Questions about Vanilla WoW

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Hi there, I’m doing some research on Vanilla WoW to determine how it was and compare it to modern day wow. Please help me out! (I started in Wrath)

Here are a few questions i have. The questions are numbered (1-6), so when you wanna answer one just put the number in front of your answer, thank you.

  1. Was quest design different in Vanilla?
    For years when i started we only had standard “kill and collect” and sometimes “click on things” or “talk to people” quests, but in modern wow we now have some different type of quest here and there. I hear Vanilla questing was better, so was there more types of quests back then?

  2. What happened to dungeons after you hit max level and started raiding?
    Today we have the Mythic+ system to keep dungeons and the loot from them relevant, but Vanilla didn’t have that as far as i know. So what happned to the dungeons? Did people just not have small group content (dungeons) to do at Max level? Today you can farm gear for all but 3 slots (Azarite) pretty much endlessly without ever stopping from the Mythic+ system, and the content continues to scale in difficulty. So did Vanilla have some similiar dungeon system?

  3. What happened to the World after you hit max level in Vanilla WoW?
    I’m trying to understand why people say the world was more relevant in Vannila wow. When someone hit max level what reason was there to go back to old zones??? Today in WoW we have achievements, reputation farming, mount hunting, Transmog farming, the Battle Pet system, and the occassional quest giving us reason to go back to the old zones sometimes. We also now have World Quest keeping the current expansion zones relevant for gearing and all the other stuff i mentioned before. So what did Vannilla have to keep the old zones you out leveled and the MAx level zones relevant and worth going to?

  4. How was gearing and gear progression in Vanilla WoW?
    I always hear that modern wow has a bad gearing and progression system, so i figured Vanilla must have done it better if people love it more. Was there more interesting loot that had bonuses better than azarite traits or just plain old stats? Was there multiple sources of good gear instead of just raids (like Mythic+)? Was there any reason or reward incentive to complete challenges you had already completed like Azarite power or possible titan forging (something to keep the rewards relevant)?

  5. What content was there at Max level in Vanilla?
    Today we have Raids, Mythic+, Islands, World Quests, Arenas, Battlegrounds, and even sometimes Warfronts (all these reward gear). Today we also have all the cosmetic rewarding stuff i mentioned above and even things like the Mage tower (Legion) sometimes. So what did Vanilla have? Was there alot more than what i just listed, or was there just Raiding?

  6. What was PvP like in Vanilla WoW?
    This has always confused me. What PVP content was there to do at max level in Vanilla? Was it rewarding, and could those rewards be used as an alternative to PvE content? Today we have Arena Skirmishes, Rated Arenas, Rated Battlegrounds, Regular and Epic Battlegrounds, PVP Islands, and the option no matter your realm to participate in world pvp via War Mode (aided by the WQ system occasionally bringing people in contact with the other faction). All of this content rewards gear and cosmetic rewards, and with Rated PvP there’s a Mythic+ cache style system to give some scaling and relevant rewards to people who only PvP at high levels, kindof proving an alternative to PvE content. What did Vanilla have to do this? How was the PvP experience in Vanilla?

I look forward to reading your civil answers and i can’t wait for Classic this Summer to see for myself! :smile:

UPDATE: Seeing a lot of people respond who have not experienced WoW’s current endgame content (non-max level characters). Being critical of Current WoW is fine, but try to at least have experienced the content before trashing it in your answer to the questions, like the guy who thinks doing Mythic+ dungeons is pulling everything and AoE-ing like it’s a random normal dungeon or the guy who thinks you don’t have to travel to Dungeons in current WoW. So, please try not to respond if you haven’t at least played current WoW, as i feel those who have could better answer my questions as they understand my perspective and can draw more educated comparisons. Remember this isn’t a “why Vanilla was great or better than current WoW” thread, this is a research thread. Thank you.

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To start, I have very little experience in retail, but I will answer these as descriptions rather than comparisons, although I will make comparisons where I have knowledge.

  1. Was quest design different in Vanilla?

Yes, it was. There were less mechanics in vanilla quests. On top of that, your character was less important. You were doing a lot of chores for a lot of people. The quest “Jarl Needs Eyes” comes to mind. He really just wants you to go collect eyes from spiders for him. In the middle of a swamp, there’s more important things you could be doing, but he wants you to get eyes. It sounds stupid right? It’s not. It humbles you. You’re not important, not yet. You have to earn that importance through great toil. You go get these eyes for Jarl, because he’s a regular citizen of Azeroth who could use a hand. You get an eye into someone random NPCs’ lives. It may not be interesting to you, but realize WoW was made during a time when this kind of game was interesting to people. As far as I can tell, retail quests are flashy and huge and oh my! and you’re so important! I recently messed around on a newly created gnome. Within 10 minutes I was already working directly under the king of the gnomes. I didn’t have to work very hard at all. How many gnomes in the world would hope to have an audience with the king? You get it instantly. Little to no work required.

