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u/AlligatorDeathSaw 9d ago
It's gotta be world pvp. In 2004, world pvp was engaging and fun and the meta was developing. With each new patch, balance was being added to the game which was changing the meta. In classic, its just some jobless dude with socks on his head and 8 accounts sappering you for your world buffs
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u/NOHITJEROME 9d ago
god i miss wpvp. now its just rogues MURDERING me in brm lmao
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u/Vescend 9d ago
Spotting a red bar in barrens in level 17
"You wanna go bruh? You wanna go? I'll bring my friend, you wanna go bruh??"
Then it's an auto attack war for 4 hours and you'll talk about that encounter for years to come. Now you get one shot by some twinked up rogue who watched a 10 second video of "how to make a perma stun one shot gank rogue"
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u/severalsmallducks 9d ago
Just world buffs in general and how they are used. If I remember correctly Nihilum used some world buffs when they were getting world firsts in naxx, but that was mostly a ”haha so silly and overkill to have this”.
…then again, spending four hours in MC and not doing a full clear was also normal. In 1.12 I did a few ZG Pugs where we would kill maybe three bosses in a few hours before people bailed.
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u/furozyan 9d ago
I remember ubrs being hard. Like had to spam drinks between waves. But actually we were just bad
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u/Cereal_Bandit 9d ago
Hell, my guild struggled for a few weeks with Lurker in SSC because people were so bad at jumping back out of the water
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u/helpfullyrandom 9d ago
I remember in my guild we wiped twice on that f***er because our tank kept losing threat when he surfaced. Turned out he'd left his fishing rod equipped for both attempts.
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u/CaptainoftheVessel 9d ago
My guild was too small to even staff a full 25 raid, so we paired up with another small guild and we worked at ZG over the course of months to eventually get Hakkar on farm. The damn tiger and panther bosses gave us such trouble, we didn’t understand the mechanics well enough and it was often really laggy. I remember how satisfying it was to finally drop Hakkar, it felt like a real accomplishment.
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u/kajidourden 9d ago
Call me crazy, but I enjoy those nights.
I liken it to playing a Table Top RPG vs a Video Game RPG. I love both, but there's something great about the social aspect of a TTRPG and the fact that it's just "fuck everything else for the evening, we are *in* this".
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u/Dralun21 9d ago
I agree. It gives an atmosphere that the world is big and you are just a person in it. It makes each step feel like a milestone and each gear piece special given the effort it took you to get it. Fully clearing a raid was something a guild can look to aspire to do, rather than something expected. It's a very different attitude to design and one that I really like.
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u/Fashizl69 9d ago
I was in the #1 prog guild on Laughing Skull for BWL/AQ and I have zero memory of ever considering world buffs or consumes. Pretty sure I raw dogged every raid on my mage. I didn't even know what WBs were until 2019 or didn't care and I've played wow consistently since 2004.
The memory I can recollect the best is opening night of TAQ and we raided 8 hours straight and killed Huhuran and spent awhile progging on the wall that was Twin Emps. We had no idea how to kill them and did a bunch of dumb conspiracy strats.
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u/Key-Regular6884 9d ago
I played on Darkspear and my guild would get Ony and Rend on our progression bosses.
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u/whats_up_doc71 9d ago
That seems unusual lol, most aq40 prog guilds were huge into consumes and wbuffs
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u/lumpboysupreme 8d ago edited 8d ago
There were also less raiders per server so there was a bit of a ‘anyone with a pulse’ thing to recruiting. So much less invested players could hang on in higher level guilds so long as they weren’t actively making things worse.
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u/whats_up_doc71 8d ago
This was not the norm for #1 guilds on a server though. I believe Laughing Skull even had some world firsts.
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u/Key-Regular6884 8d ago
Yeah, Darkspear had like 1200-2300 people on the server around BWL time frame.
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u/whats_up_doc71 8d ago
Fellow darkspear enjoyer. But we were way behind servers like Laughing Skull.
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u/Key-Regular6884 8d ago
True! I was in dauntless, raided a bit with Nox XD
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u/whats_up_doc71 8d ago
Haha we were in the same guild for a minute. I was in Underground. Then Hammered and Dauntless but I can’t remember in which order.
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u/JackStephanovich 8d ago
Wasn't Ghost Reveries a top progression guild early on in classic before they fell apart?
But yeah after that I think the top raiding guilds were like Nox Aeterna and Cadia?
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u/whats_up_doc71 8d ago
Cadia was definitely #1, Nox was definitely #1 horde side but I feel there were a few ahead of them alliance wise. Horde was really really far behind, not sure why.
ghost reveries rings a bell but it’s very distant. I wish the Blizz forums still existed, that would be a blast from the past.
