Rediscover your love for fantasy by listening to Songs of Chaos: link.michaelrmiller.co.uk/MadSeason People point at Cataclysm as the expansion to separate "classic" from "current", but is it really true?
I saw the headline and came in to see if you said Cata. LFG ruined the community- and Cata ruined the world itself. Cata was the break point. Still play- from MC Raider to dirtiest of casuals, usually just when the weather sucks. Still have my original toons and guild. ps getting those books right away. They look incredible. Massive Pern fangirl.
@@TeasLouise agree on LFG killing the community, also the ability to have horde and alliance on same account didnt help but was lesser. the killer feature of LFG easily could have been implemented without killing the community - the killer feature being not requiring 2+ people travel to the summoning stone. a teleport to any dungeon from major trade hubs would have provided the QoL of LFG without killing the server community. just my two dollars
No a bad video, but there are two points I have to disagree with you on. First, different difficulties started in BC. That was where we first saw dungeons with normal and heroic modes. WotLK getting raids with normal and heroic modes is a natural progression of the changes in BC to dungeon difficulties. Second, your timeline is a little off. Cash shop items didn't come until well after the merger with Activision. That happened on 09JUL08, ING reported on the merger the day prior (08JUL08). It wasn't until September 2009 we saw the game services for cash announced, with the race, server, and faction changes. The first cash shop items, happened almost two years later, with the release of Lil' XT, KT, and the celestial steed on 15APR10. Cat dropped 07DEC10 which is why I believe most people associate cash shop items with Cat.
Yeah man you really nailed it. I didn’t mind sweating, but now that’s ALL it is about, and the people who are left playing are kinda miserable. Ill see through cata probably but I am out after this.
Funny thing is, every last one of these classic channels was gung-ho posting min/max guides on literally everything Classic related non-stop especially the 6 months leading up to August 2019. The big channels got the entire community stuck in that hyper competitive mindset from the get-go.
I’m 32 now (12 back then) and was introduced to WoW by my uncle at launch. It’s hard to adequately describe how deeply it captured my imagination. I remember him showing me and my brothers the cinematic at his apartment a couple of weeks before launch. We had never experienced anything like it. There’s just too much to tell, but what I can say is that we had many gaming sessions in the years that followed. Uncle would pick us up for the weekend and we’d load our (3) heavy CRT monitors into the back of his truck and set up a lan party in his office. Leveled and raided together, ate junk food, goofed off, stayed up until ~4am, woke up early and repeated through the weekend. Nothing I comment here could do it justice, but if you know you know. Pure magic.
I have a similar experience, one thing blizz can never bring back is all of us being young, but adding the element of wonder by not streamlining everything in the game is all I ask for if there is future classic content
id argue the spirit of vanilla is dead space and emptiness, the long walks in-between zones, the tasteful thickness of it. My god, it even has an elite mob.
It’s sort of crazy how the greatest achievement, gear score, was outsourced to an addon. I can’t remember was it cata that item level became a normalized stat? The first time someone asked me for my gear score I was very much taken aback but tbh after I installed it I definitely did start to have a very easy time noticing when someone was building their character very goofy. Skill trees and items are something i have always appreciated about pve but with pvp i think earning stat points unlocking abilities is enough excitement and balance in general. Minmaxing removes the variety of troll and cheese builds which is the only real drawback with pvp.
The fact that you where raiding with randoms just proofs that it has nothing to do with classic at all. Back in 2004 no one raided with randoms or public groups. You where in one of the 2 to 3 raiding guilds on the server and you even all knew each other. You hang out with these people in ironforge or orgrimmar almost every day. This was the only real classic raid experience. But let's be real: Classic died 20 years ago and people still try to get into that nostalgia time not realizing that they do not play games like that anymore. You are not the 15 year old gamer with a ISDN internet connection, not having youtube and all that stuff with guides... it was a different time.
@@immatoll4375 what? man, back in the day i raided with my guild and randoms all the time. There were the two or three sweaty guilds that believed no one else was raiding the correct way, but no one really cared. It was fun running raids with randoms, trying to explain mechanics, linking fan written guides to other people, convincing people to download TS even tho not everyone had mic at the time... casual guilds were always the backbone of wow to me, the true essence. Now everyone wants to be a top-tier p´layer in a top-tier guild. Boring af if you ask me. After all, this is "just a game". A game we love but a game made for having fun, not sweating your eyes out. IRL is for the sweat and tears, WoW is for chilling and exploring another world.
Yeah it was towards the end of wrath i remember wanting 5.9k gs to get to ICC with a pug altho ppl that asked it the raid creators usually never had the gs themselves crazy times.
I simply miss when games weren't overrun with people who treat them like it's life-or-death. Many, many people have forgotten the concept of simple, casual fun that games used to be.
“Casual fun that games used to be” pretty sure the first Iike I ever heard the term “casual” as an insult was in wow. No shot you’re talking about world of Warcraft. Acting like the Ony wipe video Doesn’t exist or what?
Casual was always the backbone of wow. We were all "casuals", running around the world, trying to find secrets... now everyone and their mothers want to be a proplayer on a top tier guild. That's why i play on pservers: no one actually care for ranking high there, just the real tryhards. If you want to get that feeling of discovery/community again, maybe you should try project ascension on the progressive server (Elune). Tho i'm not a "zero changes" Andy (because i've been playing "calssic" wow for the past 10 years and got somewhat bored of the mechanics), so it may not be your cup of tea. The casual community there is pretty chill and you can take your time to learn the new mechanics (or watch the videos explaining how things works, made by the devs) because challenge runs/character resets are actually a thing there... and you get set by doing them.
@@colecote1432 Your TH-cam Account from 2016 doesn’t lend much credibility. I’m in agreement with John and it’s probably not a coincidence we have 16-17 year old accounts.
@@colecote1432 Oh yeah, of course I've seen the Onyxia Wipe animation. I get you. That wasn't the norm from mine & many others' memory, it totally existed & I won't ever deny that. I don't remember hearing the term 'casual' as an insult until the past ten years, back then 'newb/n00b' was the go-to. Hope that helps.
@@-John-Doe-people get new accounts? Lol. That's one pathetic way to try to gatekeep someone "your TH-cam account just isn't old enough to join the raid bro"
because their stats clearly tell that the majority of ppl don't want to level and that's the truth xD we've done it so many times, we're done with it, it's a chore.
J1mmy said the same in a recent video, it seems to be industry wide at this point, although I hear runescape is an outlier. I will be trying it soon :D
My favorite WoW moment to this day was sitting in Ironforge with my real-life brothers, just typing to each other via our in-game characters well into the night. We were able to say things we couldn’t say in person. We were level 25 or so, and didn’t end up playing together for long after that. My sister and brother-in-law divorced shortly after and I lost my best in-game friend and best real-life friend. Just typing this makes me feel like I valued WoW as a vehicle to bond with my family above all else. It really was a social device disguised as a video game. I miss those days.
With the current trajectory of the game industry, there may never be another generation that experiences such a truly magical thing as being a kid on WoW in 2006. I'm 29 and idc if it's a game, nothing captured my imagination as a kid like WoW did
@@rosspritchett8423 There's just so many options to connect with others online nowadays. So much that even when playing games focused on social elements, you use one of these alternatives.
Agree. My parents got divorced right before I turned 12 in 2003. World of Warcraft came out 1 year later. My brother got distant and found his own way to cope with the divorce. I focused on video games, and WoW literally provided a World for me. I socialized more than anything else. Never even went past Molten Core, wasn't in a raiding guild, wasn't a 1337 PvP god. I was an average player who wanted to talk to people, and I got good at it. I played WoW for the next 3.5 years of my life, probably the most formative years tbh. I look back now and it's so obvious I fell into WoW as an escape from divorce and my brother getting distant. That came with pros and cons, but I am ultimately incredibly grateful to this vanilla and TBC era WoW. I went from a very confused kid to a teenager who was struggling, but could find peace and safety in WoW. I'm so glad I did that as opposed to self-destructive behavior.
As a newer player, I only played dragonflight and remix, maybe 2 weeks, then decided to try classic wow, I been there the last few weeks and I can see why people still have such a love for it. I am having a great time there.
This game is like heroin, first it's incredibly awesome and then for the next 20 years you play just to get that feeling back, but it doesn't come back at least not for long (classic) and then it disappears again, but you keep hunting for it anyway... If you still can stop playing it, just stop. Best advice ever, trust me.
That's awesome you get to experience it as new. Now consider what it was like for all of us playing it in 2006 with the map full of players, and the world just full of new things to explore. Imagine your experience with it now x50 lol. Like the other commenter said, chasing that dragon
One dude's video says the sparkle horse was the begining of the end. The fact that truely blew me away was the fact the horse, when it went on sale, made more money in a few hours, than the entire amount Starcraft 2 had generated up to that point. That was also when Bobby realized he could get a boat.
For me, it was actually TBC that did it. Most of Azeroth and 1-60 were immediately invalidated for a new tiny world. The sentiment became, "All I gotta do is rush to level 58 so I can get to the real game!" I can't blame them for introducing expansions like this at the time, but I think if we could go back it would be much better if the focus was on expanding what exists without paving over it.
@jadams2289 Yes, the game should have stayed at level 60 for an expansion or two and just added more content but not new game mechanics or quality of life. Exactly like what everyone wants for Diablo 2. I think TBC didn't ruin vanilla it but it altered it. I remember still spending a lot of time in the old world even at 70. the game still made you go back to the vanilla world a whole bunch.
TBC was the end of Classic for me as well, completely changed the feel of the game and then started introducing that extra paid crap. Vanilla Classic was a blast and some of the most fun MMO gaming I have ever had and I am glad that I was a part of it before classic turned into what it is now.
TBC as end game dungeons/raids mostly, instead of a new tiny world could've been awesome. Outlands is such a hostile place, and the original lore has it looking mostly like Hellfire/Blade's Edge because the planet was ruined and realistically, it should've been so much harder to gain a foothold. It would've been cool to see that version of things
Here's what the "spirit of WoW" was to me. I was 12 and I decided that weekend to just chill at home and play some WoW. I was lvl 43 and wanted to reach 44 that weekend so I could equip the Phantom Blade. I'd just acquired the recipe but I still had to craft the weapon. After checking my bank and inventory I put aside a bag for the materials, I remember that the most complicated step was getting a potion of invisibility which back then was particularly hard since Alchemist wasn't that popular in the opening months of Vanilla. I then contacted my guild, it was one of those hangout guilds where the leader and his wife were absolutely addicted to the game and had a fully leveled character while also having two mid level alts. Another player agreed to sell me a few mithril bars on the cheap and another had alchemy. I went on a wild goose chase looking for the materials he had asked for the potion, we couldn't link the recipe, or at least we didn't know how if we could so I had the materials linked and went off. I needed some other stuff for the sword. I eventually got everything to craft a Phantom Blade and even though it wasn't much for warrior, or at least that was the notion people had, I still used it a fair bit. I reached 44 while looking for the materials and questing that weekend. It was a small thing but it was super fun. I remember there being a couple of NE warriors that I'd meet from time to time, they were always around the same level as me and I'd catch them in dungeons or out questing. It was fun bumping into them, we'd chat. Ended up playing a few Stratholme runs with them. BC was a wild ride. I had just been sent to live with my grandmother. I couldn't play the pre patch or the release. I'd level up a shaman on another server, Argent Dawn, where my school best friend was playing, to level 45 or 50 prior to moving out. The new friends that I made in school had played WoW in a private server but wanted to play the real thing. I told them the server but they didn't want to play in a rppvp server so they made their characters in Darkmoon Faire which was brand new at the time. They'd reach level 70 at some point and I was hyped listening to their stories. Like how they 4 manned a heroic dungeon at 2 am, a warrior, a paladin healer and a warlock with some random dude they picked up. By the time I got to play I was a bit miserable. Ended up finding a raiding guild that had just started out, we managed to do half of Karazan on the first week, did everything up to lib on the second and by the third we had it down. I was a "really good dps". It took me forever to get the mindblade for ele shaman. I loved the guild, Absolution, but our leader, Nichiniyo or something along those lines, was an absolute ass, he was known for being a "sarcastic bastard", being older now I feel like he thought he was being cute with a reputation like that, fact was that a absolute godly prot warr had left the guild and another chad of a feral druid also said goodbye, both officers, which prompted him to make a "pact" with a "sister guild" we had never heard up to that point, went in for a trial run for TK. Talk of "crushing lootreaver". We got to the dude, got him to 4% and wiped on the second try. Third try we went for the stacking on the boss strat since a lot of people had died to the balls, we failed at not even 60%. Leader calls it. Starts messaging me asking me why I hadn't healed. "elemental shaman chief, not my job" "but your set has healing bonuses" "I'm a dps man I ranked 4th on recount" "had you healed we'd have downed him" I remember being really upset, my class leader was a tosser that left the guild to play with a friend and then came crawling back, I remember his name, Nadjin or something like that, he died so many times to the balls because he couldn't see them. I'd grinded potions and elixirs for that run, leveled first aid to help with personal healing, had contacted my group mates prior so we could talk positioning so they could get the benefits for the totems. My heart sank when I saw another ele shaman from the new guild with the set shoulders from reaver, they had gone in on thursday which was the day I couldn't play, I had so many dkp stored for a set item. I left shortly after and didn't pick up Wow again until close to LK dropping. LK started with me paying for a server transfer. My mates had a really decent raiding guild ready to take me in. I specced enhancement since they needed it and we went on to clear everything up to and including mimiron. The raiding experience had definitely been streamlined with heroics being a small step up in difficulty, rep being easyer to farm thanks to the tabards and there being only one raiding rep. There were a few "stories" from our leveling but nothing as wild as what they'd tell me from vanilla and BC. We didn't clear ulduar before toc sadly, I had a chat with the 10 man organizer and if I had participated in it earlier we'd have cleared it, I only participated once because they were short a member.
Thanks so much for spotlighting Songs of Chaos man! Very honoured you've been enjoying the listen 🎧 For everyone who gives my books a chance, thank you so much, I deeply appreciate it!
