Is it true? Was vanilla the golden age of WoW?
>>320410182
Late vanilla and the entirety of BC.
WoW was always shit.
The golden age of WoW was warcraft 3.
I'd say Burning Crusade was. I did play vanilla but only the tail end of it. So I'm probably biased. I have also played all the xpacks and would say:
BC > Vanilla > wrath > panda > cat > wod
>>320410279
Even early Wrath. And then... patch 3.2...
Well. Were you there or not dickhead?
You had to be there, bro.
It was. Even when played nowadays it still much more enjoyable than the retail wow.
>>320410182
Hell no. The only people that could afford mounts were in Molten Core raiding guilds or spent every waking hour farming materials to sell on the AH.
it is true, all of it.
>>320410483
>early Wrath
>arcane mages
>ret pally
>every DK spec
Yeah... no.
>pre xpac patch hits
>literally whole team being camped at arathi basin graveyard by 3 rets and 2 arc mages
>xpac launches
>being GY camped by 10 DKs
Just play on nostalrius, OP. Just stay away from the 4chan guilds and you'll be fine.
amazing game if you were a dumbass teenager like i was
fun to explore
fun to play with friends
fun to pvp and do raids and high end dungeons and shit
grinding wasn't fun though and the game became progressively worse (that said i'm glad they got rid of ammunition and made pet levels and happiness more manageable)
>>320411101
>pvp
LOL!!!
>>320410182
Yes.
>>320410397
Even more yes.
Yes and early TBC.
Ignore the fags who say Wrath of the best time for WoW. The people who say Wrath was the best only say it because it's when they joined.
TBC was where the focus shifted too much to end game, and Arena was gay as shit
>>320411810
>let's change the focus of the game from 40 man raids to 10 mans in an instant!
>10 biggest dicksuckers in the guild have the time of their life
>30+ other people realize how utterly shitty tbc is
>>320411810
Is this Christina Hendricks
Yes. Vanilla WoW was an absolute gem. It had an rough-hewn design that felt organic and rewarding. The resulting limitations of group-based, time-sink content and lack of ui features gave the community reason to exist.
For me, the slow death of the game resulted from the developers designing WoW like they were designing from a WoW template, rather than something novel and creative. For example, compare the labyrinthine Blackrock Depths to the interconnected box structure of dungeons from WotLK onwards. Cross server pvp, quest helper and dungeon finder were further mistakes that each irrevocably damaged the community.
It was the golden age of community. The gameplay was much more polished that other mmos at the time but the game itself was a broken mess that you had to wade through.
The true golden age was TBC. I didn't know how many scrubs there were until I was forced to start grouping with them in WOTLK.
Maybe late Vanilla when you actually had stuff like quests in Silithus. My personal peak was in Wrath but that's because by that time I had already burnt myself out on raiding through Vanilla/BC even if I wish things like heroics on Wrath were closer in difficulty to the ones from BC.
>getting your war weapon at level 30 - 31
everything for the next 10 levels would bend over in submission at the sight of it.
>>320410182
It was good, but TBC was better. It had the perfect effort to reward ratio. You could get purples, but they weren't just handed to you.
>>320410636
This is a lie, playing a vanilla server atm thats identical to WoW vanilla and its easy to get a mount.
>>320410182
No. Vanilla was shit. TBC was better. Wotlk in my opinion felt like golden age. Cataclysm was average, mist of pandaria as setting was bad but dungeons, raids and gameplay good. WoD was pure shit that should been skipped for good.
there was no golden age of this shit game, there's too much variety and ups and downs in quality over the years
>>320412387
anita sarkeesian
>>320410636
I farmed in Tyrs Hand for weeks to get enough gold to buy Epic training. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
>>320411810
everyone thinks when they started was the best time, fuck off
Well, that's a difficult question because looking at it from modern perspective, I would consider it worthless for everything but "the journey" (and 1-60 questing is relevant in TBC/WotLK so I don't know if it can be considered an unique advantage of vanilla, particularly when TBC doesn't feature significant indirect nerfs like WotLK does).
There's some designs it deserves credit for that other expansions don't (for the most part you're not fighting existential threat of the month or killing off major lore characters for questionable reasons, it's more lore-friendly than subsequent expansions in general, the update model was definitely far superior with 12 major content patches etc) and the way most people approached it during retail was healthier for the game (for example, it wasn't treated as raid and instanced PvP simulator). If you wanted to make an argument for vanilla being good, the last point is the big thing, I think.
However, I think vanilla as it is simply doesn't survive the way it is/would be played NOW. For example, as long as you don't go in with WotLK babby mindset of AoEing everything and have the tiniest amount of discipline, the raids are trivial (besides maybe Naxx that very few servers have available, the raids tend to be pretty much 1-shot as soon as they are released on private servers), PvP is frankly quite terrible etc.
If you look at the actual game, TBC is pretty much a direct upgrade. Yes, you can nitpick things like broken/draenei retcons or small departures from illusion of a virtual world (5-man dungeons suddenly becoming different when you change an option from in-game menu, in this case I'd argue the benefits are tremendous) but generally speaking TBC showcases every strength that vanilla had (be it lack of class homogenization or player character treated as nameless adventurer rather than the hero) while the content is far superior and actually stands up to modern min/maxers.
>>320413375
I could never farm there because it was filled with chinamen.
>>320412305
>wanting 40 man raids again
It's hard enough to get 20~ people to all be able to raid on a schedule or not be retarded let alone fucking 40. That MC tribute last year let me know exactly how fucking stupid 40 man raiding would be in this day and age.
>>320412861
>be noob as fuck
>join a high levelroleplayingguild
>hit 30 and lv 60 guild mate tells me he'll help me with my quest
>no idea what he's talking about but he gets us going
>get a level and a level 40 blue axe
>proceed to oneshot everything for ~8 levels
TBC raids were awesome, Karazhan, SSC, the eye, black temple, sunwell, so many memories. WOTLK was where they started to make 'ease of use' updates like lfg that really killed the world.
>>320413451
Pretty much spot on. Vanilla was better as a world than it was a game because that's what the neckbeards of those days treated it. The mind set of players has changed. Back in vanilla I didn't care about useless quests, I didn't care that I had to run from Ironforge to the Burning Steppes for 1,200 experience, 2 silver, and a white quest reward. I just enjoyed the world and enjoyed spending time with the people in it.
As a game it was kinda shit. Class imbalance was all over the place for the first year and a half of the game. Shamans went from kings of everything to garbage shit in the span of a month. Dungeons weren't too difficult on a technical level and even the raids were really fucking easy for anyone with a brain. PvP was horrible for the most part, but it was fun because nobody cared about being efficient. They just liked being an orc fighting night elves at the Crossroads.
Vanilla was only as good as it was because of the community. The modern WoW community put into vanilla WoW would make the game nigh unplayable.
>>320413574
agreed
Up the difficulty is all they really need to do at this point
I honestly have pretty good expectations for Legion
It reminds me of TBC since we're probably going to see some crazy shit, plus they're going to have 2 raids just right off the bat
I would say for anybody, it's when they started playing, or got their first max character. Many awesome times can be had first time round. Be happy you experienced this game once, and let it rest in peace.
>>320413989
The one problem with modern WoW is the amount of difficulties they have for raiding and dungeons. Dungeons should just have normal and heroic. Raiding should have normal and heroic. I'm tired of doing dungeons like 6 times over for different rewards. The fights hardly even change all that much outside of final bosses. Normal and Mythic Archimonde are almost two different fights whereas Normal Kilrogg and Mythic Kilrogg are essentially the same.
I want a normal difficulty that has flex enabled between 10-20 people. Then I want a heroic difficulty that is locked at 20 people where every fight has 1-3 extra mechanics that completely add new elements to the battle. I'm tired of 4 difficulties where all that changes is the numbers. And get rid of LFR, contrary to popular belief all it's done has killed the game. Ever since it's introduction the sub numbers have been dropping. I know correlation doesn't equal causation, but let's give it a shot for an expansion and see what happens to the sub numbers with no LFR.
