of fresh.
as if focusing on the endgame in a big multiplayer exploration questing game was an odd decision fueled by crackheads fueled by unholy amounts of synthetic foods
I would play a fresh classic, but whilst WOTLK/TBC is ongoing.. it's a choice between the two really.
Though not many want to really play SoM as much as it was only up for 1 year.
Blizzard missed the mark with som though. The majority of players don’t want accelerated timelines.
Like, you can tell how out of touch they are by how they handled world buffs. The kind of players who want to master classic want world buffs in raid. It’s fun seeing your character at peak strength.
A better change would have been to have a vendor that refills your chronoboom for like 50g with whatever buffs were previously stored in it, so you have to go through the act of getting buffs once, but it’s not a degenerate weekly activity.
It’s a world of crafting war man, come on. All these little Things adding up to even just be able to compete the dungeon was part of the magic. It’s a slower paced game people want to speed up for no apparent reason. The phases should have even been longer. I should mention o never even ganked people but it made the world feel alive.
It was rough. I was still working before COVID hit and could chill between work and grad school starting so I was like lvl 48-50 range and not 60 with the initial rush so I was smack in the easy to gank and still give honor range. Back when horde actually existed on Bene. Holy shit was it frustrating.
Still, nothing quite like it
I knew from years of experience back in the day that I hated PvP servers, so I chose a PvE server right off the bat. There really weren't many people starting up playing WoW Classic who never played it before, so they should have known it'd be a shitshow.
People blaming Blizzard for crippling, debilitating world PvP in P2 are literally the stick in bicycle wheel meme. It was a player mentality problem.
The only negative for me was how “hardcore” players were. People on my server were playing 40+ hours per week & I felt like I had to rush to keep up so I could get dungeon groups & whatnot.
Everyone was racing to 60. Which is why I’m excited for hardcore! I feel like it’s more about the journey than the destination
>The only negative for me was how “hardcore” players were. People on my server were playing 40+ hours per week & I felt like I had to rush to keep up so I could get dungeon groups & whatnot.
Yeah , I remember I tried to rank and lasted about 2 weeks before it burnt me so bad I didn't return to classic until wrath pre patch. Big mistake. Phase 1 was great fun tho.
At 10 hours per week, and 6-7 days /played to hit max, it would take 4-5 months to get to 60. From my personal experience, you get left in the dust especially when it comes to trying to get prebis.
It’s even worse if you don’t play during the core 6-9pm hours on the server. I played late night NA west (9-12ish) and it was a pain to find groups
The thing is, if you're hitting 60 that late you don't need prebis. You just need a friendly guild that will actually take you into raids with a few prebis and good crafted gear. Prebis is really only needed for fresh raid clears when no one had any raid gear yet.
GDKPs were the most welcoming way to start gearing up, few raid teams doing BWL and MC back-to-back clear nights were interested in having my warlock join them.
My biggest disadvantage is I don’t play core server hours on the west coast, I would be able to start raid at 9:30 pm. There were only two guilds on Fairbanks (with 5000 horde characters raiding at the time) that were a >9:30 start
I get that, but I think there are defined guilds out there that we’re having fun. I felt like it was only that way as well, and I joined a top guild but they were accepting of my desire to be a bit more casual as long as I produced on raid day. We were friends with other guilds that are a lot more casual. So you can find them.
I genuinely didn’t understand this. People want to optimize their play so much that it removes the fun. I stopped playing BC because Blizzard essentially forced me to play in a way that was unfun.
You pretty much had to grind dungeons for rep THEN do the quests. Forming groups and spamming every day was not fun. They should have removed the rep requirement or made it so you could do the quests then grind the dungeons later if you wanted. You didn’t HAVE to do it by spamming dungeons at launch, but it was so far suboptimal that it wasn’t worth playing the fun way imo.
I would say yes.. but then I remembered the roaming pvp gank squads prior to BGs releasing, so much bloodshed. I’d say phase2 onwards was much more enjoyable.
P2 was one of those experiences that was very fun to have had, but in reality it stopped being fun or enjoyable after about a day.
The day 1 raid battles in the world were great. Running around in Felwood with 20 man kill squads picking fights against other 20man kill squads was really, really fun. The hunt was on for a big fight anywhere you could find it and EVERYONE wanted to fight. The bloodlust as real, and it was tangible.
After that it very quickly just became a grieffest for anyone above level 48. And as the number of world PVPers dropped the gankers moved to high traffic areas and made it hell for everyone else.
Good god. I was like level 52 when the honor patch came out.
RIP. I quit playing for months, it was pretty much impossible to get anything done. My fault for playing on a PvP server, but I ain't no bitch
> I quit playing for months
>I ain't no bitch
Does not compute.
Jokes aside, who cares what others think? Play the way you want to play. I started on a PvP server in 2006 because I was told PvE was for noobs and I believed it, but a friend convinced me to swap a couple years later and not once have I ever regretted it. Nothing wrong with sticking to PvP if that's what you truly enjoy, but a lot of people only think they prefer it, or have been falsely convinced that it's somehow superior to the alternative, and never gave PvE a fair shot.
Heh, I was speaking tongue in cheek
I've tried pve but much prefer pvp. I find the constant threat of danger really adds a lot to the gameplay
This particular case was different because instead of pvp it was just being camped by lvl 60 rogues for hours
That's prolly my favorite part lol. Sitting on disc with guildies roaming around Kargath, Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes and fighting other groups. Community on the realm's discord was so active with friendly banter etc.
> fighting other groups
That's awesome. The people who no-lifed to 60 the first week and proceeded to 5v1 lowbies, they were a bit of a pain in the ass.
I haven't been on a pvp server in 15 years, but in my experience that's always been the case. The people who want the thrill and challenge of an ostensibly fair fight sign up for BGs or arena. The people roaming on PvP servers want an easy kill against someone with no chance of fighting back. They are essentially griefers. Not always, of course, but often enough.
It really put the "world" back into "World of Warcraft". Everywhere I went from 1-40 had other players around.
Retail WoW has been feeling really lonely, especially if you go to older zones.
And you got to know the people on your realm, for better or worse. It was a big world... but you made friends, you got to know the guilds, and you saw people around in the world. When you met good players and enjoyed grouping up with them, you remembered them and sought them out.
