@@HamsterWheelGaming holy cow i didnt think itde work. dude your the best private server youtuber out there. been watching since feenix wow ele sham videos!
Best wow iteration. I didn't play when it was released, but I had a blast on nostalrius and when classic launched. IMO, classic needs a classic plus content on retail. New content but only on azeroth without adding new expansions and excluding the old world.
true , vanilla is dangerous and tidous unlike wotkl -now you can 2-4 shots mobs and tehy might do only 5% damage to you - petlevlling is -kill 1 or mobs and you level 1 level - blizzard realy blws - the petlevelling was a game itself but i guess devs are gready AND dumb
It's funny but it's true, once you go super-hard and powerlevel to 60 by just being stuck in tons of dungeon runs with a spellcleave group, and you've done the min-maxxing for x amount of time, you can't help but think 'hey you know what, this time I'm just gonna chill and really enjoy leveling a bit slower'
@@HamsterWheelGaming that’s what I’m doing after lvling 5 80s, 2 to 70, I’m now lvling a priest slow and steady, maybe not in vanilla because I’m in a hardcore raiding guild so I have ties to Classic WOTLK until it’s over but I’m going back and enjoying the journey of leveling in vanilla content… once Classic WOTLK is over and they just go directly to Cata and not adding a vanilla+ option or a different timeline Cata with no world revamp, I will be going back to vanilla or trying turtle WoW.
Vanilla successfully makes the leveling process part of the journey and your characters progression instead of it being an annoying chore like in modern mmos.
The zones not feeling like a leveling formula helps so much too. You don't have to level the same way twice. You can experience different zones, you can cut up the journey a different way. Each zone feels like a special location within a wider world, with it's own themes and unique charms. Modern leveling feels like a formula. Spend 2 levels per zone then move to the next.
Vanilla always attracts me because I don't need a PhD to do the raids or feel the absolute need to min/max my brains out to be considered relevant. It was just a chill game with a sense of discovery with solid character identity. Vanilla is one of the best examples of "Less is more" Plenty of things that can be fixed or done better, but overall I just don't feel like I'm put on rails with ridiculous expectations to achieve/experience endgame.
lol, I remember timing my greater heals with others in 40-man MC raid to keep the bloody tank alive, it was not "chill" and min/maxing was pretty much mandatory. The only difference is, leveling, and less chaotic instances were very much a core part of the gameplay, while later on both became rushed chores on the side, with end-game content taking up a larger and larger portion of what was defined as "the game".
Probably took me about the same with my first character. And you know what? I bet neither one of us minded that at all, because the journey was so fun.
i always felt like vanilla is the one and only evergreen version of wow no matter what expansion is out no matter what sate the game is in being good or bad vanilla is always there either on a pserver or classic era, you can always go back and have an enjoyable time playing it
I’ve never played Wow. The only MMO I have played is warhammer online: age of reckoning. How would I play vanilla WoW? Surely if I go through blizzard I’ll get the ‘latest game’ with all updates?
The three main things I love about Vanilla compared to the modern version of the game; -The world feels dangerous, you can't steamroll everything and group quests (for the very most part) REQUIRE a group, which is exactly how an MMORPG should be. -Iconic items. As early as level 50 you start planning dungeon runs or endgame questlines for your prebis items and some of the phase 1 items are BiS for a very long time. That feeling when your rogue/warrior finally gets HoJ was so awesome, unlike in modern day wow where you rush to maxlevel and get carried in mythics just to get your itemlevel up. -Your personal reputation and your guild reputation matters. If you are an asshole, a scammer or a ninjalooter you will be shunned by the community unlike in modern day where everything is x-realm and you are pretty much anonymous wherever you go
Hell yeah, the gear progression in vanilla is awesome. Getting a level 5 green weapon from a chest when you're leveling is amazing, and getting the Wingblade or Crescent Staff from Wailing Caverns always felt great too :)
It's the adventure! In classic there is SOOOOO much to explore, so many hidden paths and beautiful environments and tons of chests and rare spawns.... that's why I play. And I'm like 99% solo player by this point and I couldn't be happier! 💖💖💖
For me Vanilla was amazing. Its been so many years since i played but there was this place. A forest all burned down. I was farming and then boom and elite showed up. Man so many memories. You had to be there. It was amazing. Getting to know people was amazing. You were like family. Forget real life. Wow was my life. I made real friends. We all met up at blizzcon. Man it was awesome being young and not a care in the world. Now its all bills bills bills work work work kids kids kids. Man if i could do it all over i would in a heartbeat
I cannot agree with you more on every single thing you said! My Dad used to tell me i would regret just playing games and mostly WoW as a kid, but now at 32, married, kid, like you said just work work work bills bills bills non stop and then i can play a tiny bit of games now adays.... i would absolutely go back and do it again.. not change a thing.. some of the best times of my life were back then just playing all night with friends and getting to really know people and have a great time.. oh.. and just PLAY the game! no min maxxing and constant bs just everyone enjoying a GAME together!
Yeah man i dont think the game in its early days can be appeciated unless you were part of it. It was a whole different dynamic to what it is today. Its not just nostalgia that we all get when we think back to vanilla. It was the experiences and friendships you made along the way. The game made you socialise to progress. In all honesty for me the game went on a gradually steepeneing slope downwards the day that the dark portal opened to the outlands. It has never been the same since. I keep trying each expansion but i can never get back in to it. It was revived breifly with Nostalrius but we all know what happened to that. Then classic was releasead which was again fun but fizzled out once more. I think the only way is a Vanilla but with a slower/ different path than the dark portal.. Subtle additions and light expansions excluding flying mounts.
