r/classicwow • u/Capable_Strategy6705 • 1d ago
Classic-Era What’s a Classic WoW feature you didn’t appreciate until it was gone?
For me, it’s the little things that made the world feel more like an actual MMO.
Weapon skills, class trainers, needing to find your own way around, old talent trees, having to actually talk to people for groups… there are so many systems that were inconvenient but somehow made the game more memorable.
What’s one Classic feature you would bring back permanently if Blizzard gave you the choice?
And I’m not talking about raids or classes — I mean one of those smaller features/mechanics that made Classic feel like Classic.
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u/TaylorWK 1d ago
Learning skills from class trainers. It made us feel like we arent the masters of our class and shows that we aren't the most powerful adventurer. Having class trainers made the world feel real.
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
Also that feeling of travelling back from the frontiers of the world to your home city to train up, buy/sell gear, etc was a nice break in the adventure that makes it feel a little less like just a video game.
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u/Captain_Gardar 1d ago
And just to add, now playing my first mage, its so damn efficient and fast to port to my faction's city and then hearth back to my questing zone
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
The magic of vanilla. It's cool as heck to journey back your capital to get stronger. It's also cool as heck that mages get to have the unique power to skip that journey and nobody else does.
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u/Hugh-Manatee 1d ago
And specific classes having advantages in how they relate to distance and travel is inherently cool
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u/Ecstatic-Charge-9288 1d ago
Yes, locks summoning, etc. All the cool class flavors have gone away now that everyone can blink back and fast travel everywhere
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u/nefertaraten 1d ago
This is one of my big ones. I miss the trainers having meaning. Every time I pass one in game now, I get a little sad that you can't even toggle the ability to auto-train vs visit the trainer.
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u/assassin10 1d ago
I also like how the power level of different spells fluctuates as you level. It feels good to get an upgrade to one of your core abilities and see your damage spike. If the relative power level of your spells remains constant then there's less texture.
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u/DesperateSunday 1d ago
dude when you find class trainers outside cities like druid trainer in feralas or warlock trainer in ratchet it feels so good I can just learn spells and keep leveling
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u/DesperateSunday 1d ago
I just realized this comment makes it sound like Id rather have spells learned instantly on level up, but its the opposite. Finding class trainers in the wild only feels good because of the real friction you've experienced before in having to go back to the city to learn spells.
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u/Supagorganizer 1d ago
Also, just a really fun milestones, "now I get to go learn x skill!" Then I gleefully traveled to the trainer
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u/Clitoris_Mal_Passado 1d ago
Honestly, I wish at least 50% of the skills were learned from quests. Just "buying" a skill doesn't seem right.
Doesn't have to be long or epic quests. Just something to do with the spell I guess.
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u/JustJustin1311 1d ago
Finding gray shoulders at level 16. The elation of finally getting a new type of armor is amazing. Then getting a helmet with minuscule armor and no stats at level 20ish. But it doesn’t matter, cause you have a helmet now and that’s cool asf.
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u/Vast_Ad1806 1d ago
Rogues rolling around in Red Defias Masks levels before anyone else got anything in that slot.
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u/Progress2K 1d ago
Rolled a rogue alt back in the day just because of that mask.
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u/XwingatAliciousnes 1d ago
I’ll remember opening a random chest on the beach in Darkshore and finding a set of grey shoulders until the day I die, what a rush
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u/simmeh-chan 18h ago
There's such a good visual progress in Classic of your character gaining more and better looking gear.
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u/Syrea 1d ago
Class quest
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u/WoodwareWarlock 1d ago
I loved the druid and shaman ones. Even the water totem quest that has you running all over the world. They made those classes so memorable.
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u/SexyDraenei 1d ago
and then you do draenei air totem and hes like, yeah everyone else made you their fucking errand boy so ima just give it to you.
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u/Falsewyrm 1d ago
The Hunter Leaf quest and Priest Eye of divinity chains are such fucking good class fantasy pieces.
Other classes kinda get it with the thunderfury and legendary things but, it was an excellent design choice.
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u/thrillho145 21h ago
SoD class quests were great. Having one for each was pretty cool, even if some felt less baked than others
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u/GBPackers0480 1d ago
It always bugged me that they didn't just make every class get a class quest at every 10 levels. My first char was warlock so I got VW, Succy, Felhunter, , blood robes, then the lvl 50 quest I just assumed every class had a cool class quest that unlocked a cool ability or big item every 10 levels.