@@Michael_R_MillerI've been trying to find a book to start reading with my 10 year old son, but most of what I personally read is definitely too complex with too many moving pieces for a 10 year old to follow... Do you think your series would be something he could get into? Kid loves dragons haha
I argue that WoW went downhill immediately upon Blizzard adopting the expansion model. Increasing the level cap was a terrible move and made the world feel less alive while all of the high level players spent their time in Outland and Northrend. This was especially the case with Dalaran. There was almost no reason to ever go back to Org/SW. Anyway, as bad as that was, the items you get from top raids becoming useless upon the release of the next expansions isn't helping. Here we have the best weapons and armor from Naxx being traded in for greens or blues. Its ridiculous. If they do a Classic+, I'd like to see them add new weapons and armor, just with different uses. Maybe some weapons are needed, despite their lesser stats, because they give you a bonus against the bosses you're fighting or they give you extra movespeed so you can dodge aoe attacks(I'm making stuff up on the spot here, but you get my point). Instead of making armor and weapons better every time, give them alternative uses. This is how the game should move forward. Also I highly disagree with the point that the lore was better back in Wrath. The lore was butchered with TBC and only got worse from there. I might be biased, sense Warcraft 3 is my favorite game of all time, but the things they did to Illidan and Vashj and Kael'Thas were unforgivable. They made them villains only so that we could kill big named lore guys. Guess what, all of the raid bosses with the exception of some from Naxx, were made for WoW. And they did a great job with them. You had some crossover in Strath with Balnazaar, but for the most part, Rag and Nefarian and Onyxia, these are memorable and awesome raid bosses. They didn't exist in Warcraft 3. Making the Draenei sexy goat people was ill conceived and only done to keep the Alliance "pretty". Akama and The Broken ARE the Draenei, they never should have been sexy goats. And the entire premise of WotLK is downright retarded. And I mean that literally. It make zero sense whatsoever to have the entire world come at you, guns ablazing, have them kill every single on of your lieutenants, just to try to turn them into the greatest warriors. Give me a break. If they had any balls, WotLK would have seen the destruction of SW or Org or had Arthas take up residence in the plaguelands. I know I will anger some TBC and WotLK fans, but go and play Warcraft 3 and you'll understand. Thank you for coming to my WoW Ted-talk.
As much as I like and dislike what WoW added to the lore, depending what it is, I have to agree. There was no reason to kill Illidan, Vashj, or Kael'thas, and when I gave Warcraft 3 a try after playing WoW I went, "Wait, why did we kill them? They weren't saints but what they did didn't exactly justify killing them." Kael'thas especially, he was a prince who had the desperate and difficult task to save what was left of his people from damnation but was willing to do it just to ensure his people would survive in Warcraft 3 to a leader whose desperation for a seemingly hopeless task turn him into an insane and bloodlust leader who was leading his people into the same damnation he wanted to save them from by the end of BC. This was something I was salty over since then, mumbling about it for years after. The only thing I like about it is that it brought a cool dark legacy to the blood elves in the stories to come after. Doesn't justify the whole 180 though.
I can't agree more. It was also the start of needing to read outside sources to understand what happens in the game (the Sunwell manga) , the introduction to daily quests and locking almost everything behind reputation grinds.
Don't forget TBC also added arena (Made PvP e-sporty) and started the "end game is real game" mentality. The lore bosses you killed in vanilla were excusable imo, KT didn't even die (And was also the final boss) and Balnazzar and Sapphiron were non-major chars in WC3.
I would also say Faction Transfers to me really killed Classic in general, We saw so many communities on Realms go from "somewhat balanced" to 1 sided as PvE players realized that PvP meant ganking and griefing, To me my years on pservers taught me that if you don't incentivize players to pick the "inferior" faction then you end up heavily lopsided, I also think the Mega sized realms were a mistake as again taking from pservers you realize very quickly that a population of 3-5k is actually quite healthy and ensures resources are obtainable for anyone that wishes to put the time in, Community truly to me died the second they opened those realm transfers, whats worse is they repeated it again with SoD, I think for me as I age I realize my money just better spent elsewhere as well, WoW has truly been a long journey but I think for many it's just over, but we sure as hell got some great memories out of it!
When i come to world design and questing, tbc was already there. Quests hubs and flying mount + blob-like island with 4-5 zones. Vanilla leveling is so great because questing make you run around everywhere, many quest have a narrative to link with other areas : Best exemple is elwynn forest westfall redridge darkshire. With donjon's quest usualy being milestone in the lore of the area. another thing i realy like about vanilla is character progressing through leveling. You realy feel each steps, you get new and important spell while leveling with sometime specific quest for it. Your 1st green items are very impactful, same with your first blue from donjon quest, then you get rings, later shoulder and eventualy helmet. Around level 50 you start getting trinket. The dev made sure you get new and impactful stuff all the time.
I remember the week that Dungeon Finder came out was the last week my guild did dungeon runs together, and my playstyle as a tank shifted from tanking for my guild to tanking for gold because I could just do it all day with 0 downtime.
I remember there was an early maybe test version of the dungeon finder where it only was looking for players inside your own Realm and it didn't automatically teleport to dungeon. That was pretty ok to me for finding random groups.
@@akseI think you're right.. the earliest version would only lfg for players from the same realm, if I'm not mistaken. idk when it became cross realm, it's been so long & I'm not at a computer lol
almost sounds like a digital allegory of growing up... Hanging out with friends doing odd things together for pocket change then growing up and going your separate ways and getting a job for money
I remember standing in line for hours outside of my local Best Buy for the midnight pre-sale of the WotLK CE. That, in of itself, was a fun experience, just chatting it up with other people about the game and their experiences, expectations... Although I thought the expansion itself was pretty great, I had already felt a shift in the community, the pressure to grind to level 80 as fast as possible so our guild could start doing the next set of end-game content, which only accelerated the feeling of being left behind if you took a more traditional approach to leveling. Although 40-man raids offered its own set of challenges between coordinating that many people for the mechanics of raids like BWL and later AQ and Naxx and simply dealing with the lag and screen-tearing slideshow with encounters like Thaddius and Heigan DDR but also missed it because the whole guild was there doing it. The comradery on Vent, the shared wipes and the communal elation on a hard-won boss clear and people finally getting their long coveted Epic/Legendary class items. Ultimately, Wrath is when I burnt out and soon after, bowed out of WoW. Stuff in life made it more difficult to get on at my old schedule. I never returned. I popped on once or twice just to see what's changed, got a couple free weeks and a free level boost when WoD came out but nothing really grabbed me. It felt, more than ever, like I slept through the apocalypse and woke up to a barren wasteland.
Watching streamers play classic was truly depressing. They just went from dungeon grinding to raid logging, completely ignoring the world around them. That much of the playerbase would on to emulate them was even worse.
I played WoW when wotlk came out. I was just a kid back then. I loved it. Then I tried wotlk again when it was re-released. I got bored of the game at level 70. I was in Northerend at the first zone. I just... got bored of doing dungeons and quests over and over again, just to realize that it was an end-game rush in the re-release. That was when I tried HC classic. I was sad that I couldn't play BEs, but playing a Gnome mage, leveling slowly through the world, taking my time and appreciating every bit of gear I got, it was a wonderful experience, something that wotlk never did. Any dungeon gear I got in wotlk had no importance. It didn’t feel impactful to get the Illusionary Rod at SM Library in wotlk compared to getting it in HC classic. Questing was dangerous, grouping with people to finish elite quests, seeing people die. It was so just so damn good. I missed the golden era of MMO gaming, but damn does HC classic give you a good game. Right now, though, I am playing SoD with a nice casual guild, and classic SoD has been really fun. I really hope they make a TBC SoD because... I want to play BEs.
@@Trashalchemy Yep, the Activision merger was around the time TBC dropped as well, or a bit before it, and you could start to see their influence. PVP specifically was pushed to be a mega balanced esport instead of a team game where BGs and open world were the PVP, then it became basically strictly arena if you wanted to have fun
@@MDHDH-iy7nmarena is dope though, even on current retail. As a healer anyway. Have fun playing a dps though, you’re going to have a lot of downtime trying to find teammates unless you’re really good
@@gollese And yet look at the various private world servers Blizzard had take down, the poor reaction to J. Allen Brack's infamous "You think you do but you don't" line, and the overall success of Classic.
Counterintuitive. If people wanted to make bonds, they'd use the LFG channel. Dungeon Finder is about efficiency and focusing on quickly finishing a goal over the journey to get there.
I really feel it was the community. Vanilla allowed you to get to know the people on your server, both Alliance and Horde. The realm forums were so great for talking smack about pvp, or just chatting with other folks on your server. Our guild was formed December 2004 and I'm still friends with many of the folks who played the game then, to this day. "Classic" brought some of that feeling back, for a couple of years at least. There is no replacing the original run through though. I can still remember the first time running into SW and IF, like it was today. It was overwhelming and amazing.
If you're not a no-changes andy, may i suggest you to try Project Ascension (on the progressive server Elune)? There are lots of new mechanics to learn, challenge runs that make your leveling experience actually interesting, balance patches every few days and, most importantly, a sense of community. There are tryhards, casuals, RP people, pvpeers, newbies, challenge runs (with actual rewards), lots of fun builds... and the best part is that no one cares about how you're playing the game, in a good way. Every now and then, someone will ask for the best build to pump the highest damage on general chat and most responses are "man, play the game the way you want" because (unless you want to play at the highest level) you don't need meta builds. If you give it a try, remember to take your time with the new mechanics. There are a bunch, but most are secondary until you start to raid. There's also "secrets" scattered through Azeroth, so if you go blind it's actually pretty rewarding doing some exploration! As an example, i'm currently running a fire paladin, based around maelstrom weapon mechanics on a hardcore exp x1 run where i have to kill every elite beast before certain level (like King Bangalash) and man, i'm having the first time wow experience all over again lol.
I will never forget walking into Stormwind for the first time, with my friend waiting for me to show me around. I could barely keep above like 6- 10 FPS on my old computer and slow internet. I was doubly blown away that there was a tram that took you directly to the other major city which was INSIDE A MOUNTAIN. God, vanilla WoW was awe inspiring. What we see now as lackluster and normal was just mind blowing and ground breaking. Most games did not have huge open cities without instanced versions. It was so epic to me as a young teen lol. I will never get tired of reminiscing about such a magical time. And simple things like an epic mount back then were so awesome. In Classic remake you'd see them constantly, and super geared people knowing the exact right builds, but back then, an epic mount was like the coolest thing you'd see that day.
@@haptic_g more power to those that enjoy Vanilla. I think if you aren't playing a warrior, rogue, priest, or mage....vanilla kinda feels like a shit game. MoP is best expansion in my opinion. Best mmo too. Some people really enjoy mythic plus. Others like Vanilla. That's fine. We should have servers for every expansion.
@@haptic_g I think every class i mentioned is better in wotlk, cata or MoP. Depends on the type of player, but I'd say warrior rogue priest and mage are more fun and also strong in MoP too. I know some people love the class design. I couldn't stomach most classes until TBC.
@@DrewAmongTheFence78 I disagree, I mained Warlock since late Vanilla/early BC (Was a Hunter prior), but I had more fun playing a Warlock than any of those four classes from BC to DF. It just felt better, the risk-reward gameplay of Life Tapping your HP to deal more damage and the usage of soul shards added a level of class identity I couldn't find amongst the other classes.
Even back in TBC you started seeing some changes that broke the original philosophy of vanilla. Daily quests that made you feel like missing out if you didn't log in, whilst in vanilla, you had repeatable quests that you could do on your own terms. Tier sets were bought from a vendor, rather than dropped, which made it more convenient yes, but it's not as exciting and memorable to have a token drop, as having a piece of gear drop. Even a group finder tool was introduced. Not a dungeon finder with teleport, but automatic group finder, which is enough to kill a part of the chat for sure. The concept of different difficulties was also introduced in dungeons, with the heroic mode. Flying mounts were introduced, which went against the spirit of vanilla, since when you were on a flying mount, you were out of harm's way, which made the world not feel as dangerous. Plus it shrank the world down. Also, still technically in TBC, the Recruit a Friend functionality was introduced on the 6th of August 2008, and Wrath was released on November 13th.
Three months after launch of classic I couldn’t get a single dual outside Orgrimmar and asking for directions always resulted in being told to download an addon.
One cannot stress how important it is that the leveling take as long as possible. These games live and die by the grind, the slow, satisfying progression of starting really weak and over time growing more and more powerful, each step being satisfying because of the time and effort put into it. Once you finish the "grind", that's it, you've beat the game, time to quit. No amount of repeatable endgame content will keep you there for long. The old school MMORPGs, including vanilla, understood that.
Yup. I got lucky and while still being a level 2 priest met a lvl 3 druid that taugh me the ropes on how to play. It turned out, that she was the leader of one of the most powerful guilds on the server and that was her new character. She took me in, and the experience of being in a powerful guild with proper management was amazing. She had events planned for members of all level ranges, so no one felt left out and could socialize. Parties, contests, pvp bootcamps for newbies, world pvp trips for high-level players, etc. Getting to level cap was certainly a goal, but not a huge priority. A good guild or group of friends could elevate the experience so much. Joining a raid guild and doing the same thing every week while being constantly evaluated sounds like a terrible way to spend your time.
WoW became extremely popular because compared to other MMOs it was significantly LESS grindy. Many MMOs didnt even have a level cap and the grind never ended. Pointless grinds aren't appealing, and theyre even less appealing in 2024 than in 2004. Before BC classic even released, many classic players were already trying to side step the leveling process as much as possible through dungeon farms and other leveling boost services.
Spot on. OSRS is thriving with the biggest player base its ever had and after a decade of updates/QoL improvements, the one constant has been the grind. When somebody puts a considerable amount of time into something it has more perceived value; the account/gear progression in that game is incredibly satisfying as devs have done a bang up job tempering power creep over the years. Did you grind CoX kills for months back in 2017 just for a T-bow? Well it was worth it as the T-bow is still the best ranged weapon in the game some 7 years later. After playing OSRS I haven't looked back; my fondest WoW memories are from a bygone era and I've accepted the fact that my actual game experience will never meet the expectations of nostalgia.
For me it’s always about the journey, to often I find myself not reaching my destination. Meeting a NPC who asks “Can you help me?”. “Of course, that’s why I’m here”. Then I see something on the horizon that needs harvesting….or run into another NPC who asks “Can you help me?” “Of course I can!” I say…..🙃
Seems like most games nowadays have actively moved away from that style of game. I think you as a player have become a minority in this aspect, used to be gamers would share your mindset but somewhere through the years and the growth of gaming and gaming studios the mindset of the average player changed from "games are to be experienced" to "games are to be beat". There are still some good indie games that embody that philosophy but for the time being, we live in the era where mainstream gaming has become as shallow as marvel movies.
I remember the first time I hit 60 in vanilla I didn’t jump into raiding, I was sad my journey was over. So I made another char and did the whole leveling process again. The fun of it was whatever happened along the way. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Great vid - One major change you forgot to mention, that was started with Wrath and tripled down on in Cata, was "mandatory" dailies. In WOTLK stuff like the Hodir and Argent Crusade reps, where if you wanted to raid - Not only did you need to attune/gear up/do the proper quest chains like in raids past, you also had to spend a certain amount of time every day doing dailies to earn rep to get "mandatory" enchants and other things that any serious raid team basically required you to have. Cataclysm made this even worse and was a major major turn off for me and one of the reasons I quit at that time. The 40 day Molten Front stuff was super un-fun for me.