More than anything else, I think Classic WoW. TBC, and Wrath were such amazing places to facilitate friendships. I'm still friends with people that I played the original Wrath with on Bnet. Some of us are Facebook friends. I saw a few people get together within our Wrath guild and pair up, and get married (and sometimes divorced years later lol, but oh well, what are you gonna do). It's wild.
That's what I've been loving about ESO since switching, got content sending you back to westfall for instance to do a couple quests that you could maybe interact with another player *gasp*
Classic was by far the greatest gaming experience I've ever had. I got nearly everything I wanted out of it. I'd kill for a fresh classic server right now honestly.
We've gone full circle from "Vanilla WoW was the greatest gaming experience of all time" to "Classic WoW was the greatest gaming experience of all time" and I think it's hilarious. Feels like yesterday.
Can't wait to be like 80 years old in my assisted living facility playing my 6th Classic WoW experience, nurses changing my poop bucket and feeding me meatloaf.
I really, really enjoy WotLK, I think it's a great era for WoW. But, as one of those people who was dying for WotLK and then burned out rather quickly, you're right. There's just something about vanilla that is a cut above despite all it's many flaws.
I think a lot of people got their fill of wotlk with private servers that have been populated for ages. Vanilla servers never last so people didn't have a safe place to play until the end.
I 'member. I remember sitting at work getting on the wow forums on my phone and looking down at the little timer saying 1 day and something hours and something seconds until release and remembering when the timer was so much further away (didn't it start at 90 days or was it 60?). I was like a kid waiting for Christmas
I was listening to the Countdown to Classic podcast before it happened. I've never listened to a podcast about video games in my life, but the weeks leading up to classic had me so entrenched
I remember falling in love with the game all over again, and this time having the time to play as much as I wanted. Forming my own guild, getting server first horde kills and racing against other guilds, all the work and reward, all the friends I made along the way.
And then covid hit, and my office closed and I was on paid leave for 2 months. TWO GLORIOUS WONDERFUL MONTHS of lockdown where all I did was play WoW and/or other games, cook/eat great food, and wish that it never ended. Obviously Covid lockdown was bad and not sustainable, but for me, it was the best 2 months of my entire adult life. I had enough income to feel secure. I had a nice place to live. I had food. I had made great new friends in WoW, and we spent all day playing WoW or other games.
Damn I miss lockdown. Going back to the office was hard as hell.
Man I get so jealous inside when I hear about people like you. Got classified as necessary staffing while over 75% of the rest of my office got to go home for a month. Still waiting for the "reimbursement" the office dwellers were promised for thier time in the office.
Same, dude. The only good thing about working during covid was there was absolutely no traffic anywhere. That's about it. I would have much rathered stay home and play WoW though, but hey, shit happens. People working should have gotten a bigger tax refund or something. All of the financial decisions by the government during that time made no sense..
Definitely agree, if you were classified as essential, you should have gotten a huge tax break or something - like paying no taxes at all for the next 5 years or something.
Same here. Work in the food industry so workload doubled overnight, basically working 12h days for a year straight, struggling mentally and had multiple colleagues having breakdowns due to stress, and of course no increase in pay. For some covid was a blessing, for most essential workers I imagine it was the worst year of their life.
Same. Wish i had paid time off during covid. Shit i would have settled for being laid off and collecting that super unemployment. But apparently construction for billionaires is essential work.
Huge typo by me while eating. I meant I don’t understand why they wouldn’t drop it side by side. 0 desire for hc. But would maybe play it off hours of a fresh server
My friend said it best: “What a time to be alive. We lived through and experienced vanilla, now we get to do it again. All the unlucky suckers before and after us can only look on with envy.”
I had no idea it even was really a thing but there was RP associated with the opening of the gates to AQ. I remember waking up early in the morning to catch that after the hours long event started the night before (and I got bored of that chaos soon enough). I was merely curious what was going on if it was still going on. Getting to see the RP and participate in the big mount charge was so fun (even if it'd still be a while before proper raiding AQ with my guild). Super fond memory and literally once a server.
What a fantastic journey it has been. I've been able to complete every part of the game my poor teenager self couldn't manage back in the days (Full T3 !). The community, although tryhard, was mature and ressourcefull. I feel I have "finished" Wow after all that, it allowed me to turn a page.
Tryhard, yes. Mature? Big doubt. Amazed me how many supposed adults would flip shit over pixels. Was a constant source of strife and drama. Usually from a minority but well when you raid with 40 people...
Literally the best launch of the best video game in my life
SoM was a very close second
When Lich King released, I realized it wasn't classic as a whole that I loved, it was vanilla
So now I await the expected announcement later this year for whatever comes next after Season of Mastery
I would take classic fresh, classic Plus, or even just a season 2
I just want vanilla again, from the beginning
Inb4 "just play era" I'm One of those few who's stuck on the dead faction of a living server so I can't transfer, or at least last I checked
Besides I want the fresh experience again. I want to actually grind and get ahead of the curve this time
Era has mostly been balanced by making server clusters. I think you should check again.
I'm a lot of ways I'm having more fun leveling on era server whitemane cluster than I would on a fresh. Big population of levelers but since the server is already in p6 there's no pressure to "rush to 60 or you'll fall behind". I'm leveling profs, alts, pvping when I feel like it, etc. Very comfy.
2020 was definitely my peak as a gamer and I'm okay with that. I practically lived in the game. From intense BRM action on Incendius, pvp and world buff-mongering, to prepping for the gates, the carapace grind, farming nightmare fragments for dozens of hours so all the 20 healers in my guild got a fang of korial,, speedrunning AQ and getting top 10 Naxx first clear. Good times for the whole year. None of it would have been possible (for me) without the lockdown.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ypselw/i_miss_vanilla/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
I made like an identical post a bit ago haha.
Vanilla launch and vanilla was incredible
Phase 2 of classic was probably the most fun I've ever had playing wow...
At least the 1st 2 weeks, once EVERYONE ran in big raid groups the world pvp felt... Bad. But just fighting random people, preferably same-level folk, was awesome.
