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Just found the world of custom WoW servers. Such a good feeling to be back in the good ol' days when the level cap was 60 and it took three times as long to go from 1-60 as it does to go from 1-85 in Cataclysm. I've started draining my life into this game again, forgot how long it's been since before I had a truly addicting MMO to play xD All free too... >.> Without the drain on my wallet it's hard to find a reason to put the game down.
I started out first with a server called World of Scriptcraft. Some of you may have heard of it because it was apparently very popular on Reddit for a while when it was announced that it was up and running with good end-game raids. Problem is, Scriptcraft allows characters to start out at level 49 with a bunch of gear and all their abilities trained -- and then it lets you level at 8x experience rates. BORING! What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!"
This discontent led me to look elsewhere. Eventually, I found a much smaller server called The Rebirth. It's got no instant leveling and no increased leveling rates, and it's remarkably solid. I've spent the last few days of my life playing it, and the community, being so small, is very tight-knit and friendly.
The reason I got into all this is because I had to take a break from StarCraft. It's so infuriating and difficult for me (and I'm so darn bad at it!) that it was just ruining my life too often. I need to just never ladder again >.<
So yeah. WoW. Vanilla. The Rebirth. Awesome.
Sorry, just felt like telling everyone :D
EDIT: As requested, I'll do a short how-to for anyone interested in starting out on The Rebirth. There are instructions on The Rebirth's website but they aren't as clear as they perhaps could be.
Step 1: Download the WoW client. This doesn't need to be done through Blizzard or from a CD; I got mine from here.
Step 2: Once the torrent is done, run "Installer.exe," your "wow-1.12.0-engb-patch.exe," and then "wow-1.12.0-to-1.12.1-engb-patch.exe" files (wait for each to finish before starting the next.) During this step may be a good time to make your account (Step 4.)
Step 3: Go to your install path (the place on your hard drive you just installed WoW to) and open your "realmlist.wtf" file in any text editor (I used notepad.) Delete the text you find in it and replace it with "set Realmlist wow.therebirth.net" without the quotation marks.
Step 4: Make an account on www.therebirth.net by clicking on the "Account Creation" button on the right side of the page. Follow the instructions until your account is confirmed. (NOTE: I don't believe that the "Expansion" option matters; for reference I chose "Classic," but accounts are free so there's no problem if you make a mistake.)
Step 5: Run WoW.exe or Launcher.exe in the WoW install file and attempt to log in with the account info of the account you just registered on www.therebirth.net. If all goes well it should take you to a realm assignment page, and then assign you to "The Rebirth" server.
Step 6: Get your WoW on, baby.
 
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I thought you were talking about vanilla flavored ice cream....God damn i love me some French Vanilla though.
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Vanilla WoW is the best game I have ever played, having tried pretty much all middle-big name MMO's that have come out since.
Wish it could be 2004 all over again 
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Is there actually a large enough community to run low level instances? This sounds scarily fun, and by scarily I mean in regards to my health.
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Vanilla WoW: when 100gold was an unheard of number. I remember going around Stormwind and Ironforge with my friend to beg for money so we could buy our level 40 mounts.
Or how about pick-up raids to ransack horde towns? I remember going with 40 randoms and just demolishing cross-roads, but the Horde came from all over to defend.
Or early battlegrounds. When Alterac Valley would take like 3 hours . . . actually felt like a battle.
I miss it . . .
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On February 16 2012 12:39 JadeFist wrote:
Is there actually a large enough community to run low level instances? This sounds scarily fun, and by scarily I mean in regards to my health.
There's a good community if you join a good guild  There are two or three large guilds on each faction with characters levels 1 through 60, and if you just look for a little bit instances are easy enough to get into. Come join us, on Alliance the guild Reservoir Troggs is recruiting and awesome :D
EDIT: Speaking of which, I actually ran Dead Mines twice today. Just for a reference of how much instance running you can actually expect.
On February 16 2012 12:47 RBKeys wrote:
Vanilla WoW: when 100gold was an unheard of number. I remember going around Stormwind and Ironforge with my friend to beg for money so we could buy our level 40 mounts.