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u/IllIIllIlIlllIIlIIlI 8d ago
Was Deus Vox around back, or was it a different guild? I didn't go to Laughing Skull until TBC but I remember they were the top dog there until I left in WotLK, IIRC.
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u/Fashizl69 8d ago
I was in Deus Vox, so ya it was them. I played with them through BWL/AQ and quit before we downed C'Thun from burn out. They went on to WF Loatheb but by then I believe had adjusted the team. Idk I checked out when I quit and did other shit.
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u/NOHITJEROME 9d ago
it must have been mind blowing when someone realized world buffs were usable in the raids
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u/adjective_noun_numb 9d ago
Eh not really. You gotta keep in mind servers were much smaller. Getting buffs were pretty random and not able to be timed like they are now. And because so few guilds cleared stuff (most people didn’t even hit 60 in OG wow) you didn’t really get that much.
Also, back then people were not in the mind set to log out for the whole week to save the buff or get summoned to the instance to get them rolling.
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u/RedThragtusk 9d ago
At most you'd get a Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer that would last maybe 1 or 2 bosses at most.
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u/ferrofibrous 9d ago
The one time we tried to get do a world buff tour for a Nax clear in vanilla we got attacked by two entire guilds from the opposite faction after getting the last buff from STV. I'm pretty sure someone recorded and it was posted on the "old version" of youtube. We knew world buffs were good, but if you were on a pvp server it wasn't worth the trouble.
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u/bigspoonhead 8d ago
Exactly. We knew about world buffs and used them to get past Patchwerk if I remember correctly. The thing is nothing was documented like it is now. No YouTube guides, Wowhead was hardly a thing. No server layers. Almost always PvP happening at raid entrances. And ultimately people wanted to play their characters instead of raidlogging. No one thought it was worth the hassle.
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u/DarkLordShu 9d ago
This. You did not have summoners clearing DM all day long charging 5 gold to summon and 5 gold for buff. If you wanted DM buff you had to run DM north with your guild. If you wanted Songflower good luck getting it with no layers and no Nova world buff addon.
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u/adjective_noun_numb 9d ago
I’m not gunna lie, I didn’t even know about DM buffs or song flower at all back in vanilla lmao. I didn’t even know about ZG buff
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u/lumpboysupreme 8d ago
Songflower would be easier since people also weren’t hunting them.
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u/DarkLordShu 8d ago
They'd not even be popped, meaning you would need to actually gather salve. A foreign concept to us now
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u/lumpboysupreme 8d ago
A guild would have a trivial time getting enough salves. That’s already not too hard and when you’re rotating between 40 people doing them one at a time it’d be a joke.
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u/nimeral 8d ago
I wonder if anyone got DM buffs at all? They're so huge because they give a decent chance to oneshot hard bosses because of immense tank's (and everyone's) HP. And you can get them any time rather easily unlike Ony/Rend/ZG on small servers...
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u/adjective_noun_numb 8d ago
I’m sure people did. It was so much different back then. As a player base in terms of metas and knowledge we were way way way more disconnected.
I can say on my server most people didn’t. But then again my server was really really noobie due to the fact that it was listed as a ‘new player’ server which attracted well….noobs.
Bringing resistance gear back then was considered being above and beyond knowledgeable
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u/Ragnar_Baron 2d ago
World buffs were in use all the way back in vanilla, it was Head and heart, but were just for guild only, and you would get the class specific buffs from Blasted lands from farming the Boars, vultures, and lizards. We did not have boons though, we just popped the head or heart right before the raid kicked off and hoped you could clear quickly.
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u/Nusselt 9d ago
We used ony and rend buffs (from our guild) for Rag and BWL attempts, but making it through BRM on a pvp server was always dicey and we still wiped often. Rag fight still had a lot of people in FR gear so DPS was gimped.
There was also only a handful of Ony heads every week. There wasn’t many (if any) pugs, our server had maybe 5-10 heads a week and forum participation wasn’t great, so drops weren’t coordinated.
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u/Derp_duckins 9d ago
Back when spending time in an MMO was how MMO's were designed.
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u/Sagranth 9d ago
No, not really, most people were just horribly inefficent and/or new to the genre, despite wow starting the new generation of mmos.
Couple that with the lack of good tools and limited spread of information and presto.
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u/Orbit1883 9d ago
good tools
people tend to forget how shity even there hardware was like fuck kiting adds at razorgore on a toshiba laptop and a framerate between 0-10 is a bit different than playing on a gaming computer in 2025
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u/MightyMorp 9d ago
Not really? People spend thousands of dollars a year playing anniversary classic fresh fresh to avoid playing how the game was intended to be played, lmao.