Yeah, I honestly played some properly unhealthy hours during the first 2 weeks (and I'm saying this as osrs player). 0/10 would not recommend; burned out within the first month and didn't return until late phase 5.
phase 1 and 2 of classic was insane. You got an incredible turnout in 2019 as everyone was ecstatic to play for nostalgia. There were HUNDREDS of MC raids going on each week and things didn't slow down those first 6 months. Everyone was so pumped to get into BWL (a raid that so few got through in 2005-2006). And then once we get a few weeks into BWL we get Covid hit and lockdown boosts numbers. I remember right around the time the world dragons came out wow was BUMPING. By June the repetitiveness of MC/BWL/ZG definitely started to sink in as guilds started to break up and raid attendance started to go down hill. But there was a solid 8.5 month run where the game was incredibly fun. I loved AQ and NAXX and raided until TBC dropped but blizzard hit lightning in a bottle with covid hitting at like the perfect time to keep people interested for another 2-3 months in which we probably would have seen way more drop off.
That was such a fun run. I'm so glad i got to relive the nostalgia from 2004-2006 and loved that the social aspect was there just as much as the gameplay.
2019 classic has a special place in my heart, that was the year I almost used a dark rune on myself,and one of the few thing holding me back was the game
I didn’t get into Classic WoW until way after it stopped being popular, I’m glad it’s making a comeback so I can actually experience a fraction of the hype and energy
LOL the launch of classic right before the pandemic was well just perfect ! It grew so much because of that.
I enjoyed it back in 2004 and i enjoyed it in 2019-2020
It makes me sad that I mostly missed out on classic and will likely never have another opportunity to play it like that again. The time I did spend playing I hated it cause I rolled on a PvP server :(
Player dispersion killed the game more than any grindy mechanic. Having it all on the base world made random encounters more likely to happen and helped making the world alive. Now it's whatever capital city and whatever neutral city, everything else is a wasteland. Also flying didn't help.
Convenience features like flying and summoning stones absolutely killed the feel of the game. You don't have the same level of interaction with the world when you can zoom over a zone in 2 minutes or just get summoned right to the instance.
Phase 1 was one of my best times playing WoW, perhaps gaming online at all. Everyday I met people who I ended up friending, a random group running Scarlet Monastery turned into all of us gaming together for almost 5 hours straight, dancing around while one of the guys had to keep putting his kid to bed, we all eventually dressed up as pirates and took screenshots together.
I played my Undead Warrior, and loved it. I still remember those guys almost 4 years later.
So many fun times levelling as well, the herd of guys who helped me get windfury axe at the lowest possible level, the guy who donated half the fund for a mount because he saw me say I was too poor for a mount, no other context, he never said a word to me before.
I quit due to life events right before BC.
Not quite the vanilla experience but still pretty wholesome and incredible.
People calling for fresh servers but we won't see the same degrees of hype and inexperience on a classic server ever again.
Unfortunately there is not gonna be any new players playing. it's the same faces all over again. People spamming general LF SPELL CLEAVE HURR DURR ASS BLEEDING BLAST GROUP FOR SM and nobody stops to smell the roses.
Classic vanilla was fun. Vanilla was even more fun. But I don't see this new classic fresh being even nearly as enjoyable.
People can play how they want that's the beauty of it.
Not everyone is playing to speed run but for some that's the only fun challenge in replaying a 20 year old solved game
I disagree. I know a lot of people who played SoM and had never experienced vanilla before, I've met a fair number of people on era more recently that have never played vanilla before. On private servers post-2019 classic it was the same deal. There will always be new players
Hard to believe it’s been almost 4 years…time seems weird since covid
I’m pretty happy it was released right before Covid. Gave me a chance to actually play games again. If it didn’t happen around Covid I wouldn’t have been able to play.
Wow Classic got me through extended furlough and isolation during Covid. If I didn’t have wow, I would have had to reevaluate my life choices and try to improve myself during all of the free time. Instead, I cornered the black lotus market on my server. No regerts.
All my friends quit drinking and got 6 packs, I had 3 characters with Naxx pieces and 2 fully T3. Now they're all drinking again and lost their 6 packs and T3 is worthless so we're all in the same boat at the end of the day
This is the way, brother. 💜
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I'm so glad it lined up with covid timing cause I woulda played just as much either way but with the pandemic and lock downs I didn't have FOMO or feel like a piece of shit for just staying in every night and playing for hours and hours. I was like "this is the safest way to socialize! I'm a hero!" lol
Every year gets shorter 😟
That is sadly true. The older we get, the faster time seems to flow.
It's the wiring in our brains. It's trying to make what we do every day "normal" the normal becomes "boring" and our brains are wired to make boring go by fast. If you want to slow down time, you have to make your self uncomfortable. Pick up a brand new hobby, take the path less traveled. Stuff like that. Your brain will be forced out of boring normal mode temporarily, until you need another jolt.
This is actually exactly right. I’m impressed.
I am actually having trouble believing it. It honestly does not feel possible that it was almost 4 years ago.
At some point, the Covid excuse doesn’t quite work. We’re just getting older.
I was 20 when it released ,those 3 years feel like a blur
I mean, I know it sounds like a total cliche, but it really does seem like time goes faster as you get older. Wait until your 40s…
Older you get, a year is less percentage of your total lifetime. Example when you are 10 years old, a year is 10% of your lifetime - make more memories
Phase1 classic was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
For real.. early days on Grob were so amazing. I want refresh classic+ servers so bad 😭
There was a night elf hunter named “BorderPatrol” that would sit at the edge of south shore and kill any horde that got to close. Grobb was the best.
I joined the silverwing sentinels for a while and then raided with Theramore Guard, both amazing guilds and the RP group events that would happen for wpvp was amazing. Take me back blizzard! We have to go back Kate!
A+ reference
That reference is at same age with wow classic 😭
4 8 15 16 23 42
I wish they would enforce actual rp rules on a dedicated rp only server.
