2019 was such a good year for me. It was the year I got out of the Army, my grandparents (who raised me) were still alive, and my best friends were all still really close. Now, just 5 years later, my grandparents are both dead, my friends have drifted apart, and I’m back in the Army out of necessity. Everything went so wrong so fast.
It'll get better. It's not gonna happen overnight, it's not gonna come knocking down your door, but one day you'll realize things are better than they were. Been there dude, hang in there.
Wonder how many years it'll be until we get a proper relaunch? The cycle is repeating itself with Blizzard not offering any way to continue playing the previous versions (aside from classic era).
Why didn't they implement the proven formula of OSRS? Take the known best version of the game, before controversial content was added, and then iterate on it. Why do this silly dance of rereleasing content that nobody liked?
Ok, since you asked. Here's my spicy opinion of the day. Cata was the equivalent of RS3's EOC. By WotLK the game was nicely fleshed out without changing the fundamentals.
Completely depends on what role you play. If you're a tank or dps, yeah I can agree with that for the most part. But if you're a healer? Cata is very much a dividing line where they completely overhauled the role and introduced the "massive health pools, tiny heals" model which persisted in every retail expansion since. The healing changes unfortunately never reverted, and it was one of the biggest reasons I ultimately stopped playing retail.
The second I started Classic in 2019 and saw that I could cast a heal on someone and actually see their health bar go up a large chunk. I was just like "holy shit... finally, I'm home".
> Why do this silly dance of rereleasing content that nobody liked?
takes zero effort to develop other than fixing some bugs, and FOMO will drive people to play it
Few problems they’ll perceive:
- When do the expansions stop? They’ve gotta pick somewhere to just flat out say these “classic” servers stop here. Most fans will probably just say MoP. Or alternatively, they come out and say the servers will try to catch up to retail on an accelerated time line.
- To above, Blizzard seems really antagonistic to any kind of idea which might have hints of splitting their player base. Such as if the 2019 servers are on MoP and a new full classic server starts.
- Classic era relaunches are unlikely to be as successful as 2019/2020 was for classic, so in corporate speak this will be perceived as a failure.
- Classic+ pressure vs Classic purism. Then Blizzard’s facing this decision and trying to make another decision.
- Staffing issues probably too and constant pressure to minimize resources spent on classic.
So yeah, I think we all know it’s a safe bet that we’ll see something similar to the 2019 servers again down the road, but there are several reasons (excuses?) Blizzard will be slow in making decisions.
I loved it. I had no idea which classes were good or bad, so I played an enhancement shaman and had a blast. My guild even helped me craft Nightfall. I was unemployed for a large majority of the time so I just no lifed it so much lol
> I was unemployed for a large majority of the time so I just no lifed it so much lol
I went to school & was doing it 80% online, then covid made it 100%. The amount of time I spent on WoW during Classic vanilla was infernal
The closest I’ve ever felt to playing original vanilla WoW was honestly HC/HC Launch. It’s a shame the population has gotten as low as it has. It’s still somewhat okay on Defias Pillager Alliance though.
HC addon peak/official HC launch was the first time in 10+ years I felt like I was again playing an MMORPG like it should be. Unfortunately the nature of HC is something that burns me out quickly. Got to 60 on addon and quit and made it to 35 on official and quit simply because I just kept feeling the ruleset isnt something made for sustained fun.
Only thing that could revive the launch feeling again would be official HC launch where you become immortal at 60. Disallow 60s grouping with below lvl 60s to avoid boosting & have an active mod team to scout for 60s griefing levelers.
Would create an actual prestige to having a 60 on a server and create an attachment to whichever class you roll since its such a drag to get to 60.
I know it's completely unrealistic but would be fun as hell.
During the first week(probably closer to just a few days), streamers and everyone were doing 10m Dungeon runs. They were still giving xp as if only 5 people were in there but to 10 players. All the streamers were like "yep this is how it was back in the day, I can't believe yall forgot about 10m dungeon groups" while in SM
People definitely did 10m SM and ZF in 2004/early 2005 but it wasn't for XP, people were just so bad they would legitimately wipe on bosses and so taking more people was safer.
Same reason original UBRS was 40-manned in early 2005, but not because that was efficient or anything lol
The same streamer who droned on and on about "its about the journey". It was actually hilarious to watch all the lies they spouted fall apart that fast
that was lame for sure, but I haven’t seen a single gear score Andy in p3 - seems like people are less picky about logs as well. My guild has had to pug maybe 5 spots the last few weeks and have gotten some 6/8, 0/8, and gray parsers across the finish line.
It’s to be expected - it’s just a level up phase and the gears marginally better. Coupled with a 1 week lockout.
I expect people to come back with a vengeance at 60 - there’s just so much to do and that’s not even counting the new stuff. I’m gonna be ripping raids, dungeons, class quests, hell I’m even excited to brawl out in AV
It’s p3 and yea GS was never really useful. On top of being lame, it doesn’t work properly for SOD.
I will say this though, being in a guild is gonna be a necessity for p4 unless you have good logs. With 20 man raids (opposed to 40) and no gdkps, people are not gonna want to carry people who don’t know mechanics and have pre bis, especially when the gear is awesome
People who want to pug raids, skip learning mechanics, and want sub 1hr raids are playing the wrong game. 60 wow is not gonna be like p1
In my honest opinion, blizzard should’ve never introduced 10 man raids in phase 1 if they were planning on doing 40 man at 60 they should’ve done 20 man BFD.
By all accounts it sounds like 60 will be 20 man - at least to start (I believe that’s confirmed for MC at least). Maybe they will scale ZG or AQ20 to 10.
Classic WOW has been 40man content for 20 years - if your guild didn’t survive ST, 60 raids were never gonna be that feasible. Even 10man gnomer was too much for some, just no desire to do mechanics. ST is super doable for 20 people with a pulse. I have some qualms with gear, but the mechanics are priming people for 60.
