With Classic WoW right around the corner, let’s take a nice trip down memory lane and get hyped for the original old school features of Vanilla WoW together, covering them and the unique properties/elements that they brought with them. Without further due, let’s begin.
1. 40 Man Raiding
First on this list will be the endgame content/raiding of Vanilla WoW, which is of course 40 man PvE raids. If you are an oldschool and/or hardcore player of Vanilla WoW, I’m sure you have a few memorable moments of these epic raid battles. Now the first ever 40 man raid to be implemented in Vanilla WoW is none other than Molten Core, this fiery chasm had all sorts of large elementals and monsters in it. Along with a few of the first unique and original mechanics, of course talking about the Core Hounds, the pack of mobs right before the boss Magmadar. You were required to kill all of the Core Hounds simultaneously, if you didn’t, they would keep resurrecting each other until you inevitably died.
There also were bosses like Garr that required comprehensive micromanagement of https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=710/banish, off which multiple Warlocks will require to tackle the encounter. And there was of course Ragnarok himself, unique not only for the absolutely epic battle in which players surrounded his entire arena, but also his epic dialogue, Die insects!
2. World Bosses
Next, on the list, we have none other than the World Bosses of Classic WoW, these bosses were larger than life, in every sense of the word. As they were slowly introduced in Data Patches, it will be the very first time we as players, would encounter such large lumbering monstrosities pace back and forth in different areas of the world, that we had previously quested in. Make no mistake, these guys were nothing like the weekly world bosses from Legion or Bfa. These guys were hard to defeat, they required properly organized raids, proper communication among healers and tanks. it could take a long time to defeat these bosses like 30 minutes to an hour.
The first world boss to ever be introduced and a great example is Azuregos, a Greatwyrm of the Blue Dragonflight located in Azhara. He had a wide variety of interesting spells, such as teleporting both himself and a group of players to a nearby location, or completely burning out the mana of casters using a blizzard “Manastorm”, and even a spell reflect shield that made for some truly humorous moments.
3. Large Scale PvP
If you want large scale pvp, vanilla is the place for you. Let’s take a look at the old battleground Alterac Valley as an example. Now, the map on the surface itself has not changed a lot if even at all over the past 14 years. However, 14 years ago, there were no time limits in battleground meaning you could only win by killing the enemy commander, it was very common for these battlegrounds to drag on for days on end. You could go play for a few hours, go to sleep, go to school or work, then come home and join the same battleground you joined the previous day, resulting in large and crazy high scores or killstreaks.
Now a large number of players fighting wasn’t all, both teams could even summon large elemental lords, Ivus the Forest lord for the alliance and Lokholar the Ice Lord for the horde. These guys were raid bosses in themselves and when escorted properly, could easily push to the commander and win the game for your faction. In a nutshell, Classic WoW’s Alterac Valley is exactly what a pvp version of Bfa’s Warfronts would probably look like and it was glorious.
World PVP also occurred regularly back in Vanilla WoW and one of the major flashpoints, was in Hillsbrad foothills, between the two iconic towns Southshore and Tarren Mill. And these great battles was exactly what inspired the modern day pvp brawl in BfA happily named Southshore vs Tarren Mill.
4. Old Talent Trees
Next up there’s something extremely memorable to all of us that used to play Vanilla WoW, and that’s the talent trees. There are many pros and cons to the old talent trees, and it’s of course somewhat understandable why blizzard chose to simplify them. But if there are two huge things they had in the game, it was a sense of progression and personal customization. Back in classic wow, every time you gained a level, you gained a talent point. These talent points could be placed wherever you wish, as long as you had the corresponding tier unlocked.
This is a very different experience from today’s way of leveling, in which you only gain a talent point every 10 levels, this constant reinforcement of increasing power mid leveling feel extremely rewarding. As an example, you were most definitely more powerful if you were level 31 as compared to level 30. And once you finally hit level 40 you were able to unlock the final talent of one of the trees such as https://www.wowhead.com/spell=232698/shadowform for shadow priests, often creating an immense “power spike” in your character a real game changer.
This fulfilling sense of progression encouraged us to level multiple classes, as innately felt rewarding to do so.
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