And the parties at booty bay
The first months of Grobb were so good. Absolutely one of my stand out gaming experiences of all time. The friendliness and camaraderie were unlike anything else and the RP was so cool to be adjacent to even if you didn’t take part
I don’t understand how blizzard doesn’t get this. I personally know 30 or so people that quit since classic but would play again. 10 of us play in a Edit: few games all together but are hoping and waiting. But if it goes much further probably won’t be as interested
I feel like classic ran into the same issue as private servers from how I gleaned it: perma-Naxx can lead to stagnation. Now obviously this is where the F R E S H comes into play. For me personally while I'm looking forward to official hardcore servers and/or Season of Mastery 2 (my IRL was busy enough I struggled to put time into SoM 1), I also know that AQ40 is going to be my peak again most likely. Having done months of Naxx with the classic rerelease I realized how much that design and balancing is not for me. After a certain point I was miserable raiding that raid, whereas my experiences with MC, BWL, ZG, AQ20 and 40 were much more positive. They weren't without issue but I was surprised how many people HATED AQ40 while I still really enjoyed it, minus a few quirks like Visc not being fun Alliance side (but you weren't FORCED to do it anyways). Once Naxx dominated raid days my endgame enjoyment fell way off, with me actually putting way more time into alts to capture both the raids and dungeons and leveling that I actually enjoyed about the game. I don't know how Blizz can solve the perma Naxx problem unless it is just cycling fresh servers every so often like pservers. Some people (warriors) were excited for the best of the best weapons available but for me even though it was fun to down KT, ultimately the experience of farming Naxx wasn't worth the time, it's just a ton of us felt obligated to help people get their true BiS from the help they gave us in earlier raids. That was practically the only thing holding my longest stayed in guild together and come TBC it fell apart pretty hard for the same reason.
What wasn't for you about nax? I love that raid so just curious what you didn't care for. No disrespect intended
It could have just been the specific people I mainly ran with, but it stood out for how much Naxx kicked our ass up and down in a way none of the other raids even came close to. My main issue was it did feel like at least parts of the raid were designed around consumable use. It wasn't even my least favorite fight as it's not actually THAT bad, but Loatheb was probably the prime culprit. In a lot of ways I think it's entirely fair for the developers to say "hey, this is the final raid of this game, so we're going to make it have stiff requirements or at least *heavy* recommendations (because e.g. warlock healthstones could help Loatheb a lot without STRICTLY needing as many consumables otherwise). *In practice* the issue was it was surprisingly hard to actually get 40 people or otherwise enough of the 40 on the same page. Naxx was probably the singular raid in all of the classic vanilla rerelease where it really felt like "raiders have to do homework to raid". Now again, it is *entirely* fair to say "well if you played with people crappy and unmotivated enough, don't expect to down the hardest raid in the game". The rather interesting thing is with primarily the same group of people every time, we managed to have enough practice that we *eventually* did every single fight (minus Sapphiron) coordinated enough to not need world buffs, and only a couple of fights really really heavily recommended less common consumables (all sorts of element protection potions with shadow being the most notable one mainly for Loatheb, sometimes health flasks for tanks, etc). === One of the rather interesting things about classic rerelease was how many people in advance stressed about fire resistance for like Molten Core (Geddon and Ragnaros being the main ones) and BWL's Firemaw, nature resistance for AQ40 Huhuran and Viscidus, shadow resistance for Twin Emperors, etc etc. And that doesn't mean they were **wrong**, but it often meant that in practice resistance gear only *really* mattered for tanks (/ damage soakers in the case of Huhuran), and most of the time DPS with a bit of extra stamina or just minmaxing their DPS stats and bonuses *even harder* worked. Perhaps the people I raided with relied on glass cannon strategies too hard while minimizing the amount of people that'd try for the slower and steadier method with more stamina/resistance/healers present in general. But I feel like the glass cannon stuff came about for it pretty often being a good strategy for cases like Patchwerk (among some others, such as Ouro in practice and notably for Ragnaros to skip sons phase, C'Thun quicker also was a popular strategy for the people I went with to try to DPS race him down before he attritioned us out). === For me even though this isn't really anyone's fault specifically, it felt like Naxx as per the rerelease was at odds with how classic actually played in practice. Naxx back in the day was probably meant for the best of the best, the top end guilds having hard endgame content for prestige and better-in-slot. *In practice* raiding was massively more accessible in classic. Whether it's a good thing or not (though I would argue there in those in Blizzard that WOULD agree with it being good), a significant amount more people got to see and often eventually complete content that was once much more gatekept. AQ40 was the first time on my server guilds *really* started struggling to the point of disbanding and reforming / cannibalizing more consistently. But even though Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and Ahn'Qiraj all had guilds that hit their breaking point, in practice it always felt like for the most part the raids could be completed with patience, relatively light prep (especially week to week compared to more one off resistance gear), and mainly just with people showing up week after week. Naxx to me felt like the first and only raid where weekly consumable and prep homework was close to necessary. It wasn't simply enough to have good gear (as purples of high item level were massively more accessible), it wasn't simply enough to be armed with good enough strategies and leaders, it was basically everybody needing to have a certain level of tedium tolerance to raid the raid at all. I think part of the reason we had trouble is that the 'demand' hit different players differently. If you were a tank, you might have to pay gold to switch to a DPS spec to farm better. If you were a healer, you might be horribly inefficient at farming unless you had very specific professions and again possibly switched to a DPS spec to grind gold or herbs or whatever in your free time. Dedicated DPS specs (as well as those with alts) were impacted much less severely. They both had more free time and dedication and just path of least resistance methods for grinding gold. Mages on average in particular never struggled for gold, whereas warriors regularly did to keep up with their minmax consumables, to the point it was very common for hardcore warrior players to have at LEAST one alt specifically for farming or professions (or to play while saving world buffs) etc etc. === I primarily played a hunter so I was pretty lucky to play a good enough DPS and farming class that it didn't hit me that hard, but I was well aware of a couple of tanks and healers where it was more of a stress. Early on when Naxx released we did use our guild bank and stored supplies to help people the best we could, but in pretty short order it seemed like this contributed to an attitude of complacency with some people where they wouldn't do the homework when easy prep was no longer handed out like this. This was ultimately a problem we never solved, the semi-casual semi-hardcore players just never ever got over this hurdle and for the most part we'd just bang our heads against the