I just like the fact that the game is set up in stone, no need to catch up on the latest patch…no feeling of missing out, no feeling of charact value decreasing over unplayed time.
I just love how... chill and serene a game like vanilla feels. It's not overly grindy, it's just the right amount of grind per level. It's not challenging, but not a walk in the park. I feel like I think about the world that my character is positioned inside, and how it interacts with the world. I feel like and explorer, rather than a good inflicting mass genocide on unsuspecting NPCs placed haphazardly for the sake of a boilerplate quest to kill 15 mobs 5 feet away because an npc said so. Immersive gaming is at an all-time low... Pop-up notifications and menu-based gameplay has become the norm, particular due to mobile games trickling down into all forms of gaming. People just want a pachinko machine to click every and get epic loot from, rather than a 11 quest long chain deeply invested in a particular character and their quest for an adventure, finding a sweet epic item at the end of it. This is the "soul" of a game, and lots of modern game devs think no further than a barebones gameplay loop. Thankfully games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring maintain this old concept of gaming. But due to the popularity of elden ring, there was an equal amount of people crying and complaining about how little the game held your hand and forced you to go to certain places, etc. People just want to ride an amusement park roller coaster through an artificial forest full of dinosaurs and microtransactions, rather than actually experiencing the real thing and being a living, breathing member of the world of Azeroth.
For me it’s the way upgrades feel within classic. Turtle wow reminded me what made vanilla such a strong impression on my tastes for rpgs and mmos in general
I was so happy to hear your thoughts on charm and a bit more difficulty in questing and leveling. That’s what made me fall in love with vanilla. I couldn’t rush it and was forced to immerse in the areas I was exploring as it took time. Great video!
I think hardcore official will be really fun and interesting. It'll force players to stop and enjoy the game instead of rushing to 60 and that's it. I'll be coming back for it.
I'm 18 years old, so I never played vanilla, but I can easily say that Vanilla definitely has more charm than wrath and is better than wrath and is without a doubt better than any recent expansion. So it's not just all nostalgia (However maybe except for Legion cause that's when I first started playing and I think it was one of the best)
I started on Whitemane fresh on classic era, made a gnome warlock and I'm going thru the leveling all again, for the 100th time in my life, and it's so fun. The server is alive and groups easy to come by. Good to see Classic Era being played
As fun as "the journey" was in Classic, when it came to raiding/dungeons there was a LOT to be desired. Classes like Shamans and Druids could *only* *ever* heal in raids, and the only "real tank" were Warriors. Half of the classes back in Classic only had one passable spec for running dungeons and raids and leveling. Personally I prefer Wotlk despite having started playing during Classic. Wotlk still has all of the old zones from pre-Cata, but the game by 3.3.5 had introduced a few early quality of life features that *really* help, such as dual spec and level 20 mounts. Plus the vast majority of specs across ALL classes were viable!
For me it was the immersion and the stuff like long cooldowns for certain spells, the reagent requirements for some spells, the way it lowkey felt like D&D and where things feel impactful. Mana management was also great. (Altho many things can be improved) I don't like how in retail my spells off my burst feel like hitting like a wet noodle.
Alot of the FRESH folks have also moved on, so we are left with a player base that just loves being in the vanilla world of warcraft, max level or not. That does so much for the general gaming experience for the individual player.
I and a group of friends around 10 of us started playing classic again in the past couple of months, and I was instantly reminded of why it was so great. Nothing beats those player interactions out in the world
I know for myself, I was unable to play WOW when it first came out due to various reasons. Now as an adult and after trying retail for a month or so I wanted that slow burn and take my time learning and knowing the game. Retail rushed me through everything and when cut scenes happened randomly I had no idea who these characters were or why I should care for them. Now with classic, or WOTLK, I am able to take my time, meet people, and just play something casually. I get to learn the game rather than speed past everything and the locations to get to the end game as fast as I can.
The thing about Vanilla for me is that it really was about the journey. Even after starting in on endgame content, I still had reasons to play around out in the world, and not just to farm materials. I never really got bored with it before TBC came out.
there have been moments in the past where private servers made a little comeback, but never like this, turtle going from 1k to 4k active players in a few weeks says a lot. People want the old world, but with a fresh touch, class changes, new quests, new gear, etc. I really hope Turtle, Duskhaven and CoA succeed, these 3, if done right, can dictate the future of private servers IMO.
I was 9 years old early 2005. My brother bought me a level 59 undead priest named Khain. I never made it to 60. All I was doing were to stand on the roof in Ratchet smiting down Aliances arriving with the boat. As the world were smaller, I am sure people wondering why Khain never hit 60
@@du4lstrik3 Would you look at that, the superiority complex of classic players is still alive and well. Obviously, your experience isn't of value because you didn't do it the way I did. Classy stuff man.
Hello Hamsterwheel and chat whats your unbiased opinions about turtle wow pvp? im a casual gamer those days with kids and job and as much i love to i dont have enough time to spend like back in the day for wow and im worried if is a waste of time. My mai concern is some people was telling me if you hit max level the bgs are un playable because is full of players with naxx gear or other pve gear and im kinda confused. Thanks in advance for any reply i would really appreciate it
You're in Redridge and all the quest soon turn Red which are impossible to do alone. So you go to a zone with the same level range, this pushes you explore more of the world.
Turtle wow has made a few class tweaks, a dungeon group finder tool, and increased xp. You get all the atmosphere and experience of vanilla but with some much needed improvements, it's really fun.
I like that you can build classes uniquely. I really like playing a defensive rogue "tank" can't do that in retail. I like that gaining every level feels like an achievement. Running everywhere doesn't bother me.