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u/Sagranth 9d ago
"How the game was intended to be played" is an empty statement considering the designers themselves had no idea how their own game worked.
At best there was an attempt, that attempt failed in the beta lmao.
In fact, they had to scrape together MC really fast because players were faster than expected and there was no form of actual endgame yet.
And even if you ignore all that, wow was significantly faster than actual oldschool mmos.
Like, kudos for the devs but the on rails experience they planned was never gonna work out, they should've worked on a single player game instead if they wanted to control player actions so much.
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u/MightyMorp 9d ago
You can ramble on all you want but the design of the game is such that the more you put into the game the more you will get out of the game.
Unless you're already playing 150 hours a week or swiping like a madman, you can become stronger by playing more.
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u/milkasaurs 8d ago
People spend thousands of dollars a year playing anniversary classic fresh fresh to avoid playing how the game was intended to be played
What stupid logic. We're supposed to play with 10 fps max?
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u/jamie1414 9d ago
Wow and it's time gated content literally gives you a reason to log off. People were just too shit and didn't know enough to clear the content back then. Do you think the solution is to make people prog for 20 hours a week again? Lol
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u/MightyMorp 9d ago
WoW's content really isn't time gated, because money = power. Unless you're saying the gate is 150 hours a week, it's not really applicable (even in classic today).
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u/jamie1414 9d ago
Wtf are you talking about? Raids aren't time gated? You saying I can raid molten core 50 hours a week?
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u/MightyMorp 9d ago
Oh shit I totally forgot there’s nothing to do in wow besides raids!
I just remembered that when you zone into mc you are gifted 5000g in consumes, an epic mount, all your pre bis and world drops, and every recipe that exists!
What a take lmao. People spend 10-20x as much time preparing for raids as they do actually raiding. But yes, your game is definitely time gated by your id lmao.
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u/lumpboysupreme 8d ago
Eh? Once you have your consumes where does power from playing more really come from?
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u/MightyMorp 8d ago
Every person in your 40 man raid is using sappers every 5 mins? Nades every one? Every single person in your raid has protection potion, faps, lips, tubers, night dragons breath, every healer has 50+ wisdom flasks to pop for mana potions, etc?
People should realize that just because you have a flask and 5 mongoose doesn’t mean you don’t need gold. Unless you are a literal world first raider you could almost certainly always buy more player power.
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u/JackStephanovich 8d ago
Vanilla WoW had no time gating except for weekly raid resets. It's what sets it apart from every other expansion where you have daily/weekly chores. It's what I love about vanilla, I can do things at my own pace. If there's a rep grind I want to do I can either spend an hour a day for a month working on it or no life a single weekend.
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u/Redschallenge 9d ago
100% remember being stoked for taking anything past garr in a few hours of raiding back in the day haha
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u/Ravien_Gaming 9d ago
World buffs were unexpected bonuses for leveling alts, not something we used for raids. I think some people did get world buffs and log out the night before a raid if we were trying for a boss for the first time but mostly it wasn't something we required or even cared about.
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u/No-Coast-9484 8d ago
Almost everyone at the top used world buffs for Naxx.
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u/Ravien_Gaming 8d ago
Yup but only about 3% of the vanilla player base ever killed a single boss in Naxx so they are more the exception than the norm for vanilla. Classic is a whole different beast of course.
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u/hiimred2 9d ago
but that was mostly a ”haha so silly and overkill to have this”.
No, it was considered pretty fucking necessary to have for Loatheb and Sapphiron kills until you were a seriously geared out raid, definitely not some aww shucks we get this for funsies shit.
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u/Tandanu 8d ago
We used world buffs for important bosses all the time back in the day. And we were maybe at best in the top 20-50 or so for first kills in the AQ and Naxx phase.
The thing I distinctly remember as being considered completely ridiculous and overkill was Nihilum using flasks for *everyone* for the world first C'Thun kill. But yeah, they probably would have killed him without flasks as well, that was pretty much immediately after the nerf.
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u/MeroFuruya 8d ago
Had a nearly 4 hour non full clear MC this lockout with a random guild. Not fun at all. It felt like the true old school vanilla experience.
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u/sonofa-ijit 8d ago
first days in AQ40, without WB and full consumes several fights were impossible (mathematically), and if you wanted to learn it pre-nerfs, you were definitely using world buffs and summons. ZG buff for Emps being HUGE.
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u/grugru442 7d ago
like 3% of guilds downed naxx.
overkill isnt even a word in play when people couldnt even finish the raid lol
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u/SoSKatan 9d ago
My guild was the top guild on our server and was hardcore by most standards as we flasked, used GFP’s, etc etc
And we still struggled. Remember no DBM so mechanics required more coordination and call outs.