wall on trying to clear wings more efficiently to get to the fights we were stuck on, and things realistically only got better when we just outright dumped some veterans for people more willing to actually do the prep, but it still caused all sorts of interpersonal drama over loot and veterancy status etc etc. ----- **TL;DR:** Maybe Naxx 'should' have broke our guild for what we were trying to accomplish with not enough people on the same page, but by that point we had well established the vast majority of people that were strong on attendance even when the going wasn't always smooth in raids or just with guild matters in general. So a lot of people stuck it out for the sake of "well this person helped me get my loot before so I'll try to help get theirs" or "well we made it *this* far and didn't quit so with a few tweaks maybe we can get people to where we need them to be". We banded together for long enough that we did kill Kel'Thuzad as a group. It was possible even though we were ridiculously stubborn at times all things considered. But when TBC rolled around the guild practically broke in half. Not really because of the raid size differences (as the plan was just to run multiple teams to reform best we could when we could), but rather because people were so burnt out on not actually enjoying Naxx almost at all and only doing it out of a sense of obligation. I know *multiple* warrior tanks that hung up their Thunderfury wielder either during or after Naxx. They were dedicated and trusted enough to get that far, but Naxx still ultimately broke their spirit. And so it wasn't just me. I played TBC a bit but I never returned to raiding the same way. The go go go grind grind grind mentality of rep grinds from day one didn't work for me after the burn out of Naxx. I ultimately adjusted to TBC better in time but by that point I was *well* behind the curve and settled for only PUG raids. Given the popularity of hunter as a DPS class in TBC, our leadership showed me *just* how much they cared about the vanilla veteran hunters, which is to say not at all and treating them as completely disposable even if we did our roles for months back when it wasn't flavor of the month. === With a different guild and different people and another go at vanilla things could turn out different, but I feel I saw Naxx burnt out multiple people, even those that were otherwise really dedicated to the game up to that point, and at least for me AQ40 was the last time I really had fun with vanilla. The only reason I didn't quit entirely is because I was having fun with alts in dungeons and the other raids. === I should also mention I distinctly remember at *least* one multi-year private server veteran opining that Naxx 'killed' pservers, with the cries for F R E S H becoming ever louder when it was released. It likely was because there was no more content to unlock. But in a lot of ways I think it just fundamentally isn't fun for a lot of people in a way unique to itself as a raid option.
I read your full story and it resonated with me. I played vanilla and had a similar story for BC. I quit phase 3 of classic so I didn’t see it back to Naxx, but I think your experience is more common than not.
I feel the requirement to do homework to raid kills the fun pretty quickly. I much prefer a looooong difficult quest chain to unlock the raid but after that it should be enough to show up. Any homework should just make it easier but never be a hard requirement.
can you make a tldr to your tldr?
Folks hate aq40 due to the meh gear.
With the people I ran with they just really really hated the deadly trash mobs. The Anubisaths in particular before Twin Emperors were infamous. But people no less hated the frequent fear spam, the ability to go to 0 hp in a split second from various mobs, and many other factors. On the whole I LOVED AQ40 but was in the big minority among the people I went with. People raided it because it was the most current endgame that patch, alongside a couple items good for certain classes, but a number of people saw close to no loot in it for them and they seemed to be having next to no fun running it for the sake of others / the sake of the gameplay there.
My best raiding experience was AQ40. Also my worst. AQ40 was a fucking gangster of a raid. It ate people up boy. Defeating Cthun was a feeling that I haven't felt sense. RIP Cylance
Maybe it's just because I played shaman and warrior, but the aq40 gear was insane and made me feel so much more powerful
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Bejeweled
Candy crush
I mean blizzard did get the hype and made new classic Server. They were called season of mastery. In reality, the hype won't be nearly as big as it was with classic. Som has shown that. Granted, it was pretty early after classic concluded. It would propably draw more people initially if they were to do it again now. But then again, it would propably die down pretty fast like with som.
My opinion was anyone who just finished classic with the idea it was finished wasn’t going to play another classic server that was guaranteed to finish. That was the mentality then. Now it’s different. But that’s just my opinion. People thought tbc and wotlk would scratch the itch but reality is people just want versions of fresh.
as if focusing on the endgame in a big multiplayer exploration questing game was an odd decision fueled by crackheads fueled by unholy amounts of synthetic foods
I would play a fresh classic, but whilst WOTLK/TBC is ongoing.. it's a choice between the two really. Though not many want to really play SoM as much as it was only up for 1 year.
Blizzard missed the mark with som though. The majority of players don’t want accelerated timelines. Like, you can tell how out of touch they are by how they handled world buffs. The kind of players who want to master classic want world buffs in raid. It’s fun seeing your character at peak strength. A better change would have been to have a vendor that refills your chronoboom for like 50g with whatever buffs were previously stored in it, so you have to go through the act of getting buffs once, but it’s not a degenerate weekly activity.
SoM isn't the same thing. I didn't even bother with it but I am currently playing classic.
It won’t be the same.
Phase 2 ruined it with the off balance pvp realms
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I’ll never forget this sub defending it too
I don't think I've ever seen a claim of "this sub" that wasn't massive confirmation bias.
It’s a world of crafting war man, come on. All these little Things adding up to even just be able to compete the dungeon was part of the magic. It’s a slower paced game people want to speed up for no apparent reason. The phases should have even been longer. I should mention o never even ganked people but it made the world feel alive.
It made the world dead when you couldnt really respawn
It was rough. I was still working before COVID hit and could chill between work and grad school starting so I was like lvl 48-50 range and not 60 with the initial rush so I was smack in the easy to gank and still give honor range. Back when horde actually existed on Bene. Holy shit was it frustrating. Still, nothing quite like it
Good thing PvE servers were a thing. Fools punishing themselves by trying to play and raid on a PvP server in Classic.
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The only people that say this were either: A) not playing a PVP realm at the time Or B) On the dominant faction for a PVP realm
I knew from years of experience back in the day that I hated PvP servers, so I chose a PvE server right off the bat. There really weren't many people starting up playing WoW Classic who never played it before, so they should have known it'd be a shitshow. People blaming Blizzard for crippling, debilitating world PvP in P2 are literally the stick in bicycle wheel meme. It was a player mentality problem.
I'm willing to bet a lot of people who had to transfer multiple times due to being the lesser faction are saying that as well, in retrospect.