Same, when I came back to wow after a break I missed classic tbc and wrath had dropped. I played the tail end of bc back in the day but didn’t know a thing. It’d be great to go back now with all I’ve learned and do some raiding and pvp!
i started playing wow casually just before BFA and then i took a long break. got back into wotlk and i’ve fallen in love with the grind and world exploration. i appreciate the fact that sometimes the zone will outlevel me and i’ll need to travel to another zone or another continent to catch up. All in all i think classic is perfect for me personally because i prefer playing a game to explore a world rather than rushing to end game to queue dungeons and raids infinitely
Fixing and revamping vanilla talents, expanding on the zones and concepts abandoned by Blizzard like Hyjal and The Emerald Dream, adding quests, adding new races and classes, reworking items, etc. is bringing back freshness to vanilla which is drawing people in.
honestly vanilla has always been my favorite expansion even to this day simply because it just gives me the correct vibes of an mmo from that time the zones in vanilla just looks proper fantasy world without the sci fi elements from tbc the leveling was slow but that also gave you time to absorb it i loved leveling in vanilla when wow classic released by slapping on a good show or some music on a second monitor and just sit there taking my time going through zones laughing at silly quests or seeing what sort of conversations would come from quests in general and thats actually a thing i feel got lost in later expansions sure the progresive mig stories that expansions would have was great...but something about each zone having a story of its own that wasnt really about a big bad progressing as the expansion went on just felt nice it gave us a ton of small little stories in each zone and minor conversations to obverse that just sorta happened and was not expected to lead into something else i mean sure we had the big bads and questlines leading up to them but apart from that...alot of what you actually saw in each zone was just this town having an issue they want help with or these people arguing over something and you sorta just being in the middle of it you know stuff like that it just felt nice and like the world was alive rather than making the world feel like one big movie actually thats probably a good way to put it XD vanilla wow felt like a living world or a tv show with many small things happening while later wow just felt like a big movie in each expansion
nothing gives you the vibes like vanilla :) and you're right, I really feel vanilla was a more sandbox type of game, where the later expansions felt more like you're following a linear major questline
I do really like the old vanilla when i was lvl 60 (i really didnt like the very long and exhausting way to get to 60). But i liked it in 2005 and 2006 when people didnt know everything and especially the players didnt minmax and didnt know about it. It was more a group effort and people had ALOT more patience and actually wanted to help random people to get better. instead of going berserk on someone who made a mistake and blaming that person for wasting their time
Well, for me being a Wrath baby and started playing vanilla technically right after Classic Vanilla concluded for the first time; I just enjoy the leveling process with friends, also people in dungeon groups and such are much friendlier than in the expansions and work together better than anywhere else to accomplish the goals. Also Vanilla+ servers like Turtle where I play offer more gameplay and balance options than the original vanilla hence it feels worth the long-term investment.
The most fun I’ve ever had in a game, was vanilla WOW. I started playing maybe 4 months before BC. I would get my ass handed to me, and I loved it. Just exploring was amazing, I don’t think I will ever have as much fun as I did when I played the real vanilla.
I missed Classic and just decided to start playing on Classic Era servers a couple of months ago. I always wanted to and decided to finally do it. I am super glad that came at the same time as apparently everyone else lol I am starting to dabble in Turtle WoW too but I also still play retail
The idea that "the game doesn't start till you hit max level" has always been a load of BS to me. Leveling has always been one of the best parts of the game to me. It's like saying BotW doesn't get fun till you fight Ganon, because exploring and doing things is just a means to an end.
I know right, imagine applying that to other games. "Halo is only fun for the warthog run at the end" "The only good part of Mario is crossing the finish line" "The best part of Warcraft 3 is the final mission, just use cheats to level skip to there and run that level 50 times" If you're not enjoying the gameplay from level 1 and you're only liking raiding or dungeons at Max level?... maybe it's not the game you enjoy but the people aspect
The fact your character isn't the all singing all dancing dogs $ollocks champion makes a huge difference to how you perceive the world as a player. Allthough it's still classed as high fantassy it is much more grounded in its aproach to things such as dragons which helps from a story & lore arc too!
i started in legion and my parents always told me how cool classic was, so in 2019 i started as a ret paladin! now im returning to my roots, actually at level 30 looking forward to ashkandi^^
Good points...In newer MMOs people forget that journey is the main goal, not be fully geared on the endgame and although its "massive multi-player" its very single-player, solo experiences.
Vanilla was built for leveling and end game was an elite adventure for specific gear sets. I really liked your analogy of modern WoW being a highway, rushing you to the endgame gear treadmill. Today we rush to the end only to get identical gear time and again, watching our item level creep up.
It's all for nostalgia, but it's never the same. We still remember leveling up in vanilla WoW, but would we do it for every expansion the same way? Or do we want to experience new content for each expansion? We'll never forget vanilla WoW, but you're chasing a ghost. It's a feeling and experience that we'll only get to see once. It's like trying to chase the high that you get from Heroin. Before you know it, you're addicted and never satisfied.
one thing i always prefered in vanilla was the fact that there where NO zones with level restrictions meaning you could go into like orgrimmar and see all the level cap chars running around that all went out the window when they introduced outlands into the game then dalaran all of a sudden the endgame charecters where sepereted from the people who where leveling
There’s high qualify fun and low quality fun. Low quality fun is comparable to a roller coaster. It’s fun in the moment but we don’t look back and reminisce on it. High quality fun is the fun where you don’t realize you’re having at the time. It’s the hardships and struggles you go through only to look back and realize how much fun it was. Like struggling to level in a world where pulling more than 2 mobs all but guarantees your death. Or running far and out of the way to get somewhere. Or painstakingly waiting for groups to form while kicking the shit with your guildies. That’s what classic offers, high quality fun.