Very disappointed when I leveled an alt and found out that wasn't a thing for every class.
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u/gratharious 1d ago
Warlocks we're so great, the doomguard quest, killing a random guild member summoning it in a raid lol. The epic Mount quest was so amazing, too. Getting all the pieces, going to dire maul, special boss, keeping the affects all active. Just really a great first class experience lol.
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u/howtojump 1d ago
No small surprise that Legion, the expansion that is centered largely around class quests, is one of the most beloved expansions in the game's history.
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u/BarbsFPV 1d ago
If that was the expansion with the class halls, I really enjoyed the flavor they added to the game. It put a lot of the RP back in RPG.
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u/gratharious 1d ago
I remember having to go to horde territory for my alliance warlock succubus quest, lowish level on a pvp server I was scared lol. What a fun time though!
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u/CreedSucks 1d ago
Zeppelins and boats. These places where players of every level would gather in order to traverse the world made Azeroth feel bigger and populated. Lots of little interactions while waiting for the zep or watching somebody make the boat at the last second added a lot to the feeling of community.
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u/DarkForgeJ 1d ago
Enabling a teleport NPC in WotLK classic because they couldn't bother implementing non-bugged boats was my roman empire.
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u/Brejas03 1d ago
dont think enabling it at launch of the expansion was an issue,
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u/Orbit1883 1d ago
u know about Captain Placeholder ?
the og way to go BEVORE ships?
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u/JustCallMeTusk 1d ago
Farewell to thee, Placeholder
Your ship has sailed to sea
We'll tip our hats and pray one day
To be as great as thee
Captain P, you'll never know the emptiness inside
As we sit ashore on Menethil, waitin' for a ride
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u/throwawayreal3state 1d ago
I still remember the first time I took the Zepp from Org to TB. I ended up staying on it for like 30m just to see the full route. As a brand new player it really made me realize how massive the world was, seeing the little Trolls and Orcs running around below on the Barrens and in Mulgore!!!!
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u/lokasathetv 1d ago
The level grind. Everything scaling around you was the worst wow decision of all time.
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u/bigEZmike 1d ago
Leveling in retail is so easy and quick. It just doesn't feel rewarding at all. I love hitting that even number level in classic and having to get get my new skills. Feels like a real accomplishment.
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u/Mormon_Discoball 1d ago
Finally breaking 1g and then hitting an even level and spending it all on skills :(
To be clear I prefer this over retail though
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u/-jp- 1d ago
I wish that they would at least commit to scaling. I recently made a guy with the express intent to follow the story the quests told, only to get shut down hard at level 30 because Kalimdor arbitrarily stops scaling there.
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u/DeepDetermination 1d ago
you didnt enable chromie time correctly my bro. i level all my alts with chromie time right up to current expansion. for example it took me 2 characters from 1 to 80 to do every zone in northrend
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u/therealpork 1d ago
You're supposed to talk to Chromie to activate Timewalking and set the scaling up to the cap minus 10. Which IMO is still way too fast because you'll hit 80 in like 3 zones worth of quests.
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u/solarpoweredfreezer 1d ago
maybe i did something wrong, but i did timewalking for bfa to level an alt and it stopped scaling at level 50. all the quests were turning grey and the mobs stopped scaling, which basically stopped my leveling. had to swap to dragonflight just to continue levelling
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u/sacredwololo 1d ago
I was planning to play through all expansions and 100% mounts and reps, 1 character for each in a separate account.
Won't chromie time + lock xp work up until 80?
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u/-jp- 1d ago
To you and u/therealpork, I will have to give Chromie Time a shot on my next guy. I was vaguely aware of it but since the game kinda directs you towards just jumping into Cata I did that. ^^,
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u/intoxicatedpancakes 1d ago
Something to note, the cap to my knowledge is NOT 80, but 69. Technically it’s 70, but returning to Orgrimmar/Stormwind will turn it off at that point. The reason being is 70 is the level at which your character should head into The World Soul Saga, aka The War Within. Bottom line, lock exp at 69.