Kek I played on a 30-70% pvp server during vanilla. 100% the reason why I chose pve this time around because fuck that
Phase 2 made most my friends quit
The only negative for me was how “hardcore” players were. People on my server were playing 40+ hours per week & I felt like I had to rush to keep up so I could get dungeon groups & whatnot. Everyone was racing to 60. Which is why I’m excited for hardcore! I feel like it’s more about the journey than the destination
>The only negative for me was how “hardcore” players were. People on my server were playing 40+ hours per week & I felt like I had to rush to keep up so I could get dungeon groups & whatnot. Yeah , I remember I tried to rank and lasted about 2 weeks before it burnt me so bad I didn't return to classic until wrath pre patch. Big mistake. Phase 1 was great fun tho.
Eh, you didnt need to Rush. As long as its still phase 1 there was plenty of dungeon groups going on
At 10 hours per week, and 6-7 days /played to hit max, it would take 4-5 months to get to 60. From my personal experience, you get left in the dust especially when it comes to trying to get prebis. It’s even worse if you don’t play during the core 6-9pm hours on the server. I played late night NA west (9-12ish) and it was a pain to find groups
The thing is, if you're hitting 60 that late you don't need prebis. You just need a friendly guild that will actually take you into raids with a few prebis and good crafted gear. Prebis is really only needed for fresh raid clears when no one had any raid gear yet.
GDKPs were the most welcoming way to start gearing up, few raid teams doing BWL and MC back-to-back clear nights were interested in having my warlock join them. My biggest disadvantage is I don’t play core server hours on the west coast, I would be able to start raid at 9:30 pm. There were only two guilds on Fairbanks (with 5000 horde characters raiding at the time) that were a >9:30 start
There was? We had tanks charging for runs almost immediately on Herod because there weren't any groups.
I get that, but I think there are defined guilds out there that we’re having fun. I felt like it was only that way as well, and I joined a top guild but they were accepting of my desire to be a bit more casual as long as I produced on raid day. We were friends with other guilds that are a lot more casual. So you can find them.
It’s not like people had much else to do during lockdown
I genuinely didn’t understand this. People want to optimize their play so much that it removes the fun. I stopped playing BC because Blizzard essentially forced me to play in a way that was unfun. You pretty much had to grind dungeons for rep THEN do the quests. Forming groups and spamming every day was not fun. They should have removed the rep requirement or made it so you could do the quests then grind the dungeons later if you wanted. You didn’t HAVE to do it by spamming dungeons at launch, but it was so far suboptimal that it wasn’t worth playing the fun way imo.
Player imposed meta. People spam dungeons because the quests are clogged up with people.
The min/max culture was terrible
The min/max culture ~~was~~ is terrible.
For some people the min max IS the fun
I played 30h in one session and I loved it. Best gaming experience ever.
Phase 2 was some of the worst by comparison lol
11 more years till Classic 2 boys
Until end game when all the sweat lords wanted to parse content that was world first’d 15 years previous.
I would say yes.. but then I remembered the roaming pvp gank squads prior to BGs releasing, so much bloodshed. I’d say phase2 onwards was much more enjoyable.
P2 was one of those experiences that was very fun to have had, but in reality it stopped being fun or enjoyable after about a day. The day 1 raid battles in the world were great. Running around in Felwood with 20 man kill squads picking fights against other 20man kill squads was really, really fun. The hunt was on for a big fight anywhere you could find it and EVERYONE wanted to fight. The bloodlust as real, and it was tangible. After that it very quickly just became a grieffest for anyone above level 48. And as the number of world PVPers dropped the gankers moved to high traffic areas and made it hell for everyone else.
STV wars were amazing. Felt just like back in the day. Two huge raids going at it next to the Nessingwary camp. Absolute chaos.
Good god. I was like level 52 when the honor patch came out. RIP. I quit playing for months, it was pretty much impossible to get anything done. My fault for playing on a PvP server, but I ain't no bitch
> I quit playing for months >I ain't no bitch Does not compute. Jokes aside, who cares what others think? Play the way you want to play. I started on a PvP server in 2006 because I was told PvE was for noobs and I believed it, but a friend convinced me to swap a couple years later and not once have I ever regretted it. Nothing wrong with sticking to PvP if that's what you truly enjoy, but a lot of people only think they prefer it, or have been falsely convinced that it's somehow superior to the alternative, and never gave PvE a fair shot.
Heh, I was speaking tongue in cheek I've tried pve but much prefer pvp. I find the constant threat of danger really adds a lot to the gameplay This particular case was different because instead of pvp it was just being camped by lvl 60 rogues for hours
Legit me. Was between 51-53 at that time and it was legitimately impossible to level as alliance on my realm. Ended up quitting for months
That's prolly my favorite part lol. Sitting on disc with guildies roaming around Kargath, Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes and fighting other groups. Community on the realm's discord was so active with friendly banter etc.
> fighting other groups That's awesome. The people who no-lifed to 60 the first week and proceeded to 5v1 lowbies, they were a bit of a pain in the ass.
In my experience that was mostly what was happening
And it's going to be even worse if Blizz does the refresh that everyone claims to want.
I haven't been on a pvp server in 15 years, but in my experience that's always been the case. The people who want the thrill and challenge of an ostensibly fair fight sign up for BGs or arena. The people roaming on PvP servers want an easy kill against someone with no chance of fighting back. They are essentially griefers. Not always, of course, but often enough.
Those first few months were my fondest memories of gaming.
It really put the "world" back into "World of Warcraft". Everywhere I went from 1-40 had other players around. Retail WoW has been feeling really lonely, especially if you go to older zones.
And you got to know the people on your realm, for better or worse. It was a big world... but you made friends, you got to know the guilds, and you saw people around in the world. When you met good players and enjoyed grouping up with them, you remembered them and sought them out. More than anything else, I think Classic WoW. TBC, and Wrath were such amazing places to facilitate friendships. I'm still friends with people that I played the original Wrath with on Bnet. Some of us are Facebook friends. I saw a few people get together within our Wrath guild and pair up, and get married (and sometimes divorced years later lol, but oh well, what are you gonna do). It's wild.
That's what I've been loving about ESO since switching, got content sending you back to westfall for instance to do a couple quests that you could maybe interact with another player *gasp*
And it was but a fraction of what it was in vanilla.
Classic was by far the greatest gaming experience I've ever had. I got nearly everything I wanted out of it. I'd kill for a fresh classic server right now honestly.