>>320413574
>Not realizing 40 people is a medium sized raid group for any other MMO made before 2005
>Not realizing that everyone that played those other MMOs had no problem finding raid groups.
If memory serves, I think the largest I was ever a part of was 72 man in FFXI (for a single instance raid. Obviously Frontier RvR in DAoC got bigger). 40 was only hard to manage when you were dealing with ages 15 and below.
On topic, Vanilla was definitely the golden age of WoW. BC was good too, but it was the beginning of the dilution of the greatest aspects of the game.
>>320414573
It wants to be more welcoming to newer players I suppose, someone who has played an MMO for 10+ years obviously thinks raids can be mundane but normal to heroic might be a challenge to a newer casual player, much less normal to mythic. I think it's a good measure as long as they do have an actual challenge at the end I'm okay with it.
MMOs have always been made on key emphasis on grinding
I don't think the LFR has led to sub numbers dropping either though, it's the fact that there hasn't been enough content being released, that's primarily why I quit, i didn't mind the LFR because it allows people to not sift through the bullshit and if they're on the go and just want to get gear for Heroics and Mythics then they can just do a simple raid for 20 minutes and bam
I liked doing it before I went into work to be honest, the main problem WoW is facing is not expanding enough features into the game matched with the fact of lack of content
>>320410182
In my opinion WotLK was the golden age, but that's mainly because it's when I was playing with all my buddies. I started in vanilla and played with a good number of people, but was always separated from my real life friends because we played on different servers. Even still I made a lot of WoW friends on the server I was stationed on. In TBC I was moving on with the game, working more on school, working a part time job, and over all just had no time for WoW. I still played, but I was very casual. Took me months to reach 70 and I didn't do much while I was there.
Once WotLK hit I was done with school and had a ton of free time. All my buddies were in similar situations and my old friends from Vanilla wanted me back in their raiding guild for the launch of WotLK. I spent the entirety of the WotLK launch to the Cata launch playing with the same 24 people and we had a fucking blast. It was fantastic. Then we all split ways with Cata and the games never been the same for me again.
>TL;DR
WotLK > Vanilla > TBC > MoP > Cata > WoD
That's been my personal experience and I know it's biased, but it's the only way I can see it.
>>320412984
>purples
I think the colour of items is quite inconsequential. Items can be common or rare, desirable or worthless, difficult to get or welfare, regardless of item quality.
A lot of T1 raid gear in vanilla was terrible so you could treat (relatively speaking) cheap BoE craftables like Bloodvine set, green "of Frozen Wrath" greens or Bad Mojo Mask as "welfare gear" of the day (let's forget about the whole R14 thing because it was at the very end). The thing is, vanilla players at the time didn't know where these actually desirable items came from if they even knew they were desirable (while today players would map out the optimal route for getting them)
But ignoring the item colour and instead thinking of "catchup gear", I do agree that TBC was in the right place. Even with the introduction of SWP badge items, by then many times nerfed heroics were by no mean facerollable and it took a good bit of dedication to actually earn them due to high cost so I don't mind even if they were T5~T6 level in terms of power. Catchup gear is needed (since most players are left to do low-end content for a reason, capable players teaming up and rising to the top is pretty much a fairy tail, you need some catchup gear so that capable new players could prove their worth and make themselves noticed and worth picking up for higher-end guilds) and TBC did it right.
As an added benefit, it acts as an indirect nerf to the content so bad players and casuals actually get to see raid content, and I'm quite certain they'll ultimately feel better about indirectly nerfed content than picking artificial difficulty mode that was designed such that you couldn't fail, even if came with a big delay. In this sense, I think multiple raid difficulty modes has actually harmed the casuals players (since they are subject to content droughts just like top-end raiders are, they have no one to look up to or content to look forward to, and ultimately they'd be able to see all the content).
>>320415481
I realize, I just don't care. I had a hard time getting my guild in mists to show up for Heroic raids and that was just 25 of us. The average player in WoW right now is not suited for 40 mans anymore. 10th Anniversary with MC showed that plain as day.
>>320410182
In the sense of adventure, expectations and community it was certainly the Golden Age.
The actual content didn't matter. Back in Vanilla when BG's got introduced, we had to manually travel to Ashenvale to do Warsong Gulch.
Everything felt so much more immersive back then. Now you sit in the capital waiting 40 minutes for queues. Sure, its easier to do content but the game lost its charm, and players are already too familiar with the game to enjoy it.
>>320410182
no
it was slow and eughhhh
Wrath > Mists > TBC > Vanilla > Cata > WoD
>>320410182
WoW has no "golden age". Each expac pandered to different people. Vanilla WoW is/was most true to what people expected from MMOs. A lot of grinding and a huge world with a lot going on in every area of the world. There's a reason to like every expansion and it comes down to opinions. Even Cataclysm had good features that made it a good expansion even if people do like to shit all over it.
>>320417951
The crossrealms also made the game lose the only community it had left. Now everything is phasing in and out. It doesn't feel the same anymore.
Late vanilla and early tbc was the closest you could get to an ideal MMO.
>>320410182
Late Vanilla, all of BC, and the beginning of Wrath (some would argue all of Wrath but I stopped playing after the tourney because I just lost interest).
I fucking miss BC and my old guildies. I miss being that young.
>>320419761
This picture will never fail to make me laugh. It just hits me on a primal level for some reason.
>>320410182
It was when WoW was an actual MMO and required that you actually socialize with people.
>>320410483
>Early Wrath
The early Wrath with only one decently tuned boss in T7 (Sartharion+3D on 10-man) with the rest being worthlessly trivial, 5-mans that were worthlessly trivial on day 1 and totally outrageous PvP balance?
Ulduar/3.1 being superb doesn't make "early Wrath" good.
>>320411810
I enjoyed Wrath a lot, especially since it was the last closure Frozen Throne needed. Though fuck the whole flip-flopping on Arthas (does he still have humanity deep down?!?) and the "there must always be a Lich King". If it weren't for that, it would've been a 10/10 expansion lorewise.
Also Anub'arak and Kel'Thuzad deserved better.
>>320410182
Burning Crusade was fine too, but vanilla game was awesome. It was more RPG and less theme park. It was less casualized and a lot more challenging to play. It was awesome. Nobody has managed to recreate that kind of gaming atmosphere again since then
better in some ways worse in others
>>320410182
Sorry but people who think Vanilla was WoW at its greatest are nothing but nostalgiafags. The reality of Vanilla was that the raids, being 25 and 40 man, were extremely uncoordinated and had horrible design. PvP was a shit show then and it still is now. Gearing was retardedly tedious and infinitely more grindy than even MoP and WoD. Vanilla was fun because it was fresh and exciting but relative to later expansions like WOTLK and BC, it was AIDS
>>320410182
>still no good BC server
Vanilla had the best community so yeah.
>>320420592
recently went back to vanilla this year and I can safely say your post is bullshit. vanilla is better than I remembered it, and I already had good memories to begin with.
>>320420592
That's the point
It was challenging. You had to really know what you were doing and have other people that could do the same. The game didn't just automatically hand over gear that deals a million damage like this bullshit new WoW. You really had to push yourself, and the gameplay was a lot more rewarding because of it. Modern WoW is a snooze-fest, the whole fucking thing is on auto-pilot
>>320420560
>Those spell placements
That's how you know this is old. You weren't ready until you had every slot filled with something.