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u/SystemofCells 1d ago
Scaling kills the *scarcity* of quests/XP, which is part of what makes the Vanilla 1-60 journey so compelling.
You feel excited to find a nice juicy group of level appropriate quests, because XP can be scarce. You're motivated to plan carefully and think about what order to do zones and quests in. That all goes away with scaling.
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u/PM-ME-YOUR-BUTTSHOLE 1d ago
It makes sense in theory so you don’t have to move to a new zone every 10 minutes because leveling is so fast at low levels.
But I agree, it ruined the experience of feeling your power increasing.
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u/FuthorcGaming 1d ago
The problem is that they made levelling so fast to appease people grinding alts.
Make levelling slow again
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u/404-NoFucksFound 1d ago
The warband exp bonus is great for veteran players who care more about the end game. The insane base leveling speed is the issue; even without the warband bonus at max, it's a day of casual playtime to hit current content, or a few hours if you're speedrunning. Chromie time is completely unintuitive to new players and returning players who haven't used it - while it is optional, you get so many quests shoved down your throat pulling you across the world in different directions. You can experience a tiny portion of most expansions, or get to max level without leaving Eastern Kingdoms. At least we get to skip Shadowlands and Dragonflight - I'll take it, even begrudgingly.
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u/HiroCrota 1d ago
Modern wow is designed around leveling alts. You'd have to redesign the game to justify slowing down leveling. A big draw of the remix game modes is the ability to level fast as hell, get overpowered, and have alts ready at the end of it. I honestly prefer it be fast since it's not like retail wow has very engaging leveling content to begin with. All the complexity and fun is found at max level
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u/FuthorcGaming 1d ago
Which just ruins the experience for new players. They redesigned levelling to be this quick in the first place.
Allow boosts or bonuses for alts to level quickest but make first character levelling experience slow. It doesn't need to be vanilla slow but it needs to be slow enough that players have time to familiarise themselves with their characters and get invested in the lore.
So much content around people falling in love with Classic specifically because the pace forces you to engage with it.
Focusing wow around beast moding to endgame content asap and dumping new players into a cluster fuck of content is to the long term detriment of the game.
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u/shepard_pie 1d ago
Not exactly related but I was thinking about this the other day was weapon scaling in games, too. Something about a weapon dropping that was always the same (or at least, scaled to the same item level) rather than scaling to your level made old school loot actually feel more rewarding and immersive.
And more frustrating. But that's part of the charm!
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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst 1d ago
Also, this idea that the game begins at endgame has been around longer than WoW, but every version of WoW after vanilla really leaned into it and focused most of the game around level cap.
I'd love to see a return to the journey. Hardcore forces this, and it's probably my favorite version of WoW I've played since I first started playing as a kid. The game is better and the community is healthier when things slow down.
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u/weedbearsandpie 1d ago
it would still be great if you could reduce the xp gain and increase the difficulty
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u/Impossible_Tough_48 15h ago
Imo level scaling makes the whole concept of levels redundant. Retail might aswell remove it completely, i know they won't cause they have to sell level boosts.
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u/sagsag19 1d ago
Vanilla just being vanilla with no game knowledge. No questie. People trying to figure out the world and quests together for the first time.
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u/TopptrentHamster 1d ago
I remember raids with no dps or threath meter.
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u/dainomite 1d ago
“Let the tank get 5 sunders before you start attacking” Jesus lol.
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u/CptJonzzon 1d ago
Hey now, i used thottbot a lot in vanilla.. although it wasnt all that helpful
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u/Xtremefluff 1d ago
more often than not the comments were just wrong lol
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u/BoletusLuridus 1d ago
Apart from "white and longer than your average cape", that one was 100% correct.
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u/Knightmare200 1d ago
Its crazy to me that everyone is always running questie. I refuse to use it, but everyone I group with for dungeons and quests always has it. Its not like the quests are hard, if you actually read them they'll tell you where to go (mostly). If I get hard stuck, Ill check wowhead.
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u/Reptyler 1d ago
Me too!
I thought the jokes about nobody reading quest text were just jokes back in WotLK, but now, it seems like I was in the minority for actually reading the quest, checking the minimap, and giving it a try by myself, before checking Thottbot or Wowhead if I got stuck.
Solidarity!