In the character introduction cinematics in vanilla, you’re described as nothing more than a defender of your city. The two races added later, gnome and troll, describe you as being a far more important person, but I strongly believe those introductions were written separately from the original six and are a little inappropriate for vanilla.

  1. What happened to dungeons after you hit max level and started raiding?

To start, there was no system. There was the dungeon and that’s it. You either go in or you don’t. But in place of “systems” the dungeons are just hard. You can’t group everything up and AOE it down. Sometimes you even have to use your CC abilities such as polymorph or frost trap. After raiding, you don’t really need to do them very much anymore, but some people do for money, fun, or to help friends. In fact I could argue that raiders will do dungeons to help gear up a new recruit for the guild. Dungeons and pre-raid content was kept alive in vanilla by a strong alt community, and staggered differences in accomplishments. The most hardcore players can get everything they need from 5 mans in a week or two, and some of the more casual players could be running dungeons for several months to a year. And then you add in those people who level slower and arrive later. Dungeons are always being ran by people because there were endless waves of people arriving at level 60.

You speak of systems in retail and how they keep dungeons relevant. It almost sounds like a case is being made that the systems in retail are better because they achieve that relevance. I would argue that vanilla is better because there is no system, and yet the dungeons are still relevant.

  1. What happened to the World after you hit max level in Vanilla WoW?

You farmed out in the world. You don’t get very much gold from raids or dungeons like I’m hearing you do in retail. Some people really just have to go out there and farm. Either killing enemies or mining, herbing and/or fishing. Others will go out in the world and hunt down the opposite faction in between battleground queues to rank up. The zones are never dead though because sharding wasn’t a thing. Couple that with the previously explained endless alts and staggered progress of the population, and there is always someone to be found out in every zone.

In Silithus, a major farming event takes place. Both farming for twilight related items and their gear, and farming for the Ahn’Qiraj scepter reputation and related events. Winterspring is a zone nearly always populated by high levels because high levels are finishing their grind there, farming there for gold, or farming there for the Alliance tiger reputation. You can also farm reputation for Timbermaw in this zone.

There are many other open world events and tasks I’m leaving out.

  1. How was gearing and gear progression in Vanilla WoW?

These two systems are what I would say are the absolute pinnacle of perfection in the game’s history. The system marries crafting, dungeons, raids, and catch-up raids into a perfect mix. You start by doing 5 man dungeons and getting pre-raid best in slot gear or close to it. Some of the gear you get in these dungeons will be replaced very quickly in the first raid, and some of it will be used by you until the very end. Reputation farms give you craftable gear to use in the raid, and the first raid itself gives you crafting recipes for extremely powerful items, some of which are used until the very last raid in the game. However, while it sounds like you’re getting a lot of gear permanently knocked out for good, the reverse can happen. Some guilds who are regularly clearing Naxx will continue to clear Molten Core, because the gear from the final boss is still best in slot for some members, and the two legendary components of Thunderfury, a great tanking legendary weapon, come from Molten Core. The same is true regarding gear upgrades from each instance. The two catch-up raids, Zul’Gurub and The Ruins of Ahn’qiraj also contain items that the best raiders need, which means they’ll sometimes do those raids as well.

  1. What content was there at Max level in Vanilla?

At this point my pizza is getting cold and there’s no much to say about this. You can raid and do PVP. You can RP if you like that. You can roll more alts. You can be humble and farm gold (a surprising number of people enjoy this.) Now for the real reason vanilla was so great. There is one ingredient that you can add to everything I said above, that makes this game truly unique and impactful to so many people’s lives: Friends and community.

At the end of the day, the game was not primarily about spectacular events and mechanics. It was about relaxing with friends and being someone else for awhile. In vanilla, you had to really make a name for yourself to stand out in the story. It seems in retail, your name is already made for you.

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Open World Raid Bosses.

Also to piggy back on Cheater, several of the dungeons, at max or closer to max level, had things you needed to go collect out of them to get attuned to enter certain raids.

I.E. You had to run BRD to attune to MC and Onyxia. You had to run, if I am remembering this correctly, LBRS and then UBRS to attune to BWL. I think AQ40 is the only 40 man raid in Vanilla that didn’t require an attunement. Finally, for Naxx you had to buy your attunement from the Argent Dawn, and the higher your rep with them the cheaper it was. The best way to farm AD rep was to run UD Strat.

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Profession trainers could only teach you so much before you’d have to find another one to teach you higher level recipes. The highest level trainers were in dungeons; for example, the Master Enchanting trainer was inside Uldaman.

That’s something I never see people mention.