Or how about pick-up raids to ransack horde towns? I remember going with 40 randoms and just demolishing cross-roads, but the Horde came from all over to defend.
Or early battlegrounds. When Alterac Valley would take like 3 hours . . . actually felt like a battle.
I miss it . . .
Come back to it!!!<3
On February 16 2012 12:34 Silidons wrote:Vanilla WoW is the best game I have ever played, having tried pretty much all middle-big name MMO's that have come out since. Wish it could be 2004 all over again
It can be :D New players sign up every day and remark aloud, "Wow! It's just like it's 200[4-6]!"
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On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!"
What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge?
Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla.
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World PvP was the shit. At around level 26-31 I would just hand around stonetalon mountains and kill as many horde as possible on my rogue. Level 60's would eventually show up and search EVERYWHERE for me, very fun times.
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On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla.
There were some improvements in the expansions, granted, but when a game like WoW goes from hard to convenient like it has it's overall just worse. Speaking from experience all those things you mentioned are actually good things because they serve to slow down the game and push more skill and sense of achievement into it.
Except the pally thing. That's just not true, Paladin's are active and helpful members of raids on a regular basis, serving as backup heals, backup tanking, AND a bit of extra DPS -- just like a hybrid should be.
On February 16 2012 12:56 Bloodluster wrote:
World PvP was the shit. At around level 26-31 I would just hand around stonetalon mountains and kill as many horde as possible on my rogue. Level 60's would eventually show up and search EVERYWHERE for me, very fun times.
The Rebirth is full World PvP :D It's the same as you remember, someone starts ganking people and a mass of 60's rush in to start ganking the ganker, and much fun is had by all. In fact, it's a little MORE fun now because the smaller community results in rivalries all the time. I have guild mates regularly going on about how they "hate that fucking Horde Warlock, he seems to always know where I'm gonna spawn and fear me right away... anyone wanna come help me kick his ass for a few hours?"
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I'm playing on Scriptcraft right now. I know what you mean about the insta-49, but when you leveled 6 characters to 60 in vanilla like me you really don't need to do it again 
Love vanilla wow, it's my second favorite next to BC overall and favorite in terms of PvE.
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On February 16 2012 12:58 Gann1 wrote:I'm playing on Scriptcraft right now. I know what you mean about the insta-49, but when you leveled 6 characters to 60 in vanilla like me you really don't need to do it again Love vanilla wow, it's my second favorite next to BC overall and favorite in terms of PvE.
Yeah, for some it works. For me, I got to level 59 the DAY before The Burning Crusade launched. I never QUITE got to experience all that high end stuff... I wanna go back to the good ol' days and have another chance. Personally I find the leveling process extremely fun, especially because this time around I rolled Alliance (was Horde 100% in retail) so I'm seeing the world from a totally different angle.
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On February 16 2012 12:58 Gann1 wrote:I'm playing on Scriptcraft right now. I know what you mean about the insta-49, but when you leveled 6 characters to 60 in vanilla like me you really don't need to do it again Love vanilla wow, it's my second favorite next to BC overall and favorite in terms of PvE.
Speaking of BC are there any BC servers, it was kinda the pinnacle of WoW for me.
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My favorite thing about classic WoW was that it actually felt like you were exploring the world. Classic EQ had a little too much of that, but WoW had just the right balance of freedom and guidance for me. Starting in BC, everything became so streamlined that it feels (at least to me) more like taking a tour than discovering stuff for myself. Raid bosses were generally much simpler than they became in the expansions, at least before Naxx, but there was something that made raiding more fun in classic that's hard to describe.
On February 16 2012 13:07 feanor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:58 Gann1 wrote:I'm playing on Scriptcraft right now. I know what you mean about the insta-49, but when you leveled 6 characters to 60 in vanilla like me you really don't need to do it again Love vanilla wow, it's my second favorite next to BC overall and favorite in terms of PvE. Speaking of BC are there any BC servers, it was kinda the pinnacle of WoW for me.
Yeah, but I don't know of any specific ones. I played on a BC arena server a couple years ago called arena-tournament, maybe it's still around?
