I have fond memories of Vanilla WoW. I met a lot of wonderful people and some which have stayed friends through the many xpacs that followed and the adulting that accompanied those xpacs.
What I can say without a shadow of a doubt is that returning to Classic is both terrifying and awful at the same time. I am one of the lucky ones who remembers all the bad and can barely remember the good compared with how it is today. Our quality of in game life is so much better. Now let me start by saying I don’t remember it being as hard as it is currently, I suspect some further things need to happen to make it playable OR I was max levelled when this patch came out and I have repressed how difficult it actually was. It seems tuned differently, but it could be that we are all in whites in the demo but at level 15 we would have had some gear with benefits. Either way, it is hard.
I recreated my baby girl. Mage – Saradouglass – but only called her Sarad.
Mages were notoriously easy to kill in Vanilla, people mocked you for playing one because it was constant death (or near death) and I concur. After playing for only 40 minutes I racked up 5 deaths. yes, 5. That is more than 1 every 10 minutes.
And not only that, I only managed to complete 1 quest – collect 8 gnoll paws.
I might go back in…might…it was pretty traumatic. The first of the traumas occurred when I went to kill a mob and realised I had no mana after killing 1 mob already, so I died. I then…(I am so ashamed of this) ran all the way back to Sentinel Hill from Moonbrook because I needed food and water. Let that sink in. A mage…a level 15 mage….went to get food and water. Instead of just…I don’t know…CONJURING MY OWN!?!!? Yup. I am that mage.
Part of the reason I died so much was this. Resists, parries, misses. Constantly. Every second to third spell would not land but you can bet your little nuggets it used my mana. It was resist-city people, RESIST CITY!!!
I even added all my points into my talents which helped with mobs resisting!! All of them!
Can we take a moment to oooh and aaah over the majesty that is these talent trees! Appreciate the pictures that are behind the actual talents – the artwork added a lovely visual element to the trees which I really miss now. We used to have to go midway (or all the way) down into Arcane to access the good stuff then spend whatever else was left in frost because running MC everything was immune to fire so there was no point being a fire mage…at least…that is what my memory is telling me. It was a long time ago ok :p
I tried to go to Moonbrook to kill defias for bandanas and I spent the entire time just sitting and eating/drinking. I just wasn’t getting enough mana back, there was no regen. I did pick up a pair of Cuffs which had spirit…you know…the stat we all needed a little bit of to get mana back but all the healers would steal or get priority on. Like they need to heal or some rubbish?!?!?
Look at that charcter screen, with the resistances you had to magics and such a simple display of your stats. Even the skill tab had all the weapons skills back which levelled up when I did. It was exciting and made me laugh to see the “Unarmed” skill back.
For a full hit of nostalgia, because dying 5 times in 40 minutes wasn’t painful enough, I checked out my spell book and found all the different ranks of spells. I had completely forgotten about it until seeing them. Admittedly I miss the added gameplay on fights and in the field this presented you with. I have fond memories of BWL and using the lowest ranks of our Blizzard whilst we chain cast it on the balcony to slow down the adds at Nefarion. Mages had one job, to get the lowest rank, spec into frosty nova and then stand and spam. The benefit was it cost peanuts to cast, did some extra damage but slowed the mobs for as long as the rest of the DPS needed them to be. Ahhh the memories – I miss those raids.
I took way too many screenshots for the 40 minutes I was in game but I wanted to ensure I captured what I could incase the demo is pulled for virtual ticket holders soon. I am just glad I decided to jump in after Blizzcon and have a play because I certainly think a lot of people are going to be shocked at how different the game is now (and how much easier).
Differences I had forgotten about:
- Instant scroll text
- No points on the map of where to go
- Multiple Self-buffs ( I had 3 self buffs at one point plus my herbalism tracking).
- Buffing other people (yes I know some of us just got some back)
- Quests have to be actually tracked they aren’t automatically added to your side bar.
- Level Spam with what you had gained (awesome)
- Running out of mana after killing one mob
- Terror when you see a second mob come
- Remembering how to polymorph and manage multiple mobs
- Running back….anywhere….mountless (I haven’t actually levelled a new toon for a very very very long time).
- The sheer time sink of eating and drinking.
What about you guys? Have you played, do you want to? I think I have experienced enough to know that I love the game as it is now and I cannot imagine ever wanting to willingly go back to those days, but you know…if someone gets a 40 man guild going I might be tempted….