>>320420592
>25 and 40
Try playing vanilla first
>>320419973
WoW is too far gone at the moment. It's so entrenched in menus that it's almost not even a game at this point. The only hope Blizzard has is to hail mary another MMO. The problem is the risk is almost guaranteed and the reward is minimal. What made vanilla and TBC so great is that if you wanted to do something you'd look for people to do it, friends list the good ones, and make or join a guild of like minded individuals. You want gold? You'd go out and farm for it. You want materials for crafting? You go out and farm for it? You want people to buy your crafts? You'd advertise yourself. Nowadays everything is so entrenched in menus you might as well just be playing with bots.
No reason to talk to anyone, the game is too easy and gives you too much info on the dungeon. No reason to sell your shit, it's all worthless. No reason to farm for mats, they're all handed to you and worthless. No reason to go out and farm for gold, the garrison can make you 10k gold on a slow week. The only time you interact with people is in guilds and when you're raiding. This is fine, but the problem is new players will never experience this. They go through the empty low level world devoid of players. Do dungeons where everyone rushes through and nobody talks. And then reach max level by themselves and work on their solo garrison while they do LFRs where nobody talks. By not forcing people to interact until top level play at the max level no new players are going to care to do it when they finally reach that point.
>Old WoW
Level up > Talk to people to form groups > Remember said people > Share secrets and tips > Reach max level > Eventually raid together
>New WoW
Level up > Reach max level > Get burned out
For those of us that have been playing since Vanilla or TBC we're fine with talking to people and getting into difficult raids. For new people they have no idea how to do this and rather than learn they just quit and play LoL or Diablo 3.
>>320410279
This.
I could still play WoW if it was just TBC with more raids.It would mean I could have internet friends again
>>320420357
The expansion would have been 10/10 if Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad played a bigger part, Azjol-Nerub wasn't scrapped, Naxx didn't come back, and the Tournament never happened. Wintergrasp, Ulduar, Icecrown, and the surrounding lore of Northrend was all top tier as fuck.
im playing the WoW free "Starter edition" right now for the first time ever and it's pretty fun.
It was fucking shit. Stranglethorn hunter camp was constantly ganked by some faggots, I got my mount with level 47 and it took me one whole fucking month to level up a second character to 60.
>>320421280
then keep at it, i wish i was playing it for the first time too :/
>>320411176
this, I can confirm.A or H? class?
>>320421181
I can't remember if Azjol-Nerub was cut a zone because of time constraints or difficulties in making the zone on a height-based mapping engine.
But yeah they shouldn't have brought back Naxxat least keep the 40man around so I can finish farming Atiesh you motherfuckers
>>320420804
Yeah a private server filled with like minded people who enjoy and facilitate the ideal Vanilla environment is cool. Who would have thought? You're an idiot
>>320421514
>using the word "gank"
>>320420807
It was challenging as a byproduct of terrible raid design and flawed mechanics. The game was not intentionally challenging.
>>320420560
>437 deaths
No way was that played with one guy. That had to be one of the Grand Marshall grinders where people would just play in shifts.
>>320421712
If Vanilla was bad they would have opened their eyes you retarded faggot.
>>320421762
What else would I use? I'm from germany so we used to word 'getürkt'.
>>320420592
The expansions did endgame content a lot better, but vanilla did a lot of things really well. It was the most immersive and was really focused on the community.
I actually have a Vanilla server I can load up on my computer, sometimes I just boot it up and wander around Kalimdor, something about that world is just so immersive and I haven't been so drawn into anything else like that.
TBC started to burn me out and I left when they started the daily quest shit.
>>320420957
Naxx was 40 man. AQ40 was 40 man. With the exclusion of AQ20 most raids were 40 man. Fuck off
>>320421945
you'd be amazed at what people do with their free time
i played 12 hours straight no problem
>>320420560
>never joined the raid party in AV
>always went fishing
I remember some fucking retards spewing nonsense on how you have to fish some book that starts the ashbringer quest
>>320421945
>play in shifts
Some guy helped pay for my epic mount back in vanilla if I spent a few days playing his hunter in Alterac Valley to help him get High Warlord. It was fun and I got my mount out of it. He did eventually get High Warlord by the way.
>>320421762
>He doesn't gank people
>>320422178
AV was its own zone with people doing tons of stuff, didn't even have to join the fighting. Now it's a 5 minute zerg.
>>320413375
I started farming and got akrol blade30 minutes in. Shit was so cash.
>tfw playing onNostalrius
>tfw once you reach level 30 you're forced into WPvPing instead of questing because the population is so huge
>>320422518
The most fun I had was in that one winter event where snowballs had a knock back effect. I was alliance and I wasted a whole fucking day infront of our base throwing snowballs at people.
>>320422540
I remember my buddy got a Krol Blade like 3 mobs into grinding there. We all tried to convince him to sell it, but it was his first epic so he wanted to use it.He was a mage
>>320422707
>logging in on christmas day
>>320422678
>tfw that's exactly what you wanted all along
It's glorious, especially rolling around in a posse with 3 of my vanilla bros. Now none of them have time to play anymore so we're stuck at level 55 forever.It's just like when they all left in wrath it's happening all over again
>>320421946
And just like that, the point goes straight over your head. If you had actually read what I said, I said that relative to later expansions Vanilla is notably flawed and just not good. It doesn't mean for the time it was released that it wasn't good / fun.
>>320422540
>group of friends start playing wow since it's the shit
>that one fucking asshole shitnigger who gets ALL the epics
>oh wow guys i found another epic
>epic mount? yeah i got that ages ago
>our faces whenhe found one of every epic and two krol blades
>>320421007
Its literally a single player game now. They overblew the comfort thing. You have no reason to interact with players ever, unless with your raid. There is literally nothing to do in the gorgeous zones, even the lore got shat on and content cut.
Why even bother with anything: The Game.
>>320423173
>I said that relative to later expansions Vanilla is notably flawed and just not good.
TBC, WoTLK, Cata, MoP, and WoD were all more flawed.
The biggest mistake in TBC was adding flying.
The biggest mistake in WoTLK was the lowered difficulty and dungeon finder.
The biggest mistake in Cata was the destruction of the leveling process to be more streamlined and the casualization of many of the game's core aspects
The biggest mistake in MoP was the repetitive daily grind and over a year of no content.
The biggest mistake in WoD was garrisons.
I forget if it was MoP or WoD that added merged servers in zones. That was horrendous too.
Vanilla isn't nearly as flawed as its expansions.
>>320420234
>the nightmare of 100% arms warriors
That is something I never wanna re live.
What's that? You popped evasion? Lol overpower spam
>>320423393
My buddy was like that, but with raid gear. He was a brand new warlock to an already established guild. They took him on a few runs of Molten Core and within 2 weeks had 6 pieces of felheart, an azuresong mageblade, and two epic rings. It took me almost 2 months on my warrior to get half of my might set and a shield.
>>320415616
Yes, the game becomes so much better when played with people you actually know well. That's why I can kinda say I enjoyed the end of MoP because we actually got together 10 people who knew each other IRL and just raided together and became one of the top guilds on the server, and because we knew each other there was no drama, we were just playing in perfect sync and everyone agreed on where each piece of loot should go, it was a ton of fun.
Thanks to 20-man raids essentially becoming mandatory everyone quit since we couldn't keep playing as 10 without needing to drag in random people and ruin what we had going.
That said, even though I had no one to play with I had a blast playing in BC because as a lone player there was still things like heroics where you got a group experience without needing a guild, and other than that I could just do rep grinds or stuff like that, and I was still having fun. Today when I play alone I just run around doing achievements (which I guess isn't particularly different from rep grinds mostly) but the problem is that doing LFD/LFR just doesn't compare at all to the heroics there used to be. LFR in particular is so dull I usually just alt-tab and browse /v/ instead.
just give nostalrius a spin if you're curious about vanilla wow being good or not.
>>320423679
you've obviously never experienced true horror that is Stormbringer arms warriors in BC
or mace combat rogues, that was prime time bullshit
>>320423092
>logging in on new years a few minutes after midnight
>>320423652
Honestly I'm not sure how to feel about server-merged zones. On the one-hand, what little community existed was killed. On the other hand, most servers didn't have a community left and I could wander most zones in the game for hours without seeing another player.