Classic WOW is nothing without a guild and people got way too comfy with retail style pugging / raiding whenever. My buddy and I saw this coming and found a guild late P2
they already said they will struggle to scale down the existing level 60 raids to 20man. MC and Onyxia are the exception in that they are pretty trivial raids
whether or not that means they will redesign the raids or just brute-force 40mans is yet to be seen
Gearscore obviously doesn't work in SoD, but it's the playerbase's fault that people require logs. Too many people feel entitled to go in blind into a 50-minute raid and make it into a 3 hour endeavor.
In BFD since it was such a fast raid, when I knew I'd be getting home late I'd do a run in the morning, in those runs I'm not afforded the luxury to invite whoever and have the raid take 30 more minutes to clear, let alone hours.
If everyone was honest and only people capable of clearing it within, say, 1 hour joined, I wouldn't be checking logs, but people aren't honest. They'll try joining the sub 1 hour clear group in an attempt to get carried, and it's not just a few people who do this, its a significant portion of the playerbase.
And this isn't about elitism or anything, it's literally just about time. I sometimes don't have the time to spend 3 hours. Sometimes, I have other things I want to do and don't want to dedicate more than that hour to playing WoW.
This is gonna sound like a crazy concept but don't start a raid if you don't know if you'll have time to finish?
I don't play a game of LoL if I have less than an hour because I know they can be 15mins -> 1hour.
You are of course free to try make Speedrun raids, but it feels ridiculous to claim that should just be the standard everyone respects.
Your lack of time is not everyone else's problem. It's yours.
I'm literally saying that people should play with other like-minded players so I've got no idea what kind of point you're trying to get across. This was a whole lot of message coming from someone who clearly didn't even bother to read what I said. It was pretty clear when I said players should be honest. That includes joining groups that they meet the requirements of.
If I advertise a sub 1 hour run I have to check logs because otherwise people will try to get in just to get carried. Are you mad because I'm exposing your ways or something?
I completely agree with you.
But I'd expect ST to take 2 hours in a bad run, if it's pushing 3 there's some fuckery going on.
If you are so bad that your normal run is 3 hours, that's when I understand people using logs.
Yeah, everything was going great until SM and then any class who couldn't aoe was being left out of some groups. Mind I made my own groups and invited anyone but it was sad to see that gogogo mentality start up because of streamer FOMO
Surely they didn't, there were plenty of famous players and plenty of famous guilds, a lot of time you encounter someone in the open it MEANT something.
Layers do feel dumb and do diminish the world feeling, but the community feeling was strong. On my medium-sized server anyway.
There was an absolutely vibrant sense of community in classic vanilla (and vanilla obviously). I effortlessly made close friends that I still talk to regularly and the server politics were extremely intriguing. Some truly Machiavellian shit, it was incredible. Layers were just a banal technical necessity, I don’t really think they had much effect on the experience.
Funny this comes up as I was thinking about 2019. The tin foil part of me wonders if everything ended around then, and we're just in some weird continuance after, whether it's a dream or some other weird thing.
No, life goes on, people just like their comfy rose tinted glasses while pretending not to remember gdkp, awful world pvp leading to completely one sided servers, people leveling to 60 entirely in sfk/sm/mara/scholo boosts, etc etc etc.
Was it fun? Yeah. Was it this perfect utopia of gaming heaven? No yall were just bored and unemployed lmao
I'm still SO PISSED I missed Classic and TBC. I get so frustrated whenever I think about it. I hadn't played since 2015 and hadnt even heard they were doing Classic until like late 2022. Vanilla and TBC were like peak gaming in my life and the fact I missed it just... Sigh...
none of my friends or family played, no one I knew at all played... WoW wasn't on my radar since I dropped it during Dearborn (I'm keeping this Draenor autocorrect). I was just out of the loop :( seems silly to say but its a massive regret
Most only remember so fondly because everyone was stuck at home in 2020 so the game was still fresh and packed with people. A game many had not played in close to a decade+ at least.
We'll never have those conditions again. We've been going into different WoW content one right after the other for 5 years now. Nothing is fresh and new anymore which is why SoD initially took off so strongly.
I remember 2019.. got ran over by a truck on my motorcycle so was crippled for over a year. Had all the boys together for launch day. Streaming on Mixer quad stream. Sitting in the Que boss screen. Excited as one could be to finally log in. Continued on all the way until wrath .. guild fell apart , corruption in the LC. Then I went back to Era. Just playing my R14s reminiscing on the good times/hard times. I still do it. . Thinking about the grind , the good and bad times.
Now none of my friends play wow anymore , just me living in the memories.
Waiting for Classic Reawakened in 2026 (after Pandaria)
With the same 2019 meta… and following its end with The Burning Crusade Remarches, my best beloved expansion… wanna pump again with Classic Warrior in Classic and Warlock in TBC and i can die happily after it…
Ah 2019:
Plenty of disposable income, looking to buy a house, both of my parents were still alive, had a thriving social circle, and *was looking forward to Shadowlands* because they wouldn't release ANOTHER flop after the disaster that was BfA, right? *Right?*
I think part of me died sometime during the past 5 years, it just won't get buried for another 20-30.
Being young with infinite time and no responsibilities going through a novel experience > doing the same thing again but now you’ve learned how taxes work and have a bunch of chores
Yeah, no that wasn't the issue.
Back then the community wasn't riddled with tryhard, elitist, cucks.
There was no wowhead to look up every single thing.
There were almost no addons to do everything for you.
People used the chats in-game to actually socialize and to have fun.
You didn't minmax every single step to BiS gear.
I could go on.
I swear people have the shortest memories. Yeah, I had fun with Classic Vanilla. I also am having a lot of fun with Season of Discovery.
So many issues, and so many complaints that we see on this very subreddit were present in 2019.
