#Vanilla Classic Wow

[the-sentinel-enclave-blog]

Azeroth has two moons, The white lady (Elune) and The blue child. Two screenshots taken 27/3/24 of The blue child visible in Darkshore and Teldrassil

[shadowcow]

Final words of the fallen heroes of WoW Hardcore Classic, pt. 1/???

(pt. 2)

[maxiecabphotography]

Turtle WoW Pride Parade

Small event but we kept it private to prevent trolls (not the race lol) from coming to ruin it. A GM was flying above us as a rainbow cloud to make sure everything went smoothy too. Thanks to all who came!

[blackfinchart]

The World of Warcraft will never be as magical as it was before the internet invented “solving” games and content creators optimized the life out of creative choices that developers make-

However.

I honest to god believe that the move to make it less of a marionette show is to go back to vanilla (you can update the graphics if you want but idc), and develop new content horizontally instead of incrementally. I think that game design would also make the writing less… weird and character/escalation focused- and instead more sandbox, ‘human’ scale, and immersion driven.

We could still go to a lvl 60 Outland, or North Rend, or what have you. We could still meet the Draenei, and recruit the Arakockra (idr how to spell it, the bird people that all the horde people wished they could have instead of Blood Elves. You mightn’t remember but they were PISSED about the blood elves haha), and get all that awesome landscapes and environment design.

We could still fight awesome raid bosses and encounter new and weird mechanics, both in and outside the instance. GW2 has showed us that there’s a lot you can do with horizontal progression/expansion in an MMO (I LOVED playing GW2 even though the story made me roll my eyes haha).

I would play retail WoW if that happened, and also Blizzard stopped sexually assaulting, bad mouthing, bullying, financially abusing, and lying to, its employees. If it clearly and plainly apologized to Chung Ng Wai, and compensated him, and the other contestants involved, for trying to silence their message of solidarity. If they stopped abusing the finances of their customers, and stopped betraying the integrity of their creative product to squeeze out higher profits- instead choosing to generate more income through creative excellence.

If Blizzard did ALL of that, I would play WoW again.

But hey! Turtle-WoW exists! It’s free! And it’s going on the right direction!

[trans-estinien]

what kind of teenager in 2024 has the thought "man i wish i was a teenager back in the early 2000s so then i couldve remembered vanilla wow when it was current"

[tastytofusoup]

Really wish I'd titled my WoW Classic posts 'Vanilla WoW' instead.

[wubble]

My heart lives inside this game from nearly 20 years ago.

[ansu-gurleht]

i really hope when cata classic (stupid fucking concept) comes out they keep the wotlk classic servers. otherwise i’m straight up permanently switching to vanilla classic

[merkygloom]

Reupload of the iconic First Of May by Joreth InnKeeper which was taken down from Youtube on May 1st, 2023. Enjoy!

[shadowcow]

Final words of the fallen heroes of WoW Hardcore Classic, pt. 3/???

(pt. 2, pt. 4)

[maxiecabphotography]

Searing Gorge

[blackfinchart]

Choosing a character to main on Tel’abim (turtle WoW) sent me back in time to when I was a tween playing WoW and I can’t fricken decide!

It’s mainly between lady orc warrior and lady dwarf warrior- on the one hand the horde cultural gear is way way cooler looking but on the other hand short queen fantasy brave heart

Also RP is healthier on alliance but the vibes are more my aesthetic on the Horde!

Aaaaaaaaa

[goblin-enjoyer]

oh by the corpses I just seen someone on twitter point to when they added first added hats as when tf2s artstyle died. Calling tf2s artstyle beforehand "restrained 50s cold war art direction" as if it wasn't silly day one. "people rightfully shit on cod for breaking its art style but tf2 has been a mess for longer that nobody questions it" as if the game didn't have cartoony gore effects, funny voice lines and general golden comic era stupidity from as soon as it released. Im sorry but that idea of tf2 died 2 years in, even sooner if you actually look at any of the meet the team videos. and at the end of their little "thing was actually much better back in the day" speal they had the gall to go tell people to play tf2 classic. I'm sorry to people who play "classic" versions of games but why is it that whenever a bad take with someone saying that "oh the tone has been RUINED from its original light" or whatever, it's always a git who hasn't played the main game in over 10 years and stopped 2 years in. Like mate, you barely played the game! This period of time you talk about is less than a third of the games lifespan, less than even "the golden years" that the game was like in its prime. Why is the complaint with the yeti taunt glitch that a yeti is in the game as a taunt and not that the glitch exists? ugh, i need a drink. sorry for bringing twitter discourse filth here, just needed to quickly vent a little steam out me.