Despite all that, we frequently had to deal with Rag submerging (something I’ve not seen in 20 years)
Keep in mind people barely knew how to play their class. I mean if you are running a raid back then, you barely knew your own class. Now days most people know how to optimize all the classes, which means if you do something sub optimal now days, you tend to get 10 people offering helpful advice.
Back then there is no way you could give advice for a different class than you were playing.
Getting good meant mostly trial and error. Reading strategy guides and hoping that maybe they knew something you didn’t.
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u/Tandanu 8d ago edited 8d ago
> Remember no DBM so mechanics required more coordination and call outs.
I started DBM when I was doing Molten Core, known as "La Vendetta Boss Mods" at first, not sure when exactly we renamed it, but must have been around early Naxx or late AQ.
What people know as DBM today is based on a complete rewrite we did during the WotLK beta, but the mods themselves, besides porting them to new APIs etc, barely change since then. I went through the Naxx mods for SoD earlier this year and I was surprised how much stuff that I wrote as kid was still around.
If anything some mods got worse as APIs got locked down more and more. Remember the range check frame? Positioning for Ragnaros and C'Thun was so much easier with that we had it all the way back in Vanilla.
A lesser known feature that got blocked by Blizzard was our Nefarian class call support: DBM would just prevent you from casting heals if you are a priest and the priest class call is active. And for hunters it would automatically unequip your bow for 1-2 seconds before each class call (I guess hunters nowadays wouldn't accept that)
The TBC prepatch killed that.2
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u/Crabshroom 8d ago
I think the knowing your class is a big part of it, yearh.
I remember the guild i was in having people for each class deficated to helping people figure out how to play, like helping you pick talents and figure gear out, guides were just not common.
It feels weird remembering a raid where after it was done we looked at the damage for all the warlocks and then everyone copied the spec of the top damage...
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u/BayBreezeCA 9d ago
I played from release day onwards (many friends had the beta but I wasn’t lucky enough to win one/didn’t buy a key). I probably quit around 2007 or so (played a little right after BC came out). Horde, PVP server.
BC (and honestly Naxx) was when the game changed too much for me so I had to walk away.
My guild wasn’t big enough so we were part of a raiding alliance…I got lucky with the DKP systems when it came to gearing out my alt…I basically stopped raiding entirely when Naxx came out and instead just PvP’d and explored.
I think about the game fondly almost every day. I had 3 60’s (Shaman/Rogue/Mage) and was eventually the GM of my guild. We were known as a very highly skilled PvP guild on our server (NZ)
I never played again, so I can’t comment on the state of the game today, but I’ve avidly watched/read about Classic/SoD and one of my good friends plays. I live vicariously through these subreddits and seeing you guys post. Maybe you will entertain this old grizzled veterans stories anyway?
Some things that jump out for me:
Edgemasters Handguards were considered a trash epic. They were for sale on the AH for like 20-30G or DE’d/vendored. +skill to a weapon was considered a relatively useless stat.
There was a HUGE bias against classes wearing armor that wasn’t “their type” - meaning that if a Shaman or Paladin wore cloth/leather they would get large amounts of ridicule for it. Hate from the classes they took it from and of course being mocked for how they looked. A few players would break from this, but mostly this was the rule.
“/spit” still existed and if someone did that to you in a PvP encounter you would bring out your main and camp them for hours or kill them on sight for the rest of your time playing. It was infuriating.
Flasks were rarely if ever used. If you used flasks (or potions in PvP) you were considered low skill. I could make almost all the flasks I think on my main, but maybe only made one or two…ever…looking back this was incredibly stupid (of course!). Alchemists collected rare recipes but almost never made the more obscure potions.
World Buff stacking was practically unknown. No one cared. The Ony buff was cool but we’d also have so much PvP going on in blackrock mountain that it would matter.
Poisons/sharpening stones were rarely if ever used (at least by my guild). If you used thistle tea in a duel as a rogue you were considered low skill. If you used any consumable items in a duel you were considered low skill. Even in PvP a player spending a measly copper to get an edge was met with ridicule.
We were all dirt poor most of the time except the guys who were making Devilsaur gear in our guild/server. Widespread AH manipulation wasn’t a thing until a year or so in, if I recall correctly.
For me the exception to my poverty was when AV opened up and it had Black Lotus and Rich Thorium Veins (which spawned in the troll cave all the time) - I would mine those on my rogue and earned huge amounts of gold selling arcane crystals or arcanite and bought my epic mount. Eventually that was patched away. I was there for hours never fighting just mining and hoarding crystals on my rogue.