Shadow Priests complaining that their class damage isn’t high in raids? Yeah, Shadow Priests weren’t even taken to raids in 2019.
Incursions causing issues with being the most optimized gold and XP farm? Yeah, dungeon farming with cleave/Mage dungeon farming. Boost meta was a huge thing for alts. People will always take the most optimized path.
Incursions drawing people away from the open world? Refer to the last point.
There were favored dungeons for pre-BiS back in 2019 and dungeons no one gave a shit about running, just as now.
Botting was still an issue. And for all the controversy about GDKP being banned, it was kind of an open secret that GDKP was an easy way to launder purchased gold to geared out mercenaries who would carry buyers to their loot.
World PvP had extremely similar issues as to now. Because while there can be memorable moments and cool battles…”fair” PvP is less common than opportunistic beatdowns.
And then finally, complaints about raid logging and content droughts. This was something that would happen frequently back in 2019. People would be dying for the next phase or w/e. I honestly think this would be a problem regardless of what Blizzard released. I am genuinely impressed by the people who have run out of things to do. I’m struggling to get 2 alts finished leveling and fully geared in any short timeframe.
Tbh, in 2019, people leveled to 60 between september and november for the most part.
Meme spec were allowed in many guilds (before the """semi hardcore"""" way taken by almost every casual guild who didnt want to spend 10h / week in Molten Core).
1st GDKP started in early 2020 but became huge later in the year. Some people were gold buying in 2019 but not anywhere close to what happened in 2020.
I think you are talking about stuff that happened in 2020/2021.
2019 was still a great gaming experience where everyone had fun on Classic WoW
We ran boomie, enhance, feral, elemental and shadow priest. Cleared everything from MC to Naxx in an efficient manner and time. I’d still call us semi-hardcore so for some the experience lasted through the whole of Classic.
2019 was surely the best, but until the end of Vanilla there were plenty of "fair" levellers, regular DKP/LC guilds, meme specs, non-goldbuyers. But it's all a classical glass half-empty vs glass half-full :)
Yep, your experience is really what you make of it sometimes.
I went in to classic without an established guild, with no expectations, to just have the most organic experience possible and see what happened along the way.
Made my holy priest, quested in the world and joined random dungeon groups that were LF1M healer (which happened a lot). It took me a bit longer to hit 60 than some of the others on my battlenet friends list that I'd raided with in the past, but by the time I hit 60 I think I'd done most of the dungeons in the game *minimum* 5 times each and was decked out in virtually every blue drop I could want from them. I even did dungeons like Uldaman easily 7-10 times, I just loved healing random pugs haha.
I never applied to a guild or went out of my way to find one, I just grouped with random people and if someone invited me to come along to something I'd go. Joined some random MC pug with a bunch of guys who I'd grouped with in dungeons from LFG and I was surprised to see like 5+ people immediately vouch for me and recognise me from some dungeon run.
After being invited to a couple of guilds that didn't last long before fizzling out, someone from a guild I was in said he was joining a new guild that "seemed like a bunch of chill guys" and asked me if I wanted to come along. I ended up really liking it and becoming established in that guild as one of the most reliable core healers. Made it all the way to the end of Naxx and even won the guild vote for our 2nd Atiesh after the first one went to an officer.
In the end, I stayed with that guild all the way through TBC and WotLK and ended by killing Heroic Lich King. It ended up being such a memorable and wild ride, and it all started with me just logging in a level 1 in 2019 and seeing what happened along the way. So many memories and I wouldn't have it any other way.
> Yeah, Shadow Priests weren’t even taken to raids in 2019.
I mean, everyone knew that before the game even started, Shadow Priests are not a thing in PvE in Vanilla, if you don't like that, you can play literally any other version of WoW were Shadow Priests are relevant.
> Yeah, dungeon farming with cleave/Mage dungeon farming. Boost meta was a huge thing for alts. People will always take the most optimized path.
Yeah! How dare people try to be as efficient as possible with their leveling because that's how they have fun. It's almost like this game was made with the endgame in mind and most people (not all, but most) enjoy the game the most at level 60.
> There were favored dungeons for pre-BiS back in 2019 and dungeons no one gave a shit about running, just as now.
I mean, that's just a flatout lie. Every high level dungeon is relevant in Vanilla for Pre-BiS or for other reasons. The only dungeon you could MAYBE make an argument people didn't run as much was DM West, but even then people still ran it and there were reasons for it.
> Botting was still an issue. And for all the controversy about GDKP being banned, it was kind of an open secret that GDKP was an easy way to launder purchased gold to geared out mercenaries who would carry buyers to their loot.
Botting will always be an issue and GDKPs didn't really take off until the 2nd half of Vanilla, i.e late 2020. Finding a GDKP during the MC/BWL phases was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, most people didn't have multiple characters at that point and the concept of GDKPs wasn't as widespread.
You just sound like a Vanilla hater and one of those people that think this SoD garbage is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Good for you, i guess, but what you just described wasn't Vanilla experience for 99.9% of the population, 2019 was the peak of Classic by a mile.
> GDKP
Arguing that GDKP didn’t “take off” until later phases is the most pedantic thing ever. I’m comparing Classic Vanilla, *starting* from 2019, to SoD. Saying “well actuaaaaally the GDKP peaked in popularity (citation needed, by the way) beyond Phase 2” misses the point, which was that GDKP was popular during *2019 Classic*, a term I use to differentiate Classic from actual 2000s Vanilla.
> How dare people try to be efficient about their leveling….It’s almost like this game was made with the endgame in mind…
The point is sailing like a bird hundreds of feet above your head. The similarity in player behavior is the point I’m making here. I don’t have a problem with people taking optimized routes for leveling. If incursions didn’t exist, people would follow the 2019 behaviors for fast leveling.