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On February 16 2012 12:34 Silidons wrote:Vanilla WoW is the best game I have ever played, having tried pretty much all middle-big name MMO's that have come out since. Wish it could be 2004 all over again
It was only that good because it was new and so unlike anything else out there (other than maybe guild wars). If it relaunched today new, it would be just like any of the other mass of MMO's now.
Although the sence of accomplishment was significantly greater in Vanilla... you basically had shit gear unless you had a raiding guild. Raiding guild players would absolutely dominate PVP because there was no PVP gear. I do miss that.
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On February 16 2012 13:07 feanor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:58 Gann1 wrote:I'm playing on Scriptcraft right now. I know what you mean about the insta-49, but when you leveled 6 characters to 60 in vanilla like me you really don't need to do it again Love vanilla wow, it's my second favorite next to BC overall and favorite in terms of PvE. Speaking of BC are there any BC servers, it was kinda the pinnacle of WoW for me.
They exist, if you're into that, for sure. Look it up, you'll probably find one :D
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On February 16 2012 12:34 Silidons wrote:Vanilla WoW is the best game I have ever played, having tried pretty much all middle-big name MMO's that have come out since. Wish it could be 2004 all over again
Ya i hear that a lot. I think it was because it felt so revolutionary at the time, and almost big MMO since then has felt like just a tweak to that current MMO formula. So when you first experience that game type it feels thrilling and exciting, but when you view the new patch notes or new expansion it seems like an unnatural deviation from what you already enjoyed. I'm hoping another revolutionary mmo comes out soon, I have some high hopes for GW2 but we'll see...
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On February 16 2012 12:57 UmiNotsuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla. There were some improvements in the expansions, granted, but when a game like WoW goes from hard to convenient like it has it's overall just worse. Speaking from experience all those things you mentioned are actually good things because they serve to slow down the game and push more skill and sense of achievement into it.
Umm, it wasn't hard. The only difference in difficulty in vanilla was that the vast majority of people didn't know what they were doing. Once people did know what they were doing you had raids 20 manning MC with tier 1 gear. And no, it's not more skillful to do the same thing for longer.
Except the pally thing. That's just not true, Paladin's are active and helpful members of raids on a regular basis, serving as backup heals, backup tanking, AND a bit of extra DPS -- just like a hybrid should be.
I raided with a pally during vanilla WoW. In MC a pally was a buff and cleanse bot. Nothing else. Sure, in smaller raids (ZG) and later content you started to heal a bit more (especially once the 30 min buffs were added), but in classic MC raiding you did nothing but buff and cleanse. Backup tanking? No way in hell. Not until TBC were pallies tanking in any raids. Druids sometimes (I played a tanking druid as well), but only very specific fights and situations.
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Oh I miss the good old days of WoW. BC brought a little of it along, but by WotLK everything had gone to shit.
Nothing beats staying up until 3 in the morning exploring a new raid with all your friends.
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On February 16 2012 13:08 Darpa wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:34 Silidons wrote:Vanilla WoW is the best game I have ever played, having tried pretty much all middle-big name MMO's that have come out since. Wish it could be 2004 all over again It was only that good because it was new and so unlike anything else out there (other than maybe guild wars). If it relaunched today new, it would be just like any of the other mass of MMO's now.
Yep, exactly. It was new, it was most people's first MMO, and it did things a lot better than any other game at the time. That doesn't mean that it's better than what we've got now though.
Although the sence of accomplishment was significantly greater in Vanilla... you basically had shit gear unless you had a raiding guild. Raiding guild players would absolutely dominate PVP because there was no PVP gear. I do miss that.
Yes, there was more prestige from raiding then, mostly because raiding was so exclusive. But I really don't see that as a good thing. As someone who's time is a lot more limited these days than back then, I would hate to try playing an MMO that requires you to be able to play 4+ hour raiding sessions multiple times a week in order to have any progression at the end game.