As a first day launch wow player back in 2004, vanilla will always be a very special to me . That’s why I only play classic now and have been since it launched in 2019. Call it nostalgia or call me a fool. Either way, I enjoy it and will until it’s ending day.
Could it be the very things that we complain about. The flight paths, the traveling to dungeons, the 2 quest per zone back and forth between continents. Could it be these things that create the fondness we have? I think so.
it’s feels good man, vanilla is solid, would i like to see some class balance, sure…but you could leave everything else alone and it would be back on top!
man starting a new character with your buddy back in vanilla was the best experience ever leveling together and beating the quests together. Having mcdonads and just relaxing being happy about the crappy loot you were given going into your first dungoen. Especially if both you and your buddy were the same race it just made it more fun and cozy. These days it is all about speed running to max level and pay for Heroic carry so you can raid or pvp at end game as soon as humanly possible and then your buddy unsubscribes the game because they feel there is no content anymore and they got tired of the endgame.... Literally happened to me like 3 expansions during their release months. Warlords of Draenor, Battle for azeroth and shadowlands. I was always the last man standing going into the X.1 patch. Vanilla is all about just having a good time instead of numbers, epics, mounts and achievements. Also I loved how big the Azeroth map was. Every expansion it feels like the map is getting smaller even though the game is getting bigger. I mean Dragonflight is basically just 4 zones..... Shadowlands was 4 leveling zones and 1 endgame zone. I'm sorry but I just don't like you only have the option to level in 4 zones it makes the game so small. Also every new zone feels likes a small island. Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms felt huge and were continents in comparison. Northrend came close but still didn't really capture that feel because of flying mounts. Every other expansion just got downhill streamlined into 4 leveling zones... it sucks it makes every expansion feel like we are playing world of warcraft mini games but not WORLD of warcraft. Why can't they just make a new big continent and then every expansion or patch add more zones to that continent instead of small islands or realms that feel claustrophobic. Sometimes it feels like there is nothing to discover or rumor about.
I like to think of Vanilla as being like a textured, mountainous landscape, where all the idiosyncrasies create an interesting optimisation puzzle for the player to solve. Quality of life improvements only end of smoothing out the landscape into something bland and featureless - to the point where levelling is relegated to a mindless prologue before the "real" endgame.
First ! pin me
Allright since you asked so nicely :)
I WITNESS YOU
Well deserved!
@@HamsterWheelGaming holy cow i didnt think itde work. dude your the best private server youtuber out there. been watching since feenix wow ele sham videos!
Well done dick
Nothing beats the atmosphere of vanilla.
Best wow iteration. I didn't play when it was released, but I had a blast on nostalrius and when classic launched.
IMO, classic needs a classic plus content on retail. New content but only on azeroth without adding new expansions and excluding the old world.
@@FGazi-qf1hp I present to you Turtle WoW and Project Epoch.
Absolutely, I've never been able to immerse myself into any other expansion, the same way I was able to immerse myself in vanilla :)
Trueeee
true , vanilla is dangerous and tidous unlike wotkl -now you can 2-4 shots mobs and tehy might do only 5% damage to you - petlevlling is -kill 1 or mobs and you level 1 level - blizzard realy blws - the petlevelling was a game itself but i guess devs are gready AND dumb
“I can’t believe it’s all over, what do we do now?”
“What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game”
It's funny but it's true, once you go super-hard and powerlevel to 60 by just being stuck in tons of dungeon runs with a spellcleave group, and you've done the min-maxxing for x amount of time, you can't help but think 'hey you know what, this time I'm just gonna chill and really enjoy leveling a bit slower'
@@HamsterWheelGaming that’s what I’m doing after lvling 5 80s, 2 to 70, I’m now lvling a priest slow and steady, maybe not in vanilla because I’m in a hardcore raiding guild so I have ties to Classic WOTLK until it’s over but I’m going back and enjoying the journey of leveling in vanilla content… once Classic WOTLK is over and they just go directly to Cata and not adding a vanilla+ option or a different timeline Cata with no world revamp, I will be going back to vanilla or trying turtle WoW.
Vanilla successfully makes the leveling process part of the journey and your characters progression instead of it being an annoying chore like in modern mmos.
This is the reason why I've always been such an altoholic.
Thats because its slow and dificult. Slow down retail leveling and double mobs health and damage and you would have a videogame....
The zones not feeling like a leveling formula helps so much too. You don't have to level the same way twice. You can experience different zones, you can cut up the journey a different way. Each zone feels like a special location within a wider world, with it's own themes and unique charms. Modern leveling feels like a formula. Spend 2 levels per zone then move to the next.
Vanilla always attracts me because I don't need a PhD to do the raids or feel the absolute need to min/max my brains out to be considered relevant. It was just a chill game with a sense of discovery with solid character identity. Vanilla is one of the best examples of "Less is more"
Plenty of things that can be fixed or done better, but overall I just don't feel like I'm put on rails with ridiculous expectations to achieve/experience endgame.
Always good to go back to basics.
Well said ❤
lol, I remember timing my greater heals with others in 40-man MC raid to keep the bloody tank alive, it was not "chill" and min/maxing was pretty much mandatory.
The only difference is, leveling, and less chaotic instances were very much a core part of the gameplay, while later on both became rushed chores on the side, with end-game content taking up a larger and larger portion of what was defined as "the game".
When I first played Vanilla, it took me a FULL YEAR to level to 60. And it was one of richest experiences of my time in Azeroth.
Probably took me about the same with my first character. And you know what? I bet neither one of us minded that at all, because the journey was so fun.
i always felt like vanilla is the one and only evergreen version of wow no matter what expansion is out no matter what sate the game is in being good or bad vanilla is always there either on a pserver or classic era, you can always go back and have an enjoyable time playing it
True!