@@NotSuperSerious what in the hell are you talking about? Horrible examples. You absolutely do not need to do dailies to raid, especially not argent tournament. Vanilla wow had more grinds than wotlk. Regarding Sons of Hodir-> even if the enchant gave you 500 stats in wotlk you could still clear everything except heroic lich king 0% without it. Sure it helps, but nothing so small as a shoulder enchant is making or breaking your guild's progress. Not when bad players over geared for the content still suck at mechanics. Shoulder enchant might be expected but 25 players without shoulder enchants could still clear content if they didn't rep grind. However, you must have potions or resistance gear in classic. Side note, some people like dailies. Others do not. Some people do them for completion. Others do them for gear, gold, or to unlock something that helps guildies or alts(recipes or BoA items). What you meant was attunements are required. Wotlk actually removed those though.
@DrewAmongTheFence78 when said enchants or items are BiS and not hard at all to grind or get then yeah there's no excuse as to not have it, especially in WOTLK when rep grinding was easy as heck.
Dailies are not required in cata at all. I topped meters and was blasting down heroics without tol borad dailies and with the honored shoulder enchant from therazane and parsing high. Plus a shoulder enchant isn't even going to matter if your job is to interupt on say chogal omnitron or halfus. No one in a serious guild is hitting a berserk timer over a damn shoulder enchant. These are all things that people do to "fit in" and make your character as powerful as it can be for raid. However a single minor thing on 25 players is never going the be the reason your group could not kill a boss. For the first 4 expansions, if you have all raiders live the fight and you do mechanics and still hit a berserk timer... players just are bad at their specs or bad at the game.
What WOTLK changed for old players, cata made true for all players. Cata made it true for everyone that leveling was easy, end game was all that mattered, etc. Whereas in WOTLK new players still got to experience "classic" wow design philosophy. I started in WOTLK and I had the classic experience. I leveled through the old world, and it wasn't empty on my server. I joined a guild or two, we grouped up and did low level content. My friends and I hung around outside orgrimmar and just chatted for hours, no care in the world for how fast we would hit 80. All the wonder of exploration was still intact. It took me a year to hit 80, I was second of my friend group to do it. It was just not important to us to hit 80 fast, and there were plenty of people like us beyond our little group of 5. Our guild was filled with experienced and new players alike. All of what classic means, my friends and I got to experience. The magic wasn't gone for new players. Then when we hit 80 the game expanded, and it was a whole new world, but not one disconnected from the world we had just taken a year to get through. The things wrath changed really only affected people who had been playing since before wrath came out. You couldn't get heirlooms, for example, if you didn't have a level 80 character already. Cata made heirlooms available for gold, by contrast. Dungeon finder leveling spam was only a thing at the very end of wotlk, but it was there for everyone from the start in cata, which is technically not a change that cata made but it means the experience wasn't had by new players until then. So people who started as new players in the beginning of wotlk leveled like normal players but if you started in cata you likely spammed dungeons. Basically, wrath did show a change in philosophy but that change wasn't felt, in my opinion, unless you had been playing for years before. New players still got to experience the classic philosophy when leveling up and starting out. In cata, however, nobody got to experience classic philosophy. New players were just as inundated with the new philosophy as old players. I think that's why cata is seen as the line and not wrath.
For me it was phase 2 in classic when the game died for me. Earthfury was really well balanced faction wise which made wPvP a blast as you had relatively equal fights while out and about. Then in P2 blizzard got this great idea to open server transfers from max population servers to Earthfury which massively unbalanced our server. Now horde had a 66-75% server population and Alliance struggled from there on out. Earthfury Alliance side finally died early TBC when almost all the Alliance players transferred off because there were no new players to recruit or like me quit as I had enough of what Blizzard had done to our once amazing server.
Phases were an horrible idea, I'm pretty sure it was very purposefully done to introduce FOMO into what should have been a definitive, frozen in time, Vanilla version of the game.
A familiar, open world that exudes the feeling of freedom. That is a home for many and never changes. The feeling of having the freedom to do what I want at any time. Nevertheless, everything I do has a value, a meaning and also leads to the goal. But how, with whom and for how long the whole thing happens is something I decide to a large extent, freely myself. It is the player's freedom that is conspicuously the focus of Vanilla.
I’ve been playing on a TBC private server where they don’t allow addons. The community is pretty small (400 people so far) but wow it makes you realize how much bloat there is with modern wow and the way Blizzard started to implement the addons people developed into their own UI. Having no addons and just the basic interface is pretty fun actually.
People that can't play without add ons are weird. Seems like a sweaty thing tbh. I use a few add ons but hardly need them at all. The only add on that I absolutely need is DBM but that's just because I'm inexperienced and don't want to slow my group down lol
There is no way for a private server to disallow addons lmao. You're lying or naive to genuinely believe people aren't playing with them. Not even a custom WoW client could stop addons from working because the UI would fall apart. The addons folder that has stuff labeled "Blizzard_" in it are used by the game to make those specific pieces function.
Being 11 years old when it came out and leveling up to 60 with my best friends over the course of 3 years, that was magic. Purely enjoying the world and soaking it in. We never even started raiding. Loved every minute.
As mostly Wrath player, I agree with you. I started several months before the release of WotLK, Sunwell was already half-abandoned by that point in the open-world part. I enjoyed faster leveling in TBC, but I absolutely hated how different it was visually from the world I started to play in. TBC was never a great expansion for me. Wrath was better in some aspects, but what did I do in my spare time when I was not doing dailies or raiding? I revisited vanilla dungeons and raids with friends in very small groups for a semblance of challenge. I used to farm Onyxia solo and I explored every corner of BRD, coming back to it hundreds of times. While still leveling in TBC I already knew about Atiesh and I hoped that I would be able to grab it once I reach max level just for the collection. That never happened of course. As a never vanilla player, I always wanted to go back in time and experience those adventures for myself. Thanks to the private servers I was able to do it before Classic launched and it was even a greater experience than I could have imagined. Sure, when playing vanilla sometimes you miss some QoL features or are annoyed that some class doesn’t shine in certain spec like in Wrath, but the whole slow, sometimes even boring experience of going from one part of the world to another for some XP for a simple delivery quest leaves better impression than grabbing 20 quests without reading and mindlessly doing them while watching all seasons of South Park with the game being in the background. I was going for the Insane in the Membrane achievement by the end of Wrath and was probably 60 % done when I lost all interest in game. I was burned out. I owned Cataclysm and I played it once for a week or even less when a friend sent me the Scroll of Resurrection. Since then I played only vanilla and that never left me burned out even after many years.
Don't forget that Wrath is when the Lore Characters became voiced, and the player became their goffers... in classic and TBC the player was the hero driving the action. in Wrath you're saved by Jaina, saved by Sylvanas, Thrall vs Varian, Varian vs Garrosh, Bolvar saves you, Tirion saves you... etc etc. The whole game shifted from player focus to lore/NPC focus and its obvious upon a second run through Wrath.
I personally didn't mind the NPC focus cause it still felt like I was just some guy on the sidelines seeing things happen as I was one of the many trying to save the world. It wasn't until Cata when the game felt like I alone was interacting with lore figures in questing and slowly pushed me towards a main protagonist role did I feel the charm of vanilla/Classic began to shift out. It was tolerable in Cata but it got worse as the expansions flew by, now I feel like I am just so important to the story that Thrall and Anduin whip out their phone to call me when they need help and Khadgar can take me to the local bar to have a drink, making the multiplayer aspect of WoW feel essentially worthless outside of dungeons and raids (And PvP if you are into that).
I HIGHLY disagree. In classic at least, you were just a guy. This allowed the player to rp their character much more freely than just "me the hero!" You were one of many soldiers fighting for a cause. You didnt have to be a hero, nor a hero's underling. You could do what you want. Then later they started forcing your character into being "hero!" Or "champion!" It's bullshit. I hate it.
People blamed cataclysm for being a really bad expansion. But total overhaul of the azeroth itself and keep the endgame going was a huge businness back then and even now it is. People sings praises about WotLK everywhere but I remember people were complaining about that expansion that time too. Modernizing an element or total game itself doesnt kill itself. What's killing WoW is today's society, our new social interaction behaviours and "being a total dickhead in internet looks cool " mentality. These things are not just kill WoW, they can kill any game that needs a good co-operation and interaction.
the thing is in Classic you just cannot do Naxx i.e. without min/max, you cant even do Onyxia if you are really really improvising as an entire raid...
@@SoyoyoS you totally can Todays WR are silly, with tons of consumables, world buffs and shit It felt hard because nobody had a clue of what was happening, the overall player level was much lower back then
@@ZZZZordan true. People remember it as being much "harder" than it actually was. The reason it was "harder" is because it was brand new and very few had mastered the game yet. Add the fact that you couldn't simply share a video link with boss mechanics (most people didn't have a PC with the capability to play and record at the same time- and streaming was nearly nonexistent), and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off whilst being screamed at on Vent....if they even had Vent, to complete raids. Times were different.
The spirit of vanilla is an environment that encourages socialization. The long walks, flight rides, the need to personally engage to form groups, get help from guildies, fill in the tedium of grinding. All of that created an environment where you leaned on the people around you to get entertainment.
Classic died for me in WotLK in the Vault of Archavon. I'd done the whole wintergrasp battle, we won, but then I couldn't get invited to any raid for the Vault because I didn't have the achievement and that was that. This is when the gearscore stuff was cropping up too and it just killed the vibe for me and the game lost a lot of fun.
I have recently gotten back into reading and funny coincidence I reread a lot of my favorite fantasy novels, including Eragon. I have never seen a book series as an ad read before and I have to admit it was pretty refreshing to see. I want more of these type of ads in videos. I plan on checking out the Songs of Chaos.
Mad I’m a big fan of your channel and a lot of your points. So I’m gonna say this as blunt as possible. You just keep saying the same thing over and over. The problem is that old mmo players are chasing a high. A high that being an adult now has taken away from you. You will never be as care free and clueless and you were then. And thats what we need to “get back” to the old school feelings. Our time wasn’t as “valuable”. Streamers hadn’t ruined all the mystery of every single game just for internet clout. It’s gone brother. Accept it and start drinking. It helps.
I say this same thing to people who see all 7 Jurassic Park movies, all 12 Star Wars movies, all the Marvel movies and walk away still feeling empty. None of these things are a novelty any more. CGI dinosaurs don't wow the audience any more and neither do space ships getting into dog fights. It's been done a thousand times and it's time to move on and accept you're old enough that you've seen it all and nothing will blow your mind like it did when you a kid or young adult. Move on and pursue something that has meaning instead of trying to find satisfaction in "nerd" stuff. It's all been hijacked by major companies any way who care more about checking boxes that they think will drive engagement numbers up so they can make as much money as possible. There are very few passion projects these days.
The temptation to re-subscribe for a month and roll a new toon in vanilla is so strong every time I watch a madseason video. I've loved your content ever since the days of crusade and my first experience with streamer raids. Will always look forward to these videos, much love goat
Going to Orgrimar or Ironforge into LFG chat was something special. You created bonds there. You gathered the group of adventurers and you'd know them by names. And throughout your leveling process you'd see those people again and again and have those friendships bloom. Later on when you finally get to 60 you know so many people, you go "way back" with them. You join a guild where those people are, you move around, you go hunt for blue armor sets and then for their upgrades before you even attempt MC or BRD. Great time
I think one of the reasons wotlk was so well recieved was because people experienced the joy of the quality of life changes for the first time, and the negative long term effects on socializing, etc. hadn't taken effect yet. They do something very similar with Diablo 4. When you're playing the campaign in Diablo 4, legendaries are very rare and the game is slow paced and nostalgic. Originally you couldn't even use a mount until you progressed quite far into the campaign. But then once you finish the campaign, you're bombarded with convenience and QoL such as faster leveling, tons of legendaries, etc. and you're hit by that initial exctacy. But as you keep playing, then leveling up and finding loot loses its charm when it's been made too easy. They're just crossing their fingers that they got you hooked on the dopamine treadmill. I think over-doing convenience/QoL gives a big spike in player-activity and is good for making money in the short run, but they're changing the retention-mechanism of the game from being driven by socializing and sense of accomplishment to fomo and addiction, which eventually hurts the company's reputation in the long run.
D4 has little to no reason incentive to grind endgame. The drop rates are bad and the gear itself is bad. Even Diablo 3 still had plenty to grind. Games don't die for no reason.
I loved vanilla because I loved the adventure, being able to play a fantasy version of myself, fighting off horde players, the rush of getting your first blue item and most of all.. Meeting and getting to know people very much like myself.
Azeroth flying, I agree. BC and Wrath were AMAZING for wpvp. I was so looking forward to tens of thousands of hks in hellfire peninsula again fighting at the towers... But it just didn't happen this time around. There was always someone at the towers. Always someone in wintergrasp. Gurubashi. Tons of people dueling outside the cities. I saw very little of any of that in classic.
I never thought I would ever be able to quantify the value of that small talk of forming the group together via chat rather than an automated machine, but you did exactly that. I miss it too
TBC 2.3 patch should get some special mention, in this patch they made leveling faster, killed elite quests, standardised creatures levels, added a bunch of free blue gear to low level dungeons, reduced mounts levle to 30, removed a lot of classes restrictions and limitations, paladin became physical etc. It was basically the WOTLK pre pre patch
I'm so glad you made this. Wotlk was the first time WoW growth flat-lined. Meaning it was the first time in wow history that the same amount of people were subscribing that were unsubscribing. It truly was the beginning of the end
It's really time to stop...I feel obligated to dislike any video with it in it...and I hate doing that...I love Mads and I love the channel, but it has really overstayed its welcome...I agree with the statement, but its annoying
The spirit if vanilla is forming a group in a city for a dubgeon on the opposite side of the world because you need to free space in your quest log but you forget where you picked up the dungeon quest and wont be able to find it again if you delete it from your log.
died for me when i was 1 bar from 60 on my HC toon of 200hours. didn't know why I was playing, so I do drowned it in the stormwind canals to give it a poetic death. RIP Struggled, priest of azeroth
Great Video, man. I cannot believe I have been playing this game for 20 years now, and yeah, I would agree that Wrath was the start of most things; e.g., gear score add-on, group finding, and so on. However, I would say that now that I am 20 years older now, and have limited time these days, the current game fits my older life! Keep up the good work.
Mad ngl you should put your money where your mouth is on all of this vanilla hype. Play era and bring attention too it, I think this would be good content and would bring good light to those playing era.
Leveling is by far one of my favorite things about all old era MMOs. The "Grind" of getting the next level to unlock the next tier of gear or weapons. That was the incentive to just "Feel stronger" and feel like the time you put into the game mattered.
Hey man I think you make good content but it feels like you've made this exact video like 7 times now, it feels very samey. I think I've heard you explain the differences/transitioning between classic and modern WoW over and over again
The forums was great too adding more out of the game experiences of community. The most amazing time was when servers were packed but in each server you got to know a very specific community you remembered many names in that server and what their personalities was like. Each server was like one big family. You would have your drunk uncle, the guy spamming chat for free gold, someoen constantly arguing about politics, you know all those people and you grouped with certain of them and remembered the quirks they had like Bob always had to stop and mine during a run and it was all endearing in a way. You even remembered the gankers and loved them all the same even if they kept getting you while you were questing in STV.
