Keep sharing! A new expansion thread will drop each week.
World of Warcraft: Vanilla
Alrighty, oldies. Sharing time.
In celebration of WoW’s 20th Anniversary, going to kick off an expansion nostalgia trip every week starting with Vanilla. Have your favorite tales of Burning Crusade ready next week and Wrath the week after. You get the deal.
For those who weren’t there for Vanilla — well, enjoy our shenanigans and naivety as baby Warcraft players. Your time is coming soon to shine.
Incoming Vanilla Memories…
What were the most innocently n00bish things you did as a baby WoW player?
What do you consider to be your greatest Vanilla achievement?
Which Vanilla accidentally world-ending calamity did you experience? (e.g., blood plague, kiting world bosses to capitals, etc.)
It’s funny, for all its fame I have no memory of the blood plague at all, even though I played at the time. I kinda wonder if the fact that I played on an RP server meant we were all too busy emoting at each other to go to raids and get diseases before it was patched.
Kiting bosses sure did happen a lot though. Someone on my original server used to kite some kind of undead troll enemy to Goldshire a lot, it wasn’t really a boss but it had some scripted characteristic where it couldn’t die if it left its zone, so it’d just be eternally stuck at 1 hp fighting confused people.
And it’s not exactly world-ending, but there was an item called a “goblin mortar” or something which backfired like 1/3rd of the time and would cause aoe damage around the caster which would hit neutral parties. I used to think it was super funny to use this item until the backfire procced and blow up random friendly people. So I guess I’d tell my vanilla self to stop blowing up noobs with the goblin mortar, it’s sort of mean and costs a lot of heavy stone to refuel
What were the most innocently n00bish things you did as a baby WoW player?
I initially wore cloth robes as a warrior because I thought they looked cooler than the mail sports bras that were dropping at the same level. (This was level 7.)
What do you consider to be your greatest Vanilla achievement?
I got the original Ardent Dawn tabard. It’s really not that big in hindsight but it was my first endgame grind and it felt like huge deal.
I also made Knight-Captain in the original PvP system. I couldn’t get any further without ruining my life.
Which Vanilla accidentally world-ending calamity did you experience? (e.g., blood plague, kiting world bosses to capitals, etc.)
My first day in Stormwind, a Hordie kited Lord Kazzak from the Blasted Lands to Fordragon. I had no idea what was going on, skull-level players were everywhere and so were the bodies. I thought the Alliance capital being assailed by 5-story-tall demons was a normal, everyday occurrence.
What would Today You say to Vanilla You?
You’re about to make some life-long friends at college and in WoW. Enjoy the ride.
Also: Don’t worry. Thottbot won’t be around forever. And yes, it is a terrible site.
I didn’t understand the concept of aggro and, as a level four, decided to explore Kalimdor. Literally a trail of Tauren bones leading from Mulgore all the way to Gadgetzan.
Biggest Vanilla achievement was making it to High Warlord on the old Honir system, buying all the PVP gear and the Black War Raptor. As a Tauren back then, I was HUGE. I used to get whispers all the time from people who were shocked when this T-Rex sized dinosaur with a giant armored cow on top came running past. And since this was back when gold was hard to make, people also whispered me for gold. But the joke was on them, I spent everything I had for that thing.
I joined the game right before the Gates of AQ opened on whatever server they first opened on. I don’t really remember anything ‘epic’ like the Blood Plague happening on my server. But the first true calamity that I experienced was the Scourge Invasion during Wrath pre-launch. I loved it, both as a defender and then trolling. My friend and I brought down Thunder Bluff on our own, it was fun.
Vanilla is good memories, but I wouldn’t play it if it came out today. I like the Quality of Life improvements that Retail has, the ease of making money and all the much more polished content that is available today. Save for TWW content as I hate pretty much everything about this expansion. Good times with good people, but I’d rather have a better game.
What were the most innocently n00bish things you did as a baby WoW player?
-buying armor from the armor vendors in goldshire, thinking white level was so great.
What do you consider to be your greatest Vanilla achievement?
Fighting Kazzak as he charged the gates of Stormwind and seeing all these people just get pwnd with his AOE (including me); I was only like level 20 or something at the time.
Which Vanilla accidentally world-ending calamity did you experience? (e.g., blood plague, kiting world bosses to capitals, etc.)
Kazzak at Stormwind before Burning Crusade came out
lol, having those things was such a bragging point. I remember when having an epic riding mount at 60 at all was considered a sign of wealth… also joke is on them, even if you had it “easy” with the warlock and paladin Level 60 mount quests, you were still broke by the time you got your 100% speed epic mount.