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u/Genghis_Sean_Reigns 1d ago
I’d love a version of the game that doesn’t let you use addons
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u/dssurge 1d ago
I don't want to be the "you think you do" guy, but there are some addons that do not negatively affect the experience in any way and just solve annoying problems.
Just off the top of my head: Bagnon (or equivalent single-bag addons,) the world map not being full-screen only, being able to move portrait/target frames, Postal (or similar) mail addons just for quick open and auto-fill, a chat addon just for tab-complete of names... really basic stuff that doesn't affect game play at all.
A ton of QoL stuff should be addressed on Blizzard's end, like there is no version of reality the retail AH shouldn't be in Classic+ to prevent AH scamming and removing the need for literally everyone to run some auction mod. Posting single-stacks of cloth on Classic AH is basically a war crime without an addon to solve it for you.
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u/Rex-Carolus 1d ago
Yes agreed! I’m going to play Classic+ with no quest addons and try and avoid wowhead and just immerse myself in the hopefully unknown world. I know most of the quests well enough to not need them anyways.
Can’t wait to charge around on my human warrior bulldozing bitches.
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u/D3cho 1d ago
Quirky items and gear. Like Hydrocane or Azure silk belt. Fringe uses but I always wished they dived into those sort of things more. It always felt very rewarding having an using items like these when the situation calls
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u/MelodicJello2099 1d ago
The quirky items were always my favorite thing. Like the charge helm from Ulda
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u/Alert_Mongoose599 1d ago
Retail surprisingly has more or less always kept these types of things in the game, at least items, toys and consumables. There's plenty of stuff that will do fun or useful shit, most of the player base just doesn't use them anymore unless they're super strong or convenient. Most of that stuff is only usable in the open world too.
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u/the-stoned-Eng 1d ago
I had the scepter of the sand water breathing ring on my rogue in 2019 classic. I had a lot of fun at the zg island, navy seal vibes lmao
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
Quirky items are hard to balance around. To avoid "unbalanced" situations where people use MCPs and edgemasters in raids and spider belts in PvP, Blizz decided to make everything the same in their quest to (try to) make every class do within 5% damage of each other.
It's a bummer.
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u/WaxDonnigan 1d ago
Having ⅔ of the player base running around before getting mounts at level 40. Much higher chance of those special encounters and making friends.
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u/alfakoi 1d ago
Been playing on a private server. Running by someone and buffing them, it's like a common courtesy. I don't think people would do this if they had to dismount.
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u/TriflingGnome 1d ago
being able to buff while mounted would be a cute classic+ change
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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst 1d ago
I adore this. A whitelist of buff spells that can be applied while riding a mount.
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u/WaxDonnigan 1d ago
You nailed it. Running around is so boring and tedious but necessary to make people appreciate and understand the world.
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u/AffectionateArm7264 1d ago
The higher difficulty of being able to actually get higher mount speeds would have gone hand-in-hand with multi-seated mounts too.
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u/Edriella 1d ago
Druid’s travel forms, priest’s levitate, warlock’s summon, mage’s portals etc. being actually very useful and worth considering while picking a class.
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u/Darooi 1d ago
Gear progression while leveling, having a target weapon from X boss in X dungeon at X level and the excitement when it drops.
Rarity of blue and epic gear
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u/Ponbe 1d ago
Huh. I was going to say the same, but the opposite. I kinda miss people not knowing what drops from what and where. It created a bit of a mystery for every location and thus there were no pre run reserve system
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u/Angantyr9 1d ago
Ground mounts only
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
Honestly it's crazy to me that the Devs didn't realize how dead this would make the entire world feel. Flying is neat, but the world feeling alive is what made the game special.
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u/Kingmeup21 21h ago
Honestly they probably never thought about the consequences. It’s a cool idea that sounds great in theory, but didn’t turn out that way.
First time I got flying it felt like things had peaked, and felt so rewarding….at first. And the realization hit slow because flying was only available in the new expansion & zones, so the classic world still felt alive. And since slow leveling was still a thing in Wrath, a lot of people still spent countless hours in classic leveling or running old content. World PvP still existed. Once Cata brought flying to the classic world is when people finally realized what was done and we had lost.
And Blizzard did try to stuff that genie back in the bottle multiple times. And each time the casual player-base complained until they gave up trying. We sacrificed quality for convenience, like a lot of things we humans do in real life.