I’ve never played Wow. The only MMO I have played is warhammer online: age of reckoning. How would I play vanilla WoW? Surely if I go through blizzard I’ll get the ‘latest game’ with all updates?
@@patinho5589 th-cam.com/video/CEb-zb_9F8g/w-d-xo.html
The three main things I love about Vanilla compared to the modern version of the game;
-The world feels dangerous, you can't steamroll everything and group quests (for the very most part) REQUIRE a group, which is exactly how an MMORPG should be.
-Iconic items. As early as level 50 you start planning dungeon runs or endgame questlines for your prebis items and some of the phase 1 items are BiS for a very long time. That feeling when your rogue/warrior finally gets HoJ was so awesome, unlike in modern day wow where you rush to maxlevel and get carried in mythics just to get your itemlevel up.
-Your personal reputation and your guild reputation matters. If you are an asshole, a scammer or a ninjalooter you will be shunned by the community unlike in modern day where everything is x-realm and you are pretty much anonymous wherever you go
Hell yeah, the gear progression in vanilla is awesome. Getting a level 5 green weapon from a chest when you're leveling is amazing, and getting the Wingblade or Crescent Staff from Wailing Caverns always felt great too :)
Bingo. You nailed it. I have been playing wow since 2005 in original vanilla, and you described it perfectly.
Vanilla is inevitable, you try to leave..... but you always come back
Facts
@@aliceberethart classic u mean :PO?
@@aliceberethart vanilla came out in 2004 I think you mean classic or private servers
@@aliceberethart we will never get vanilla back bake:(
undead hunter video background on a vanilla video lmfao
It's the adventure! In classic there is SOOOOO much to explore, so many hidden paths and beautiful environments and tons of chests and rare spawns.... that's why I play. And I'm like 99% solo player by this point and I couldn't be happier! 💖💖💖
For me Vanilla was amazing. Its been so many years since i played but there was this place. A forest all burned down. I was farming and then boom and elite showed up. Man so many memories. You had to be there. It was amazing. Getting to know people was amazing. You were like family. Forget real life. Wow was my life. I made real friends. We all met up at blizzcon. Man it was awesome being young and not a care in the world. Now its all bills bills bills work work work kids kids kids. Man if i could do it all over i would in a heartbeat
Leveling in vanilla way back in 2005 was one of the best times I've ever had playing videogames
I cannot agree with you more on every single thing you said! My Dad used to tell me i would regret just playing games and mostly WoW as a kid, but now at 32, married, kid, like you said just work work work bills bills bills non stop and then i can play a tiny bit of games now adays.... i would absolutely go back and do it again.. not change a thing.. some of the best times of my life were back then just playing all night with friends and getting to really know people and have a great time.. oh.. and just PLAY the game! no min maxxing and constant bs just everyone enjoying a GAME together!
Yeah man i dont think the game in its early days can be appeciated unless you were part of it. It was a whole different dynamic to what it is today. Its not just nostalgia that we all get when we think back to vanilla. It was the experiences and friendships you made along the way. The game made you socialise to progress. In all honesty for me the game went on a gradually steepeneing slope downwards the day that the dark portal opened to the outlands. It has never been the same since. I keep trying each expansion but i can never get back in to it. It was revived breifly with Nostalrius but we all know what happened to that. Then classic was releasead which was again fun but fizzled out once more. I think the only way is a Vanilla but with a slower/ different path than the dark portal.. Subtle additions and light expansions excluding flying mounts.
I just like the fact that the game is set up in stone, no need to catch up on the latest patch…no feeling of missing out, no feeling of charact value decreasing over unplayed time.
Same
Twow just hit 5k so there is definitely a Vanilla comeback happening. Heck, even era servers are seeing a boom.
I was there, it was awesome to see people go nuts in world chat :)
I was there too with my Goblin Warlock!
nobody cares about shenna and her free slaves.
Umm Turtle WoW is NOT vanilla WoW. It’s heavily customized! Kronos 4 is true vanilla WoW
@@theworldisastage3393 You are wrong. Kronos goes for 2 years. And also, Kronos 4 doesn’t take money from anyone other than through donations
I just love how... chill and serene a game like vanilla feels. It's not overly grindy, it's just the right amount of grind per level. It's not challenging, but not a walk in the park. I feel like I think about the world that my character is positioned inside, and how it interacts with the world. I feel like and explorer, rather than a good inflicting mass genocide on unsuspecting NPCs placed haphazardly for the sake of a boilerplate quest to kill 15 mobs 5 feet away because an npc said so.
Immersive gaming is at an all-time low... Pop-up notifications and menu-based gameplay has become the norm, particular due to mobile games trickling down into all forms of gaming. People just want a pachinko machine to click every and get epic loot from, rather than a 11 quest long chain deeply invested in a particular character and their quest for an adventure, finding a sweet epic item at the end of it. This is the "soul" of a game, and lots of modern game devs think no further than a barebones gameplay loop.
Thankfully games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring maintain this old concept of gaming. But due to the popularity of elden ring, there was an equal amount of people crying and complaining about how little the game held your hand and forced you to go to certain places, etc.
People just want to ride an amusement park roller coaster through an artificial forest full of dinosaurs and microtransactions, rather than actually experiencing the real thing and being a living, breathing member of the world of Azeroth.
Vanilla really hit that sweet spot of offering challenging leveling content, but not punish you super badly if you would die
Agreed!
Turtle WoW just reached 5k online btw.
Yep it was awesome, I was there and world chat went nuts :)
I love vanilla for how non-linear it’s leveling adventure is.