What they should have just done was merged a shitton of servers and just admit that they lost a lot of people. That way they'd forge new but still natural communities, rather than giving us this weird-ass pseudo-community of inter-dimensional ghosts.
>>320423652
Flying was the biggest mistake of the entire game, but despite that TBC was still one of the best expansions. If there's one thing I've learned from WoW it's that if I'm ever in the position to design an MMO I will never include flying. What did that one faggot say from long ago?
>"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."
Once you give players the ability to fly you can never take it away from them. Blizzard learned that the hard way.
>>320421945
I was in an Av for 14 hours earlier this year before I quit nost. I just find tbc and wotlk pvp far superior and it's more important to me than pve. It did have some nice world pvp though
>>320410182
TBC was
>>320423652
this is a good post
basically it all went downhill in PvP when they redesigned AV and did cross-server battlegrounds
in PvE with a LFG tool
Every server had a nice community, with firends, enemies, villians, tons of drama and shit. Now i resubbed for MoP quite a while ago for a month and we literally never said a word to each other for like 3-4 instances straight
so much for being an MMO with no obligations to talk to other people. Enchants on auction and other stuff added to this as well.
>>320411101
>>ret pally
11k judgment of the martyr like what's up nigga
>>320423883
>get into an arena
>we're against a rogue/druid combo
>rogue cheap shots me
>see he's using maces
>alt+tab and go do some chores around the house
>>320423883
>Stormbringer arms warriors in BC
You forgot their resto-druid accompaniment.That was me and my bro, I once walked a complete circuit of EotS with ALL 15 alliance trying to kill my resto druid after I convinced the rest of the horde to wait for me to return successful at MT. After I made it back, my warrior friend charged in and started smashing shit. BC was balanced.
>>320424087
TBC was the only WoW expansion that was good.
>>320422160
Which was 25?
>>320410182
i dont even
>>320423975
so many christmas and new years
>play wow until there's only a few minutes to the new year
>celebrate with parents for a few minutes
>go back and play wow
>happy new year everyone in trade
>>320424147
14 hours? Amateur.
I lost a screenshot of a 72 hour long AV we won. It was funny becuase i was playing alliance during vanilla and AV queue was about 2 hours long. So i logged into AV in the evening, played it a couple of hours, went to sleep, woke up and got into queue and popped into THE EXACT SAME AV that has still been going on.
What a time that was. Summoning bosses, picking up badges, forming rogue/druid groups to infiltrate enemy base and hold mines and shit.
>>320424087
What they've done with Draenor flying isn't so bad honestly, except it should probably require even more commitment. I really liked being ground bound at the start but after a while you kinda want that convenience when you're just out picking herbs or whatever, especially when there is some awkward terrain like in Spires of Arak where the map seems to imply that you should be able to walk across a place but you can't because lol mountains. And at this point in the expansion everyone's just standing in their garrison anyway so it's not like you're missing out on the world PvP because of mounts.
Garrisons are fucking retarded, I mean I like the easy gold flow but it's some cell phone game tier shit that you should just be able to manage from your UI without having to go there. I wouldn't even mind their existence if it weren't for them being the de facto hub of the expansion which no one ever leaves unless they have to.
![wow ZulGurub[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/hsN8xi2.jpg "wow ZulGurub[1].jpg")
Did anyone else like ZG?
>>320424451
25 came with BC. I think gruuls lair and muhammads chamber where the first 2 25 man dungeons in the game.
>>320424451
There was no 25 man raid in vanilla, only ZG and AQ20 which were both 20 man.
>>320424451
What? There's no 25 man raid in Vanilla.
Did you even play it?
>>320424549
literally the best instance apart from BWL, Kharazan and Ulduar
>>320424513
>mfw i entered the last stage of a 4+ day AV and got my ice barbed spear minutes before i had to leave for school
>>320424549
My guild let me come with them there on the day that I dinged 60 which gives it a special place in my heart, especially since I got the zulian skinner for my fury warrior which didn't even have skinning.
But it doesn't compare to the feel of Onyxia or MC desu.
People say TBC but it was really WotLK up until 3.2.
PvP and PvE was at it's tippest toppest during Ulduar.
WotLK also had excellent world design.
>>320424549
Man I made so much gold solo farming the voodoo dolls and bloodvines from the herbs. Latter was required for nature resist gear for Ahn'Qiraj, I forget what the dolls were for. Small time gold for the true barons, no doubt, but still neat on a quiet server.
>>320424760
3.0 was completely mediocre man, if you mean 3.1 was the best you should just say it and not lump it in with the rest of the expansion desu.
>>320410182
It was the golden age of the WoW community.
Now playing a private server can't even perfectly bring that back, because any mention of retail is met with a circlejerk over vanillafags who played in TBC and reminisce over "us oldfags, huh?"
>You could actually die while questing
>Areas had elite mobs in some areas, so you could REALLY die while questing
>No LFG, had to talk to people to get dungeons going
In terms of raid mechanics, WoW is in its prime. Classes have been oversimplified to just perform their specific role, though, so things feel a lot easier.
>>320424513
I loved that shit, but honestly it needed some changes to make it actually end or be rewarding. AV was tremendous fun but a waste of time rewards-wise. However, adding a literal time-limit to AV was going way to far and basically destroyed it.
There was a sweet-spot where AV would last about an hour and a half or two, that was when it was best. Though personally I'd rather they keep the 3 day long AV and just give you participation rewards for your contributions when you leave, and mail you a victory gift or something if your team actually wins later on.
>>320424760
PvP was fucking god tier until ICC patch.
Arena scene died so quick it was scary.
>>320424576
Yep.
>>320424597
That's the point
>>320424609
Did you read what I was replying to?
>>320424968
Arena scene's death was a good thing, Arena was the worst thing to ever hit WoW PvP. But I agree, PvP was pretty great up until ICC.
![2790528-5439472555-B78W6[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/HMyrK3a.jpg "2790528-5439472555-B78W6[1].jpg")
>people who make "level 60 only" guilds where everyone locks their level at 60 and does raids on retail servers
>>320423652
>The biggest mistake in TBC was adding flying.
Subjective. Flying is great for a variety of reasons. I'd give you more points if you complained about the number of portals and everything that made travel and mounts in general pointless in WoD and MoP.
>The biggest mistake in WoTLK was the lowered difficulty and dungeon finder.
Subjective. WoTLK had some of the most fun raids in Ulduar/ICC with interesting lore and great characters. And improved mechanics that are not inherently flawed doesn't mean they intentionally made it less challenging.
>The biggest mistake in Cata was the destruction of the leveling process to be more streamlined and the casualization of many of the game's core aspects
Destruction of the leveling process how? Introducing character boosts in MoP was infinitely worse than anything Cata did.
>The biggest mistake in MoP was the repetitive daily grind and over a year of no content.
I agree MoP was very repetitive. But so is every expansion in one way or another. MoP overdid it with the daily quests but every single expansion had grinding. It's an MMO.
>The biggest mistake in WoD was garrisons.
Subjective. Garrisons, while they proved to be very underwhelming as the missions add no real content to the game and followers don't do anything special, having your own hub is kind of a cool feature. There's an argument to be made that garrisons bastardized professions, but saying that garrisons as a whole were a pointless addition to the game is stupid.
>>320425190
I thought classes now were much tougher than they were back then. Wouldn't a level 60 raid with a bunch of level 60 chars in retail/modern loot be still ridiculously OP compared to old level 60s?
>>320425342
They are.
I'm not who you're replying to but I go on a private server for a few days every couple months for nostalgia sake
>>320425342
Yep, I watched Kungen's stream and they had to go in full white gear with level 1 weapons to have a challenge.