I remember myself and two other paladin players worked together for our pally race mount and once we finally obtained them, we /walked around in Ironforge in a parade line hoping people would go “oooh aaahh.” In return, people would pull out their rare PvP mounts and the like. It was a fun time.
I did this so many times. I’m not sure if people realize that there was no definitive leveling guide for most of Vanilla and the game wasn’t always clear as to which zone to go to next when you out-leveled it. There was also the dreaded crossings between Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor when you were two levels too low to stay on the same continent and needed to corpse run to the next zone from the nearest port.
I can’t believe I forgot about AQ. Fun story with that.
I was on Thorium Brotherhood at the time and since it was one of the newest RP servers, we were one of the last to open our gates. The date they opened, me and my old college buddies logged in to watch the biggest, baddest, most prolific raid guild on TB battle the gate guards… and they got rolled. My potato of a computer also lagged and everything was rendering like a horrid stop-motion animation of death. Everything spun out of control, they wiped, and all the bystanders proceeded to be slaughtered. The epic mythos bubble of how awesome that top guild was was also popped forever.
If anyone was in Forge on TB that day, my hat off to you. That was a rough one.
Being a vigorous pain twixt my Guild’s cheeks trying to get low-level gear because it was BiS at that level despite the fact I didn’t Twink PvP or anything of the sort. OCD is a helluva nightmare to have in this game if you don’t believe you have OCD.
When I first started, I thought I was helping a hunter who was struggling against pets and didn’t realise what taming mechanics looked like. It’s been 20 years and I still feel so bad about those poor tauren trying to tame a boar and I thought I was helping …
Dropping Nefarian for the first time. It was the very end of Vanilla and most folks had already done it, but we refused to leave Guildies behind so we were running sub-optimal rosters with a lot of Warlocks and Mages, back before it was easy to swap speccs around and your choices had a lot of weight, and that thundering, two-in-the-morning roar over ventrilo as we finally dropped him, got that damn head to take back to Orgrimmar to put on a damn stick for the last time.
All of them. World bosses being kited into Stormwind created some of the greatest RP I ever had back then, herding low-level players into the Deeprun Tram and sending them to Ironforge, high-level players taking up suicide charges to try to drag that Doomlord out of the city or at least into a confined corner so it would stop slaughtering people and aggroing NPCs who’d just spawn more guards who just feed the Doomlord more souls.
The Blood Plague I ended up an unwitting pawn in a certain Guild’s plans to spread it to every possible capital they could get to. Its one of the reasons I struggle with Mages to this day because its always there at the back of my head that these people who were desperate for Portals to Undercity and Thunder Bluff weren’t just eager to hit up the other AHs, they were actively committing bio-terrorism, and I helped, like a goober.
I joined up just a couple weeks before BC launched. My friend at the time was like “omg come try out this game!” and I figured the trial period would be enough. After all, I was playing a MUD at that time and kept getting bored of it, so I figured this would be the same. >_>;;
I can only really answer the first question, but it was gear-related. I had no idea what all the colors meant, or the stats (had never played D&D either, so no basis for comparison!). My friend and I looted gray shoulders off something and were SO excited because heck yes, we got gear for our shoulder slot!! That noob thought stuck around for a good few weeks, until finally someone in Stormwind whispered me and sent me a whole set of gear because mine was so embarrassing. (I also remember a rogue in Trade chat saying they wore plate, and even though I wasn’t part of the conversation, I thought they actually could…)
What were the most innocently n00bish things you did as a baby WoW player?
Kept heading north from Redridge until I hit Burning Steppes. Got killed by imps as soon as I crossed zones. Took 9x rezzing to get far enough away to escape.
What do you consider to be your greatest Vanilla achievement?
I found out that they were removing PvP titles the week before they were removed. I was undergeared and not max level, but I still managed to get Corporal on my rogue.
Which Vanilla accidentally world-ending calamity did you experience? (e.g., blood plague, kiting world bosses to capitals, etc.)
Pre-BC event. I logged into SW just after Kruul had devastated the area. Dead bodies everywhere. Awhile later, he was down at Booty Bay. The “raiders” on my server were awful and couldn’t take him down. We threw so many bodies at him.
I loved Tauren. Still do, but I almost never play one. I remember the Tauren shaman players in BGs. They’d run up, stomp, drop totems and annihilate us. There was one Tauren I’d see in BGs all the time. One day I found him out in STV. We waved. We sat down. We emoted. Then we went on our way.
I didn’t play Forsaken for a long time because I didn’t like the hunch.
Keep sharing! A new expansion thread will drop each week.