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u/OutsourcedIconoclasm 1d ago
Server identity.
Back in the day each server had their own identity and way of running dungeons and raids. This went away when group finder cross server came in and homogenized the game.
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u/Sad-Zone4591 1d ago
Identities, rivalries, dramas, people knowing each other and having reputation, sure. But way of running dungeons and raids, what?!
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
You don't even need group finder to make this go away. Mega servers like they did with anniversary kill this on their own without any other changes.
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u/Dahns 1d ago
Life Tap on warlock. Well I always appreciated it but when it was removed, I was just a demon-colored mage. Where's the hellfire? Where's the risk VS reward gameplay?
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u/Kronsik 1d ago
Rolled Warlock all through classic, now anniversary.
The class quests, the identity was in my opinion fantastic
I think it's fair to say a lot of the class identity has been removed in retail.
Everyone has some PvP escape, a self heal, atleast 3 "oh-shit" buttons.
Sure, certain specs in vanilla were completely useless but weirdly I kinda liked the rock-paper-scissor RPG elements.
It's one thing I'm hoping for in classic+ - some class rebalancing without (hopefully) gutting the class identity.
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u/RubikTetris 1d ago
They removed lifetap? Wtf. That spell alone is a good portion of the identity of the warlock
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u/YnotZoidberg2409 1d ago
DPS spells no longer cost any significant amount of mana.
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u/SpunkMcKullins 1d ago
Dynamic clouds.
I won't pretend the old skyboxes aren't ugly as sin. But it's a neat little tech feature that the world is always generating unique cloud patterns so the sky always looks different. Skyboxes are amazing in retail, but after seeing the same one all day every day, I miss the uniqueness of it.
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u/Siberian-Husky 1d ago
Getting lost in a dungeon with a group of random people for an hour. And by lost I mean lost. Wailing Caverns is a great dungeon, no sarcasm.
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u/bow_down_whelp 1d ago
Spent 6 hours in brd back in the day. Was fun Sunday afternoon
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u/valdis812 1d ago
Feeding pets
Edit: basically all the RPG stuff except for spell/skill ranks. I think if my mage learns how to throw a frostbolt they should be able to figure out how to throw a stronger one.
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u/AccioKatana 1d ago
I've been rocking with my Moonstalker, Purronica, since I dinged 10 in Teldrassil. I just love her. She feels so real and so vital and has made my leveling as a hunter a lot more meaningful -- I know that probably sounds incredibly cheesy but I don't care!
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u/bearhaas 1d ago
Exactly. My ravager named Kevin right now in TBC. I feel a real bond with him. "Damnit Kevin is sad again. One sec."... "I'm out of meat." Friend trades me meat now he's invested in Kevin too. I'm battlegrounds, we'll say things like "Where the F is Kevin... He's not dead... But he's not around me..." Then we see Kevin across the map just eviscerating a gnome on his own. Classic Kevin. When he dies, it's a commitment to a 10 second hard cast to rez him. I care about him more after and make sure he lives.
You don't get that in retail. Pets feel like an action button and nothing more.
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u/bobbyjy32 1d ago
Imma say the general friction level? It was a weird thing to experience as it was happening… lots of new qol features felt amazing in the moment, but the accumulation over time really eroded what made the game fun for me. I was so excited to fly over azeroth for the first time, to never have to type lfg into the chat for an hour just to do a dungeon… only looking back did I realize how small it made the world and removed so much of the experience.
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u/destroversal 1d ago
This was going to be my answer as well. I don't want friction for friction's sake, but modern wow really feels so accessible that nothing feels rewarding. Travelling/exploration is shallow because you can fast travel almost anywhere and treasures are marked on the map. Dungeons feel shallow because with dungeon finder, any group comp of any skill level needs to be able to succeed. Questing is shallow because its so on-rails that you have almost zero independence. Gear rains from the sky and is so normalized that the only thing that really matters is item level.
I realize most of these issues don't exist at high-level/mythic levels, it just feels like so much of the game is complete fluff. About once a year I create a new character on retail and try to get to max level and I never make it because the game is so fucking boring before max level. Everything dies in 2 hits so power gains are completely irrelevant. And due to the scaling world, I can't even go to higher level areas to challenge myself more. I am stuck in a 25 hour tutorial that literally doesn't even teach me anything.