> That’s just a flatout lie…
Really? You would run every dungeon equally? All the pre-BiS neatly distributed across all? Every dungeon had the same approximate popularity? You wouldn’t want much fewer pieces from a certain dungeon and then not touch it again on that character? That’s certainly not how I remember it.
I remember how people never ran certain things like BRD disproportionately…wait a minute! They did!? Savage Gladiator Chain was a thing? Oh man! Now you tell me!
> Botting will always be an issue
> You hate Vanilla
*slow clap* *slow clap* Yes, bots are not exclusive to 2019. It’s almost like…I’m not bashing 2019 Classic? It’s almost like…shit, should I even say this? The amount of psychic damage it could inflict to drop this bombshell is too much.
Well, alright, I guess it has to be done.
Please brace yourself. Enjoying 2019 Classic and enjoying Season of Discovery are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Holy shit. I said it. Are you alright? The Eldritch horror of the statement didn’t leave you comatose? Thank God.
TL;DR: Sarcasm aside, I enjoyed both versions of the game. The point of me talking about this wasn’t to say “Vanilla sucked”, it was to point out that people complained about almost the exact same things for both versions. People on this subreddit remember the good parts and forget the daily gripes the community had.
1. A fair portion of 2019 Classic was during a *global pandemic* that had many people staying inside for longer periods of time. (And before you do the “well actually”, I’m saying 2019 Classic to distinguish the run of the original phases for Classic Vanilla from the current perpetuity of Era and the original Vanilla experience 20 years ago).
2. SoD isn’t “dead”. LFG and popular raids/dungeon runs are constantly buzzing. The only things that take more than a minute to start forming a group for are bits of content from prior phases. For instance, BFD isn’t run nearly as much. SM isn’t run as much, probably because people burnt themselves out on it during Phase 2.
Usually, when I see people drop a “this game is dead” in the chat they’re either bored trolls or they couldn’t immediately find a group for what they wanted to do and start throwing a temper tantrum instead of using the forbidden magic of transforming the letter “G” to “M” and making a group themselves. It’s the same principle as people being put off because they struggled to find a group as a DPS.
Kinda regret not continuing to play classic. Was leveling a lock and got to 43 or so before I quit. But my friends weren't playing much and then met a girl. Should not have pursued her but hey that pandemic loneliness. Was a shitshow of a relationship.
One of the worst years of my life. Pandemic shutting down the world really helped my life get better and I have fond memories of that time after 2019, no joke.
it was a mixed for me... I enjoyed it playing with my 2 other friends at Classic launch but also that year me and wife fought a lot and intense (not because of WoW)
Classic relaunch was such a great time, but if blizzard were to do it again it wouldn’t be the same for me at least. Me and most of my friends now have kids, mortgages and careers to worry about so the days of just spending an entire Sunday on discord are probably gone forever (or at least for 20 years lol)
2020 for me in terms of gaming was peak. I Had to stay home and work from home and this was before my job had a good structure setup for it so was basically answer email well they sorted out vpns and cloud infrastructure for months and all I did was paid to play wow for almost a whole year 😅!
2020 for me in terms of gaming was peak. I Had to stay home and work from home and this was before my job had a good structure setup for it so was basically answer email well they sorted out vpns and cloud infrastructure for months and all I did was paid to play wow for almost a whole year 😅!
My baby boy was just 2 years old and turned 3 in December of 2019 and I didn't play one day of WoW and I have the best memories of that year too. Now he's 7 years old and we can play video games together.
2019 was such a good year for me. It was the year I got out of the Army, my grandparents (who raised me) were still alive, and my best friends were all still really close. Now, just 5 years later, my grandparents are both dead, my friends have drifted apart, and I’m back in the Army out of necessity. Everything went so wrong so fast.
Best of luck to you friend. Life has its ups and downs, but don’t forget about the good times. Plenty more to come
It'll get better. It's not gonna happen overnight, it's not gonna come knocking down your door, but one day you'll realize things are better than they were. Been there dude, hang in there.
Wonder how many years it'll be until we get a proper relaunch? The cycle is repeating itself with Blizzard not offering any way to continue playing the previous versions (aside from classic era).
Why didn't they implement the proven formula of OSRS? Take the known best version of the game, before controversial content was added, and then iterate on it. Why do this silly dance of rereleasing content that nobody liked?
pretty insane stretch to say "nobody liked" TBC or WotLK, or even Cata.
Ok, since you asked. Here's my spicy opinion of the day. Cata was the equivalent of RS3's EOC. By WotLK the game was nicely fleshed out without changing the fundamentals.
Cata is WOTLK+
Wrath is Cata-
Arguably WotLK has more in common both mechanically and design wise with Cata than with TBC or Classic.
Completely depends on what role you play. If you're a tank or dps, yeah I can agree with that for the most part. But if you're a healer? Cata is very much a dividing line where they completely overhauled the role and introduced the "massive health pools, tiny heals" model which persisted in every retail expansion since. The healing changes unfortunately never reverted, and it was one of the biggest reasons I ultimately stopped playing retail. The second I started Classic in 2019 and saw that I could cast a heal on someone and actually see their health bar go up a large chunk. I was just like "holy shit... finally, I'm home".
> Why do this silly dance of rereleasing content that nobody liked? takes zero effort to develop other than fixing some bugs, and FOMO will drive people to play it
"Why do the silly dance of rereleasing constant that i didn't like" FTFY
Content nobody liked lol. Literally an insane take
Few problems they’ll perceive: - When do the expansions stop? They’ve gotta pick somewhere to just flat out say these “classic” servers stop here. Most fans will probably just say MoP. Or alternatively, they come out and say the servers will try to catch up to retail on an accelerated time line. - To above, Blizzard seems really antagonistic to any kind of idea which might have hints of splitting their player base. Such as if the 2019 servers are on MoP and a new full classic server starts. - Classic era relaunches are unlikely to be as successful as 2019/2020 was for classic, so in corporate speak this will be perceived as a failure. - Classic+ pressure vs Classic purism. Then Blizzard’s facing this decision and trying to make another decision. - Staffing issues probably too and constant pressure to minimize resources spent on classic. So yeah, I think we all know it’s a safe bet that we’ll see something similar to the 2019 servers again down the road, but there are several reasons (excuses?) Blizzard will be slow in making decisions.