>>320411810
shopd
>>320425296
fuck off blizzdrone
>>320411810
yea and people who say vanilla and tbc were the best also only say so because thats when they started
>>320425761
Nice argument.
>>320411810
Or if they're a paladin.
>>320425828
hiding behind subjectivity is not an argument, either.
>I like eating shit because it tastes good and that's my opinion!
Not to mention you said flying is good for many reasons and failed to even post one.
>>320424549
Zul'aman man, Zul'aman. Bear runs were fun as hell.
>>320425945
>tfw levelled a paladin to 60 in vanilla retail
>>320424549
My guild didn't even need shit from ZG, but we'd do it anyways just because it was run to just faceroll everything in 2.5 gear while shooting shit in vent and fucking around.
We'd even do a raid vs raid to see who could finish quicker.
>>320426128
literally alt tab while auto hitting shit to death: the class
>>320425828
>at the point they stopped releasing numbers
You're acting like there is an argument at this time. You're objectively wrong based upon quantifiable statistics. Calling you a blizzdrone is quite accurate. You were wrong before you even started.
>>320425945
pfft
Never in the history of WoW have the paladins been in better shape than for 3 days after 2.0 hit
i was one of the 3 raiding ret pallies on my server (knew the other 2 for years online as well) and it was not funny how i one-shot everything in sight with a newly added Crusader Strike while providing the whole raid judgements of light, wisdom, crusader, increased crit chance and such
only reckoning bombs were better
>>320410182
I'd say it is even if there were huge problems with the game.
>warriors were the only viable tanks
>AoE tanking and pulling was tedious
>literal insta fucking gib PvP encounters
>half-baked zones like azshara
>fucking spirit points on every classes' dungeon armor set
The difficulty of the raids was undoubtedly higher than anything than any future iteration of WoW and to make your progress more rewarding, PvE items were the best items for PvP. Casuals unfortunately ruined this by whining to Blizzard that only 5% of players ever got to experience stuff like Naxx and AQ40 so they made everything easy as shit after Vanilla.
I haven't played much of WoD but in BC Blizzard went way too hard in the opposite direction of instagib PvP, arena matches would go on for 20 minutes.
>>320410182
Wotlk was.
>>320426240
You'd think the superbrains at ActiBlizz would correlate these numbers per expansion, but they fucking don't.
It's crazy.
>>320424528
Actually there's a huge amount of WPVP on my server at least (NA-Emerald Dream), but most of the players interested in it haven't taken the time to get flying.
On that note, landing the booterang on someone that's hovering, taunting you is absolutely the most satisfying feeling in the game.
>>320425945
>>320426128
>>320426220
http://s185.photobucket.com/user/algorath/media/ReasontoplayPaladin.jpg.html
havent seen this pic in a long time
>>320426220
Yes but 5 mans were fucking amazing, you were the guy that prevented wipes and clawed back a shit-hits-the-fan situation.
It's a shame raiding killed the paladins role.
>>320424513
I meant I was in the bg when it started and stayed for 14 hours completely active.
It went on until the server crashed after I went to sleep
>>320424549
>raiding guild needs dwarf priests for fear ward
>scoop me up at level 58
>a little bit later they're short a healer for ZG, let me go along
>top the heal chart with extremely low overheal
>a few raids later get an officer promotion
I really miss those guys sometimes, they were a pretty great group of people
>>320426307
Raids were the real challenge.
it was coordinating 40 idiots.
>>320426267
>Never in the history of WoW have the paladins been in better shape than for 3 days after 2.0 hit
Oh fuck me yes this. I had some ret gear I'd scraped together and Bonereavers Edge, in those few days we did AQ20 and I topped the damage meters, good times, but then.. patch..
>>320425296
>This post
Let me guess, you still play WoW? I honestly never see this desperate defense of Blizzard unless it's coming from someone who's still playing, I know because my girlfriend is one of them.
Flying was a mistake. It was a fun gimmick, but it has so many downsides that there are dozens if not hundreds of pages written about it across countless posts and articles. Off the top of my head, some of the major ones are:
>it's much harder to do decent world and macro-level design when players can fly over everything
>it's much harder to do any sort of WPvP with players almost always flying, and able to escape into the sky if they break combat for 3 seconds
>the world feels smaller because A, you can see it all in one screen from above and B, you can fly so quickly that what should take half an hour to cross takes 5 minutes
Meanwhile it brought what, something that was fun for about 30 minutes but then became a necessary fact of life forever after? What huge gameplay benefit did we get from permanent flight? It should have been limited to specific quests and limited-time buffs.
While I agree with your general assessment of Wrath, Dungeon Finder was undeniably destructive. Virtual anonymity destroyed the casual PvE community, and removing the need to travel to dungeons removed a lot of incentive for players to explore and memorize the world geography. It brought quicker access to PvE content for sure, but in the process irrevocably damaged the experience and spawned a carefree repercussion-less attitude in dungeon groups who had nothing to fear for their reputation.
Cata leveling truly is subjective as to whether you like Cata or Vanilla leveling more. I'll concede MoP as well.
Garrisons
>boring, more repetitive than any daily
>both inconsequential in terms of story while incredibly important in terms of gameplay "content"
>free gear, money, and professions on an unprecedented scale
>significantly contributed to the death of professions
>all the same
>>320424087
Well, TBC had a great deal of mitigating designs:
A great deal of PvP hotspots, at summoning stones, farming locations (because that actually was still a thing in TBC) like Skettis etc. In addition, it was much harder to avoid fights when caught as...
...the mount cast time was twice as long (1.5 seconds longer cast is actually a really big deal in this sense) and increased the distance of when it's worth it to fly than to walk, especially when coupled with...
...the standard flying being 60% and 280% was actually prestigious with the inflation levels of the time. Most players wouldn't use flying to skip content or for fast safe travel because ground mount was faster. They used it because...
...flying really made thematic sense considering the geography, and it was used as an actual mechanic in Dragonmaw/Skyguard quests, in gating content (Tempest Keep and quests like Gorefiend's Armor).
Now, it's certainly true flying is the kind of thing that you can't take away once you've given the players a taste of it. It's also true that flying has some fairly inherent disadvantages in making it trivial to avoid any threats from other players and skipping the world rather than experiencing it. However, to large extent it's also a matter of WotLK ruining a design that kinda worked in TBC. For example, was the cast time reduction necessary? Was buffing the standard flying speed necessary? Was inflation caused by significantly reduced amount of gold sinks compared to "unavoidable" income unavoidable? Was it necessary to gut the professions such that there really wasn't anything worth getting (and thus farming materials for) once you got your identical stat bonuses (not to mention the best farming spots for motes being Wintergrasp when your faction controlled it, which pretty much meant the farming spot wasn't contested by enemy faction)? And so on. A lot of drawbacks of flying (death of world PvP etc.) are related to individually bad designs in WotLK.
>>320426462
>it was coordinating 40 idiots.
the hardest part was getting 40 people to log on and be ready at the same fucking time
>tfw main tank is already 40 minutes late
>>320422893
>help friend out
>a BOE epic drops
>tell him to sell it on AH since he needs gold and should stop buying chinese farmed stuff
>he equips it anyway
>asks me for gold so he can re spec his character so he can use it properly
>mfw we had an upcoming raid that would guarantee him getting better stuff than that
>>320426643
I've had a few people like that in my guilds / as friends.
You can't cure stupid.
>>320426643
>>320426801
I did that once but only because I really liked the look of the epic despite it being shit for me.
That's how my warlock came to ownTeebu's blazing longswordwhich I never used in a serious way. I always knew it would pay off more than gold, since I use it for transmog now.
>>320426637
My first guild in vanilla had over 50 level 60s all ready to raid and we frequently did raids with less than 30 people. Our first Ragnaros kill only had 31 people in the raid. Nobody else showed up that night. As a consequence we all became better to compensate, but on the downside people started looking for greener pastures. We ended up being cannibalized by a couple of the other high tier guilds looking for geared players ready to tackle the upcoming AQ raids.