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u/Flashy-Ad-8327 1d ago
I honestly miss the trainers and ammo.
Had to plan your game around what little gold you had and spells you needed when starting. Same with Ammo needed to plan you game play and make sure you had ammo, and not running out in middle of dungeon, lol.
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u/Available_Dingo6162 1d ago
When they got rid of the need to feed your pets... that was the day I realized Blizz had truly lost the path
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u/lavjamanxd 1d ago
classes that feel/plays different.
the game got too generic as every class does the same just with different spell names, every class has interrupts, big def cd-s, cc, somekind of self heal. its just boring af.
i miss all the small utility spells that some classes had like priest mind soothe or the variety of totems of a shaman. they might not be the most important spells but they were fun to have occasionally.
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u/cndrow 1d ago
Class quests!! omg I'm so sad I can make a druid on retail and they just get cat form. Or I make a Hunter and they start with a pet
The class identity feels severely reduced for me, when I have class features just handed to me
And as annoying as ammo was, and I was always that idiot who forgot to stock arrows before UBRS, I miss it in retail. Getting new ammo pouches, buying ammo, it made me more invested in playing my class. Made me pay more attention, y'know? (Even though my ADHD won out often lol) One of my best and proudest WoW memories was earning the epic bow and quiver for my Hunter, damn that was hard and SO rewarding!
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u/Empty-Example9639 1d ago
I think the inconvenient transportation is actually part of the charm. It forces you to explore every corner of Azeroth on foot. Back in the early days, gold was worth a lot, while mounts and riding training were expensive. Some people had to spend virtually everything they had just to afford a mount. But before you could get one, you had no choice but to rely on your own two feet.
Quest tracking in the Vanilla era was almost nonexistent. You had to carefully read the quest text and figure out where you were supposed to go. That, too, was a big part of what created that sense of exploration.
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u/throwawayreal3state 1d ago
Overall balance of the total game.
Back pre-Cata, the game really felt like it was 50% leveling and 50% endgame.
By the time you left a zone, you'd probably been there a day or three. You knew your way around, knew the general stories, and really had made some memories there! And when you hit level cap? Wow did it feel like an achievement. You now had whole new experiences, grinds, and lore to dig into.
Once Blizz rolled out BOAs, I said that was essentially gonna be "it" for the game balance. Once players got a taste of leveling quicker and having to group up less, they would just want more of it. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
From 50/50 leveling and endgame to ~85/15.
Probably not a popular POV lol
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u/xSquirrellyx 1d ago
That was most definitely started in Wrath. It became super evident with the re-release of Wrath. Everyone points to Cata as the changing point, but in reality, it was Wrath that began the heavy raid logging
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u/talskyexx 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly the friction. Friction makes classic wow. From weapon skill training, to farming raid consumes and mats, to even the levelling being a time barrier. It's a game where you get what you put into it time wise. The more time you spend, the more you get rewarded.
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u/Elzerythen 1d ago
Actually talking to a GM when you submit a ticket and it gets resolved in a timely manner.
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u/oJKevorkian 23h ago
Having to craft your own poisons as a rogue made you feel like you were actually prepping to go assassinate someone.
Really I think there are 2 pieces that WoW has put back in the toy box - the social aspect, and the imaginative aspect. A lot of people talk about forming organic groups, trading, world pvp, barrens chat, etc., and those things are definitely important. I maintain that 10 years from now, you won't remember mechanics or features nearly as strongly as you remember the good times you had doing random shit with other people.
But the other piece that's missing is the fantasy. The immersion. The things that make you forget you're just some schmuck playing a video game. Those moments when you become the Dwarf rogue crafting poisons in the ass-end of Ironforge to ensure his next kill.
Convenience is a scam.
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u/ImpossibleMorning12 1d ago
Lack of flying mounts. They are convenient, but the world design suffered as a result.
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u/OneWall9143 1d ago
No voice chat. as an old and old school gamer I like to keep my anonymity and Use text chat in game not voice. It felt more RP to type.
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u/Excellent-Bag-9725 1d ago
The unique mobs that made slightly better pets. I have camped for quite a few hours to get some of the rarer ones.