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On February 16 2012 13:16 CarbonTwelve wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:57 UmiNotsuki wrote:On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla. There were some improvements in the expansions, granted, but when a game like WoW goes from hard to convenient like it has it's overall just worse. Speaking from experience all those things you mentioned are actually good things because they serve to slow down the game and push more skill and sense of achievement into it. Umm, it wasn't hard. The only difference in difficulty in vanilla was that the vast majority of people didn't know what they were doing. Once people did know what they were doing you had raids 20 manning MC with tier 1 gear. And no, it's not more skillful to do the same thing for longer. Show nested quote +Except the pally thing. That's just not true, Paladin's are active and helpful members of raids on a regular basis, serving as backup heals, backup tanking, AND a bit of extra DPS -- just like a hybrid should be. I raided with a pally during vanilla WoW. In MC a pally was a buff and cleanse bot. Nothing else. Sure, in smaller raids (ZG) and later content you started to heal a bit more (especially once the 30 min buffs were added), but in classic MC raiding you did nothing but buff and cleanse. Backup tanking? No way in hell. Not until TBC were pallies tanking in any raids. Druids sometimes (I played a tanking druid as well), but only very specific fights and situations.
Especially because even though it may be more convenient to raid (at the entry level) there still exists challenging content in hard modes. I'm always surprised by how many people complain about WoW being "too easy" now but haven't cleared the content.
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On February 16 2012 12:47 RBKeys wrote:
Vanilla WoW: when 100gold was an unheard of number. I remember going around Stormwind and Ironforge with my friend to beg for money so we could buy our level 40 mounts.
Or how about pick-up raids to ransack horde towns? I remember going with 40 randoms and just demolishing cross-roads, but the Horde came from all over to defend.
Or early battlegrounds. When Alterac Valley would take like 3 hours . . . actually felt like a battle.
I miss it . . .
wth 3 hour AV? All my AV bg's were 10+ hours :/ sad part is that I was Alliance and always losing. 10 hour pvp fest for 1 medal.
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vanilla wow was so awesome. i remember on my mage i'd have to show up an hour or so just so i could make water for the raid LOL. world pvp was also too good. I remember we would hop on the roofs at darkshire and pick off lowbies till the world defense chat kicked in and the 60's started showing up. soooo much fun
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Vanilla WoW was my favourite also. I cleared everything from MC to H LK. I barely played Cata, did normal T11 and nothing else. The game has 'improved' but lost all the lustre in the process. I'd much prefer to play Vanilla (and non T6 BC) with all of it's little quirks and time sinks, than Cataclysm with all of its streamlined, homogenous, boring, and decidedly lifeless improvements. It's really been downhill since WotLK. I pretty much began losing interest when they rehashed the best instance they'd ever made for the first raid tier
And yeah, vanilla wow = AV's that went for DAYS more often than they went for 3 hours LOL
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I play on the scriptcraft server. The OP really is unfair and bashes them. Rates are set by the player between 1 and 5 times, and its only an option to start at level 49 with green gear, mount and abilities. If you want, and there are a lot of people doing so, you can level 1-60 normal rates on scriptcraft too. Drop rates are normal regardless though; might be different sub 49.
Starting at level 49 isn't even bad either. If you can get past all the ganking, you see a lot of world PvP since everyone is being condensed into 49-60 leveling spots. It also removes a lot of the obselences risk from the server being shut down. The 5x also makes questing as a group more efficient, rather than slow you down as the original game did.
Its also the only private server I've seen that doesn't have an absolute shit core. In fact, its the best/closest server to the original that I have ever played on. AQ is just opening, and each side has 2-3 raiding guilds in MC/BWL.
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On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla.
As somebody who raided from Vanilla until the end of Cata, I can really agree with alot of these statements. There were alot of wonderful things about vanilla - world pvp, the sense of community in guilds, the sense of accomplishment in raiding, but there was alot of bullshit aswell.
-Clearing MC/Ony every week was literally the most boring thing in the entire world. I waited almost 2 years to get my left thunderfury binding, but it never dropped.
-Unbelievable drama and guild loot-distribution tension. Yes, epics MEANT something, but that only increased the stress involved in the administrative part of raiding to extremes
-Mat grinding for raids. Oh dear god. People who never made it into Vanilla naxx can't imagine how fucking awful this was. You'd grind mats for hours, turn in Ony head, clear ZG for the buff, pop hundreds of gold of consumables, and then you'd run in and have your MT die instantly to patchwerk because one of the healers dropped his collectable on the floor and his fat belly pressed the spacebar while he was leaning over to pick it up, breaking his GH cast (true story).