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To answer 3 and 5 collectively: professions single-handedly made lower level zones relevant and important at all stages of the game. Getting gear in Vanilla is significantly harder, and crafting profs were drastically more important.

Let’s say you’re level 40 and working on The Way of the Weaponsmith quest for blacksmithing weaponsmith specialization (https://classicdb.ch/?quest=5302). You’re going to need a lot of shadowgems (https://classicdb.ch/?item=1210#reagent-for) and lesser moonstones (https://classicdb.ch/?item=1705#mined-from-object), which are mined from copper, tin, silver, and gold ore nodes. This would put you farming ore in starter and lower level zones even well into your 40s.

Also, you’ll need leather for some of those blacksmithing crafting recipes, which means you’ll probably be fishing in floating wreckage for mats, or farming gold to buy leather. (or farming the leather yourself if you have skinning). This once again puts you in lower level zones to get the materials.

Another example: Heart of Fire (https://classicdb.ch/?item=7077#dropped-by:0+2-8+1) is a reagent for a large number of important high level crafting recipes, and is also used in the quest for elemental leatherworking I believe. Heart of Fire can drop from any fire elemental in the 40-60 level range (outdoors, in dungeons, in raids, etc). So even at 60 you’d probably farm the elementals in Searing Gorge, or at the volcano in Ungoro Crater.

More generally, pretty much any specific mob type could have important drops (mats, gear, recipes, etc) that would make them worth farming even at higher levels.

Vanilla WoW didn’t need gimmicks like achievements or transmog hunting to bring you back to lower level zones. The world and game design organically made wide spans of level ranges and zones important all across the leveling experience.

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I’ll respond with quotes, since that’s how forums usually work.

My memories are not crystal clear, so I may misremember a few things.

The nature of every quest sent you on a journey, far as I recall. It wasn’t that the mechanics of quests were better, but that getting 3-4 quests and journeying off sent you on an adventure of its own.

Killing Alliance NPCs in their stronghold was dangerous, because respawns were quick, NPCs were dangerous, and you were often sent into a fortress where it was easy to over-pull.

Dungeon and atunement quests had a similar feel.

Lemme see if I can remember more…Yeah I can’t right now, so I’m probably missing things.

All that said, I do clearly remember quests getting more interesting as patches developed.

So long as there was something to get from a dungeon, you ran it. Attunements and resist gear (fire from what I recall,) were big contributors to revisiting BRD, and then Onyxia’s atunement sent you all over.

You didn’t wait to raid until you were geared out in 5-man loot, and getting loot from raids was definitely not as common…so they were absolutely relevant well into early raiding.

As for once you get into BWL and above, you just got more picky.

  1. Dungeons required that you travel to them.
  2. Farming mats for your guild/raid. Individual servers without high populations didn’t always have mats, and gold wasn’t nearly as expendable…you couldn’t just buy everything so farming was more important.
  3. Gear and gold being harder to come by meant that quests in EPL (Eastern Plague Lands) and the like were sometimes meaningful.
  4. Rep and gold grinding. Furbolg rep was pretty popular to take part in…
  5. World Defence channel stated when a town was being attacked; those in SW/Org came to their defense. Why? Because you knew it was that stupid PvP guild and needed to put them down. (This one is less important and just fun.)

I’ve touched on this a bit in previous points, but I’ll try to expand.

One main thing here is something that extended into TBC: everything in the expansion built upon what was there before. Every new character needed to go through those steps (unless they were carried by a guild.)

  • Just hit 60? Go do some 5mans and work on attunements.
  • Got attunements and some 5man loot? Do UBRS and keep working on attunements.
  • Got more gear and attunements? Great! Try to get into a guild that does MC/ZG (or a PUG if you want to gamble on your experience.)
  • Raiding MC for a long time and have some epics? Nice, now go wipe on Razorgore with your guild until you realize you’d prefer to kill Rag first.

It’s not that vanilla’s gearing system was ‘better,’ it was that it took time and was therefor more meaningful.

The time between the first and fourth bullet-point in my post for an average player is likely months; current WoW gives you all of that almost immediately.

As many have said, vanilla isn’t for everyone. Those who say it was better think so because they liked the meaningful slow grind. Just my take, anyway.

What I loved about vanilla, was that ‘content’ wasn’t what made me play. No, I don’t mean I would’ve been fine doing nothing…but the small things felt much more rewarding (partly due to difficulty, as mentioned in the previous point,) and because you were doing those things with friends and people close to you.

Guilds were far closer socially from what I recall. ALL that said, I will answer the best I can.