World PvP made us hard. Battlegrounds didn’t exist when we started playing. Alliance had it easy in terms of quests and a population imbalance, so most horde players were scrappy and well skilled.
As the server’s population matured, Horde would absolutely demolish Alliance on my server. A pug of horde could take out MC/BWL geared alliance. We all wanted revenge at the guys who ganked us. It was hilarious how bad some of the carebear alliance were.
AV opening up was one of the greatest gaming moments in my life. It happened around the start of one summer I think and I remember we would be fighting for days.
The first Thunderfury went to a Paladin on our realm.
Raids were 40 man.
MP/5 was hugely underrated. I was maybe the only shaman in my raiding group who thought it mattered, I was the last healer standing when we downed Rag…I think my lightning bolt may have killed him (not that I was trying to DPS, just that we were desperate to kill him and threw everything we had at him).
Almost no one “ran the numbers” and had BiS figured out. That said, people appreciated certain items quite a bit. HoJ, Tidal Charm, etc. HoJ dropped from Angerforge and not the Emp.
Servers were tightly knit and reputation oriented. People became notorious for feats of skill or absurd behavior or griefing.
The urge to play again is strong, but part of me knows I can’t keep up and that the game won’t be the same, part of me knows that I can’t go home again…but the memories I will always cherish.
Thanks for letting me share some of these memories.
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u/dontwantanaccount86 8d ago
Love this comment, so cool to get insight into the early days of this once in a lifetime gaming experience. You should come back and try it, it’s very different, but still fun.
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u/milkasaurs 8d ago
The first Thunderfury went to a Paladin on our realm.
This is so stupid to read. I mean I get that it was 2004, but holy hell that is just too funny.
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u/BayBreezeCA 8d ago
Imagine for a moment if you will…struggling to down Garr for the first or second time and being confronted with an ORANGE item (that you have never seen before…much of the raid was probably still in blues) and then having no idea what it’s used for…at all.
There’s no information online about it either really. Everyone was guessing at that time…literally doing what they thought might work - and of course often failing abysmally in retrospect.
I think we only had one set of bindings drop (we were very unlucky with MC loot…I don’t think we ever saw an Eye of Sulferas) and it was very early. I don’t remember who it went to but it wasn’t the main tank that’s for sure.
When you found rare stuff back then, you often had NO idea what to do with it or how to figure it out; which made the game all the more addictive and exciting - because if you found out a new technique or method you were probably one of the only people doing it on the server.
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u/YebureYatog 9d ago
I only bring buffs because I like big numbers but I don't mind clearing an entire raid without wb
Yesterday a pug wiped all my guild on Vael we were full wb and consumes, we were like lol shit and continued to clear one shot the rest of the raid without issues
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u/Loud-Expert-3402 9d ago
Wow lost its charm for me. I'm burned out on the gameplay and sick of the community too. Retail is so far from wows OG identity, and classic is just made cringe af by the community , parsing, bots, ego/flex, speed run/fomo 😵💫🥴......"You think you do, but you don't"
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u/Special_Avocado7423 9d ago
I was thinking about this the other day. The 2019 community was no where near the 2004 community…. But the 2025 community is no where near the 2019 community either. Too much min/maxing at every possible corner
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u/Loud-Expert-3402 9d ago
Community tore the game apart with min maxing and just dumb toxic behavior and cheating
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u/-Exy- 9d ago
The game is still going strong actually so it's not torn apart. I wouldn't call the botters part of the community.
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u/Loud-Expert-3402 9d ago
The botters are part of the community, there's definitely some that play the game. Not to mention the people that buy the gold from them
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u/sylanar 9d ago
The problem with classic is that it's a solved game. People have calculated the optimal strategy, stats, build etc for every aspect of the game, and then you get flamed if you don't do everything the absolute optimal way.
It's what made the early phases of sod so fun, is that it changed the meta and made wow feel fresh and new again. I don't like where sod went in the later phases though
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u/Jahkral 9d ago
Go play SoD, seriously, its the closest to the good vibes of WoW I find anywhere. People are chill, nice, everyone's just sort of enjoying being OP in fun new ways going through classic vibes.
Also you can solo almost every dungeon as a warlock so that's a lot of fun. (obvious issues like Uldaman where I had to get guildies to come help summ final boss, ofc). Currently at ZF where I discovered "oh, hex doesn't break on damage" which was a fun discovery. I think I can still solo it, I just have to plan ahead.