-PvP rank grind being the most sadistic thing imaginable on competitive servers.
-OH GOD FUCK AQ40 JESUS MFUCKING CHRIST
Uhg...
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On February 16 2012 13:57 Fission wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla. As somebody who raided from Vanilla until the end of Cata, I can really agree with alot of these statements. There were alot of wonderful things about vanilla - world pvp, the sense of community in guilds, the sense of accomplishment in raiding, but there was alot of bullshit aswell. -Clearing MC/Ony every week was literally the most boring thing in the entire world. I waited almost 2 years to get my left thunderfury binding, but it never dropped. -Unbelievable drama and guild loot-distribution tension. Yes, epics MEANT something, but that only increased the stress involved in the administrative part of raiding to extremes -Mat grinding for raids. Oh dear god. People who never made it into Vanilla naxx can't imagine how fucking awful this was. You'd grind mats for hours, turn in Ony head, clear ZG for the buff, pop hundreds of gold of consumables, and then you'd run in and have your MT die instantly to patchwerk because one of the healers dropped his collectable on the floor and his fat belly pressed the spacebar while he was leaning over to pick it up, breaking his GH cast (true story). -PvP rank grind being the most sadistic thing imaginable on competitive servers. -OH GOD FUCK AQ40 JESUS MFUCKING CHRIST Uhg...
You are right, but those are the trade offs to make such an immersive world that vanilla provided. People fail to realize that there are always trade offs to be made, which really hinders their ability to know what they want (grass always greener?).
Look at world PvP. Vanilla had some amazing world PvP; I remember getting our MT his TF and 2 alliance guilds showing up, creating an absolute shit storm for a couple hours in silithus. Trade off? Nothings protecting you from getting ganked over and over and over again while leveling your alt.
Same idea with flying mounts. Sweet, no more flight paths and easily traveling. Trade off? Death of world pvp, condesed to who can have more dudes flying over a zone to snipe you the second you touch the ground.
The list goes on, but no need to continue.
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Old WoW seems really bad.
TBC is probably some of the worst stuff I've ever played; it's just so tedious and repetitive. With Cata, the 1-60 was fun... then TBC hit. I couldn't bring myself to level through that.
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Old WoW versions (vanilla and BC) are a state of mind, IMO. I don't think a private server could quite capture the zeitgeist that existed when they were current. As tempting as these servers are, I'll just keep those times locked away as a memory.
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ahh the old days... they were the best. my good old enhance sham!! : )
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Ah vanilla wow. The best mmo I have ever played. The raids were difficult and rewarding, pvp was actually fun, world pvp was abundant, and alterac valley matches could last for days. I remember going to bed one night after playing in one alterac valley for 4 hours and waking up to join the same game. So good.