I agree... the dungeon finder had the effect on me that i skipped entire questing zones in wrath and later it did not make sense anymore to explore them. So i basically did just fly from one certain spot to the next wondering about the places and npcs. Dungeons are faster leveling and better loot, but a lot of repetition, more grinding and less role playing
This is something I've been saying since wrath, the game took a drastic change from TBC to wrath but their "Bring the player not the class" mentality ruined the game feel for me, so many things felt like more of the same and every time the lich king showed up he either did nothing, got his ass beat, or just walked away, he has been the bitch king since wrath first launched.
Wow the irony of Madseason calling out blizzard for their money grab and then a good quarter of his new video is a money grab advertisement. RIP Madseason videos being good. Everyone sells out at some point I guess.
Classic died for me, when I could no longer keep up with the story - when I felt I was being rushed to the next "chapter" (aka. Expansion) before I was done with the current one. I never completed the Vanilla endgame raids, because people had already moved on to TBC. By the time I got to TBC's endgame, people were already getting started on WotLK. Because of my more casual pacing, I was always left behind before I had any chance to experience any of the "good stuff" that people usually refer to when they talk about WoW. I was stuck always grinding to level for the endgame, but never experiencing the actual endgame for myself. It was so frustrating, by the time Cataclysm rolled around - and I'd once again missed out on the endgame, all the stuff about the Lich King, that I as a Warcraft 3 fan had been looking most forward to seeing, I just gave up. Not only did Cataclysms release mean I'd once again missed out on the story, it completely undermined the story up until that point by inserting the whole "world changing" event, so I couldn't even just keep playing the previous expansions on my own, without dialogue, quests, and the landscape itself having been changed to accommodate the new expansion. That's when I gave up.
Thats all his content has become. He's an angry ex at this point and its fucking sad because based on his non WoW content he has potential to make amazing stuff.
@@Noriaela It's end endless circlejerk. Vague, melancholic, nostalgia-blinded, heavy-sigh-fueled rambling about how new bad and old good, without ever actually making a meaningful and consistent point. It's like his only goal is to bait people into leaving sad, long-winded comments about how much they miss 2004. I wish people had enough self-awareness to admit that they're just old and jaded instead of pretending it's somehow Blizzard's fault they've lost all sense of joy in their lives.
WoW as a game is pretty dull, most mmorpgs are. If not for the social element, why play them. And don't say "the lore", please. As a follower of the series since Warcraft II, it pains me what they've done to the characters and setting.
I hear what you're saying bro but the whole world has gone mad. Negativity and toxicity everywhere. Every online Game I play, is toxic. I'm starting to like retro single player Games more and more.
IMO the social aspect is pretty much what makes MMOs truly shine, why play a game a massive multiplayer online if interaction between players is not desired any time from level 1 to max? if I wanted to play a game where I didn't deal with other players, whether it be in a group for quests or instances or fighting in PvP, then I'd just not play an MMO at all. For example, look at Star Wars: The Old Republic. It looks cool and fun but the fact that it is so heavy into the singleplayer aspect with its questing makes me go, "Alright but why is this considered an MMO?" Only reason why is because of space battles and dungeons, and that's only counting as you level up to max, no idea if there is any difference at max level. Remove all that and you have a singleplayer RPG right there, no reason to make it an MMO.
@EJ_Red you all have mental illnesses. Why does wow have to be an mmo? Everytime someine pops up in game tneybtyim the experience. Wow is better as a single player game. There's nonlaw saying wow is an mmo. Poe is labeled an mmo but 99% of gameplay is solo. And ssf mode is better than trade. Mmo just means a lot of people play it and it's an online game. If you cant enjoy wow without rtards ruinng your day then that's a personal problem
I love the random kindness , rudeness, stupidity in the open world. Busy servers when they are fresh are some of the worst and best times you can have, imo
I played since launch and quit at the start of Wrath. I was guild-less all the way to level 50-ish. I was in a dungeon with four others in the same guild. I was a frost mage....at the end of the dungeon, I received an invite because of how well I was playing as a "pug." I stayed with that guild until I quit playing. My friend, who introduced me to WoW, said at the very start before I even logged in: "you don't find a guild; the guild finds you." RIP WoW.
I was one of them. I quit WoW during Wrath and the group finder was just one of the reasons for doing so, people say it took a while for the negative ramifications of the group finder to be properly felt but I remember the decimation of that core social aspect of the WoW experience being pretty fucking immediate and drastic. I eventually returned to WoW for the Legion expansion, the complete lack of community and social interaction in the game as a whole was in a word: 'depressing'. I eventually quit again once it became clear that I was only logging in to raid and little else. That's not what I want from an MMO, if I want a single player experience I'd rather just play a single player game and actually get a better overall experience.
@@Sevarrius The worst part is the only people still vocal about retail WoW are those that enjoy it and they are toxic as all hell. Any problem you have? That's a "you" problem apparently. Why would I want to dedicate my time to playing with a bunch of aholes? "Just grind boring solo daily garbage content until you have enough ilvl to deem you worthy". Meanwhile in Vanilla and TBC I was grouping with all sorts of players with differing skill levels and play time all the time. The gearscore addon devastated Wrath group experience, turning your average raider into a "ilvl or nothing" idiot with the communication skills of a rabid hyena.
@@kedarunzi9139 What? It's literally one of his main talking points in the video, with him also mentioning the blow that the group and raid finder had to the social aspect of the game. Never mind the fact that he probably spent as much time talking about Wrath of the Lich King as he did Classic/Vanilla, whilst also mentioning multiple other expansions/version of the game. Did we watch the same video?
I had absolutely no idea you were back madseason great video I've watched your last vid from 3 years ago so glad you're back man! Your calm voice soothes the pain of the absolute devastation that has befallen WoW... As for the game personally i felt the change in wotlk and after cata it was GREATLY obvious wrath was peak cata was the nice slope and pandas were the bottom. Also great music selection for the video!
How many times you gonna make this exact same video? I like your content a lot but I swear I’ve heard you tell this whole story in several other videos
All you streamers man. You have no idea where to look except for what gets views. CLASSIC WOW IS ALIVE AND WELL just leave those garbage cataclysm servers and come to classic era WHITEMANE or hardcore servers DEFIAS PILLAGERS. World buffs everyday, growing community, full classic experience. It’s alive and well.
Dude at 10:23 when you hit up Dalaran and had FFIX - The Place I'll Return To Someday playing... I've sat in that city listening to this and Gizmaluke's Grotto. So peaceful.
The changing of the original zones and quests was the biggest thing for me. I enjoyed being able to go back and level a new character in the old zones. Nostalgia was no doubt a big part of it.
You are forgetting something here: Wotlk was the last expansion that saw HUGE system changes. They added phasing (which ashes of ceation/star citizen devs claim is a new invention by them). It is basically something akin to what is now called cloud. They could have dropped all realm restrictions exactly at that point but chose not to, for some reason. They added the PvP Zone and VEHICLEs. Which was used a lot in wotlk and is still used for much varied content. They did a lot of other technical changes which I forgot. While you might call Blizz lazy with TBC they really upped their game with wotlk. Unfortunately, very late into the expansion, Activision/bobby forced them to streamline and add all "current thing" features like achievements.
For me, the "spirit of Vanilla" was the lack of shortcuts. You wanted to achieve something, you had to put time and effort into it. Even going to other zones was like this - mounts were expensive and available later than they are nowadays, so you had to do a lot of walking (and fending off random mob attacks). I disagree about Vanilla being linear - it gave a lot more freedom because the quests were not curated and arranged in neat chains as they are nowadays. You actually had to explore and find quests in obscure places. Some quests required travel to other zones, even other continents. Many quest chains ended without giving you breadcrumbs to other chains, so you had to go back to exploring and looking for stuff to do... and this created a fairly good feel of non-linearity and sandbox-like freedom. I could go on, but you get the idea...
You're exactly right about WotLK. I realized it during last year's classic release. I am now realizing it about Phase 3 and 4 of SoD. Nightmare Incursions destroyed the leveling experience. Rushing to max level denies us the community-building experience.
The community killed Classic WoW. From the get go in 2019, it was just min maxxing and tryhards. The closest I've gotten to a true Vanilla experience was WoW HC.
Cataclysm is WotLK+, it just improved upon and polished everything from WotLK while also making leveling 1-60 good again(and fresh at the time). But I'd argue that Cataclysm was a love letter to Vanilla, TBC and Warcraft 2 fans, along with some WC3. Now yes, some of the game's design isn't like vanilla, but it's mostly end-game. Keep in mind only Cataclysm every properly addressed pre-expansion leveling. As in changing and adding new proper content in the form of the revamped kalimdor and eastern kingdom. Every other expansion just cut the XP required and focused on its own leveling in the new zones. The small problem is that in Cata leveling was a numerically easier, now that there was proper itemization while leveling, meaning that not just weapons and some OP piece here and there were good, all gear was good. Plus with the removal of spell ranks, now spells had lower base damage, but higher stat scaling. If anything they could have introduced a second difficulty to leveling(heroic if you will) for those who enjoy leveling or just straight up make it harder. To this day I play WoW without taking achievements into account. If I get an achievement cool, I don't know how that happened for the vast majority of them. XD If you ask me when classic died it's either with MoP, WotLK or with the release of BlackWing Lair. You decide.
Cata leveling was so dumbed down and streamlined. Absolute yawnfest with no thinking or challenge involved. Just follow arrows and check off your todo list.
@@divinecomedian2 Vanilla leveling isn't harder either, just pull a few mobs less, but I agree that the quest helper ruins leveling, good thing you can turn it off in the console/chat. Keep in mind WotLK introduced the quest helper.
Man this is getting tiring. How many times are you gonna milk this topic? Classic died because all of us grew up and learned the game. Classic was a base game, everything else is an expansion. No fucking shit you’re gonna have to start adding something to speed leveling when the cap is going up and the whole playerbase is already maxed so what are they gonna focus on? I used to like your videos man, you’ve really turned in to Asmongold 2.0.
Alliance players still play friendly with Goblins against their own long-term interests. People still kill Azuregos for loot, even though he's never done a single thing wrong. You guys only got more effective at being bad at the game. You fail faster and more powerfully than ever.
Your videos always randomly pop up on my recommended even though I'm subscribed and they're a breath of fresh air. Thank you for always bringing back nostalgia. I played from vanilla until mists when my fiance and i split up. I tried to come back for legion but it wasn't the game i fell in love with. There will never be a game quite like vanilla world of warcraft.
Rediscover your love for fantasy by listening to Songs of Chaos: link.michaelrmiller.co.uk/MadSeason
People point at Cataclysm as the expansion to separate "classic" from "current", but is it really true?
I saw the headline and came in to see if you said Cata. LFG ruined the community- and Cata ruined the world itself.
Cata was the break point. Still play- from MC Raider to dirtiest of casuals, usually just when the weather sucks. Still have my original toons and guild.
ps getting those books right away. They look incredible. Massive Pern fangirl.
@@TeasLouise agree on LFG killing the community, also the ability to have horde and alliance on same account didnt help but was lesser.
the killer feature of LFG easily could have been implemented without killing the community - the killer feature being not requiring 2+ people travel to the summoning stone.
a teleport to any dungeon from major trade hubs would have provided the QoL of LFG without killing the server community. just my two dollars
I'm glad you're back
No a bad video, but there are two points I have to disagree with you on.
First, different difficulties started in BC. That was where we first saw dungeons with normal and heroic modes. WotLK getting raids with normal and heroic modes is a natural progression of the changes in BC to dungeon difficulties.
Second, your timeline is a little off. Cash shop items didn't come until well after the merger with Activision. That happened on 09JUL08, ING reported on the merger the day prior (08JUL08). It wasn't until September 2009 we saw the game services for cash announced, with the race, server, and faction changes. The first cash shop items, happened almost two years later, with the release of Lil' XT, KT, and the celestial steed on 15APR10. Cat dropped 07DEC10 which is why I believe most people associate cash shop items with Cat.
@@TeasLouiseThanks for checking out the books!
for me "classic" died when my friends got too sweaty and it was no longer about rolling alts and goofing around together
Yeah man you really nailed it. I didn’t mind sweating, but now that’s ALL it is about, and the people who are left playing are kinda miserable. Ill see through cata probably but I am out after this.
@@Ghostcharm I couldn’t even get my friends to play classic, they got to level 30 and quit
Min maxing wrecks every mmo! And honestly i don't know a cure to it 😢
sooo many people in "current" classic got so sweaty immediately and wanted to minmax everything; it just sucks the fun out of the game
Funny thing is, every last one of these classic channels was gung-ho posting min/max guides on literally everything Classic related non-stop especially the 6 months leading up to August 2019. The big channels got the entire community stuck in that hyper competitive mindset from the get-go.
I’m 32 now (12 back then) and was introduced to WoW by my uncle at launch. It’s hard to adequately describe how deeply it captured my imagination. I remember him showing me and my brothers the cinematic at his apartment a couple of weeks before launch. We had never experienced anything like it. There’s just too much to tell, but what I can say is that we had many gaming sessions in the years that followed. Uncle would pick us up for the weekend and we’d load our (3) heavy CRT monitors into the back of his truck and set up a lan party in his office. Leveled and raided together, ate junk food, goofed off, stayed up until ~4am, woke up early and repeated through the weekend. Nothing I comment here could do it justice, but if you know you know. Pure magic.
I'm 39, in it since 2006 and I know EXACTLY what you mean. The feeling and experience of going to a midnight sale for BC was insane.
I have a similar experience, one thing blizz can never bring back is all of us being young, but adding the element of wonder by not streamlining everything in the game is all I ask for if there is future classic content
I think your comment does the magic pretty good justice. Great story man. I'm 33. I agree with you. Miss those nostalgic days.
The early 00s were incredible, those times will never come back, lucky us who had the opportunity and enough money to experience some of it.
It was truly a magical time. I do think it can still be brought back.
id argue the spirit of vanilla is dead space and emptiness, the long walks in-between zones, the tasteful thickness of it. My god, it even has an elite mob.
Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's zone.
Murloc eggshell with Gilnean type... What do ya think?
I can't believe that Bryce prefers VanPatten's expansion to mine...
Ur mom is an elite mob
Darnassus. How Impressive. How on Earth did you get a reservation there?
Classic died for me the first time I had someone whisper me, “Link your logs”
Minmaxers killed classic indeed. Wotlk was when that took a strong hold on the server community and I quit until cata.
It’s sort of crazy how the greatest achievement, gear score, was outsourced to an addon. I can’t remember was it cata that item level became a normalized stat? The first time someone asked me for my gear score I was very much taken aback but tbh after I installed it I definitely did start to have a very easy time noticing when someone was building their character very goofy.
Skill trees and items are something i have always appreciated about pve but with pvp i think earning stat points unlocking abilities is enough excitement and balance in general. Minmaxing removes the variety of troll and cheese builds which is the only real drawback with pvp.