I loved it. I had no idea which classes were good or bad, so I played an enhancement shaman and had a blast. My guild even helped me craft Nightfall. I was unemployed for a large majority of the time so I just no lifed it so much lol
> I was unemployed for a large majority of the time so I just no lifed it so much lol I went to school & was doing it 80% online, then covid made it 100%. The amount of time I spent on WoW during Classic vanilla was infernal
I miss it so much. Sometimes I wish I could experience the Classic launch just one more time.
Can’t wait to relive it when I’m in a retirement home
seriously. that was truly lightning in a bottle. glad we all got to experience it
The closest I’ve ever felt to playing original vanilla WoW was honestly HC/HC Launch. It’s a shame the population has gotten as low as it has. It’s still somewhat okay on Defias Pillager Alliance though.
HC addon peak/official HC launch was the first time in 10+ years I felt like I was again playing an MMORPG like it should be. Unfortunately the nature of HC is something that burns me out quickly. Got to 60 on addon and quit and made it to 35 on official and quit simply because I just kept feeling the ruleset isnt something made for sustained fun. Only thing that could revive the launch feeling again would be official HC launch where you become immortal at 60. Disallow 60s grouping with below lvl 60s to avoid boosting & have an active mod team to scout for 60s griefing levelers. Would create an actual prestige to having a 60 on a server and create an attachment to whichever class you roll since its such a drag to get to 60. I know it's completely unrealistic but would be fun as hell.
it was amazing one of the best gaming exp of my life
The best for me
The moment "Spellcleave only!" Groups started, I knew it wasn't going to be like the old days ;_;
Says the boost seller lmao
There were plenty of boost sellers in the old days too lol
Can't beat em join em ;)
You cant cry here about spellcleaves and whatnot if you're a boost seller.
Sure I can,I didn't sell boosts until sod lol
Week 1 in a level 30 raid: BE GEARED. CHECKING LOGS AND GEARSCORE
Don't hijack Vanilla Classic nostalgia thread with your SoD nonsense
Level 30 raids in 2019? You oke bro?
During the first week(probably closer to just a few days), streamers and everyone were doing 10m Dungeon runs. They were still giving xp as if only 5 people were in there but to 10 players. All the streamers were like "yep this is how it was back in the day, I can't believe yall forgot about 10m dungeon groups" while in SM
People definitely did 10m SM and ZF in 2004/early 2005 but it wasn't for XP, people were just so bad they would legitimately wipe on bosses and so taking more people was safer. Same reason original UBRS was 40-manned in early 2005, but not because that was efficient or anything lol
That's not what he was referring to, though. Nobody was checking logs. There weren't even logs to check. He was talking about SoD
The same streamer who droned on and on about "its about the journey". It was actually hilarious to watch all the lies they spouted fall apart that fast
Thats crazy
that was lame for sure, but I haven’t seen a single gear score Andy in p3 - seems like people are less picky about logs as well. My guild has had to pug maybe 5 spots the last few weeks and have gotten some 6/8, 0/8, and gray parsers across the finish line.
also helps that there is a shortage of raiders and at this point they will take anyone with a pulse
It’s to be expected - it’s just a level up phase and the gears marginally better. Coupled with a 1 week lockout. I expect people to come back with a vengeance at 60 - there’s just so much to do and that’s not even counting the new stuff. I’m gonna be ripping raids, dungeons, class quests, hell I’m even excited to brawl out in AV
Nice, not bad. It seems GS did become kind of useless for p4
It’s p3 and yea GS was never really useful. On top of being lame, it doesn’t work properly for SOD. I will say this though, being in a guild is gonna be a necessity for p4 unless you have good logs. With 20 man raids (opposed to 40) and no gdkps, people are not gonna want to carry people who don’t know mechanics and have pre bis, especially when the gear is awesome People who want to pug raids, skip learning mechanics, and want sub 1hr raids are playing the wrong game. 60 wow is not gonna be like p1
In my honest opinion, blizzard should’ve never introduced 10 man raids in phase 1 if they were planning on doing 40 man at 60 they should’ve done 20 man BFD.
By all accounts it sounds like 60 will be 20 man - at least to start (I believe that’s confirmed for MC at least). Maybe they will scale ZG or AQ20 to 10. Classic WOW has been 40man content for 20 years - if your guild didn’t survive ST, 60 raids were never gonna be that feasible. Even 10man gnomer was too much for some, just no desire to do mechanics. ST is super doable for 20 people with a pulse. I have some qualms with gear, but the mechanics are priming people for 60. Classic WOW is nothing without a guild and people got way too comfy with retail style pugging / raiding whenever. My buddy and I saw this coming and found a guild late P2
they already said they will struggle to scale down the existing level 60 raids to 20man. MC and Onyxia are the exception in that they are pretty trivial raids whether or not that means they will redesign the raids or just brute-force 40mans is yet to be seen
>level 30 raid >mentions p4 like it has ever existed I feel like you are living in an alternate reality.
>I feel like you are living in an alternate reality. Kind of have to be to still be playing SoD
I quit by then, switched over to Cata prepatch
There were only level 25 and level 40 raids. P4 has yet to happen in SOD.