>>320422150
I'm thinking about doing this with an alpha client, I'd love to explore all those zones that were mid development and see what was changed.
>>320423883
>Stormbringer
It's Stormherald (also known as Stunherald, Skillherald etc.)
How can you misremember the name of such an iconic weapon?
>>320427158
I saw one drop once ever in MC.
Never again.
Saw the blue one from TBC a few times though.
First time, my friend on his priest ninja'd it from a group of guildies. Got gkicked and expected me to leave my SSC/TK guild with him to join some scrappy guild struggling on Aran.
Laughed and told him hes on his own, not taking a fall for his fuckup.
>>320427191
My guild had the problem of 20 or so core members that always turned up and then having a pool of inconsistent people to fill up the rest and you would get people forgetting encounters and making dumb mistakes.
>>320427369
Worth it. I've been gkicked for stealing less, though I only stole from guilds where I hated one or more officers.
My main guild always welcomed me back afterwards regardless of reputation. We were the second-oldest guild still active at the end of Wrath, and I was the last officer (and member) to ever log on in mid Cata.I miss you guys
>>320427353
Sad how this is still accurate.
>>320423679
>tfw mained a rogue throughout Wrath
It was a horrible feeling for the first few seasons. Here I was, riding high on my Glad title from S2-S4 with my mage and priest buddy, and Wham: suddenly you're the absolute worst class in the game in terms of PvP.
>it's a survival hunter/ret/dk and a priest in 2's
Guess we lose.
The biggest fucking gutpunch was some fag pioneering the envenom spec to finally get back at the fucking cleave teams as RLS only to then discover the hell of Wizard Cleaves...
>>320426578
I don't play the game anymore. I played on and off during WoD just to clear the current raids on heroic or mythic if i managed to, but I saw no reason to pay for a subscription. It's not a defense of Blizzard. It's a defense of logic. You can't arbitrarily criticize something without offering any legitimate reason as to why you feel that way. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and that's perfectly fine. But you can't say flying is bad when that's your opinion. WoW has an incredibly vast world and let's be honest, no one wants to spend half an hour to an hour running to a fucking dungeon and not actually accomplishing anything. THAT is a detriment to gameplay. I whole heartedly agree that it allows people to skip over much of the explorable world, but how much of WoW other than the specific zones you're questing in or raiding in are even that interesting to look at? Have you ever actually looked at zones like Hellfire Peninsula? There's nothing to explore but bland, muddy color palettes and a lot of WoW is that way.
>>320427308
What is that some alpha build of SM armory? I really was into exploring shit, I know most all secret spots. I even bugged out once and flew across the ocean on a flight path and kept going until I had to ticket blizzard - crazy shit.
Would love to explore the oceans but aside from the fact that they're almost certainly empty, I have a shitty deep water phobia - once I see that fatigue bar I go NOPE.
I'd actually play the fuck out of some weird alpha server, doesn't even need to be combat or GM controls.
>>320424549
I loved ZG, mostly because it was fun to tank on mypaladin
It offered good gear and fun fights compared to the fucking slog that was MC. Too bad AQ20 wasn't as good, ZG ended up being one of my favorites.
>>320424549
>Jin'do
I feel like everything else was easy and enjoyable, but Jin'do was a crazy motherfucker.
>constantly throws down both the brain wash totem controlling one person and the healing totem that heals him 3% per tick, melee has to kill healing then brain wash and continue beating on him
>need a mage next to the skeleton pit to aoe skeletons when someone gets teleported
>have to keep his mana low so he doesn't use hex since he uses it on the person with the highest aggro
>you get a debuff that does damage on you and lets you see shades that usually beat down on healers, as dps you have to kill these things
>messing up on any of these things means deaths, got to coordinate that shit just perfectly
>>320426128
>>320426220
>>320425945
For what paladins had to put up with they deserved the absolute insanity that was pre-Wrath patch in BC.
Never in the history of video games has something gone from so useless to so fucking strong in the span of one day.
>>320428203
Jin'do was literally for masochists. He was the hardest fight up to Nefarion and he was just a side boss in the lowest tier raid.
Nope. Whoever said that just outed that they never did play vanilla wow and if they did play it outed themselves as being very very young while they did. Any adult human being or someone who was in their late teens back then knew and still knows how fucking SHIT i could be from time to time. Not to say it was a bad game though.
>>320428364
>ret paladins in vanilla and bc
>auto-attack machines that literally do as much damage as an afk hunter even if they time everything perfectly
>ret paladins in 3.0 wotlk
>what hath hell wrought
It was the age Blizzard actually gave a shit.
>>320428531
The pre-Wrath patch was still one of the best, all things considered.
Brought an almost useless spec up from the depths to the forefront of the game, and had hands-down the best event the game has ever seen: The Zombie plague.
If you don't 100% love every single aspect of WoW, you're a fucking faggot. Line up to get your ass fucked.
>>320428364
I think that patch was the only way to kill off the lolret stigma, paladins were nigh invincible.
I don't think it was possible for another class to 1v1 a paladin, even a warglaive gladiator rogue couldn't kill me.
>>320428417
The thing about vanilla is that it was a shit game that fostered a strong community so you always felt like you wanted to go back and play it no matter how shit it was or upset it made you. I remember in high school my life was wake up, play a bit of wow, go to school, think of wow and talk about wow with friends, go back home, play wow until i went to sleep. There was always something interesting in the world.
Compare it to modern wow. All in all, it's a decent game with a good balance of things to do. But you never need to interact with anyone to do 99% of the content so you never feel like you wanna come back.
>>320428585
WoD really is a fucking embarassment in terms of raid content.
I mean releasing a major patch without a new raid tier where the main feature is a fucking selfie camera? Fucking unreal.
>>320428680
>The zombie plague
Best event ever, fuck those faggots that got the event shortened because they couldn't do the same boring shit they did every single day.
>>320428872
>I remember in high school my life was wake up, play a bit of wow, go to school, think of wow and talk about wow with friends, go back home, play wow until i went to sleep
this game seriously fucked my social life forever
>>320428203
At least Jin'do was a bro to the raptor boss.
>raptor boss yells "Ding!"
>Jin'do yells back "Grats!" from the other side of the zone
>>320428776
What's even more ironic is the changes that patch brought spawned a whole new festering stigma of Ret Paladins that they were almost hate more afterwards than before.
Before Wrath I never had to deal with a fucking shit-geared, no skilled, mouth-breathing skill-clicking fucktard clogging up my raids.
They were ten times worse than Hunters ever were.
>>320428981
Lucky for me I was smart and handsome in high school. Aside from my WoW addiction I still got good grades and was decently popular. It also helped that like 40% of my school played WoW so I was always in good company. I can't imagine what it'd be like for people not in my situation.
>tfw being that guy who stands at the mailbox all day except when not raiding just letting people 'mire
>tfw all those accidental invites and spaghetti-drops
>>320428895
2.2 was a major patch. I feel like I'm the only one that remembers it.
Not disagreeing with you, 6.1 was definitely the worst by far, but it's not without precedent.
>>320410182
MC was one of the worst raids I have ever played
>>320428895
Blizzard has started a downward trend of simply not giving a fuck with any of their games. They sell, but the effort that actually goes into them is as minimal as possible.
It's depressing to think this was once one of the great gaming giants for PC. Now reduced to this generic garbage. Not to mention Riot's owner Tencent also owns them, so they are bringing jew communists as well.
>>320429172
It was odd for me because in the last 3 years of school I barely went in because it was so easy for me to stay at home and play WoW. Nobody seemed to notice that I was never there, I had a big group of friends since the start but never saw them outside school so didn't really have much to say to them as all I cared about was WoW.
In the end I got average grades, could have been much worse if I wasn't good at exams.