[indefenceofvanillawow]

Spell Ranks (Part 1)

Why did Vanilla WoW have a system where you have to go back to a class-specific NPC every so often to level your spells and learn new ones?

The correct answer is probably 'Everquest did it', with a little bit of 'Warcraft 3 also had spell ranks'.

It was eventually entirely removed in Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion, 8 years after Vanilla's release. Other modern MMORPGs would never use this system either. And the prevailing attitude is that this system was just busywork, and didn't have any place in the game.

But did it? Why wasn't it removed earlier? And how did it change before it was eventually removed?

First, I want to dispel any notion that this was a technical limitation. Many spells already had in-built level scaling that simply halted at the level when the next rank of that spell was available.

Spells with no damage or healing component, like poison cures, would often scale their cost with your base mana. Modern WoW currently uses this base mana scaling for all mana costs.

Many physical abilities would scale directly with your weapon damage, and tack on a damage bonus based on its rank. Bloodthirst is even an example of an ability that scaled directly with attack power, and it still had ranks. (By the way, whenever I use the word 'spell' in this post, I am also referring to abilities, it's just easier).

So the spell rank system was not something they had to do, but they did it anyway. Why?

The aspect of returning to a class trainer repeatedly over the course of levelling seems odd, but there's a point to it. The Soulsborne games actually do something similar, where the places at which you can level up your character or upgrade your weapons are always limited, often to your home base. So you keep returning to your home base, and eventually, it becomes familiar. Dark Souls 1 is a bit of an outlier, but it did some other interesting things to keep Firelink Shrine as something of a home base, partly to amplify a nefarious midgame betrayal.

There's also the facet of class quests, as sometimes you'd return to a class trainer, and they'd have something new for you to do. Sometimes the reward is gear, but most of them reward new spells. Shamans receive quest chains from their class trainers at levels 4, 10, 20, and 30 to earn each element for their totems, which are a crucial class feature. The player needs to know to keep returning to class trainers.

The aspect of having to manually learn and upgrade every spell also might seem like a pointless inconvenience, but this is a dismissive description that doesn't engage honestly with the system. An interesting perspective I saw of this was from someone who had never tried it before, J1mmy in his video, 'I never played WoW, so I tried all of them (a lot)'.

Around the 9 minute mark, he starts to talk about learning spells, and how it differs between Classic WoW and Retail WoW. He felt like in Classic, the game let him earn his spells at a pace he felt comfortable, and he even pointed out something I didn't realize, that the currency cost of acquiring spells meant there was more of a reason to know what you were getting.

By contrast, he felt as though the Retail game was just dumping levels on him, and by extension, dumping spells. To quote, "I swung at a guy like three times, and I was levelled up again. I was immediately rewarded with two new abilities that were inserted right into my ability bar. I did not pay for them, I did not ask for them, I suddenly have these two things here. Something felt weird about it".

It's something to notice about people who try Classic and Retail back to back. Classic is definitely slower, but much more careful with how it introduces things to new players.

In Part 2 of this post, I'll be examining some benefits of the system unique to Vanilla WoW's implementation, the erosion of those benefits, and the erosion of the system itself. Additionally, some knock-on effects of removing it. Link to Part 2.

[wp100]

Blizzard just made their WoW Kobolds attractive for the next expansion and I don't know how to feel about it

[shadowcow]

Final words of the fallen heroes of WoW Hardcore Classic, pt. 2/???

(pt 1, pt 3)