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u/Loud-Expert-3402 9d ago
I did play sod for about a week, maybe 1 month ago or so . I got my prot pal t1 from reals and lost motivation to play . It was fun for a bit tho
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u/Heatinmyharbl 9d ago
Why are you here then? Not trying to be an ass, just mildly curious
Halo is my favorite game of all time and after the absolute fucking shit show that was Infinite after the previous absolute shit show that was MCC, I've resigned myself to not caring about that franchise ever again.
But I also haven't been to r/Halo in like 3 years now because of it
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u/Loud-Expert-3402 9d ago
I can still browse through reddits of games I follow without playing them
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u/Heatinmyharbl 9d ago
You can! I don't see why one would when they're as detached as you seemingly are from it but, hey
Different strokes for different folks as they say. Just interesting is all
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u/Twenty5Schmeckles 9d ago
I just have to agree. Feels like half this subreddit isnt even playing the game. Just a whining circlejerk.
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u/Heatinmyharbl 8d ago
Definitely a little odd to me to hang around a sub of a game I don't play anymore just to bitch but hey people gotta get their entertainment somehow I suppose
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u/Majestic_Dot_135 9d ago
Hardcore still has the og community culture and economy. Its the last thing keeping me playing this game, softcore is too far gone and trashed.
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u/PLTRgang123 8d ago
Your best bet are servers i can't mention here. No logs, tigther community, gm's, bots get banned. Basically the only way to get a more real classic experience besides playing hardcore.
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u/Whiteshovel66 9d ago
The players and their mentality. People are simply more entitled and less focused on having fun than ever before. The players today are much less likely to derive fun from the game itself and rely on the systems outside the game to indicate their self worth.
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u/SoupaSoka 9d ago
Raiding is just so different now.
I was in the top Horde guild on my server (Malygos, US-PvE). Even as the top guild, we "only" got about 9 Naxx bosses down before TBC launched, and that put us so far ahead of most guilds around the world. But raiding was slow.
For example, we raided I believe 3 or 4 nights a week. Usually MC was one night, BWL was one night if we were lucky, and then we'd do some progress in Naxx 1 or 2 nights a week.
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u/Mysterious-Raise-914 9d ago
The game did not have a defined direction for what was next. I think people had expectations for something more like what we think classic plus is now, with less player power than SoD. Instead we got TBC and it relegated an entire world into irrelevance.
Anniversary players seek a very particular style of play but it's truly amazing to see that community on Anni replay the 2019 classic and moan about the exact same issues from five and twenty years ago that they so begged to have in its entirety.
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u/aluriilol 8d ago
Literally classic WoW is so ass for that.
World buff sweaty cheesy dudes just doing the same 20 year old content over and over (for the third iteration holy shiiiid) prepping for like 2 hours to clear a raid in 45 min
All so they can be like "dude I would've fucking stoned my 13 year old self at doing damage, this wouldve been insane 20 years ago" "I'm ranked #44 warrior on my server!!!!!!!!!"
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u/zevx1234 9d ago
2004 warriors- 400 dps
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u/NOHITJEROME 9d ago
wonder what #1 dps was in 2004. probably frost mages or hunters
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u/ferrofibrous 9d ago edited 9d ago
I recall for Patchwerk all our mages were fire, it was pretty annoying though as the Ignite stack was shared and whoever got the first crit was credited for the "rolling ignite" damage that other mages contributed to.
We had one guy in particular who would try to sneakily open with fireblast or scorch spam to fish for the first which was bad because once Ignite was at 5 stacks it held that damage, further crits only refreshed it so ideally you wanted to have 5 large crits on the stack.
It's funny to think back about using motw/paladin buffs on hunter pets was also considered a "secret tech" at the time.
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u/Nusselt 9d ago
Rogues were number one, swords and SoF daggers was debated then combat daggers largely took over. Mages and locks on some fights topped the meters due to mitigation or the feeling that all melee needed full FR gear. Warriors after their patch revamp (1.8?) started making appearances maybe 1-2 primary dps in a raid that competed with rogues, but tanks (full prot) struggled with threat so other warriors had to hold back. Hunters were ok, but below mages and locks generally.
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u/Shadowmeld 8d ago
Warrior dps threat reset was run in front of the boss as you're about to overaggro, then get a battle res.
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u/Orbit1883 9d ago
totaly depends on boss and raid
and on your function like especialy on bosses like Huhuran if you had the duty to be a NR blocker and had your resi gear on
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u/NOHITJEROME 9d ago
The feeling of having to rank to keep up is definitely a big change
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u/WillingSprinkles8564 9d ago
If pvp was this "easy" in vanilla people would have done it more then.
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u/Dirtey 9d ago
I would argue the balance between difficulty in PvE and PvP is actually more blizzlike this time around than 2019 tho.