The fact that you where raiding with randoms just proofs that it has nothing to do with classic at all. Back in 2004 no one raided with randoms or public groups. You where in one of the 2 to 3 raiding guilds on the server and you even all knew each other. You hang out with these people in ironforge or orgrimmar almost every day. This was the only real classic raid experience. But let's be real: Classic died 20 years ago and people still try to get into that nostalgia time not realizing that they do not play games like that anymore. You are not the 15 year old gamer with a ISDN internet connection, not having youtube and all that stuff with guides... it was a different time.
@@immatoll4375 what? man, back in the day i raided with my guild and randoms all the time.
There were the two or three sweaty guilds that believed no one else was raiding the correct way, but no one really cared.
It was fun running raids with randoms, trying to explain mechanics, linking fan written guides to other people, convincing people to download TS even tho not everyone had mic at the time... casual guilds were always the backbone of wow to me, the true essence.
Now everyone wants to be a top-tier p´layer in a top-tier guild.
Boring af if you ask me.
After all, this is "just a game". A game we love but a game made for having fun, not sweating your eyes out. IRL is for the sweat and tears, WoW is for chilling and exploring another world.
They're Big, They're Heavy, They're Wood
Classic died somewhere mid OG wotlk, when gear score became a thing. That's when the min max peak efficiency culture really started spreading
gearscore was childs play compared to what it would evolve into... funny yet sad
Yeah it was towards the end of wrath i remember wanting 5.9k gs to get to ICC with a pug altho ppl that asked it the raid creators usually never had the gs themselves crazy times.
Yeah gear score killed it for me too. I quit a few weeks before cataclysm. Was a fun 4 years though!
Gear Score is a great marker of when this game died.
This is the correct answer
I simply miss when games weren't overrun with people who treat them like it's life-or-death.
Many, many people have forgotten the concept of simple, casual fun that games used to be.
“Casual fun that games used to be” pretty sure the first Iike I ever heard the term “casual” as an insult was in wow. No shot you’re talking about world of Warcraft. Acting like the Ony wipe video
Doesn’t exist or what?
Casual was always the backbone of wow. We were all "casuals", running around the world, trying to find secrets... now everyone and their mothers want to be a proplayer on a top tier guild. That's why i play on pservers: no one actually care for ranking high there, just the real tryhards.
If you want to get that feeling of discovery/community again, maybe you should try project ascension on the progressive server (Elune). Tho i'm not a "zero changes" Andy (because i've been playing "calssic" wow for the past 10 years and got somewhat bored of the mechanics), so it may not be your cup of tea.
The casual community there is pretty chill and you can take your time to learn the new mechanics (or watch the videos explaining how things works, made by the devs) because challenge runs/character resets are actually a thing there... and you get set by doing them.
@@colecote1432 Your TH-cam Account from 2016 doesn’t lend much credibility.
I’m in agreement with John and it’s probably not a coincidence we have 16-17 year old accounts.
@@colecote1432 Oh yeah, of course I've seen the Onyxia Wipe animation. I get you.
That wasn't the norm from mine & many others' memory, it totally existed & I won't ever deny that.
I don't remember hearing the term 'casual' as an insult until the past ten years, back then 'newb/n00b' was the go-to.
Hope that helps.
@@-John-Doe-people get new accounts? Lol. That's one pathetic way to try to gatekeep someone "your TH-cam account just isn't old enough to join the raid bro"
Blizzard is really uncomfortable with people being any level below the level cap.
"The game doesn't begin until max level"
because their stats clearly tell that the majority of ppl don't want to level and that's the truth xD we've done it so many times, we're done with it, it's a chore.
@@williamdrum9899 Problem is that the game shouldn't make you go, "This gets fun at endgame," it should make you go, "This gets better at endgame."
Glad at least they try to make previous content relevant with things like MoP Remix.
J1mmy said the same in a recent video, it seems to be industry wide at this point, although I hear runescape is an outlier. I will be trying it soon :D
My favorite WoW moment to this day was sitting in Ironforge with my real-life brothers, just typing to each other via our in-game characters well into the night. We were able to say things we couldn’t say in person. We were level 25 or so, and didn’t end up playing together for long after that. My sister and brother-in-law divorced shortly after and I lost my best in-game friend and best real-life friend. Just typing this makes me feel like I valued WoW as a vehicle to bond with my family above all else. It really was a social device disguised as a video game. I miss those days.
With the current trajectory of the game industry, there may never be another generation that experiences such a truly magical thing as being a kid on WoW in 2006. I'm 29 and idc if it's a game, nothing captured my imagination as a kid like WoW did
@@rosspritchett8423 There's just so many options to connect with others online nowadays. So much that even when playing games focused on social elements, you use one of these alternatives.
Agree. My parents got divorced right before I turned 12 in 2003. World of Warcraft came out 1 year later. My brother got distant and found his own way to cope with the divorce. I focused on video games, and WoW literally provided a World for me. I socialized more than anything else. Never even went past Molten Core, wasn't in a raiding guild, wasn't a 1337 PvP god. I was an average player who wanted to talk to people, and I got good at it.
I played WoW for the next 3.5 years of my life, probably the most formative years tbh. I look back now and it's so obvious I fell into WoW as an escape from divorce and my brother getting distant. That came with pros and cons, but I am ultimately incredibly grateful to this vanilla and TBC era WoW. I went from a very confused kid to a teenager who was struggling, but could find peace and safety in WoW. I'm so glad I did that as opposed to self-destructive behavior.
As a newer player, I only played dragonflight and remix, maybe 2 weeks, then decided to try classic wow, I been there the last few weeks and I can see why people still have such a love for it. I am having a great time there.
This game is like heroin, first it's incredibly awesome and then for the next 20 years you play just to get that feeling back, but it doesn't come back at least not for long (classic) and then it disappears again, but you keep hunting for it anyway... If you still can stop playing it, just stop. Best advice ever, trust me.
That's awesome you get to experience it as new. Now consider what it was like for all of us playing it in 2006 with the map full of players, and the world just full of new things to explore. Imagine your experience with it now x50 lol. Like the other commenter said, chasing that dragon
One dude's video says the sparkle horse was the begining of the end.
The fact that truely blew me away was the fact the horse, when it went on sale, made more money in a few hours,
than the entire amount Starcraft 2 had generated up to that point.
That was also when Bobby realized he could get a boat.
For me, it was actually TBC that did it. Most of Azeroth and 1-60 were immediately invalidated for a new tiny world. The sentiment became, "All I gotta do is rush to level 58 so I can get to the real game!" I can't blame them for introducing expansions like this at the time, but I think if we could go back it would be much better if the focus was on expanding what exists without paving over it.
@jadams2289 Yes, the game should have stayed at level 60 for an expansion or two and just added more content but not new game mechanics or quality of life. Exactly like what everyone wants for Diablo 2.
I think TBC didn't ruin vanilla it but it altered it. I remember still spending a lot of time in the old world even at 70. the game still made you go back to the vanilla world a whole bunch.
TBC was the end of Classic for me as well, completely changed the feel of the game and then started introducing that extra paid crap. Vanilla Classic was a blast and some of the most fun MMO gaming I have ever had and I am glad that I was a part of it before classic turned into what it is now.
100%
TBC as end game dungeons/raids mostly, instead of a new tiny world could've been awesome. Outlands is such a hostile place, and the original lore has it looking mostly like Hellfire/Blade's Edge because the planet was ruined and realistically, it should've been so much harder to gain a foothold. It would've been cool to see that version of things
@@Vaclu55555 What extra paid crap was there in TBC?
Here's what the "spirit of WoW" was to me.
I was 12 and I decided that weekend to just chill at home and play some WoW. I was lvl 43 and wanted to reach 44 that weekend so I could equip the Phantom Blade. I'd just acquired the recipe but I still had to craft the weapon. After checking my bank and inventory I put aside a bag for the materials, I remember that the most complicated step was getting a potion of invisibility which back then was particularly hard since Alchemist wasn't that popular in the opening months of Vanilla. I then contacted my guild, it was one of those hangout guilds where the leader and his wife were absolutely addicted to the game and had a fully leveled character while also having two mid level alts. Another player agreed to sell me a few mithril bars on the cheap and another had alchemy. I went on a wild goose chase looking for the materials he had asked for the potion, we couldn't link the recipe, or at least we didn't know how if we could so I had the materials linked and went off. I needed some other stuff for the sword. I eventually got everything to craft a Phantom Blade and even though it wasn't much for warrior, or at least that was the notion people had, I still used it a fair bit. I reached 44 while looking for the materials and questing that weekend. It was a small thing but it was super fun.
I remember there being a couple of NE warriors that I'd meet from time to time, they were always around the same level as me and I'd catch them in dungeons or out questing. It was fun bumping into them, we'd chat. Ended up playing a few Stratholme runs with them.
BC was a wild ride. I had just been sent to live with my grandmother. I couldn't play the pre patch or the release. I'd level up a shaman on another server, Argent Dawn, where my school best friend was playing, to level 45 or 50 prior to moving out. The new friends that I made in school had played WoW in a private server but wanted to play the real thing. I told them the server but they didn't want to play in a rppvp server so they made their characters in Darkmoon Faire which was brand new at the time. They'd reach level 70 at some point and I was hyped listening to their stories. Like how they 4 manned a heroic dungeon at 2 am, a warrior, a paladin healer and a warlock with some random dude they picked up. By the time I got to play I was a bit miserable. Ended up finding a raiding guild that had just started out, we managed to do half of Karazan on the first week, did everything up to lib on the second and by the third we had it down. I was a "really good dps". It took me forever to get the mindblade for ele shaman. I loved the guild, Absolution, but our leader, Nichiniyo or something along those lines, was an absolute ass, he was known for being a "sarcastic bastard", being older now I feel like he thought he was being cute with a reputation like that, fact was that a absolute godly prot warr had left the guild and another chad of a feral druid also said goodbye, both officers, which prompted him to make a "pact" with a "sister guild" we had never heard up to that point, went in for a trial run for TK.
Talk of "crushing lootreaver". We got to the dude, got him to 4% and wiped on the second try. Third try we went for the stacking on the boss strat since a lot of people had died to the balls, we failed at not even 60%. Leader calls it. Starts messaging me asking me why I hadn't healed. "elemental shaman chief, not my job" "but your set has healing bonuses" "I'm a dps man I ranked 4th on recount" "had you healed we'd have downed him" I remember being really upset, my class leader was a tosser that left the guild to play with a friend and then came crawling back, I remember his name, Nadjin or something like that, he died so many times to the balls because he couldn't see them. I'd grinded potions and elixirs for that run, leveled first aid to help with personal healing, had contacted my group mates prior so we could talk positioning so they could get the benefits for the totems. My heart sank when I saw another ele shaman from the new guild with the set shoulders from reaver, they had gone in on thursday which was the day I couldn't play, I had so many dkp stored for a set item. I left shortly after and didn't pick up Wow again until close to LK dropping.
LK started with me paying for a server transfer. My mates had a really decent raiding guild ready to take me in. I specced enhancement since they needed it and we went on to clear everything up to and including mimiron. The raiding experience had definitely been streamlined with heroics being a small step up in difficulty, rep being easyer to farm thanks to the tabards and there being only one raiding rep. There were a few "stories" from our leveling but nothing as wild as what they'd tell me from vanilla and BC. We didn't clear ulduar before toc sadly, I had a chat with the 10 man organizer and if I had participated in it earlier we'd have cleared it, I only participated once because they were short a member.
Failing to full clear Kara with pugs was the most fun I had in the game
Tldr
I really enjoyed reading this, it brought up many similar memories of my own. Thanks for sharing Friend
@@Jacob-do9yl tldr: nostalgia
This entire essay can be summed up in the first three words. Classic Andys just want to be kids again. 🙄
Thanks so much for spotlighting Songs of Chaos man! Very honoured you've been enjoying the listen 🎧 For everyone who gives my books a chance, thank you so much, I deeply appreciate it!
Thank you Michael, I'm loving Ascendant so far!
I'll be sure to get them on audible, love the artwork.
@@smutserkling6848Thank you kindly! Appreciate the support and hope you love them ❤
@@Michael_R_MillerI've been trying to find a book to start reading with my 10 year old son, but most of what I personally read is definitely too complex with too many moving pieces for a 10 year old to follow... Do you think your series would be something he could get into? Kid loves dragons haha
Certainly a more interesting read than anything written by Steve danuser.
I argue that WoW went downhill immediately upon Blizzard adopting the expansion model. Increasing the level cap was a terrible move and made the world feel less alive while all of the high level players spent their time in Outland and Northrend. This was especially the case with Dalaran. There was almost no reason to ever go back to Org/SW. Anyway, as bad as that was, the items you get from top raids becoming useless upon the release of the next expansions isn't helping. Here we have the best weapons and armor from Naxx being traded in for greens or blues. Its ridiculous.
If they do a Classic+, I'd like to see them add new weapons and armor, just with different uses. Maybe some weapons are needed, despite their lesser stats, because they give you a bonus against the bosses you're fighting or they give you extra movespeed so you can dodge aoe attacks(I'm making stuff up on the spot here, but you get my point). Instead of making armor and weapons better every time, give them alternative uses. This is how the game should move forward.
Also I highly disagree with the point that the lore was better back in Wrath. The lore was butchered with TBC and only got worse from there. I might be biased, sense Warcraft 3 is my favorite game of all time, but the things they did to Illidan and Vashj and Kael'Thas were unforgivable. They made them villains only so that we could kill big named lore guys. Guess what, all of the raid bosses with the exception of some from Naxx, were made for WoW. And they did a great job with them. You had some crossover in Strath with Balnazaar, but for the most part, Rag and Nefarian and Onyxia, these are memorable and awesome raid bosses. They didn't exist in Warcraft 3.
Making the Draenei sexy goat people was ill conceived and only done to keep the Alliance "pretty". Akama and The Broken ARE the Draenei, they never should have been sexy goats. And the entire premise of WotLK is downright retarded. And I mean that literally. It make zero sense whatsoever to have the entire world come at you, guns ablazing, have them kill every single on of your lieutenants, just to try to turn them into the greatest warriors. Give me a break. If they had any balls, WotLK would have seen the destruction of SW or Org or had Arthas take up residence in the plaguelands.
I know I will anger some TBC and WotLK fans, but go and play Warcraft 3 and you'll understand. Thank you for coming to my WoW Ted-talk.
As much as I like and dislike what WoW added to the lore, depending what it is, I have to agree. There was no reason to kill Illidan, Vashj, or Kael'thas, and when I gave Warcraft 3 a try after playing WoW I went, "Wait, why did we kill them? They weren't saints but what they did didn't exactly justify killing them." Kael'thas especially, he was a prince who had the desperate and difficult task to save what was left of his people from damnation but was willing to do it just to ensure his people would survive in Warcraft 3 to a leader whose desperation for a seemingly hopeless task turn him into an insane and bloodlust leader who was leading his people into the same damnation he wanted to save them from by the end of BC. This was something I was salty over since then, mumbling about it for years after. The only thing I like about it is that it brought a cool dark legacy to the blood elves in the stories to come after. Doesn't justify the whole 180 though.