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On February 16 2012 14:09 Razith wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 13:57 Fission wrote:On February 16 2012 12:54 CarbonTwelve wrote:On February 16 2012 12:28 UmiNotsuki wrote:
What happened to the experience of leveling your character the old fashioned way? The joy of questing and running instances and that thrill you get with every hard-earned "ding!" What about the joy of massive gaps in content where you had no choice but to grind on mobs for hours and hours (levels 53 to 57 for anyone)? Or playing a mage and having to drink for half a minute after every second mob during the mid 30s? Or being a pally in raids doing nothing but buffing 40 people every 5 minutes & cleansing in between? Or not being able to do anything for 15 minutes because you need to fly from Booty Bay to Iron Forge? Sorry, but IMO the vast majority of people who talk about how much better it was in vanilla really do have rose tinted glasses on. I stopped playing WoW about 2 years ago because I didn't like the direction it was going in, but I still know how many major improvements they made since vanilla. As somebody who raided from Vanilla until the end of Cata, I can really agree with alot of these statements. There were alot of wonderful things about vanilla - world pvp, the sense of community in guilds, the sense of accomplishment in raiding, but there was alot of bullshit aswell. -Clearing MC/Ony every week was literally the most boring thing in the entire world. I waited almost 2 years to get my left thunderfury binding, but it never dropped. -Unbelievable drama and guild loot-distribution tension. Yes, epics MEANT something, but that only increased the stress involved in the administrative part of raiding to extremes -Mat grinding for raids. Oh dear god. People who never made it into Vanilla naxx can't imagine how fucking awful this was. You'd grind mats for hours, turn in Ony head, clear ZG for the buff, pop hundreds of gold of consumables, and then you'd run in and have your MT die instantly to patchwerk because one of the healers dropped his collectable on the floor and his fat belly pressed the spacebar while he was leaning over to pick it up, breaking his GH cast (true story). -PvP rank grind being the most sadistic thing imaginable on competitive servers. -OH GOD FUCK AQ40 JESUS MFUCKING CHRIST Uhg... You are right, but those are the trade offs to make such an immersive world that vanilla provided. People fail to realize that there are always trade offs to be made, which really hinders their ability to know what they want (grass always greener?). Look at world PvP. Vanilla had some amazing world PvP; I remember getting our MT his TF and 2 alliance guilds showing up, creating an absolute shit storm for a couple hours in silithus. Trade off? Nothings protecting you from getting ganked over and over and over again while leveling your alt. Same idea with flying mounts. Sweet, no more flight paths and easily traveling. Trade off? Death of world pvp, condesed to who can have more dudes flying over a zone to snipe you the second you touch the ground. The list goes on, but no need to continue.
Yea the nature of the grind simply changed as far as you wanting to maintain a higher standard was concerned. People fail to realise that while the game may have gotten easier the reason some of highest level of content was getting cleared more easily than a Vanilla Nax later on was because people just got better at the game (this doesnt apply to WOTLK though).
Point being there was always something you could do to be better than everyone else at the highest level. I did it, I got all my Mimirons heads and Invincibles and Zulian Tigers way before everyone else did and the few months that (cept for the tiger lol). Its simply that the have nots in terms of gear and such eventually tended to balance out in time for new content. Which is fine with me I liked the fact that my competition wasnt to far behind or almost the same level starting new content.
Other people maybe didint.
If I take my knowledge of the game back now to Vanilla to a Vanilla only server I could probably breeze through it no problem. There are only so many things they couldve done with wow to keep it fresh and they did a good job. Now not so much.
Rose tinted glasses indeed. I honestly cant say what the best time was and I played at pretty much the highest level (Ok I didnt get past 4 horseman) post Vanilla and a pretty decent one during and aside from WOTLK being garbage I cant say one was better than the other from a competitive aspect. I dont get how sinking your time into 10 hr bgs was ever a good thing all people did was complain about them when it was happening. World PVP was nice though but when you went to open the gates and the servers crashed it wasnt so much fun then was it ?
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On February 16 2012 13:44 shannn wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 16 2012 12:47 RBKeys wrote:
Vanilla WoW: when 100gold was an unheard of number. I remember going around Stormwind and Ironforge with my friend to beg for money so we could buy our level 40 mounts.
Or how about pick-up raids to ransack horde towns? I remember going with 40 randoms and just demolishing cross-roads, but the Horde came from all over to defend.
Or early battlegrounds. When Alterac Valley would take like 3 hours . . . actually felt like a battle.
I miss it . . . wth 3 hour AV? All my AV bg's were 10+ hours :/ sad part is that I was Alliance and always losing. 10 hour pvp fest for 1 medal.
3 hours, if I wasn't lucky enough to win in that time, is as long as I would allow myself to stay
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On February 16 2012 15:24 Gheed wrote:
Old WoW versions (vanilla and BC) are a state of mind, IMO. I don't think a private server could quite capture the zeitgeist that existed when they were current. As tempting as these servers are, I'll just keep those times locked away as a memory.
agree 100%
that being said, I'd love to travel back and relive that time so much fun
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use to love the world PvP in vanilla. but the levelling times and MC taking like 6 hours... and of course level 50-60 was always so long! lol
They have made it better with the levelling, at least now you can level on mobs and quests quick enough and dont have to do MASSIVE grinds to get up in levels!!!