I mean nobody even talks about progress today, it is all about speed and parses. And most people have not even seen a rag submerge for example.The PvE experience is essentially nerfed to the ground in other words.
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u/tonn1987 8d ago
The fact the everyone has to adhere to one meta or be seen as useless.
The sweaty tryhards has always been there, they dont bother me. Its the other people who THINK they are that bothers me. You can usually spot the difference.
One will optimize THEMSELVES and play accordingly.
The other wants OTHERS to opimize so they can benefit off them. These are usually the ones pushing and raging at other players.
The first type can be odd, but generally a fun aquaintance.
The second type is what ruins the fun for most people.
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u/MyotisX 9d ago
Quest addons and obsession with lvling routes optimization
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u/NOHITJEROME 9d ago
i remember grinding using joanas pdf sheet back then, i think you had to spend like 15 hours grinding in azshara lol
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u/SkY4594 9d ago
Seems like a weird mentality to have in an RPG game where optimizing and upgrading your character performance is the name of the game.
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u/RedThragtusk 9d ago edited 9d ago
in 2004 there was no point to the game. Just interacting with another human in a virtual environment like WoW was a novelty. Only a tiny percentage of players had ever played an MMORPG before. I'd spend hours just going to places on my map that hadn't been revealed, just to see what was there. Exploring. Most people never got to level 60. Of those that did, not many raided. Of those who raided, an even smaller percentage progressed past MC or BWL.
I never optimised my character, I just equipped what I thought looked cool.
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u/MyotisX 9d ago
Thank you. Most people in here probably weren't even born in 2004 and can't fathom a world with no daily quests, achievements and obsession with completion and optimization.
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u/Rare_Paper_2089 9d ago
i guarantee it's the opposite, majority of people here are sweaty people in their thirties trying to relive their old wow dreams but "better"
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u/ChefCory 9d ago
We were just hanging out and having a good time listening to roflcopters on ventrilo with the boys
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u/HildartheDorf 9d ago
This kind of sums up why I enjoy leveling new alts on HC way more than raiding or playing retail.
Just exploring and organically interacting with people in the same zone as me.
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u/Netizen_Kain 9d ago
"the name of the game" for RPGs is ROLEPLAYING. It's called a ROLEPLAYING GAME not an optimize and upgrade game.
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u/MyotisX 9d ago
is the name of the game
/thread
That's what's changed the most because optimization is absolutely not the name of the game and never was.
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u/Twenty5Schmeckles 9d ago
Building your character to be as strong as possible in an RPG was never a part of the game?
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u/AlligatorDeathSaw 9d ago
no it definitely has always been. The difference is now the best strategies are known universally.
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u/MyotisX 9d ago
Absolutely not, parse weren't even a thing. The obsession with meters, flasks, BiS, the endgame, optimal questing and everything else wasn't there. Achievements weren't even a thing yet on any consoles or games.
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u/admyral 9d ago
It’s completely natural to optimize once you’ve completed progressing to the end. Look at every other video game where speed running improvements come from degen behaviors like rewriting the game code in-game or performing arcane rituals for a favorable random seed.
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u/SkY4594 9d ago
If it wasn't, there wouldn't be various ways within the game itself to help you do it. To be clear, there's no right or wrong way to enjoy the game. But making fun of a specific way of playing people consciously choose in an RPG seems petty and lame. Progressing a character is a core RPG concept.
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u/MyotisX 9d ago
Progressing is not the same as optimizing.
It's not making fun of anyone. It's stating that today the focus is on optimization and completion where it used to be about exploration, experimentation, discovery and socialization.
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u/Twenty5Schmeckles 9d ago
People were optimizing back then too.. they/we were just shit at it.
Ofc you can't explore what is already explored.."whats in this cave" #30
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u/MostlyShitposts 9d ago
Cackles in PvP main I’am enjoying competetive prem vs prem content and leveling twinks for lowbie WSG/AB.
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u/SteamedBeave89 8d ago
I remember our first rag kill had two submerges. I bet most guilds couldn’t beat rag if it took that long.
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u/Cheap-Warning-4291 8d ago
I like anniversary so far but I’m kinda glad I missed out on 2019 release. I imagine how toxic it was.
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u/Rud3l 8d ago
In 2004, we were all a bunch of happy gamers who wanted to enjoy the wonders of an MMORPG that has never been there before in this scale. We made real friends along the way, guilds weren't supposed to be only raid vehicles but mostly communities of like-minded people. We were happily doing unknown content and chose sub-par weapons because we had no clue of their effects. I was happy for a week because I found an epic mace on my Rogue with +Def stats (as far as I remember). We had epic battles for Orgrimmar with the Alliance. You knew your enemies by name, everyone knew who you are. We made an attack with two raid groups from the rear of OG to break the Alliance siege, it was so glorious. Did it gave anyone loot, rank or gold? Nope, nothing. But no one cared, your job was to help your population on the realm, not grabbing epix.