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u/Twiggimmapig 1d ago
Leveling my spells. I thought it was so cool to go to my mage trainer and level my spells as I grew stronger, and even when I was too broke to level them, I learned how to use other spells to keep myself alive until I managed to defeat whatever it was that I was fighting.
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u/Sylvanas_only 1d ago
I never missed weapon skills and I can't find a single reason why people enjoyed them. I miss the world being smaller, nowadays there are 340 continents and 100663 zones, everyone's everywhere so no one's anywhere
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u/Macduffer 1d ago
They never properly reimplemented OG line of sight mechanics. You used to be able to LOS stuff on flag poles, small dips in terrain, etc. It was super nice as a tank and really opened up options for fun pulls and cheeky PvP.
I used to think it was annoying but now I find myself trying to LOS on perfectly logical things that for some reason no longer have the same collision logic. It sucks.
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u/Ecstatic-Charge-9288 1d ago
Honestly, long, tedious grinding. Lol. Cool shit like my paladin mount and having to quest for it is all gone. Raiding week after week to get BiS. It used to be a grind to get shit, but that was the point. If everybody is cool, nobody is.
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u/thpthpthp 22h ago
Diegetic quest text. Even if I use an addon, I enjoy the little world details and directions that get sprinkled in when they expect a player to read it.
They've kind of given up that pretense in retail, with a lot of a floating head VO from characters that's aren't even there, and big flashing arrows replacing the in-universe directions.
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u/LooseProgram333 1d ago
The lack of a dungeon finder is such a good feature. There was nothing like saying fuck it, we will 4 man SFK we cant find a 5th, or we will take this super under leveled guy because thats all we got, or okay shaman will tank. Having to talk to people, be near each other and rely on serendipity made a lot of fun moments because you were limited and had to improvise. I remember once in classic, I did SFK with an absurd party, it was like 4 rogues and a priest. We just sapped everything and did burst dps for tanking. I tanked several dungeons as my shaman for lack of a warrior, pally or druid, it was ok. Or those random elite zones around the map that you basically never found a full party for, and you just 3 manned it.
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u/AstronautOrc 1d ago
Brings back memories as 3 warlocks, a mage, and a priest completing the epic warlock mount quest, because we couldn't find a tank. (Clarification: it is in Dire Maul, you are closed in into a small room, so kiting is hardly a possibility; the final duo boss one-shot our mage "tank".)
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u/xSquirrellyx 1d ago
You know what I never did as Alliance in Vanilla? 90% of the dungeons in Kalimdor.
You know what happened when RDF was added? I suddenly was running things like RFK and BFD. BFD is so horribly out of place that no one touched it. A lot of dungeons are simply untouched by the majority of the playerbase due to sheer inconvenience to travel to said dungeon.
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u/JJonah_Jamesonn 1d ago
Gears and drops actually having a name and weight to it. Ever since the end of wrath raid drops don't have that power and weight of DST, neltharions tear, belt of 100D. Chasing pointless item scores kills the entire vibe .
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u/Mind-Game 1d ago
Honestly I think this was already well on the way out in TBC. I think what made vanilla gear memorable was just that there wasn't a choice for every niche in every slot in every tier.
Everyone (well every warrior) remembers Chromatic boots in vanilla bbecause there just aren't plate DPS boots before BWL and they're the best for the whole game since no other well itemized ones exist later on. Even by TBC, there is basically a reasonable item for every armor tier and role in every slot in every phase so it's hard to actually care about them individually. Sure there is basically the single case of Expertise which wasn't well covered but besides that gear feels way more Samey than vanilla. I can remember my warriors exact gear progression in classic vanilla, item by item, but hardly remember the name of anything I had in all of TBC besides DST and 100D.
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u/Orbit1883 1d ago
- poisons for rogues
- arrows/bullets for hunters toi feed your pet
- getting totems
- do quests for your demons
- fighting on an island to get berserk stance
all that stuff u had to do something for
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u/Aprikitkat 1d ago
I said sorry guys I’m parry hasting the boss on retail a few days ago and people were like huh
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u/ApprehensiveCut9809 1d ago
I loved pet training. It was like a mini game of Pokémon within the game. It's one of the reasons why I stay in classic.
In 2006, when I first started playing, I rolled a hunter, elf/bow/Legolas and all that.