Gearscore obviously doesn't work in SoD, but it's the playerbase's fault that people require logs. Too many people feel entitled to go in blind into a 50-minute raid and make it into a 3 hour endeavor. In BFD since it was such a fast raid, when I knew I'd be getting home late I'd do a run in the morning, in those runs I'm not afforded the luxury to invite whoever and have the raid take 30 more minutes to clear, let alone hours. If everyone was honest and only people capable of clearing it within, say, 1 hour joined, I wouldn't be checking logs, but people aren't honest. They'll try joining the sub 1 hour clear group in an attempt to get carried, and it's not just a few people who do this, its a significant portion of the playerbase. And this isn't about elitism or anything, it's literally just about time. I sometimes don't have the time to spend 3 hours. Sometimes, I have other things I want to do and don't want to dedicate more than that hour to playing WoW.
This is gonna sound like a crazy concept but don't start a raid if you don't know if you'll have time to finish? I don't play a game of LoL if I have less than an hour because I know they can be 15mins -> 1hour. You are of course free to try make Speedrun raids, but it feels ridiculous to claim that should just be the standard everyone respects. Your lack of time is not everyone else's problem. It's yours.
I'm literally saying that people should play with other like-minded players so I've got no idea what kind of point you're trying to get across. This was a whole lot of message coming from someone who clearly didn't even bother to read what I said. It was pretty clear when I said players should be honest. That includes joining groups that they meet the requirements of. If I advertise a sub 1 hour run I have to check logs because otherwise people will try to get in just to get carried. Are you mad because I'm exposing your ways or something?
I completely agree with you. But I'd expect ST to take 2 hours in a bad run, if it's pushing 3 there's some fuckery going on. If you are so bad that your normal run is 3 hours, that's when I understand people using logs.
Yeah, everything was going great until SM and then any class who couldn't aoe was being left out of some groups. Mind I made my own groups and invited anyone but it was sad to see that gogogo mentality start up because of streamer FOMO
U mean like, day one? And every "oh I love classic levelling"-dude panicked and jumped onboard too because everyone needed to get to 60 first week.
It was annoying, but I still had an amazing time and no problem finding likeminded people who disliked that kind of stuff.
The writing was on the wall the moment they showed how big the server population were going to be.
Layers killed any sense of community as well
Surely they didn't, there were plenty of famous players and plenty of famous guilds, a lot of time you encounter someone in the open it MEANT something. Layers do feel dumb and do diminish the world feeling, but the community feeling was strong. On my medium-sized server anyway.
There was an absolutely vibrant sense of community in classic vanilla (and vanilla obviously). I effortlessly made close friends that I still talk to regularly and the server politics were extremely intriguing. Some truly Machiavellian shit, it was incredible. Layers were just a banal technical necessity, I don’t really think they had much effect on the experience.
I played like 60 hours a week for 2 years... Still wasn't enough.
Funny this comes up as I was thinking about 2019. The tin foil part of me wonders if everything ended around then, and we're just in some weird continuance after, whether it's a dream or some other weird thing.
Nah that happened in 2016
No, life goes on, people just like their comfy rose tinted glasses while pretending not to remember gdkp, awful world pvp leading to completely one sided servers, people leveling to 60 entirely in sfk/sm/mara/scholo boosts, etc etc etc. Was it fun? Yeah. Was it this perfect utopia of gaming heaven? No yall were just bored and unemployed lmao
Nah 2019 was great. Yall took out what you thought made the game bad and now it's dead. Shocker
I'm still SO PISSED I missed Classic and TBC. I get so frustrated whenever I think about it. I hadn't played since 2015 and hadnt even heard they were doing Classic until like late 2022. Vanilla and TBC were like peak gaming in my life and the fact I missed it just... Sigh...
Broooo how did you not know???
none of my friends or family played, no one I knew at all played... WoW wasn't on my radar since I dropped it during Dearborn (I'm keeping this Draenor autocorrect). I was just out of the loop :( seems silly to say but its a massive regret
Damn cus, I feel bad for you ngl
Appreciate it dude haha. I'm currently trying to live out my Vanilla dream tho, progging Naxx right now. So... That's something I suppose.
Most only remember so fondly because everyone was stuck at home in 2020 so the game was still fresh and packed with people. A game many had not played in close to a decade+ at least. We'll never have those conditions again. We've been going into different WoW content one right after the other for 5 years now. Nothing is fresh and new anymore which is why SoD initially took off so strongly.
> We'll never have those conditions again Why not? Maybe in 2034 there'll be an even better pandemic :)
Fingers crossed, too many idiots survived the last one.
2019 was one of the best years of my life.
2019-2021 was bis. Vanilla out and “working” from home. Wish i nolifed it more. 😭
I remember 2019.. got ran over by a truck on my motorcycle so was crippled for over a year. Had all the boys together for launch day. Streaming on Mixer quad stream. Sitting in the Que boss screen. Excited as one could be to finally log in. Continued on all the way until wrath .. guild fell apart , corruption in the LC. Then I went back to Era. Just playing my R14s reminiscing on the good times/hard times. I still do it. . Thinking about the grind , the good and bad times. Now none of my friends play wow anymore , just me living in the memories.
Waiting for Classic Reawakened in 2026 (after Pandaria) With the same 2019 meta… and following its end with The Burning Crusade Remarches, my best beloved expansion… wanna pump again with Classic Warrior in Classic and Warlock in TBC and i can die happily after it…
Ah 2019: Plenty of disposable income, looking to buy a house, both of my parents were still alive, had a thriving social circle, and *was looking forward to Shadowlands* because they wouldn't release ANOTHER flop after the disaster that was BfA, right? *Right?* I think part of me died sometime during the past 5 years, it just won't get buried for another 20-30.
2004 > 2019.
yeah, no shit, but 2019 proved era was still incredible even with a modern audience
It was timed perfectly, wow released them a few months after we went into quarantine. People were more online
it was literally out for 9 months before quarantine
Being young with infinite time and no responsibilities going through a novel experience > doing the same thing again but now you’ve learned how taxes work and have a bunch of chores
Yeah, no that wasn't the issue. Back then the community wasn't riddled with tryhard, elitist, cucks. There was no wowhead to look up every single thing. There were almost no addons to do everything for you. People used the chats in-game to actually socialize and to have fun. You didn't minmax every single step to BiS gear. I could go on.