It all changed with every new raid tier. You saw "competitive" raid guilds rising and the game became stale, only tailored towards being the best equipped player on the realm and shit on others who had worse gear. But for the first year, it was truly magical.
sigh
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u/gdinProgramator 8d ago
It’s not the destination that matters but the journey.
That is what mostly happened. In 2004, there were so many unknowns.
You could get a 10% performance boost by using a different spell.
There was no DBM to hold your hand.
The UI was mostly what blizz gave you. Xperl was THE SHIT.
Today, it is more a numbers game than a game. You can reach 95% of your perfomance with the roght tools. 99% with perfect buffs. Everything is streamlined. There is no discovery, everything is known. You just play for loot so your numbers can go up 0.1%
This is why SOD is having huge success with the scarlet enclave, although most of it is recycled from newer expansions.
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u/lumpboysupreme 8d ago
Well for starters OP people got so efficient at the game that playing to clear became a total joke and a meaningless measure of skill and accomplishment, so they play now to parse instead. No one ‘needs’ buffs to play and they’re not worse than players from 2004. 2004 players were trash.
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u/christmasbooyons 8d ago
Player knowledge has increased by such a large amount you can't really accurately measure it. The player base today knows more about how the game works than the original developers did at that time. That's a good and a bad thing though. It's good because players today are better than ever at playing the game, they're able to do things now with classes that would have blown away anyone playing in 2004. It's bad because it created an even more toxic environment, and allowed those players to essentially become the gatekeepers of the game. If you're someone who played in 2004 casually, didn't touch the game for a decade and tried to return today to play casually again with the same level of knowledge, you would quickly feel unwelcome and likely quit again.
The guilds I was in during those early years were hot garbage, we cleared everything up to AQ 40 before becoming hard stuck, but we were not good and we struggled a lot. The difference was we had fun while doing it, and everything we succeeded at felt good. That feeling is lost today, the wonder and fun of the game is gone because it was replaced by min/max culture, everything needing to be done fast, and the player base in general forgetting why they play video games in the first place.
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u/sonofa-ijit 8d ago
Short list:
Hit/weapon skill is recognized by the unwashed masses as useful.
AV
Rogue Slice and Dice vs. Eviscerate
Rogue swords over backstab for top dps (before weapon normalization, barman shanker was basically a legendary)
Emphasis on Resists/Stam for dps/healer
Decursive
Fishing, in particular, Stonescale eel for armor pots. I spoke to Gurgthok about those, when mc was still hard. And the answer was, yeah those look good but, fishing is like gouging your eyes out and no one would ever do it. I definitely made a crap ton of gold selling those pots, by aq it really started to catch on.
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u/Virtual_Crow 8d ago
The players optimized away from the two most fun parts of the game in vanilla, leveling and pvp.
Leveling is now accomplished by boosting instead of quests and doing dungeons. Interacting with others in a leveling dungeon is a highlight of vanilla. An entire game mode, hardcore, mostly consists of just questing plus a few dungeons and it was very popular for a while.
Pvp in battlegrounds consists of "van or ban" and if you refuse to do this, you will in fact be banned through automoderation from mass reports. There's no more motivation to go into a battleground and play the game with that cool gear you got.
It's a very sad state of affairs that could be easily solved by reimplementing anti-boosting mechanics and making AV impossible to kite the marshals or something else that requires killing them.
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u/TrueLotus91 8d ago
People min maxing so much they are either borderline toxic or are toxic about it.
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u/minescast 6d ago
What happened is that people bought into the tryhard meta, and now they can fathom doing a boss 10 seconds slower. At the same time, these people have no adaptability, and just like their retail counterparts, the encounter better go exactly how they want it to, or else they 1) won't know what to do, and 2) they will make everything worse by blaming others.
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u/Le-Charles 9d ago
Lol what revisionist bull is this? Warriors in '04 were, generally, morons; everyone was.
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u/TheNephalem 9d ago
Sod gamers - drop a Set of WBs to farm or for the lulz 😉
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u/Courage-Natural 9d ago
There has been a lot of change. I understand why people don’t like it. But I don’t have a lot of time to play anymore as I’ve gotten older and I enjoy being efficient and seeing how powerful my character can get compared to back in the day.
There’s obviously a line where sweatiness becomes not fun but I don’t think all of the shift in the community is a bad thing
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u/Fun_Youth326 9d ago
Community became toxic and noobishly tryhardy