I liked vanilla but loved TBC the most
TK was a fun raid to run
WotLK was not bad, everything after it is cancer.
>>320429172
are you me?
I'm still not sure how i managed to lose my virginity in 2005 (i'm born in 91) when i played WoW like crazy.
Funny story: i lived in russia during that time and EU servers weren't a thing. I literally had to wake up at 4 am to raid with people on east (?) coast. 4am to 9 am raids were a fucking bitch. It didn't help that i raided as a holy pally (literally flash of light + cleanse macro only for 4-5 hours straight). On several occasions have i fallen asleep with autorun to pull additional mobs or bosses and wipe us. Almost got kicked.
>>320429316
I'm nostalgic for it because it was my first WoW raid, but when I look back objectively I can't help but agree. Every boss was essentially just one or two mechanics that like 2 classes had to pay attention to while everyone else just dpsed or healed. A lot of the bosses were just numbers checks instead of skill checks.
>Vanilla
Fun to explore/quest. Everything else sucked.
>BC
Buggy, Broken, Unbalanced Mess until 2.3 fixed it. Then it was pretty alright
>WotLK
First Raid Tier was garbage. Second was god tier. Third was garbage. Fourth was god tier. PvP was unbalanced as fuck. Wintergrasp was fun.
>Cata
Dungeons were fun till people like OP bitched and moaned and got it nerfed. PvP balance was at its highest point. PvE Raiding was at its high point. 4.3 Ruined it.
>MoP
The unrated gem of WoW. Great everything with the exception of PvP Balance and Story Pacing in Dread Wastes.
>WoD
Maybe in a few years they will have time to make it not shit.....
>>320429696
>WoD
>a few years
How about they've already given up on it. They're aiming to get Legion out the door as fast as possible and have pretty much admitted that the only thing they're gonna be doing with Legion is a few bug fixes from here on out. My guess is we've got 6-8 months of WoD left before Legion.
>[2. Trade] Memelord: anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]
>>320430009
It was a joke you mong.
>>320428364
>Useless
In 2.4.3, all three specs were a part of ideal progression raiding setup. Not something you'd want more than one of (2 holypallies probably is ideal on Brutallus, but if you're thinking of core raid setup, on most bosses you'd only want one) but particularly as Horde retribution was definitely worth it and some content REALLY benefited from a dedicated protadin (never mind Hyjal Trash, Reliquary of Souls P3 or solotanking Felmyst instead of bringing some alt to tank the skeletons, having a protadin geared out the ass allows you to drop one tank on M'uru, and considering it's the most difficult encounter in the expansion most likely to cockblock a guild, that alone justifies pally tank).
In solo/unorganized group PvP paladins were strong and while they fell off from above-average gladiator rankings of S1/S2 to second lowest (above hunters), it's not like ret/holy were incapable of doing well.
>>320429694
The 10th anniversary of the game brought back Molten Core, and just tuned the numbers and bosses up to level 100.
It was a fucking bloodbath. Imagine thirty-nine screaming, shit flinging monkeys, who for the better part of five years have had everything handed to them on a sliver platter, no matter how much they fucked up. Suddenly, they have to actually pay attention to the game for once in their raid-finder lives. Forget to kill a son and it splits? Wipe the raid. Pull a corehound accidently while fighting a surger? Wipe the raid. Didn't decurse? Wipe the whole fucking thing to the god-damn ground.
I hope I never have to relive that hell.
>>320430129
>anal [Pounding] [For the Children]
>>320423092
>Manage to make some real friends
>They arrange huge party on christmas day
>mom "no you cant leave your family on christmas"
>let >>320423975 happen
>miss only chance to get teenage sex and friends wont talk back so enjoyed 6 years of neet life
Th-thanks.
>>320430139
Paladins as a whole were a very good class. Holy preformed well and prot paladins, like shadow priests, had the roles they could excel at but also were good enough to pick up if needed.
Ret was really only good if you were on Horde for SoB, and even then only near the end of the game, where you had access to the BT/SWP gear.
In PvP holy was a good spec but no where near the level of domination of a retro druid or a disc priest, but hey it was BC and you could hit Glad running Rogue/Hunter. Ret in PvP brought a good amount of survivability but ultimately they weren't nearly as good as bringing a warrior in a lot of comps.
I'm not saying they weren't useful as a whole class, but you cannot say with any sense of seriousness that Ret wasn't the weakest spec in the entire game.
>>320430139
>The best dps seal for paladins was horde only
That was some bullshit let me tell you that.
My only experience with WoW was playing on a shitty WotLK private server with some friends for a while, I did mostly battlegrounds and other pvp stuff back then.
So I'm curious: from my perspective, what would be better about the game if I played on a private vanilla WoW server? Is it just the community and exploring aspects or are there other things?
>>320430794
Alliance made better Prot Paladins anyways, so you could actually go to a raid before fucking SWP
>>320430797
I'll be very honest.
The best thing about this game is 100% the community.
What you do can be fun too but because you're doing it with others trying to reach the same goal is what people with the nostalgia goggles get hard for and it's true, the people are what made the game so much fun.
It's just something you had/have to be there for I guess.
>>320430794
Eh, I miss when race and faction mattered gameplay-wise.Aside from humans now being undeniably the best PvP race.
Blood Knights, blood elf paladins, were all about that revenge. Makes sense that they'd deal more damage than most other paladins.
>>320429343
>They sell, but the effort that actually goes into them is as minimal as possible.
I think their HotS team is doing a pretty good work. Only problem is that when they test each map they all sit on down with dedicated people who knows what to do and wants to work as a team opposed to how ignorant the players in a pug team are.
Not like the Hearthstone Team who basically just re-use fan made art and then calls it a day while cashing in 80€ worth of DLC money from half the player base every year.
>>320415481
>40 was only hard to manage when you were dealing with ages 15 and below.
Bullshit, that's when it's easiest because they have no responsibilities. It's hard enough to get 5 people together at the same time to play a fucking tabletop RPG.
>>320428417
>Nope. Whoever said that just outed that they never did play vanilla wow and if they did play it outed themselves as being very very young while they did. Any adult human being or someone who was in their late teens back then knew and still knows how fucking SHIT i could be from time to time. Not to say it was a bad game though.
Spotted the non raider. Just because you couldn't do shit in game does not make everyone who played underage or a liar.
>>320430797
If your only exposure to WoW was a Wrath private server, then Vanilla is going to be a completely different experience. You'll wonder why half your skills are useless, why you can't survive if you dare to pull more than one mob once you hit level 20, why your class raiding strategy is to spam one fucking skill the entire raid, and a bunch of other bullshit.
But what you have to understand is that we put up with all the fucking shit that was in Vanilla WoW because the rest of it was a magical experience. Going to IF/Org for the first time, and seeing all the 60's in their raid gear was amazing. The feeling of trepidation you felt going into Duskwood, or riding around Southshore or STV. The sheer joy of spending time with your mates, most of whom you met organically in the game, and leveling up with them over time and doing dungeons, which were themselves a huge undertaking just to get to: All of that was in Vanilla.
Sure, you had xXArThAsXx the undead rogue ganking you over and over while leveling, and farming for raid mats for 4 hours just so you could spend another 5 hours doing MC was fucking awful. But the rest of the game was just too good to pass up.
player since 2005 vanilla here.
Should I just finally quit? Legion honestly looks really boring and bland just like dogshit WoD
>>320426637
>>320426462
these, my guild would rarely get more than 30 people for raids
25 man's just aren't the same
>>320410182
No, TBC is.
>>320431636
I never felt any of those things.
Why did Blizzard hate shamans so much?
>>320431885
Then you led a sad, sad life.
>>320432069
Or I played UO and EQ1 first. It was your first MMO, not mine.
>>320410182
If that's what you want to remember it as.
>>320432149
But my first MMO wasUltima Online
>>320432289
Then what the fuck are you doing jacking off over WoW?