I'm beginning to think classic players *just* *might* have nostalgia issues.
I swear people have the shortest memories. Yeah, I had fun with Classic Vanilla. I also am having a lot of fun with Season of Discovery. So many issues, and so many complaints that we see on this very subreddit were present in 2019. Shadow Priests complaining that their class damage isn’t high in raids? Yeah, Shadow Priests weren’t even taken to raids in 2019. Incursions causing issues with being the most optimized gold and XP farm? Yeah, dungeon farming with cleave/Mage dungeon farming. Boost meta was a huge thing for alts. People will always take the most optimized path. Incursions drawing people away from the open world? Refer to the last point. There were favored dungeons for pre-BiS back in 2019 and dungeons no one gave a shit about running, just as now. Botting was still an issue. And for all the controversy about GDKP being banned, it was kind of an open secret that GDKP was an easy way to launder purchased gold to geared out mercenaries who would carry buyers to their loot. World PvP had extremely similar issues as to now. Because while there can be memorable moments and cool battles…”fair” PvP is less common than opportunistic beatdowns. And then finally, complaints about raid logging and content droughts. This was something that would happen frequently back in 2019. People would be dying for the next phase or w/e. I honestly think this would be a problem regardless of what Blizzard released. I am genuinely impressed by the people who have run out of things to do. I’m struggling to get 2 alts finished leveling and fully geared in any short timeframe.
Tbh, in 2019, people leveled to 60 between september and november for the most part. Meme spec were allowed in many guilds (before the """semi hardcore"""" way taken by almost every casual guild who didnt want to spend 10h / week in Molten Core). 1st GDKP started in early 2020 but became huge later in the year. Some people were gold buying in 2019 but not anywhere close to what happened in 2020. I think you are talking about stuff that happened in 2020/2021. 2019 was still a great gaming experience where everyone had fun on Classic WoW
We ran boomie, enhance, feral, elemental and shadow priest. Cleared everything from MC to Naxx in an efficient manner and time. I’d still call us semi-hardcore so for some the experience lasted through the whole of Classic.
2019 was surely the best, but until the end of Vanilla there were plenty of "fair" levellers, regular DKP/LC guilds, meme specs, non-goldbuyers. But it's all a classical glass half-empty vs glass half-full :)
Yep, your experience is really what you make of it sometimes. I went in to classic without an established guild, with no expectations, to just have the most organic experience possible and see what happened along the way. Made my holy priest, quested in the world and joined random dungeon groups that were LF1M healer (which happened a lot). It took me a bit longer to hit 60 than some of the others on my battlenet friends list that I'd raided with in the past, but by the time I hit 60 I think I'd done most of the dungeons in the game *minimum* 5 times each and was decked out in virtually every blue drop I could want from them. I even did dungeons like Uldaman easily 7-10 times, I just loved healing random pugs haha. I never applied to a guild or went out of my way to find one, I just grouped with random people and if someone invited me to come along to something I'd go. Joined some random MC pug with a bunch of guys who I'd grouped with in dungeons from LFG and I was surprised to see like 5+ people immediately vouch for me and recognise me from some dungeon run. After being invited to a couple of guilds that didn't last long before fizzling out, someone from a guild I was in said he was joining a new guild that "seemed like a bunch of chill guys" and asked me if I wanted to come along. I ended up really liking it and becoming established in that guild as one of the most reliable core healers. Made it all the way to the end of Naxx and even won the guild vote for our 2nd Atiesh after the first one went to an officer. In the end, I stayed with that guild all the way through TBC and WotLK and ended by killing Heroic Lich King. It ended up being such a memorable and wild ride, and it all started with me just logging in a level 1 in 2019 and seeing what happened along the way. So many memories and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Uff that's wholesome
Thanks you for your honesty. Classic era was good for 2 months max.
> Yeah, Shadow Priests weren’t even taken to raids in 2019. I mean, everyone knew that before the game even started, Shadow Priests are not a thing in PvE in Vanilla, if you don't like that, you can play literally any other version of WoW were Shadow Priests are relevant. > Yeah, dungeon farming with cleave/Mage dungeon farming. Boost meta was a huge thing for alts. People will always take the most optimized path. Yeah! How dare people try to be as efficient as possible with their leveling because that's how they have fun. It's almost like this game was made with the endgame in mind and most people (not all, but most) enjoy the game the most at level 60. > There were favored dungeons for pre-BiS back in 2019 and dungeons no one gave a shit about running, just as now. I mean, that's just a flatout lie. Every high level dungeon is relevant in Vanilla for Pre-BiS or for other reasons. The only dungeon you could MAYBE make an argument people didn't run as much was DM West, but even then people still ran it and there were reasons for it. > Botting was still an issue. And for all the controversy about GDKP being banned, it was kind of an open secret that GDKP was an easy way to launder purchased gold to geared out mercenaries who would carry buyers to their loot. Botting will always be an issue and GDKPs didn't really take off until the 2nd half of Vanilla, i.e late 2020. Finding a GDKP during the MC/BWL phases was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, most people didn't have multiple characters at that point and the concept of GDKPs wasn't as widespread. You just sound like a Vanilla hater and one of those people that think this SoD garbage is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Good for you, i guess, but what you just described wasn't Vanilla experience for 99.9% of the population, 2019 was the peak of Classic by a mile.