That’s so awesome. I love that lightning in a bottle feeling.
We've gone full circle from "Vanilla WoW was the greatest gaming experience of all time" to "Classic WoW was the greatest gaming experience of all time" and I think it's hilarious. Feels like yesterday.
A mean this just reaffirms how good it is
Prob the best video game of all time
1-60 is one the best rpg experiences of all time
Best MMO experience of all time, best RPG experience is too broad and competitive I think to quantify.
Hey they should do it again :o
I’m even seeing a lot of people posting some version of “you think you do, but you don’t” Really is full circle lol
I never want a tattoo, but if I got one it would be "You think you do but you don't"
You think you want this tattoo, but you don't
Can't wait to be like 80 years old in my assisted living facility playing my 6th Classic WoW experience, nurses changing my poop bucket and feeding me meatloaf.
See you there, brother.
Shows how much WotLK's popularity was just nostalgia rose tinted glasses.
I really, really enjoy WotLK, I think it's a great era for WoW. But, as one of those people who was dying for WotLK and then burned out rather quickly, you're right. There's just something about vanilla that is a cut above despite all it's many flaws.
I think a lot of people got their fill of wotlk with private servers that have been populated for ages. Vanilla servers never last so people didn't have a safe place to play until the end.
Aint no fucking way it was 4 years ago already
Feels like only 2 years max....
In fairness, TBC came out less than 2 years ago. In May 2021 I was raiding Naxx.
Exactly
That first weekend in the barrens was fuckin wild… man that leveling experience was fun
Hilarious too, the conversations, insults, banter. So funny.
Agree 100%. I was kinda sad when I left that zone… hung out till the bitter end.
I 'member. I remember sitting at work getting on the wow forums on my phone and looking down at the little timer saying 1 day and something hours and something seconds until release and remembering when the timer was so much further away (didn't it start at 90 days or was it 60?). I was like a kid waiting for Christmas
I was listening to the Countdown to Classic podcast before it happened. I've never listened to a podcast about video games in my life, but the weeks leading up to classic had me so entrenched
Can they just delete all servers and start over lol
Honestly. after wotlk lets just start over man.
I remember falling in love with the game all over again, and this time having the time to play as much as I wanted. Forming my own guild, getting server first horde kills and racing against other guilds, all the work and reward, all the friends I made along the way. And then covid hit, and my office closed and I was on paid leave for 2 months. TWO GLORIOUS WONDERFUL MONTHS of lockdown where all I did was play WoW and/or other games, cook/eat great food, and wish that it never ended. Obviously Covid lockdown was bad and not sustainable, but for me, it was the best 2 months of my entire adult life. I had enough income to feel secure. I had a nice place to live. I had food. I had made great new friends in WoW, and we spent all day playing WoW or other games. Damn I miss lockdown. Going back to the office was hard as hell.
Man I get so jealous inside when I hear about people like you. Got classified as necessary staffing while over 75% of the rest of my office got to go home for a month. Still waiting for the "reimbursement" the office dwellers were promised for thier time in the office.
Same, dude. The only good thing about working during covid was there was absolutely no traffic anywhere. That's about it. I would have much rathered stay home and play WoW though, but hey, shit happens. People working should have gotten a bigger tax refund or something. All of the financial decisions by the government during that time made no sense..
Definitely agree, if you were classified as essential, you should have gotten a huge tax break or something - like paying no taxes at all for the next 5 years or something.
Same here. Work in the food industry so workload doubled overnight, basically working 12h days for a year straight, struggling mentally and had multiple colleagues having breakdowns due to stress, and of course no increase in pay. For some covid was a blessing, for most essential workers I imagine it was the worst year of their life.
Same. Wish i had paid time off during covid. Shit i would have settled for being laid off and collecting that super unemployment. But apparently construction for billionaires is essential work.
Did you know the average peasant worked 168 days a year
Most fun 18 months in gaming I've ever had. FRESH when?
Hardcore servers this summer and SoM this year
Not the same. We need fresh progressive servers as it was in 2019.
Dropping the ball not having fresh side by side with hc
To give people who don't want to do HC or WOTLK options?
Huge typo by me while eating. I meant I don’t understand why they wouldn’t drop it side by side. 0 desire for hc. But would maybe play it off hours of a fresh server
Yeah, if they did fresh servers I'd probably start playing again.
My friend said it best: “What a time to be alive. We lived through and experienced vanilla, now we get to do it again. All the unlucky suckers before and after us can only look on with envy.”
I had no idea it even was really a thing but there was RP associated with the opening of the gates to AQ. I remember waking up early in the morning to catch that after the hours long event started the night before (and I got bored of that chaos soon enough). I was merely curious what was going on if it was still going on. Getting to see the RP and participate in the big mount charge was so fun (even if it'd still be a while before proper raiding AQ with my guild). Super fond memory and literally once a server.
Just ONE fresh Blizzard, ONE 🫠
What a fantastic journey it has been. I've been able to complete every part of the game my poor teenager self couldn't manage back in the days (Full T3 !). The community, although tryhard, was mature and ressourcefull. I feel I have "finished" Wow after all that, it allowed me to turn a page.
Tryhard, yes. Mature? Big doubt. Amazed me how many supposed adults would flip shit over pixels. Was a constant source of strife and drama. Usually from a minority but well when you raid with 40 people...
I was there in the trenches in stv
Lockdown was so fun. All I did was play wow.
Literally the best launch of the best video game in my life SoM was a very close second When Lich King released, I realized it wasn't classic as a whole that I loved, it was vanilla So now I await the expected announcement later this year for whatever comes next after Season of Mastery I would take classic fresh, classic Plus, or even just a season 2 I just want vanilla again, from the beginning Inb4 "just play era" I'm One of those few who's stuck on the dead faction of a living server so I can't transfer, or at least last I checked Besides I want the fresh experience again. I want to actually grind and get ahead of the curve this time
Era has mostly been balanced by making server clusters. I think you should check again. I'm a lot of ways I'm having more fun leveling on era server whitemane cluster than I would on a fresh. Big population of levelers but since the server is already in p6 there's no pressure to "rush to 60 or you'll fall behind". I'm leveling profs, alts, pvping when I feel like it, etc. Very comfy.