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On February 16 2012 18:49 fanta[Rn] wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 15:24 Gheed wrote:
Old WoW versions (vanilla and BC) are a state of mind, IMO. I don't think a private server could quite capture the zeitgeist that existed when they were current. As tempting as these servers are, I'll just keep those times locked away as a memory. agree 100% that being said, I'd love to travel back and relive that time so much fun
I think the thing I miss the most about vanilla WoW is just how much spare time I had in my life 7 years ago...
On February 16 2012 19:01 Tommylew wrote:
and of course level 50-60 was always so long! lol
They have made it better with the levelling, at least now you can level on mobs and quests quick enough and dont have to do MASSIVE grinds to get up in levels!!!
Yup. I mentioned that earlier. Spending 6-8 hours per level for 53-57 on my pally grinding mobs in WPL/EPL was just insanely stupid.
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Thank god they sped up the leveling. It was so tilting back in vanilla to have all your friends at 60. Completely separated from you in another world, as you drudged on grinding endlessly. All my memories from vanilla sucked, mainly cause I quit after a month when I had only reached 26, which had a 1-2 hour grind after 6-8 bars of exp.
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On February 16 2012 15:24 Gheed wrote:
Old WoW versions (vanilla and BC) are a state of mind, IMO. I don't think a private server could quite capture the zeitgeist that existed when they were current. As tempting as these servers are, I'll just keep those times locked away as a memory.
Pretty much this.
I recently started playing some on another server, got to 60 and did some ZG/MC/BWL, but it was really different and not at all so epic as back in 2004/2005. Mostly i think that the community plays the biggest role for me, i miss too many people
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Burning Crusade was much better than Vanilla. I actually quit in September '07 so I never had to experience the next two expansions, but from what I hear they were dreadful.
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I've edited the OP to include a how-to guide on getting started in The Rebirth. I don't know what's a matter with all these haters, Vanilla WoW is just as fun today as I remember it back in 2004 (if not more!) Maybe they should give it a shot before saying it's only good through rose-tinted glasses...
Oh well, no skin off my back :D Keep being awesome TL.
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On February 16 2012 23:30 UmiNotsuki wrote:
I've edited the OP to include a how-to guide on getting started in The Rebirth. I don't know what's a matter with all these haters, Vanilla WoW is just as fun today as I remember it back in 2004 (if not more!) Maybe they should give it a shot before saying it's only good through rose-tinted glasses...
Oh well, no skin off my back :D Keep being awesome TL.
Then you probably didnt sink as much time into it as some people did. Besides its not that Vanilla was not as good as the later expansions just that it isnt particularly appealing to go back to it. Honestly no wants to play a FM and wand patchwerk for 3 minutes waiting for an evo to pop shoot 4 spells run out of mana and then repeat. Items were a mess. But I guess if you want to just run around level and explore then its probably more than good enough. Some people played it for different reasons.
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Honestly, I did a similar thing a few months ago.
I quickly realized that Vanilla WoW was not fun, the people I played it with was what made it fun. The gameplay itself in Vanilla is extremely repetitive and grindy and simply boring in my opinion.
BC was the true awesome expansion
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why arent we talking about starcraft or something lol?
User was warned for this post
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On February 17 2012 06:55 starplayer35 wrote:
why arent we talking about starcraft or something lol?
Because this is a blog and I wanted to talk about something else with the same wonderful community? -.-
Go complain somewhere else, please.
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this is really cool, personally i never had a chance to play pre-BC and have wanted to play like this for a while
feeling kind of lost without my blood elves though
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Just spent 6 straight hours in BRD doing Onyxia questline.
just like the good old days
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On February 17 2012 09:21 Gann1 wrote:Just spent 6 straight hours in BRD doing Onyxia questline. just like the good old days
Now you know why I'm so excited about this :D
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Sorry for the necro here but is anyone else playing on a vanilla US wow server these days? Is there any out there that are decently popular?
The only really awesomely populated one that I can see is Emerald Dream (Feenix) but as far as I can tell that's based in EU.. almost unplayable for us aussies
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EPT