>>320432149
Now this is the real answer right here. I can relate to the aforementioned moments experienced in WoW, but ultimately Ultima Online was THE mmorpg that set the bar so high it was never even attempted by other games to climb over. It's a shame the genre (and gaming in general) didn't evolve (actuallly got worse in some respects) over all those years.
>>320430717
Moonkins weren't a part of min/maxed raid (aside from tanking the shaman add on Maulgar or unless you needed insect swarm miss chance to fuck around with unhittable feral tank, too inconvenient to be used in actual progression raids, or you had some similarly unrealistic absurd melee stacked setup in which case faerie fire +meleehit might bring their personal DPS+raid DPS contribution over another lock/mage).
Elemental was also on the edge. Wrath of Air+Totem of Wrath+one more lust+personal DPS was definitely preferable to another mage/lock, but since restoration could give all those benefits except Totem of Wrath, it gets more difficult to evaluate their desirability. It kinda comes down to how would you value restoshammies over another holy priests or running a restodruid, and how much value you place in elemental being able to use items cloth-wearers couldn't. I personally value trees and holy priests quite a lot so I'd probably take one elemental to top caster group, but you can't really theorycraft if it's optimal.
Ret being definitely desirable as Horde and on the edge as Alliance is certainly preferable to moonkins that simply have no spot in min/maxed setup or elemental that's on the edge regardless of faction
>>320410182
Not all of it but a good chunk. These three periods were outstanding in my mind.
Vanilla BWL/Zul'Gurub/AQ era.
TBC Karazhan/Black Temple/Zul'Aman era.
WotLK Ulduar era.
>>320432502
I have some pretty bad memories of UO too. The main difference between the two isn't that UO was my first MMO, it's that UO allowed me to immediately get in the world and start doing things that I wanted to do like blacksmithing while vanilla WoW(and EQ) forced me through literal months of content I wanted absolutely nothing to do with just so I could get to what I actually cared about.
What's a nice class to start with on Nostalrius? I only played the Warcraft games.
>>320430139
>Time for Hyjal again
>Prot Paladin can't make it this week
>Skip it that week and end up never going back
Trial of the Crusader looks like the most fun raid in the game next to fucking Hyjal.
>>320433440
If you're a masochist or watch large quantities of porn while playing games look no further than the paladin.
>>320433716
Hyjal is the only raid in the game worse than MC. That's saying a lot.
>>320433716
Hyjal was shit, I honestly 100% prefer ToC to Hyjal.
Hyjal is just several hours of wave clearing with the occasional simple boss, Archimonde is the only fun fight but even that is questionable. ToC was a single fucking room, but at least some of the bosses were fun.
I had high hopes for Hyjal too, I actually loved the mission in WC3.
>>320424760
Pvp was good, world and raids were shit apart from ulduar which was god tier.
>>320431459
The HotS team and the D3 team are probably the best at Blizzard right now. The Overwatch team is a wait and see, but so far so good aside from that 20 tick bullshit. But they caved on the FoV slider they will probably cave on that too.
>>320433716
Well, it's not like you can't do Hyjal without a protadin, you just need to bring an extra tank and ease a bit on AoE trigger finger.
Besides, most guilds should have at least someone with a protadin alt. T6/SWP-geared protadin can tank everything with ease apart from needing some help with abominations and (since they stun and without avoidance and block you suddenly take 10x damage) but you can tank the lot of ghouls and crypt fiends with modest gear. Actually, there's those felhounds too, but those packs are trivial.
But yeah, Hyjal is a mediocre raid. In addition to the annoying trash that takes ages to clear even in farm raids, it's kinda insulting due to being easier than Kael and Vashj required to get there. Not Molten Core/TOC/Dragon Soul tier, but certainly not good.
>those nights when you just couldn't down Onyxia for some reason
>>320432149
>>320432289
>not just playing all of the original MMO
The only reason vanilla was the "golden age" of WoW was because there was a population to sustain a consistently active world. 10m UBRS could be a thing. Popcorn raids on lowbie zones could be a thing. Barren chat was a thing.
Once everyone leveled to max and Burning Crusade came out, the game had to shift focus. It was no longer World of Warcraft, it was World of Raiding. Although there were plenty of world PvP in places like the arena in Hellfire Pen and Halaa in Nagrand, it felt a lot smaller. Wrath of the Lich King further pushed forth this notion of late game focus because that was really the only way to sustain the game's growth.
You HAD to be there to enjoy vanilla.
>>320433928
Hyjal is actually really atmospheric and thematically interesting. TOC takes place in one extremely boring room and lorewise the idea it's even there is just fucking stupid (Hyjal raid doesn't even happen lorewise, yes, but the concept of reliving Twilight of Gods mission from WC3 is neat)
Hyjal trash is complete ass, but TOC kinda obliges you to do it 4 times (and since you can literally start doing it in blues, it's kinda expected for you to do it on all your serious alts to boot)
Hyjal bosses sans Archimonde are mind-numbing. TOGC bosses sans Anub'arak are mind-numbing. I don't understand how you might view them as fun.
There's some prestige in doing T6 endgame content and you get really cool gear, T6 arguably having the best tier gear, and items like Cataclysm's Edge and Tempest of Chaos. Conversely, everyone and their mother and dog is doing TOC and it has some of the worst item designs.
Hyjal is easier than Kael and Vashj required to get there (with an arguable exception of Archimonde, which is the kind of encounter where one idiot can wipe the raid as opposed to those two being about group effort). TOC is easier than Ulduar (with an arguable exception of Anub'arak heroic, which is the kind of encounter where one idiot can wipe the raid as opposed to encounters like Firefighter, Knock*3, Yoggy and Algalon that are about group effort) but at least it's not faceroll insultingly trivial like TOC normalmode, supposed T3 content that's doable in fucking blues.
I mean, it's not like Hyjal is good, I heartily agree it's mediocre or worse, but worse than fucking TOC? Come on.
>>320434731
It's not that we couldn't do it, it's just why bother making the worst raid in the history of WoW even worse than it needs to be.
And it's supposed to be you reliving one of the most iconic moments from WC3 and instead it's just Trash, NPC babysitting, and "I swear I used my Tear guys".
>>320435946
Anyway, ignoring the question of which one is worse, what really riles me up is that TOC, unquestionable and definite filler raid, LASTED LONGER THAN THE BEST RAID OF THE EXPANSION THAT WAS RENDERED OBSOLETE THE MOMENT TOC WAS RELEASED
I mean, WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK was Blizzard thinking?
>>320435946
I never claimed ToC was good. But the only raid I'd classify as worse is Hyjal, though I never played Cata, MoP, or WoD. To me the atmosphere in Hyjal was shit and nothing at all like Twilight of Gods, which was tense. Hyjal was a clusterfuck but not in the good way that WC3 was. It wasn't a final stand, it was wave clearing followed by seemingly arbitrary retreats followed by more wave clearing with only a single interesting boss at the end.
TOC, as a raid (ignoring the abysmal dungeon aspects) was a single shitty nonsensical room with a lot of shitty bosses just like Hyjal, only there weren't 10 waves of trash between every boss fight. It was literally just Hyjal, compressed into a tiny room, and shortened so that it was over and forgotten sooner.
I consider T6 to be separate from Hyjal. The quality of a raid and the quality of the gear it drops are independent from one another, because raid quality is dependent upon boss mechanics, aesthetics/atmosphere, and trash layout/design. Item quality is entirely different, and then item visuals are also different. I mean, most of Ulduar's items and sets were ugly as hell but I still consider the raid in my top 5 while tier 8 (overall) is in my bottom 5. I do agree that tier 6 was great though, my warlock was never happier.
>>320436842
Yeah, I'll never forgive them for that. I actually loved ICC too for different reasons, but Ulduar was my top wrath raid and it was way too fucking short.