For me it’s the way upgrades feel within classic. Turtle wow reminded me what made vanilla such a strong impression on my tastes for rpgs and mmos in general
There's nothing like being a new level 5 noob rogue or warrior, and stumbling across a green weapon in a chest :)
I find myself using the word "Endearing" more so than charm when describing what attracts me to Vanilla Wow.
that's also a great term to describe it!
I was so happy to hear your thoughts on charm and a bit more difficulty in questing and leveling. That’s what made me fall in love with vanilla. I couldn’t rush it and was forced to immerse in the areas I was exploring as it took time. Great video!
Like this format of video, thanks Hamster!
I started classic again a couple of months ago from scratch with a friend. I have no plans to touch retail. Thanks for the video!
Vanilla WOW is my favorite game of all time. Nothing else like it. In Vanilla the journey is the game, and what a journey it is.
I think hardcore official will be really fun and interesting. It'll force players to stop and enjoy the game instead of rushing to 60 and that's it. I'll be coming back for it.
I think so too!
Ahhh, mate I love to watch ur videos :D.
Thanks!
I'm 18 years old, so I never played vanilla, but I can easily say that Vanilla definitely has more charm than wrath and is better than wrath and is without a doubt better than any recent expansion. So it's not just all nostalgia (However maybe except for Legion cause that's when I first started playing and I think it was one of the best)
I started on Whitemane fresh on classic era, made a gnome warlock and I'm going thru the leveling all again, for the 100th time in my life, and it's so fun. The server is alive and groups easy to come by. Good to see Classic Era being played
As fun as "the journey" was in Classic, when it came to raiding/dungeons there was a LOT to be desired. Classes like Shamans and Druids could *only* *ever* heal in raids, and the only "real tank" were Warriors. Half of the classes back in Classic only had one passable spec for running dungeons and raids and leveling.
Personally I prefer Wotlk despite having started playing during Classic. Wotlk still has all of the old zones from pre-Cata, but the game by 3.3.5 had introduced a few early quality of life features that *really* help, such as dual spec and level 20 mounts. Plus the vast majority of specs across ALL classes were viable!
For me it was the immersion and the stuff like long cooldowns for certain spells, the reagent requirements for some spells, the way it lowkey felt like D&D and where things feel impactful. Mana management was also great. (Altho many things can be improved)
I don't like how in retail my spells off my burst feel like hitting like a wet noodle.
Vanilla is the game. Having gone back everything after feels like a collection of quality of life / balance changes with more difficulty.
I've wanted to return for a while now, but I'm waiting to see what the next "Season of Mastery" will be.
Its not nostalgia for me that makes me come back to vanilla, i just love it, its harder and doing difficult things etc really feels special.
The journey is what makes everything enjoyable. That’s why I liked and miss classic wow the most vs what it became over time
Vanilla felt like a dangerous place to quest in. It was a totally different pace.
Facts!
Definitely. If it wasn't the mob two levels above you killing you, it was a member of the opposite faction! Terrifyingly fun!
take a shot for every "whatnot" and you may be drunk, happy and whatnot.
awesome video brother!
Alot of the FRESH folks have also moved on, so we are left with a player base that just loves being in the vanilla world of warcraft, max level or not. That does so much for the general gaming experience for the individual player.
Vanilla will be relevant 100 years in the future still
I think so too, I believe vanilla really is a timeless game :)
I and a group of friends around 10 of us started playing classic again in the past couple of months, and I was instantly reminded of why it was so great. Nothing beats those player interactions out in the world
Turtle Wow made the right choice in embracing the RP aspect of the game.
I love how they're even go so far as to add their own music in the game, it's amazing!
Vanilla world has lot of nostalgy - simple quests, familiar places, no extensive endgame bandaids.
I know for myself, I was unable to play WOW when it first came out due to various reasons. Now as an adult and after trying retail for a month or so I wanted that slow burn and take my time learning and knowing the game. Retail rushed me through everything and when cut scenes happened randomly I had no idea who these characters were or why I should care for them. Now with classic, or WOTLK, I am able to take my time, meet people, and just play something casually. I get to learn the game rather than speed past everything and the locations to get to the end game as fast as I can.
The thing about Vanilla for me is that it really was about the journey. Even after starting in on endgame content, I still had reasons to play around out in the world, and not just to farm materials. I never really got bored with it before TBC came out.
What’s the difference between classic and normal wow? I’ve never played wow so I do not know, but plan on getting the game soon
Collective consciousness
It's basic
It's easy to learn
There's a community
It's not trying to 1 up the next best thing
I hope somewhere in future we will get another fresh classic but with much slower Phases
I will always keep coming back to classic
there have been moments in the past where private servers made a little comeback, but never like this, turtle going from 1k to 4k active players in a few weeks says a lot. People want the old world, but with a fresh touch, class changes, new quests, new gear, etc. I really hope Turtle, Duskhaven and CoA succeed, these 3, if done right, can dictate the future of private servers IMO.
Kronos 4 too!!
I was 9 years old early 2005. My brother bought me a level 59 undead priest named Khain. I never made it to 60. All I was doing were to stand on the roof in Ratchet smiting down Aliances arriving with the boat. As the world were smaller, I am sure people wondering why Khain never hit 60
Your first character was an Ebay Priest? Wow what a crap experience.
@@du4lstrik3 I was 9.
@@simulki7108 Pretty sure when I was 9, I was able to understand that bypassing 90% of the game right at the start was a stupid idea.
@@du4lstrik3 It’s more than that. I had a serious disease. Brother just wanted to make me happy…
@@du4lstrik3 Would you look at that, the superiority complex of classic players is still alive and well. Obviously, your experience isn't of value because you didn't do it the way I did. Classy stuff man.