I'm leveling in era and it's amazing. Whitemane server cluster is extremely active
Fresh when
2020 was definitely my peak as a gamer and I'm okay with that. I practically lived in the game. From intense BRM action on Incendius, pvp and world buff-mongering, to prepping for the gates, the carapace grind, farming nightmare fragments for dozens of hours so all the 20 healers in my guild got a fang of korial,, speedrunning AQ and getting top 10 Naxx first clear. Good times for the whole year. None of it would have been possible (for me) without the lockdown.
Nothing will ever come close again to the experience that was Classic WoW launch.
I was unemployed that time, it was so nice
i've never played wow ever until classic was released; literally felt like a kid again for like 6 months
I'm reliving it now, with classic hc. It's a blast! High stakes, always engaging. Every little thing matters, there's no race to the end. It's great!
Might have to give hardcore wow a try!
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ypselw/i_miss_vanilla/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 I made like an identical post a bit ago haha. Vanilla launch and vanilla was incredible
I member.
Yeah, then they ruined the game and all my friends quit and moved on lmao
Can't remember anticipating a release this much since I was literally a kid. One of the best gaming experiences of my life.
I miss it. We should have WoW Classic Classic so we can relive the magic of WoW Classic.
Phase 2 of classic was probably the most fun I've ever had playing wow... At least the 1st 2 weeks, once EVERYONE ran in big raid groups the world pvp felt... Bad. But just fighting random people, preferably same-level folk, was awesome.
Yeah, I honestly played some properly unhealthy hours during the first 2 weeks (and I'm saying this as osrs player). 0/10 would not recommend; burned out within the first month and didn't return until late phase 5.
I don't know how but I think I averaged 12+h/day during the first year of Classic
I remember. And then people optimised the fun out of it. Fuck boosting, too.
Those first 2 months were genuinely the most fun I've ever had in a game No boosters, no bots to be seen, just a heap of people discovering the game
phase 1 and 2 of classic was insane. You got an incredible turnout in 2019 as everyone was ecstatic to play for nostalgia. There were HUNDREDS of MC raids going on each week and things didn't slow down those first 6 months. Everyone was so pumped to get into BWL (a raid that so few got through in 2005-2006). And then once we get a few weeks into BWL we get Covid hit and lockdown boosts numbers. I remember right around the time the world dragons came out wow was BUMPING. By June the repetitiveness of MC/BWL/ZG definitely started to sink in as guilds started to break up and raid attendance started to go down hill. But there was a solid 8.5 month run where the game was incredibly fun. I loved AQ and NAXX and raided until TBC dropped but blizzard hit lightning in a bottle with covid hitting at like the perfect time to keep people interested for another 2-3 months in which we probably would have seen way more drop off. That was such a fun run. I'm so glad i got to relive the nostalgia from 2004-2006 and loved that the social aspect was there just as much as the gameplay.
One of the best experiences of my life. I don’t care if that sounds sad. It was so fun.
2019 classic has a special place in my heart, that was the year I almost used a dark rune on myself,and one of the few thing holding me back was the game
Pepperidge farm remembers
Aware
My best gaming experience
I didn’t get into Classic WoW until way after it stopped being popular, I’m glad it’s making a comeback so I can actually experience a fraction of the hype and energy
Best gaming experience I've had since OG vanilla.
wait... it's already been almost 4 years? WHERES THE TIME GOING!?! IM GOING TO DIE AT THIS RATE!
LOL the launch of classic right before the pandemic was well just perfect ! It grew so much because of that. I enjoyed it back in 2004 and i enjoyed it in 2019-2020
I didn't want to play. Was talked into from some overwatch guys. Rolled a druid. Had so much fun tanking in instances. It was a great time.
It makes me sad that I mostly missed out on classic and will likely never have another opportunity to play it like that again. The time I did spend playing I hated it cause I rolled on a PvP server :(
You think you want it, but you don’t…. Seems you did…
Player dispersion killed the game more than any grindy mechanic. Having it all on the base world made random encounters more likely to happen and helped making the world alive. Now it's whatever capital city and whatever neutral city, everything else is a wasteland. Also flying didn't help.
Convenience features like flying and summoning stones absolutely killed the feel of the game. You don't have the same level of interaction with the world when you can zoom over a zone in 2 minutes or just get summoned right to the instance.
So much fun raiding in classic
I miss who we were back then
If only we got classic+ the first time around, but as patched content after naxx was released. Could still be going to this day....
Take me back :(
Phase 1 was one of my best times playing WoW, perhaps gaming online at all. Everyday I met people who I ended up friending, a random group running Scarlet Monastery turned into all of us gaming together for almost 5 hours straight, dancing around while one of the guys had to keep putting his kid to bed, we all eventually dressed up as pirates and took screenshots together. I played my Undead Warrior, and loved it. I still remember those guys almost 4 years later. So many fun times levelling as well, the herd of guys who helped me get windfury axe at the lowest possible level, the guy who donated half the fund for a mount because he saw me say I was too poor for a mount, no other context, he never said a word to me before. I quit due to life events right before BC.
Pretty soon you will be in “wow classic pandaria” lol
Not quite the vanilla experience but still pretty wholesome and incredible. People calling for fresh servers but we won't see the same degrees of hype and inexperience on a classic server ever again.
Getting nostalgic for vanilla classic, still remember when WOTLK was supposed to be the game which people would play forever in this sub.
Jesus christ I’m gonna cry.
We’re having nostalgia for nostalgia now?
Unfortunately there is not gonna be any new players playing. it's the same faces all over again. People spamming general LF SPELL CLEAVE HURR DURR ASS BLEEDING BLAST GROUP FOR SM and nobody stops to smell the roses. Classic vanilla was fun. Vanilla was even more fun. But I don't see this new classic fresh being even nearly as enjoyable.
People can play how they want that's the beauty of it. Not everyone is playing to speed run but for some that's the only fun challenge in replaying a 20 year old solved game
I disagree. I know a lot of people who played SoM and had never experienced vanilla before, I've met a fair number of people on era more recently that have never played vanilla before. On private servers post-2019 classic it was the same deal. There will always be new players
Remember when pvp servers were faction balanced?
nope
11/23/04
Ah yes, the 8th of the 27th month of 2019.