Good points. Man would I die to see a classic+ (WoW 2) that implements what you are saying
I can't agree more.
It was also the start of needing to read outside sources to understand what happens in the game (the Sunwell manga) , the introduction to daily quests and locking almost everything behind reputation grinds.
Don't forget TBC also added arena (Made PvP e-sporty) and started the "end game is real game" mentality. The lore bosses you killed in vanilla were excusable imo, KT didn't even die (And was also the final boss) and Balnazzar and Sapphiron were non-major chars in WC3.
@@DrewPicklesTheDark arena was so much fun though. That has to stay!
I would also say Faction Transfers to me really killed Classic in general, We saw so many communities on Realms go from "somewhat balanced" to 1 sided as PvE players realized that PvP meant ganking and griefing, To me my years on pservers taught me that if you don't incentivize players to pick the "inferior" faction then you end up heavily lopsided, I also think the Mega sized realms were a mistake as again taking from pservers you realize very quickly that a population of 3-5k is actually quite healthy and ensures resources are obtainable for anyone that wishes to put the time in, Community truly to me died the second they opened those realm transfers, whats worse is they repeated it again with SoD, I think for me as I age I realize my money just better spent elsewhere as well, WoW has truly been a long journey but I think for many it's just over, but we sure as hell got some great memories out of it!
How are you going to cope when the next game you play starts changing too!?
@@danielfahimislam3166why are you even here with that piss poor attitude broski?
When i come to world design and questing, tbc was already there. Quests hubs and flying mount + blob-like island with 4-5 zones.
Vanilla leveling is so great because questing make you run around everywhere, many quest have a narrative to link with other areas : Best exemple is elwynn forest westfall redridge darkshire. With donjon's quest usualy being milestone in the lore of the area.
another thing i realy like about vanilla is character progressing through leveling. You realy feel each steps, you get new and important spell while leveling with sometime specific quest for it. Your 1st green items are very impactful, same with your first blue from donjon quest, then you get rings, later shoulder and eventualy helmet. Around level 50 you start getting trinket. The dev made sure you get new and impactful stuff all the time.
I remember the week that Dungeon Finder came out was the last week my guild did dungeon runs together, and my playstyle as a tank shifted from tanking for my guild to tanking for gold because I could just do it all day with 0 downtime.
I remember there was an early maybe test version of the dungeon finder where it only was looking for players inside your own Realm and it didn't automatically teleport to dungeon. That was pretty ok to me for finding random groups.
@@akseI think you're right.. the earliest version would only lfg for players from the same realm, if I'm not mistaken.
idk when it became cross realm, it's been so long & I'm not at a computer lol
almost sounds like a digital allegory of growing up... Hanging out with friends doing odd things together for pocket change then growing up and going your separate ways and getting a job for money
Minmaxing c0nts in thr lfg chat ruined it for me in beginning of wotlk. Dungeon finder was the revival, should've been in game from the beginning...
@@Permuh I do recall GearScore being huge right before LFG. So many people saying you couldn't even get an invite without xxx GearScore.
I remember standing in line for hours outside of my local Best Buy for the midnight pre-sale of the WotLK CE. That, in of itself, was a fun experience, just chatting it up with other people about the game and their experiences, expectations...
Although I thought the expansion itself was pretty great, I had already felt a shift in the community, the pressure to grind to level 80 as fast as possible so our guild could start doing the next set of end-game content, which only accelerated the feeling of being left behind if you took a more traditional approach to leveling. Although 40-man raids offered its own set of challenges between coordinating that many people for the mechanics of raids like BWL and later AQ and Naxx and simply dealing with the lag and screen-tearing slideshow with encounters like Thaddius and Heigan DDR but also missed it because the whole guild was there doing it. The comradery on Vent, the shared wipes and the communal elation on a hard-won boss clear and people finally getting their long coveted Epic/Legendary class items.
Ultimately, Wrath is when I burnt out and soon after, bowed out of WoW. Stuff in life made it more difficult to get on at my old schedule. I never returned. I popped on once or twice just to see what's changed, got a couple free weeks and a free level boost when WoD came out but nothing really grabbed me. It felt, more than ever, like I slept through the apocalypse and woke up to a barren wasteland.
Watching streamers play classic was truly depressing. They just went from dungeon grinding to raid logging, completely ignoring the world around them. That much of the playerbase would on to emulate them was even worse.
RIP classic died for 1000000000 time
How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old game?!
@@DA-uo5hz horse isnt even dead its fully decomposed and hes coming back to hit it with a stick...
I think SOD was truly the end for classic
But sod inst classic, how can it affect the vanilla?
@@Heavnelydemonjust go and play your “nochanges “ era servers and stop complaining
I played WoW when wotlk came out. I was just a kid back then. I loved it. Then I tried wotlk again when it was re-released. I got bored of the game at level 70. I was in Northerend at the first zone. I just... got bored of doing dungeons and quests over and over again, just to realize that it was an end-game rush in the re-release.
That was when I tried HC classic. I was sad that I couldn't play BEs, but playing a Gnome mage, leveling slowly through the world, taking my time and appreciating every bit of gear I got, it was a wonderful experience, something that wotlk never did. Any dungeon gear I got in wotlk had no importance. It didn’t feel impactful to get the Illusionary Rod at SM Library in wotlk compared to getting it in HC classic. Questing was dangerous, grouping with people to finish elite quests, seeing people die. It was so just so damn good.
I missed the golden era of MMO gaming, but damn does HC classic give you a good game. Right now, though, I am playing SoD with a nice casual guild, and classic SoD has been really fun. I really hope they make a TBC SoD because... I want to play BEs.
"classic" died in the later patches of WoTLK. the new "classic" died when TBC released
IDK, I feel like I could sense the fall during original TBC as well.
@@Trashalchemy Yep, the Activision merger was around the time TBC dropped as well, or a bit before it, and you could start to see their influence. PVP specifically was pushed to be a mega balanced esport instead of a team game where BGs and open world were the PVP, then it became basically strictly arena if you wanted to have fun
Absolutely nothing has died. For you? Sure, classic are still up and shining. Freaking doomers, 2 decades of whining.
@@MDHDH-iy7nmarena is dope though, even on current retail. As a healer anyway. Have fun playing a dps though, you’re going to have a lot of downtime trying to find teammates unless you’re really good
@@gollese And yet look at the various private world servers Blizzard had take down, the poor reaction to J. Allen Brack's infamous "You think you do but you don't" line, and the overall success of Classic.
I wish the Dungeon finder had been limited to Server only. That way you could still make bonds with people.
I been saying this. Thats what Blizz should have done. You know they had the capability to do it that way.
In TBC, is was just a list you put yourself into. You still had to interact with the people at least.
Counterintuitive. If people wanted to make bonds, they'd use the LFG channel. Dungeon Finder is about efficiency and focusing on quickly finishing a goal over the journey to get there.
Just go outside and talk to a real person. 🙄🙄
@@dangerousdays2052 And talk about weather ? So boring
I really feel it was the community. Vanilla allowed you to get to know the people on your server, both Alliance and Horde.
The realm forums were so great for talking smack about pvp, or just chatting with other folks on your server.
Our guild was formed December 2004 and I'm still friends with many of the folks who played the game then, to this day.
"Classic" brought some of that feeling back, for a couple of years at least.
There is no replacing the original run through though. I can still remember the first time running into SW and IF, like it was today. It was overwhelming and amazing.
Classic is the coziest game ever conceived of
Check Turtle WoW out.. I saw the High Elf city and was in a fair bit of awe.
If you're not a no-changes andy, may i suggest you to try Project Ascension (on the progressive server Elune)?
There are lots of new mechanics to learn, challenge runs that make your leveling experience actually interesting, balance patches every few days and, most importantly, a sense of community. There are tryhards, casuals, RP people, pvpeers, newbies, challenge runs (with actual rewards), lots of fun builds... and the best part is that no one cares about how you're playing the game, in a good way. Every now and then, someone will ask for the best build to pump the highest damage on general chat and most responses are "man, play the game the way you want" because (unless you want to play at the highest level) you don't need meta builds.
If you give it a try, remember to take your time with the new mechanics. There are a bunch, but most are secondary until you start to raid. There's also "secrets" scattered through Azeroth, so if you go blind it's actually pretty rewarding doing some exploration!
As an example, i'm currently running a fire paladin, based around maelstrom weapon mechanics on a hardcore exp x1 run where i have to kill every elite beast before certain level (like King Bangalash) and man, i'm having the first time wow experience all over again lol.
@@rosspritchett8423100% true
I will never forget walking into Stormwind for the first time, with my friend waiting for me to show me around. I could barely keep above like 6- 10 FPS on my old computer and slow internet. I was doubly blown away that there was a tram that took you directly to the other major city which was INSIDE A MOUNTAIN. God, vanilla WoW was awe inspiring. What we see now as lackluster and normal was just mind blowing and ground breaking. Most games did not have huge open cities without instanced versions. It was so epic to me as a young teen lol. I will never get tired of reminiscing about such a magical time. And simple things like an epic mount back then were so awesome. In Classic remake you'd see them constantly, and super geared people knowing the exact right builds, but back then, an epic mount was like the coolest thing you'd see that day.
As Totalbiscuit once sang; 'Hark the Wrathbabies do sing'
We all miss him.
Miss that man. Well Said.
I love that none of us can get over vanilla wow
@@haptic_g more power to those that enjoy Vanilla. I think if you aren't playing a warrior, rogue, priest, or mage....vanilla kinda feels like a shit game. MoP is best expansion in my opinion. Best mmo too. Some people really enjoy mythic plus. Others like Vanilla. That's fine. We should have servers for every expansion.
@@DrewAmongTheFence78 those 4 are only good for parse-brained players. whole lot more game out there and all the classes are fun.
@@haptic_g I think every class i mentioned is better in wotlk, cata or MoP. Depends on the type of player, but I'd say warrior rogue priest and mage are more fun and also strong in MoP too. I know some people love the class design. I couldn't stomach most classes until TBC.
@@DrewAmongTheFence78 I disagree, I mained Warlock since late Vanilla/early BC (Was a Hunter prior), but I had more fun playing a Warlock than any of those four classes from BC to DF. It just felt better, the risk-reward gameplay of Life Tapping your HP to deal more damage and the usage of soul shards added a level of class identity I couldn't find amongst the other classes.
@@DrewAmongTheFence78 Imo, TBC kept the classic philosophy while balancing and making all specs useful.
Even back in TBC you started seeing some changes that broke the original philosophy of vanilla.
Daily quests that made you feel like missing out if you didn't log in, whilst in vanilla, you had repeatable quests that you could do on your own terms.
Tier sets were bought from a vendor, rather than dropped, which made it more convenient yes, but it's not as exciting and memorable to have a token drop, as having a piece of gear drop.
Even a group finder tool was introduced. Not a dungeon finder with teleport, but automatic group finder, which is enough to kill a part of the chat for sure.
The concept of different difficulties was also introduced in dungeons, with the heroic mode.
Flying mounts were introduced, which went against the spirit of vanilla, since when you were on a flying mount, you were out of harm's way, which made the world not feel as dangerous. Plus it shrank the world down.
Also, still technically in TBC, the Recruit a Friend functionality was introduced on the 6th of August 2008, and Wrath was released on November 13th.
Three months after launch of classic I couldn’t get a single dual outside Orgrimmar and asking for directions always resulted in being told to download an addon.
One cannot stress how important it is that the leveling take as long as possible. These games live and die by the grind, the slow, satisfying progression of starting really weak and over time growing more and more powerful, each step being satisfying because of the time and effort put into it. Once you finish the "grind", that's it, you've beat the game, time to quit. No amount of repeatable endgame content will keep you there for long. The old school MMORPGs, including vanilla, understood that.
Yup. I got lucky and while still being a level 2 priest met a lvl 3 druid that taugh me the ropes on how to play. It turned out, that she was the leader of one of the most powerful guilds on the server and that was her new character. She took me in, and the experience of being in a powerful guild with proper management was amazing. She had events planned for members of all level ranges, so no one felt left out and could socialize. Parties, contests, pvp bootcamps for newbies, world pvp trips for high-level players, etc. Getting to level cap was certainly a goal, but not a huge priority. A good guild or group of friends could elevate the experience so much. Joining a raid guild and doing the same thing every week while being constantly evaluated sounds like a terrible way to spend your time.
WoW became extremely popular because compared to other MMOs it was significantly LESS grindy. Many MMOs didnt even have a level cap and the grind never ended. Pointless grinds aren't appealing, and theyre even less appealing in 2024 than in 2004. Before BC classic even released, many classic players were already trying to side step the leveling process as much as possible through dungeon farms and other leveling boost services.
Spot on. OSRS is thriving with the biggest player base its ever had and after a decade of updates/QoL improvements, the one constant has been the grind. When somebody puts a considerable amount of time into something it has more perceived value; the account/gear progression in that game is incredibly satisfying as devs have done a bang up job tempering power creep over the years. Did you grind CoX kills for months back in 2017 just for a T-bow? Well it was worth it as the T-bow is still the best ranged weapon in the game some 7 years later. After playing OSRS I haven't looked back; my fondest WoW memories are from a bygone era and I've accepted the fact that my actual game experience will never meet the expectations of nostalgia.
For me it’s always about the journey, to often I find myself not reaching my destination. Meeting a NPC who asks “Can you help me?”. “Of course, that’s why I’m here”. Then I see something on the horizon that needs harvesting….or run into another NPC who asks “Can you help me?” “Of course I can!” I say…..🙃
at least back then we were a small cog helping the heroes fight the big baddie. Nowadays we're the hero the game needs else the world would end.
Seems like most games nowadays have actively moved away from that style of game. I think you as a player have become a minority in this aspect, used to be gamers would share your mindset but somewhere through the years and the growth of gaming and gaming studios the mindset of the average player changed from "games are to be experienced" to "games are to be beat".
There are still some good indie games that embody that philosophy but for the time being, we live in the era where mainstream gaming has become as shallow as marvel movies.