Hello Hamsterwheel and chat whats your unbiased opinions about turtle wow pvp? im a casual gamer those days with kids and job and as much i love to i dont have enough time to spend like back in the day for wow and im worried if is a waste of time. My mai concern is some people was telling me if you hit max level the bgs are un playable because is full of players with naxx gear or other pve gear and im kinda confused. Thanks in advance for any reply i would really appreciate it
You're in Redridge and all the quest soon turn Red which are impossible to do alone. So you go to a zone with the same level range, this pushes you explore more of the world.
Turtle wow has made a few class tweaks, a dungeon group finder tool, and increased xp. You get all the atmosphere and experience of vanilla but with some much needed improvements, it's really fun.
I like that you can build classes uniquely. I really like playing a defensive rogue "tank" can't do that in retail. I like that gaining every level feels like an achievement. Running everywhere doesn't bother me.
good looks showing poppa Kargoz some love!
Vanilla with no world buffs plus the first phase of TBC would be my dream.
Same, when I came back to wow after a break I missed classic tbc and wrath had dropped. I played the tail end of bc back in the day but didn’t know a thing. It’d be great to go back now with all I’ve learned and do some raiding and pvp!
World buffs are mostly fine with chronoboom, the one that sucks is the dragonslayer and zandalar
i started playing wow casually just before BFA and then i took a long break. got back into wotlk and i’ve fallen in love with the grind and world exploration. i appreciate the fact that sometimes the zone will outlevel me and i’ll need to travel to another zone or another continent to catch up. All in all i think classic is perfect for me personally because i prefer playing a game to explore a world rather than rushing to end game to queue dungeons and raids infinitely
Fixing and revamping vanilla talents, expanding on the zones and concepts abandoned by Blizzard like Hyjal and The Emerald Dream, adding quests, adding new races and classes, reworking items, etc. is bringing back freshness to vanilla which is drawing people in.
The head manager at TH-cam misses vanilla just as much as we do. They are quietly making it happen for us 😂
WoW up until and including Wrath was an adventure. Then it became a convenience. Now it's a job.
I totally agree man ...
honestly vanilla has always been my favorite expansion even to this day simply because it just gives me the correct vibes of an mmo from that time
the zones in vanilla just looks proper fantasy world without the sci fi elements from tbc
the leveling was slow but that also gave you time to absorb it
i loved leveling in vanilla when wow classic released by slapping on a good show or some music on a second monitor and just sit there taking my time going through zones
laughing at silly quests or seeing what sort of conversations would come from quests in general
and thats actually a thing i feel got lost in later expansions
sure the progresive mig stories that expansions would have was great...but something about each zone having a story of its own that wasnt really about a big bad progressing as the expansion went on just felt nice
it gave us a ton of small little stories in each zone and minor conversations to obverse that just sorta happened and was not expected to lead into something else
i mean sure we had the big bads and questlines leading up to them but apart from that...alot of what you actually saw in each zone was just this town having an issue they want help with
or these people arguing over something and you sorta just being in the middle of it you know stuff like that
it just felt nice and like the world was alive rather than making the world feel like one big movie
actually thats probably a good way to put it XD
vanilla wow felt like a living world or a tv show with many small things happening
while later wow just felt like a big movie in each expansion
vanilla isnt a xpac tho
@@GuaridoNutri that's literally all you took from this?
Yes, played classic too many times to know all that.
nothing gives you the vibes like vanilla :) and you're right, I really feel vanilla was a more sandbox type of game, where the later expansions felt more like you're following a linear major questline
undead hunter video background on a vanilla video lmfao
Is there smewhere where vanilia isn't pass bwl and has decent pop?
Remember all quests in vanilla. Remember non in expansions
I do really like the old vanilla when i was lvl 60 (i really didnt like the very long and exhausting way to get to 60). But i liked it in 2005 and 2006 when people didnt know everything and especially the players didnt minmax and didnt know about it. It was more a group effort and people had ALOT more patience and actually wanted to help random people to get better. instead of going berserk on someone who made a mistake and blaming that person for wasting their time
Does anyone know if they're making any fresh vanilla only servers?
Vanilla is also doing competitions hard-core races and with prize money
hey Hamster Turtle WoW just reached 5400 today!
Well, for me being a Wrath baby and started playing vanilla technically right after Classic Vanilla concluded for the first time; I just enjoy the leveling process with friends, also people in dungeon groups and such are much friendlier than in the expansions and work together better than anywhere else to accomplish the goals. Also Vanilla+ servers like Turtle where I play offer more gameplay and balance options than the original vanilla hence it feels worth the long-term investment.
The most fun I’ve ever had in a game, was vanilla WOW. I started playing maybe 4 months before BC. I would get my ass handed to me, and I loved it. Just exploring was amazing, I don’t think I will ever have as much fun as I did when I played the real vanilla.
I missed Classic and just decided to start playing on Classic Era servers a couple of months ago. I always wanted to and decided to finally do it. I am super glad that came at the same time as apparently everyone else lol I am starting to dabble in Turtle WoW too but I also still play retail
Just for reference 10.1 is to be determined for its release date, 21st/22nd march is 10.0.7 (minor content update) patch :)
I thought I was going crazy, thank you. I was like "Uhhh, what? Did I slip into a coma for two months?"
The idea that "the game doesn't start till you hit max level" has always been a load of BS to me. Leveling has always been one of the best parts of the game to me. It's like saying BotW doesn't get fun till you fight Ganon, because exploring and doing things is just a means to an end.
I know right, imagine applying that to other games.