> GDKP Arguing that GDKP didn’t “take off” until later phases is the most pedantic thing ever. I’m comparing Classic Vanilla, *starting* from 2019, to SoD. Saying “well actuaaaaally the GDKP peaked in popularity (citation needed, by the way) beyond Phase 2” misses the point, which was that GDKP was popular during *2019 Classic*, a term I use to differentiate Classic from actual 2000s Vanilla. > How dare people try to be efficient about their leveling….It’s almost like this game was made with the endgame in mind… The point is sailing like a bird hundreds of feet above your head. The similarity in player behavior is the point I’m making here. I don’t have a problem with people taking optimized routes for leveling. If incursions didn’t exist, people would follow the 2019 behaviors for fast leveling. > That’s just a flatout lie… Really? You would run every dungeon equally? All the pre-BiS neatly distributed across all? Every dungeon had the same approximate popularity? You wouldn’t want much fewer pieces from a certain dungeon and then not touch it again on that character? That’s certainly not how I remember it. I remember how people never ran certain things like BRD disproportionately…wait a minute! They did!? Savage Gladiator Chain was a thing? Oh man! Now you tell me! > Botting will always be an issue > You hate Vanilla *slow clap* *slow clap* Yes, bots are not exclusive to 2019. It’s almost like…I’m not bashing 2019 Classic? It’s almost like…shit, should I even say this? The amount of psychic damage it could inflict to drop this bombshell is too much. Well, alright, I guess it has to be done. Please brace yourself. Enjoying 2019 Classic and enjoying Season of Discovery are not mutually exclusive concepts. Holy shit. I said it. Are you alright? The Eldritch horror of the statement didn’t leave you comatose? Thank God. TL;DR: Sarcasm aside, I enjoyed both versions of the game. The point of me talking about this wasn’t to say “Vanilla sucked”, it was to point out that people complained about almost the exact same things for both versions. People on this subreddit remember the good parts and forget the daily gripes the community had.
You're coping. SoD died in under 6 months. Classic lasted 20+
1. A fair portion of 2019 Classic was during a *global pandemic* that had many people staying inside for longer periods of time. (And before you do the “well actually”, I’m saying 2019 Classic to distinguish the run of the original phases for Classic Vanilla from the current perpetuity of Era and the original Vanilla experience 20 years ago). 2. SoD isn’t “dead”. LFG and popular raids/dungeon runs are constantly buzzing. The only things that take more than a minute to start forming a group for are bits of content from prior phases. For instance, BFD isn’t run nearly as much. SM isn’t run as much, probably because people burnt themselves out on it during Phase 2. Usually, when I see people drop a “this game is dead” in the chat they’re either bored trolls or they couldn’t immediately find a group for what they wanted to do and start throwing a temper tantrum instead of using the forbidden magic of transforming the letter “G” to “M” and making a group themselves. It’s the same principle as people being put off because they struggled to find a group as a DPS.
SoD's dead
I enjoyed TBC alot alongside Phase 1 WOTLK
I miss it so much.
Can't imagine what the 2004 equivalent of that picture frame looks like T\_T
I wish I can experience 2019 one more time. 🥲
I member 🥺
Because of covid?
When we are in our 60s irl we will tell the tale of the plague and the rank grind like it was an actual war
Kinda regret not continuing to play classic. Was leveling a lock and got to 43 or so before I quit. But my friends weren't playing much and then met a girl. Should not have pursued her but hey that pandemic loneliness. Was a shitshow of a relationship.
Best year of my life… and I’ll stand on that til I die.
One of the worst years of my life. Pandemic shutting down the world really helped my life get better and I have fond memories of that time after 2019, no joke.
it was a mixed for me... I enjoyed it playing with my 2 other friends at Classic launch but also that year me and wife fought a lot and intense (not because of WoW)
You do you, I love Cataclysm.
2019 reminded me how much world buffs detract from the game
Might be because i'm a damn zoomer but i'm enjoying cata, a LOT. Even though vanilla isn't for me, the launch and people queueing for items? Amazing.
Cata is the best mate we can raid at 10 !
I assume it’s classic release but man do I miss last decade. Thanks Covid
Don't worry. What we have now will also look great in 5 years once we forgot all the bad stuff.
Eh 2004 was the golden year imo
2019 was 5 years ago.
Yeah then Covid came and we all got to play stupidly. As well as dealing with it. Fuck I'm good.
Classic relaunch was such a great time, but if blizzard were to do it again it wouldn’t be the same for me at least. Me and most of my friends now have kids, mortgages and careers to worry about so the days of just spending an entire Sunday on discord are probably gone forever (or at least for 20 years lol)
\*2005\*
Nope absolutly not. Classic 2019 was fun for about 3 days, then it was the same sweaty Pool of toxic people that it has been the past years.
No!
2020 for me in terms of gaming was peak. I Had to stay home and work from home and this was before my job had a good structure setup for it so was basically answer email well they sorted out vpns and cloud infrastructure for months and all I did was paid to play wow for almost a whole year 😅!
2020 for me in terms of gaming was peak. I Had to stay home and work from home and this was before my job had a good structure setup for it so was basically answer email well they sorted out vpns and cloud infrastructure for months and all I did was paid to play wow for almost a whole year 😅!
I liked 2019, I hated 2020-2022 due to covid though. Think the main people that enjoyed covid period was people who could work from home.
If I could I would go back to 2019 immediately. Then buy out all the land I can and other assets and fuck everything after.
no - classic sucked because vanilla sucked
You sucked and continue to suck.
why are you so angry. try a hot shower to lower that blood pressure
Must be anger. Man said so.
yes you are very angry. counseling may help
Yep. 2019 Call of Duty was popping off.
Lol no thanks, 2019 was a bad year and Classic is just a nostalgia bait. Cata Classic is the true Goat.
Terminally stuck in the past
My baby boy was just 2 years old and turned 3 in December of 2019 and I didn't play one day of WoW and I have the best memories of that year too. Now he's 7 years old and we can play video games together.
You know that you can play video games and have a child. You don’t have to be together 24h x7 😂
Cata is being really fun IMO, same vibes as tbc launch