I remember the first time I hit 60 in vanilla I didn’t jump into raiding, I was sad my journey was over. So I made another char and did the whole leveling process again. The fun of it was whatever happened along the way. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Great vid - One major change you forgot to mention, that was started with Wrath and tripled down on in Cata, was "mandatory" dailies. In WOTLK stuff like the Hodir and Argent Crusade reps, where if you wanted to raid - Not only did you need to attune/gear up/do the proper quest chains like in raids past, you also had to spend a certain amount of time every day doing dailies to earn rep to get "mandatory" enchants and other things that any serious raid team basically required you to have. Cataclysm made this even worse and was a major major turn off for me and one of the reasons I quit at that time. The 40 day Molten Front stuff was super un-fun for me.
dailies are chores, i don't know who thought this would "add infinite content", but they should repeat the 4th grade
True, side note I really liked the tabard system they had setup as an alternative
@@NotSuperSerious what in the hell are you talking about? Horrible examples. You absolutely do not need to do dailies to raid, especially not argent tournament. Vanilla wow had more grinds than wotlk. Regarding Sons of Hodir-> even if the enchant gave you 500 stats in wotlk you could still clear everything except heroic lich king 0% without it. Sure it helps, but nothing so small as a shoulder enchant is making or breaking your guild's progress. Not when bad players over geared for the content still suck at mechanics. Shoulder enchant might be expected but 25 players without shoulder enchants could still clear content if they didn't rep grind. However, you must have potions or resistance gear in classic.
Side note, some people like dailies. Others do not. Some people do them for completion. Others do them for gear, gold, or to unlock something that helps guildies or alts(recipes or BoA items).
What you meant was attunements are required. Wotlk actually removed those though.
@DrewAmongTheFence78 when said enchants or items are BiS and not hard at all to grind or get then yeah there's no excuse as to not have it, especially in WOTLK when rep grinding was easy as heck.
Dailies are not required in cata at all. I topped meters and was blasting down heroics without tol borad dailies and with the honored shoulder enchant from therazane and parsing high. Plus a shoulder enchant isn't even going to matter if your job is to interupt on say chogal omnitron or halfus. No one in a serious guild is hitting a berserk timer over a damn shoulder enchant. These are all things that people do to "fit in" and make your character as powerful as it can be for raid. However a single minor thing on 25 players is never going the be the reason your group could not kill a boss. For the first 4 expansions, if you have all raiders live the fight and you do mechanics and still hit a berserk timer... players just are bad at their specs or bad at the game.
What WOTLK changed for old players, cata made true for all players. Cata made it true for everyone that leveling was easy, end game was all that mattered, etc. Whereas in WOTLK new players still got to experience "classic" wow design philosophy.
I started in WOTLK and I had the classic experience. I leveled through the old world, and it wasn't empty on my server. I joined a guild or two, we grouped up and did low level content. My friends and I hung around outside orgrimmar and just chatted for hours, no care in the world for how fast we would hit 80. All the wonder of exploration was still intact. It took me a year to hit 80, I was second of my friend group to do it. It was just not important to us to hit 80 fast, and there were plenty of people like us beyond our little group of 5. Our guild was filled with experienced and new players alike. All of what classic means, my friends and I got to experience. The magic wasn't gone for new players. Then when we hit 80 the game expanded, and it was a whole new world, but not one disconnected from the world we had just taken a year to get through.
The things wrath changed really only affected people who had been playing since before wrath came out. You couldn't get heirlooms, for example, if you didn't have a level 80 character already. Cata made heirlooms available for gold, by contrast. Dungeon finder leveling spam was only a thing at the very end of wotlk, but it was there for everyone from the start in cata, which is technically not a change that cata made but it means the experience wasn't had by new players until then. So people who started as new players in the beginning of wotlk leveled like normal players but if you started in cata you likely spammed dungeons.
Basically, wrath did show a change in philosophy but that change wasn't felt, in my opinion, unless you had been playing for years before. New players still got to experience the classic philosophy when leveling up and starting out.
In cata, however, nobody got to experience classic philosophy. New players were just as inundated with the new philosophy as old players. I think that's why cata is seen as the line and not wrath.
For me it was phase 2 in classic when the game died for me. Earthfury was really well balanced faction wise which made wPvP a blast as you had relatively equal fights while out and about. Then in P2 blizzard got this great idea to open server transfers from max population servers to Earthfury which massively unbalanced our server. Now horde had a 66-75% server population and Alliance struggled from there on out. Earthfury Alliance side finally died early TBC when almost all the Alliance players transferred off because there were no new players to recruit or like me quit as I had enough of what Blizzard had done to our once amazing server.
Never forget phase 2
Phases were an horrible idea, I'm pretty sure it was very purposefully done to introduce FOMO into what should have been a definitive, frozen in time, Vanilla version of the game.
Levelling was the only phase of the game I wanted to do. Of course, I was also a filthy casual.
I just randomly clicked on your channel just to see this dropped 51 seconds ago. What a coincidence
A familiar, open world that exudes the feeling of freedom. That is a home for many and never changes.
The feeling of having the freedom to do what I want at any time. Nevertheless, everything I do has a value, a meaning and also leads to the goal.
But how, with whom and for how long the whole thing happens is something I decide to a large extent, freely myself.
It is the player's freedom that is conspicuously the focus of Vanilla.
I’ve been playing on a TBC private server where they don’t allow addons. The community is pretty small (400 people so far) but wow it makes you realize how much bloat there is with modern wow and the way Blizzard started to implement the addons people developed into their own UI. Having no addons and just the basic interface is pretty fun actually.
I can't survive WoW without an auto grey seller.
that sounds fun ima try that out. zero addons is what ive been preaching for years.
People that can't play without add ons are weird. Seems like a sweaty thing tbh. I use a few add ons but hardly need them at all. The only add on that I absolutely need is DBM but that's just because I'm inexperienced and don't want to slow my group down lol
There is no way for a private server to disallow addons lmao. You're lying or naive to genuinely believe people aren't playing with them. Not even a custom WoW client could stop addons from working because the UI would fall apart. The addons folder that has stuff labeled "Blizzard_" in it are used by the game to make those specific pieces function.
Absolutely dog water realm.
Being 11 years old when it came out and leveling up to 60 with my best friends over the course of 3 years, that was magic. Purely enjoying the world and soaking it in. We never even started raiding. Loved every minute.
Classic ended with the ingame store.
Amen
As mostly Wrath player, I agree with you. I started several months before the release of WotLK, Sunwell was already half-abandoned by that point in the open-world part.
I enjoyed faster leveling in TBC, but I absolutely hated how different it was visually from the world I started to play in. TBC was never a great expansion for me.
Wrath was better in some aspects, but what did I do in my spare time when I was not doing dailies or raiding? I revisited vanilla dungeons and raids with friends in very small groups for a semblance of challenge. I used to farm Onyxia solo and I explored every corner of BRD, coming back to it hundreds of times.
While still leveling in TBC I already knew about Atiesh and I hoped that I would be able to grab it once I reach max level just for the collection. That never happened of course.
As a never vanilla player, I always wanted to go back in time and experience those adventures for myself. Thanks to the private servers I was able to do it before Classic launched and it was even a greater experience than I could have imagined.
Sure, when playing vanilla sometimes you miss some QoL features or are annoyed that some class doesn’t shine in certain spec like in Wrath, but the whole slow, sometimes even boring experience of going from one part of the world to another for some XP for a simple delivery quest leaves better impression than grabbing 20 quests without reading and mindlessly doing them while watching all seasons of South Park with the game being in the background.
I was going for the Insane in the Membrane achievement by the end of Wrath and was probably 60 % done when I lost all interest in game. I was burned out. I owned Cataclysm and I played it once for a week or even less when a friend sent me the Scroll of Resurrection.
Since then I played only vanilla and that never left me burned out even after many years.
Don't forget that Wrath is when the Lore Characters became voiced, and the player became their goffers... in classic and TBC the player was the hero driving the action. in Wrath you're saved by Jaina, saved by Sylvanas, Thrall vs Varian, Varian vs Garrosh, Bolvar saves you, Tirion saves you... etc etc. The whole game shifted from player focus to lore/NPC focus and its obvious upon a second run through Wrath.
That's a good point that I haven't heard repeated before.
I personally didn't mind the NPC focus cause it still felt like I was just some guy on the sidelines seeing things happen as I was one of the many trying to save the world. It wasn't until Cata when the game felt like I alone was interacting with lore figures in questing and slowly pushed me towards a main protagonist role did I feel the charm of vanilla/Classic began to shift out. It was tolerable in Cata but it got worse as the expansions flew by, now I feel like I am just so important to the story that Thrall and Anduin whip out their phone to call me when they need help and Khadgar can take me to the local bar to have a drink, making the multiplayer aspect of WoW feel essentially worthless outside of dungeons and raids (And PvP if you are into that).
I HIGHLY disagree. In classic at least, you were just a guy. This allowed the player to rp their character much more freely than just "me the hero!" You were one of many soldiers fighting for a cause. You didnt have to be a hero, nor a hero's underling. You could do what you want. Then later they started forcing your character into being "hero!" Or "champion!" It's bullshit. I hate it.
@@feloniousbutterfly CHAMPION I GOT A NEW AZERITE TOOTHPASTE FOR YOU
People blamed cataclysm for being a really bad expansion. But total overhaul of the azeroth itself and keep the endgame going was a huge businness back then and even now it is. People sings praises about WotLK everywhere but I remember people were complaining about that expansion that time too. Modernizing an element or total game itself doesnt kill itself. What's killing WoW is today's society, our new social interaction behaviours and "being a total dickhead in internet looks cool " mentality. These things are not just kill WoW, they can kill any game that needs a good co-operation and interaction.
Classic died for me when people started min/maxing.
the thing is in Classic you just cannot do Naxx i.e. without min/max, you cant even do Onyxia if you are really really improvising as an entire raid...
@@SoyoyoS you totally can
Todays WR are silly, with tons of consumables, world buffs and shit
It felt hard because nobody had a clue of what was happening, the overall player level was much lower back then
@@SoyoyoSmy guy people have 3 manned onyxia
@@ZZZZordan true. People remember it as being much "harder" than it actually was. The reason it was "harder" is because it was brand new and very few had mastered the game yet. Add the fact that you couldn't simply share a video link with boss mechanics (most people didn't have a PC with the capability to play and record at the same time- and streaming was nearly nonexistent), and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off whilst being screamed at on Vent....if they even had Vent, to complete raids. Times were different.
True thats when all went downhill. In every online game.
The spirit of vanilla is an environment that encourages socialization. The long walks, flight rides, the need to personally engage to form groups, get help from guildies, fill in the tedium of grinding. All of that created an environment where you leaned on the people around you to get entertainment.
Classic died for me in WotLK in the Vault of Archavon. I'd done the whole wintergrasp battle, we won, but then I couldn't get invited to any raid for the Vault because I didn't have the achievement and that was that.
This is when the gearscore stuff was cropping up too and it just killed the vibe for me and the game lost a lot of fun.
Make your own group?
@@pyotrbagration2438 but but but but this would mean I have to do the work. I rather complain
I have recently gotten back into reading and funny coincidence I reread a lot of my favorite fantasy novels, including Eragon. I have never seen a book series as an ad read before and I have to admit it was pretty refreshing to see. I want more of these type of ads in videos. I plan on checking out the Songs of Chaos.
Mad I’m a big fan of your channel and a lot of your points. So I’m gonna say this as blunt as possible. You just keep saying the same thing over and over. The problem is that old mmo players are chasing a high. A high that being an adult now has taken away from you. You will never be as care free and clueless and you were then. And thats what we need to “get back” to the old school feelings. Our time wasn’t as “valuable”. Streamers hadn’t ruined all the mystery of every single game just for internet clout. It’s gone brother. Accept it and start drinking. It helps.
I say this same thing to people who see all 7 Jurassic Park movies, all 12 Star Wars movies, all the Marvel movies and walk away still feeling empty. None of these things are a novelty any more. CGI dinosaurs don't wow the audience any more and neither do space ships getting into dog fights. It's been done a thousand times and it's time to move on and accept you're old enough that you've seen it all and nothing will blow your mind like it did when you a kid or young adult. Move on and pursue something that has meaning instead of trying to find satisfaction in "nerd" stuff. It's all been hijacked by major companies any way who care more about checking boxes that they think will drive engagement numbers up so they can make as much money as possible. There are very few passion projects these days.
The temptation to re-subscribe for a month and roll a new toon in vanilla is so strong every time I watch a madseason video. I've loved your content ever since the days of crusade and my first experience with streamer raids. Will always look forward to these videos, much love goat
"Deja vu all over again" -Yogi Berra
Going to Orgrimar or Ironforge into LFG chat was something special. You created bonds there. You gathered the group of adventurers and you'd know them by names. And throughout your leveling process you'd see those people again and again and have those friendships bloom. Later on when you finally get to 60 you know so many people, you go "way back" with them. You join a guild where those people are, you move around, you go hunt for blue armor sets and then for their upgrades before you even attempt MC or BRD. Great time
I think one of the reasons wotlk was so well recieved was because people experienced the joy of the quality of life changes for the first time, and the negative long term effects on socializing, etc. hadn't taken effect yet.
They do something very similar with Diablo 4. When you're playing the campaign in Diablo 4, legendaries are very rare and the game is slow paced and nostalgic. Originally you couldn't even use a mount until you progressed quite far into the campaign. But then once you finish the campaign, you're bombarded with convenience and QoL such as faster leveling, tons of legendaries, etc. and you're hit by that initial exctacy. But as you keep playing, then leveling up and finding loot loses its charm when it's been made too easy. They're just crossing their fingers that they got you hooked on the dopamine treadmill.
I think over-doing convenience/QoL gives a big spike in player-activity and is good for making money in the short run, but they're changing the retention-mechanism of the game from being driven by socializing and sense of accomplishment to fomo and addiction, which eventually hurts the company's reputation in the long run.
D4 has little to no reason incentive to grind endgame. The drop rates are bad and the gear itself is bad. Even Diablo 3 still had plenty to grind. Games don't die for no reason.
You also just described Diablo 3.
I loved vanilla because I loved the adventure, being able to play a fantasy version of myself, fighting off horde players, the rush of getting your first blue item and most of all.. Meeting and getting to know people very much like myself.
Let's see if this one gets taken down within a minute of me starting it again this time
Yeah my bad, I fat fingered it yesterday, had some stuff to fix
Nice to see a fantasy book series as sponsor, will certainly give it a listen! And good video of course, as always
as soon as flying came out, and ended world pvp, was the end of it for me. it then killed any social interaction that was still left.
Blizz did a lot of irreversible damage with tbc
Azeroth flying, I agree. BC and Wrath were AMAZING for wpvp. I was so looking forward to tens of thousands of hks in hellfire peninsula again fighting at the towers... But it just didn't happen this time around.
There was always someone at the towers. Always someone in wintergrasp. Gurubashi. Tons of people dueling outside the cities. I saw very little of any of that in classic.
@@AccountInactive then you didn’t play vanilla. It was incredibly common to have duels outside cities in vanilla, but yeah not so much in classic.
I never thought I would ever be able to quantify the value of that small talk of forming the group together via chat rather than an automated machine, but you did exactly that.
I miss it too
TBC 2.3 patch should get some special mention, in this patch they made leveling faster, killed elite quests, standardised creatures levels, added a bunch of free blue gear to low level dungeons, reduced mounts levle to 30, removed a lot of classes restrictions and limitations, paladin became physical etc. It was basically the WOTLK pre pre patch
great point
And yet it’s still probably one of greatest patches WoW ever had.