"Halo is only fun for the warthog run at the end"
"The only good part of Mario is crossing the finish line"
"The best part of Warcraft 3 is the final mission, just use cheats to level skip to there and run that level 50 times"
If you're not enjoying the gameplay from level 1 and you're only liking raiding or dungeons at Max level?... maybe it's not the game you enjoy but the people aspect
The fact your character isn't the all singing all dancing dogs $ollocks champion makes a huge difference to how you perceive the world as a player. Allthough it's still classed as high fantassy it is much more grounded in its aproach to things such as dragons which helps from a story & lore arc too!
Really appreciate the content, keep it up! What are you maining in turtle? Whats your name? :)
Thank you! I'm maining an undead hunter called Disposedhero
i started in legion and my parents always told me how cool classic was, so in 2019 i started as a ret paladin! now im returning to my roots, actually at level 30 looking forward to ashkandi^^
Nice talk brothers
Good points...In newer MMOs people forget that journey is the main goal, not be fully geared on the endgame and although its "massive multi-player" its very single-player, solo experiences.
Classic plus rested xp guide is the ideal way of both!
when everything leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, vanilla always cleanses the pallet.
I would love servers that have a cap at lvl 10, then 20, then 30 and so on like in the wow beta. makes the leveling more meaningful
Check ChromieCraft out
It's a pretty nice server and it's progressive.
Right now the level cap is 69
Chromiecraft really did an awesome job with doing that type of super progression
Vanilla was built for leveling and end game was an elite adventure for specific gear sets. I really liked your analogy of modern WoW being a highway, rushing you to the endgame gear treadmill. Today we rush to the end only to get identical gear time and again, watching our item level creep up.
It's all for nostalgia, but it's never the same. We still remember leveling up in vanilla WoW, but would we do it for every expansion the same way? Or do we want to experience new content for each expansion? We'll never forget vanilla WoW, but you're chasing a ghost.
It's a feeling and experience that we'll only get to see once. It's like trying to chase the high that you get from Heroin. Before you know it, you're addicted and never satisfied.
Do you think blizz is going to put fresh vanilla servers soon?
We think we do and we do
definitely!
nostalgia trip
one thing i always prefered in vanilla was the fact that there where NO zones with level restrictions meaning you could go into like orgrimmar and see all the level cap chars running around that all went out the window when they introduced outlands into the game then dalaran all of a sudden the endgame charecters where sepereted from the people who where leveling
There’s high qualify fun and low quality fun. Low quality fun is comparable to a roller coaster. It’s fun in the moment but we don’t look back and reminisce on it.
High quality fun is the fun where you don’t realize you’re having at the time. It’s the hardships and struggles you go through only to look back and realize how much fun it was. Like struggling to level in a world where pulling more than 2 mobs all but guarantees your death. Or running far and out of the way to get somewhere. Or painstakingly waiting for groups to form while kicking the shit with your guildies. That’s what classic offers, high quality fun.
As a first day launch wow player back in 2004, vanilla will always be a very special to me . That’s why I only play classic now and have been since it launched in 2019. Call it nostalgia or call me a fool. Either way, I enjoy it and will until it’s ending day.
Is it worth trying Classic in 2023? I've been playing on retail since 2006. Any Realms worth playing on?
Everyone felt unique back in the old wow days it felt you really was in another world.
Could it be the very things that we complain about. The flight paths, the traveling to dungeons, the 2 quest per zone back and forth between continents. Could it be these things that create the fondness we have?
I think so.
it’s feels good man, vanilla is solid, would i like to see some class balance, sure…but you could leave everything else alone and it would be back on top!
Ever since I started playing Vanilla on a private server I finally can enjoy without rushing all the content I've missed during my first time in 2005.
man starting a new character with your buddy back in vanilla was the best experience ever leveling together and beating the quests together. Having mcdonads and just relaxing being happy about the crappy loot you were given going into your first dungoen. Especially if both you and your buddy were the same race it just made it more fun and cozy. These days it is all about speed running to max level and pay for Heroic carry so you can raid or pvp at end game as soon as humanly possible and then your buddy unsubscribes the game because they feel there is no content anymore and they got tired of the endgame.... Literally happened to me like 3 expansions during their release months. Warlords of Draenor, Battle for azeroth and shadowlands. I was always the last man standing going into the X.1 patch. Vanilla is all about just having a good time instead of numbers, epics, mounts and achievements. Also I loved how big the Azeroth map was. Every expansion it feels like the map is getting smaller even though the game is getting bigger. I mean Dragonflight is basically just 4 zones..... Shadowlands was 4 leveling zones and 1 endgame zone. I'm sorry but I just don't like you only have the option to level in 4 zones it makes the game so small. Also every new zone feels likes a small island. Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms felt huge and were continents in comparison. Northrend came close but still didn't really capture that feel because of flying mounts. Every other expansion just got downhill streamlined into 4 leveling zones... it sucks it makes every expansion feel like we are playing world of warcraft mini games but not WORLD of warcraft. Why can't they just make a new big continent and then every expansion or patch add more zones to that continent instead of small islands or realms that feel claustrophobic. Sometimes it feels like there is nothing to discover or rumor about.
You have it right. Vanilla is a great experience
Great vid as always HW! What's your TWoW guild?
I like to think of Vanilla as being like a textured, mountainous landscape, where all the idiosyncrasies create an interesting optimisation puzzle for the player to solve. Quality of life improvements only end of smoothing out the landscape into something bland and featureless - to the point where levelling is relegated to a mindless prologue before the "real" endgame.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
You can travel the world, but there's no place like home ❤
The more videos I watch, the more I realize that I don’t miss wow. I just miss being young and stupid and being around the young and stupid.