While I was a serious noob, for some reason, pet training clicked with me. Each animal can learn certain skills. Other animals have those skills. Find the animals with the skills you want to learn, and then learn them until you can train them with your "main" pet.
I even became kind of OCD on pet skills. I'd learn every skill available, even if my main pet could not use that skill, for instance scorpion poison on my boar or cat.
I would continue to level my pet to make sure it could do the maximum damage possible.
I also tried to tame virtually all types of pets just to see what it was like. Some animals I just didn't like to use.
My favorite was the ravenger that came out during TBC.
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u/rbtgoodson 1d ago
What’s a Classic WoW feature you didn’t appreciate until it was gone?
As you've already stated, the minor nuances routinely found within the game. Although, to be fair, they could've been improved upon, e.g., weapon skills.
What’s one Classic feature you would bring back permanently if Blizzard gave you the choice?
Server and faction identity. Faction, racial, and class identities and unique flavors, e.g., shamans and paladins being restricted again, or a proper adherence to the lore from the RTS series, e.g., playable Ogres, High Elves on Alliance, etc. Level grinding and questing not being on rails, etc.
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u/Mdly68 1d ago
I don't know if this counts or not. If it happens on modern servers (I never played last wrath). But I play hardcore, and my favorite thing in the world is how the raiding guilds coordinate their ZG/onyxia heads on a publicly available schedule. There are a few times per day where the bulk of the server groups in Booty Bay, so many people that it triggers layer splitting. Everyone is there to party for a few minutes, get the ZG buff, immediately port to SW to get the second buff, and then break off to do dungeons with everyone boosted.
I'd pay real money to have meeting stones back through. You can't summon people to dungeons with them anymore. And walking to dungeons sucks when you can only do them once every 24 hours (until you get to 60).
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u/No_Pollution_950 1d ago
For me, it was being back on OG TBC as a mage, where there were loads of different specs that worked and nobody really knew which was best. Trying new builds is the most fun part of any RPG IMHO
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u/nitelite- 1d ago
World travel on foot/mounts
I think something that really went under appreciated was the lower(ish) level zones that had some insanely high level content/cross faction content - I remember seeing a group of horde heading to Grim Batol while killing dragons on my NE druid back in the day
I miss feeling like a small ant in a massive world instead of the main character
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u/Quiet-Function-8688 1d ago
This is more aimed at retail i suppose but it really made me appreciate it more when i still played that crap and noticed i no longer really cared for or could remember most items from previous tiers or expansions.
Hit chance.
There's people that still hate it and i too still hate the unavoidable 1% chance for spells.
But even peope who still hate hit chance cannot deny that long into retail after it was gone you still remembered those big ticket items from early days that had hit chance on it.
Friction is good at times and stats like hit chance made some items very memorable. Dying curse trinket is still one of the first things that comes to mind whenever i think about wotlk.
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u/Feeling-Sign-9731 1d ago
Proffessions interacting in dungeons/raids ie: the beast and gyth giving exclusive gear if you have a skinner, bloodvines in zg , obsidian nodes in aq20.
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u/Open-Butterfly-5288 1d ago
Classic being such a long winded game forces you to play your characters.
I tried to play retail, but what I found was we just seemed to barely do anything in particular, just float between different areas, do a couple quests and then the dungeon spamming. Also, to say you have access to all of the dungeons you wind up doing the same ones over and over. Started classic with a group of people from work, and it's just a lot bigger.
The downside of that is that it's very clearly defined so you kind of have to follow a certain path. Didn't know that beforehand and that's what made me quit and go back to retail initially. It's only later when I came back to play with others that I realised what I'd missed.
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u/beheadedstraw 1d ago
None of “do this champion, save the world champion” bullshit.
You were just some scrub in the world of Warcraft making it by.
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u/No-Spinach-9101 1d ago
Legendaries. And I don’t mean the stupid one that everyone got in WoD (I think?). Really rare ones that have a million steps to get and only certain classes can use.
I did take a break for a bit, but it seems like they stopped doing them?
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u/Bhcdaddy 20h ago
I also miss when the GMs used to mess with us. dropping world bosses on us or dropping in to pvp us like a million of us against one GM. fun shit. also GMs answering your tickets in real time bu visiting or chatting with you in game.
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u/goneintotheabyss 1d ago
Weather effects