@@maldlions5313 how?
I'm so glad you made this. Wotlk was the first time WoW growth flat-lined. Meaning it was the first time in wow history that the same amount of people were subscribing that were unsubscribing.
It truly was the beginning of the end
"Told you so, by the way!" is a line I expect to hear in every MadSS video and I love the fact that it never disappoints! ^^
same lmao
It's really time to stop...I feel obligated to dislike any video with it in it...and I hate doing that...I love Mads and I love the channel, but it has really overstayed its welcome...I agree with the statement, but its annoying
The spirit if vanilla is forming a group in a city for a dubgeon on the opposite side of the world because you need to free space in your quest log but you forget where you picked up the dungeon quest and wont be able to find it again if you delete it from your log.
They don't make them like they used to. These kids nowadays don't know a hard days questing if it slapped em in the face.
died for me when i was 1 bar from 60 on my HC toon of 200hours. didn't know why I was playing, so I do drowned it in the stormwind canals to give it a poetic death. RIP Struggled, priest of azeroth
Great Video, man. I cannot believe I have been playing this game for 20 years now, and yeah, I would agree that Wrath was the start of most things; e.g., gear score add-on, group finding, and so on. However, I would say that now that I am 20 years older now, and have limited time these days, the current game fits my older life! Keep up the good work.
Mad ngl you should put your money where your mouth is on all of this vanilla hype. Play era and bring attention too it, I think this would be good content and would bring good light to those playing era.
Leveling is by far one of my favorite things about all old era MMOs. The "Grind" of getting the next level to unlock the next tier of gear or weapons.
That was the incentive to just "Feel stronger" and feel like the time you put into the game mattered.
Cross realm did in fact destroy the community .
It had to, population dies so some servers became near empty so you merge them.
@@larrymitchell6470 cross realm and merge are not the same thing bud.
Hey man I think you make good content but it feels like you've made this exact video like 7 times now, it feels very samey. I think I've heard you explain the differences/transitioning between classic and modern WoW over and over again
Being a classic Andy is a mental illness. These people just cannot let go of the past. It's a fucking video game guys, to outside
The forums was great too adding more out of the game experiences of community. The most amazing time was when servers were packed but in each server you got to know a very specific community you remembered many names in that server and what their personalities was like. Each server was like one big family. You would have your drunk uncle, the guy spamming chat for free gold, someoen constantly arguing about politics, you know all those people and you grouped with certain of them and remembered the quirks they had like Bob always had to stop and mine during a run and it was all endearing in a way. You even remembered the gankers and loved them all the same even if they kept getting you while you were questing in STV.
0:51 wait.. they took out the male/female symbols and replaced it with that??
Dungeon Finder was never bad. Raid finder…yes. Dungeons are for leveling. Raids are end game and the point is to get to end game.
I agree... the dungeon finder had the effect on me that i skipped entire questing zones in wrath and later it did not make sense anymore to explore them. So i basically did just fly from one certain spot to the next wondering about the places and npcs. Dungeons are faster leveling and better loot, but a lot of repetition, more grinding and less role playing
This is something I've been saying since wrath, the game took a drastic change from TBC to wrath but their "Bring the player not the class" mentality ruined the game feel for me, so many things felt like more of the same and every time the lich king showed up he either did nothing, got his ass beat, or just walked away, he has been the bitch king since wrath first launched.
Waltz for Zizi being in the opener really brought on the love for nostalgia we based so much of our love for the games on. Great choice!
Wow the irony of Madseason calling out blizzard for their money grab and then a good quarter of his new video is a money grab advertisement. RIP Madseason videos being good. Everyone sells out at some point I guess.
yeah like wtf. Either make a longer video or a shoreter ad
@@TFrills But he got you two Sally's to not only watch but add comments.
Classic died for me, when I could no longer keep up with the story - when I felt I was being rushed to the next "chapter" (aka. Expansion) before I was done with the current one.
I never completed the Vanilla endgame raids, because people had already moved on to TBC. By the time I got to TBC's endgame, people were already getting started on WotLK. Because of my more casual pacing, I was always left behind before I had any chance to experience any of the "good stuff" that people usually refer to when they talk about WoW. I was stuck always grinding to level for the endgame, but never experiencing the actual endgame for myself. It was so frustrating, by the time Cataclysm rolled around - and I'd once again missed out on the endgame, all the stuff about the Lich King, that I as a Warcraft 3 fan had been looking most forward to seeing, I just gave up.
Not only did Cataclysms release mean I'd once again missed out on the story, it completely undermined the story up until that point by inserting the whole "world changing" event, so I couldn't even just keep playing the previous expansions on my own, without dialogue, quests, and the landscape itself having been changed to accommodate the new expansion. That's when I gave up.
Talk about kicking a dead horse..
Thats all his content has become. He's an angry ex at this point and its fucking sad because based on his non WoW content he has potential to make amazing stuff.
This comment is really just as much of beating a dead horse if not more
@@Noriaela It's end endless circlejerk. Vague, melancholic, nostalgia-blinded, heavy-sigh-fueled rambling about how new bad and old good, without ever actually making a meaningful and consistent point. It's like his only goal is to bait people into leaving sad, long-winded comments about how much they miss 2004.
I wish people had enough self-awareness to admit that they're just old and jaded instead of pretending it's somehow Blizzard's fault they've lost all sense of joy in their lives.
I love you MadSeason. Thanks for coming back to us and uploading more videos!
I HATE THE WOW COMMUNITY. i want ssf wow where i only deal with them in instances and loot is personal
WoW as a game is pretty dull, most mmorpgs are. If not for the social element, why play them.
And don't say "the lore", please. As a follower of the series since Warcraft II, it pains me what they've done to the characters and setting.
I hear what you're saying bro but the whole world has gone mad. Negativity and toxicity everywhere. Every online Game I play, is toxic. I'm starting to like retro single player Games more and more.
IMO the social aspect is pretty much what makes MMOs truly shine, why play a game a massive multiplayer online if interaction between players is not desired any time from level 1 to max? if I wanted to play a game where I didn't deal with other players, whether it be in a group for quests or instances or fighting in PvP, then I'd just not play an MMO at all. For example, look at Star Wars: The Old Republic. It looks cool and fun but the fact that it is so heavy into the singleplayer aspect with its questing makes me go, "Alright but why is this considered an MMO?" Only reason why is because of space battles and dungeons, and that's only counting as you level up to max, no idea if there is any difference at max level. Remove all that and you have a singleplayer RPG right there, no reason to make it an MMO.
@EJ_Red you all have mental illnesses. Why does wow have to be an mmo? Everytime someine pops up in game tneybtyim the experience. Wow is better as a single player game. There's nonlaw saying wow is an mmo.
Poe is labeled an mmo but 99% of gameplay is solo. And ssf mode is better than trade. Mmo just means a lot of people play it and it's an online game.
If you cant enjoy wow without rtards ruinng your day then that's a personal problem
I love the random kindness , rudeness, stupidity in the open world.
Busy servers when they are fresh are some of the worst and best times you can have, imo
I played since launch and quit at the start of Wrath. I was guild-less all the way to level 50-ish. I was in a dungeon with four others in the same guild. I was a frost mage....at the end of the dungeon, I received an invite because of how well I was playing as a "pug." I stayed with that guild until I quit playing.
My friend, who introduced me to WoW, said at the very start before I even logged in: "you don't find a guild; the guild finds you." RIP WoW.
plenty of people back in wrath pointed out that group finder would fuck the game up
I was one of them. I quit WoW during Wrath and the group finder was just one of the reasons for doing so, people say it took a while for the negative ramifications of the group finder to be properly felt but I remember the decimation of that core social aspect of the WoW experience being pretty fucking immediate and drastic.
I eventually returned to WoW for the Legion expansion, the complete lack of community and social interaction in the game as a whole was in a word: 'depressing'. I eventually quit again once it became clear that I was only logging in to raid and little else. That's not what I want from an MMO, if I want a single player experience I'd rather just play a single player game and actually get a better overall experience.
@@Sevarrius The worst part is the only people still vocal about retail WoW are those that enjoy it and they are toxic as all hell. Any problem you have? That's a "you" problem apparently. Why would I want to dedicate my time to playing with a bunch of aholes? "Just grind boring solo daily garbage content until you have enough ilvl to deem you worthy". Meanwhile in Vanilla and TBC I was grouping with all sorts of players with differing skill levels and play time all the time. The gearscore addon devastated Wrath group experience, turning your average raider into a "ilvl or nothing" idiot with the communication skills of a rabid hyena.
this isn't even about wow as a whole, just classic
@@kedarunzi9139 What? It's literally one of his main talking points in the video, with him also mentioning the blow that the group and raid finder had to the social aspect of the game. Never mind the fact that he probably spent as much time talking about Wrath of the Lich King as he did Classic/Vanilla, whilst also mentioning multiple other expansions/version of the game.
Did we watch the same video?
@@cattysplat i don't think they enjoy retail i think they are just full of cope
I had absolutely no idea you were back madseason great video I've watched your last vid from 3 years ago so glad you're back man! Your calm voice soothes the pain of the absolute devastation that has befallen WoW... As for the game personally i felt the change in wotlk and after cata it was GREATLY obvious wrath was peak cata was the nice slope and pandas were the bottom. Also great music selection for the video!
I always said Wrath is what killed WoW. Burning Crusade was the best of WoW
Gear Score killed it, that became the thing in WotLK. WOW integrated a form of that mod in game from TBC. Then everyone wanted OP cake walks.
Thats cutscene where silvanus fights saurfang was actually the best moment of BFA tho...
How many times you gonna make this exact same video? I like your content a lot but I swear I’ve heard you tell this whole story in several other videos
Bro go do something else then and stop hate watching
I haven't heard him point out how Wrath is more to blame than Cata and I watch most of his recent videos
I did not know Nathanos Blightcaller was a self-insert lmao a whole lot is starting to make sense now
All you streamers man. You have no idea where to look except for what gets views. CLASSIC WOW IS ALIVE AND WELL just leave those garbage cataclysm servers and come to classic era WHITEMANE or hardcore servers DEFIAS PILLAGERS. World buffs everyday, growing community, full classic experience. It’s alive and well.
Dude at 10:23 when you hit up Dalaran and had FFIX - The Place I'll Return To Someday playing... I've sat in that city listening to this and Gizmaluke's Grotto. So peaceful.
The changing of the original zones and quests was the biggest thing for me. I enjoyed being able to go back and level a new character in the old zones. Nostalgia was no doubt a big part of it.
These videos feel so bitter, it's just been the same negative videos about Classic. SoD devs aren't doing super well rn but at least they're trying...
You are forgetting something here: Wotlk was the last expansion that saw HUGE system changes. They added phasing (which ashes of ceation/star citizen devs claim is a new invention by them). It is basically something akin to what is now called cloud. They could have dropped all realm restrictions exactly at that point but chose not to, for some reason. They added the PvP Zone and VEHICLEs. Which was used a lot in wotlk and is still used for much varied content. They did a lot of other technical changes which I forgot. While you might call Blizz lazy with TBC they really upped their game with wotlk. Unfortunately, very late into the expansion, Activision/bobby forced them to streamline and add all "current thing" features like achievements.
is bro still doom posting about wow in 2024?
For me, the "spirit of Vanilla" was the lack of shortcuts. You wanted to achieve something, you had to put time and effort into it. Even going to other zones was like this - mounts were expensive and available later than they are nowadays, so you had to do a lot of walking (and fending off random mob attacks). I disagree about Vanilla being linear - it gave a lot more freedom because the quests were not curated and arranged in neat chains as they are nowadays. You actually had to explore and find quests in obscure places. Some quests required travel to other zones, even other continents. Many quest chains ended without giving you breadcrumbs to other chains, so you had to go back to exploring and looking for stuff to do... and this created a fairly good feel of non-linearity and sandbox-like freedom. I could go on, but you get the idea...
it died when they made molten core 20 man only
You're exactly right about WotLK. I realized it during last year's classic release. I am now realizing it about Phase 3 and 4 of SoD. Nightmare Incursions destroyed the leveling experience. Rushing to max level denies us the community-building experience.
The community killed Classic WoW. From the get go in 2019, it was just min maxxing and tryhards. The closest I've gotten to a true Vanilla experience was WoW HC.
Cataclysm is WotLK+, it just improved upon and polished everything from WotLK while also making leveling 1-60 good again(and fresh at the time).
But I'd argue that Cataclysm was a love letter to Vanilla, TBC and Warcraft 2 fans, along with some WC3. Now yes, some of the game's design isn't like vanilla, but it's mostly end-game.
Keep in mind only Cataclysm every properly addressed pre-expansion leveling. As in changing and adding new proper content in the form of the revamped kalimdor and eastern kingdom. Every other expansion just cut the XP required and focused on its own leveling in the new zones.
The small problem is that in Cata leveling was a numerically easier, now that there was proper itemization while leveling, meaning that not just weapons and some OP piece here and there were good, all gear was good. Plus with the removal of spell ranks, now spells had lower base damage, but higher stat scaling. If anything they could have introduced a second difficulty to leveling(heroic if you will) for those who enjoy leveling or just straight up make it harder.
To this day I play WoW without taking achievements into account. If I get an achievement cool, I don't know how that happened for the vast majority of them. XD
If you ask me when classic died it's either with MoP, WotLK or with the release of BlackWing Lair. You decide.
I mean Vanilla literally died on the release of TBC. People only went back to capital cities to trade and auction.
@@cattysplat Even in vanilla Capitals were just a hub no different than future hubs.
Cata leveling was so dumbed down and streamlined. Absolute yawnfest with no thinking or challenge involved. Just follow arrows and check off your todo list.
@@divinecomedian2 Vanilla leveling isn't harder either, just pull a few mobs less, but I agree that the quest helper ruins leveling, good thing you can turn it off in the console/chat.
Keep in mind WotLK introduced the quest helper.
Gotta drive engagement on this channel by saying the same thing for the 15th time.
Keeps you coming back eh?
Dark Portal Pass ruined it
Man this is getting tiring. How many times are you gonna milk this topic? Classic died because all of us grew up and learned the game. Classic was a base game, everything else is an expansion. No fucking shit you’re gonna have to start adding something to speed leveling when the cap is going up and the whole playerbase is already maxed so what are they gonna focus on? I used to like your videos man, you’ve really turned in to Asmongold 2.0.
Alliance players still play friendly with Goblins against their own long-term interests. People still kill Azuregos for loot, even though he's never done a single thing wrong.
You guys only got more effective at being bad at the game. You fail faster and more powerfully than ever.
Your videos always randomly pop up on my recommended even though I'm subscribed and they're a breath of fresh air. Thank you for always bringing back nostalgia. I played from vanilla until mists when my fiance and i split up. I tried to come back for legion but it wasn't the game i fell in love with. There will never be a game quite like vanilla world of warcraft.