  1. Battlegrounds.( Amplified by the fact you were killing enemies you kinda knew. 3 day long Alterac Valleys were nuts.)
  2. World PvP. (Similar to above.)
  3. Raids.
  4. Dungeons.
  5. Attunements.
  6. Professions.
  7. Server-organized events. Yes, those 5-FPS battles with the entire server involved were somehow fun…along with player weddings (RP was more than Goldshire humping. lol. Unsure how it is now, but it seemed dead in Legion to me.)
  8. Faction-boss raids. Usually went pretty poorly…

There’s more, but I’m getting a bit fatigued with this post and would like to end it.

My final words: Vanilla’s endgame was the entire game. The whole thing mattered, because who you met and interacted with as you leveled up could easily change how you’re perceived on the server.

The only reason I ever got to experience Molten Core at first and then Naxx near the end, was because of my best gnome-friend Valdren. He also lent me money for my mount at level 40, which I spent about a month repaying.

I cannot stress enough that vanilla is not just about ‘content the devs give you,’ and more about what you make of your character.

Hope I helped some…I know a lot is probably missing.

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Geh, just realized I was quoting the wrong person and therefor forgot 1 question.

Ah well, Vanilla PvP wasn’t super balance, but PvP was more of a hap-hazard result of poking people than anything else. Being competitive is not a great idea.

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!. Since you started in Wrath, you leveled through a very nerfed and rather made-irrelevant version of vanilla questing, so you have a general idea here and I think you already know the answer to this question: quest design changed radically in Cataclysm and they’ve been tweaking it ever since.

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  1. No, quests were simpler in function for vanilla wow. But the main difference is questing was not on rails, it was much more open format. Quests didn’t typically have a grand narrative where you were a great hero. There were also a lot of… it’s hard to say the right words… secrets? sort of. A lot of quests were more difficult to find, to unlock, to complete, and they also sometimes took you all over the world.
    There is something to the vanilla quest system that made it feel satisfying and adventurous, though it’s fairly simple.

  2. Dungeons were relevant at max level, and how relevant depended on your commitment. It was not uncommon for the highest level dungeons to be the highest level content people did… and it’s quite a big task completing the dungeon sets(and the 2nd tier of dungeon sets). It’s something a casual to moderate player could definitely have as an ultimate goal, if your schedule does not allow raids.
    For hardcore raiders, dungeons are relevant for gearing guild mates, reagents, professions, rep rewards and quests. There does come a time where they become less relevant to the point where raids are your main focus, but never completely irrelevant… unless you have completely maxed out yourself.

  3. Quests(Even at max level) take you all around the world and are relevant throughout the entire raiding experience. Farming regents and farming in general requires you to go all over the world in various places. The regent demand at end game is very high. Some rep rewards are also in different places in the world. Some of these hotspots are big pvp points of contention. There are also world events like AQ, the EPL one, etc. Fishing extraviganza, and the gurabashi arena are a few more.

  4. Rewards were fewer, drop chances were lower, and gear you did get stayed relevant longer. You could get gear through pvp, dungeons, and raids… though raiding gear was the best gear… but it doesn’t mean you couldn’t progress your character otherwise.
    The gearing system in Vanilla did feel very satisfying when you finally got something you have been really working for, like I said, rewards were fewer… so they felt bigger. Progression worked similar than it does now, there are harder and harder dungeons, and harder and harder raids.

  5. In Vanilla there was a lot more to try to accomplish in general at max level like attunements and reputations. The economy system also worked a lot differently and more rewarding in my view. Professions were also very rewarding and something you continued to work on at max level. There were no dailys like world quests, you had a set progression you had that you worked towards. There were world events in vanilla, like I said before. Lights hope event(Idk what its called), AQ event, fishing extravaganza, arena, world bosses.
    I see you focus a lot of your concern on Max level… but actually the true golden part of vanilla wow in my view is that it is actually a game that feels like a real character progression throughout the entire game. The economy is relevant at all parts of the game, pvp is relevant at all parts of the game, professions are relevant at all parts of the game, and dungeons! You can almost think of classic wow being in it’s “endgame” at level one… your character never stops progressing all the way through to the end of nax. This is not the case in modern wow, currently it’s just a rush to get to the “real” game at the end. Vanilla wow is actually a full RPG experience.

  6. Vanilla wow pvp was my favorite. All classes felt very distinct in pvp. Unfortunately classes today feel more homogenized. Nothing in todays wow copies the experience of vanilla AV… which was my favorite pvp of a mmo I’ve ever played.
    There are certainly Pvp rep rewards AND honor rewards.
    To give you some insight into how vanilla pvp feels in comparison to today… players health was lower… so getting the initiative on the opponent mattered fairly significantly. Having a gear advantage is very rewarding… but it wasn’t an automatic win. Crits felt very impactful and they changed the coarse of a battle.
    You felt very powerful in pvp as a player… and very weak at the same time xD. There were some crazy things you could pull of like mind controlling people off ledges, AoE bomb a group of 20 people, One shot people on a lucky super powered crit…

Characters also had significantly more spells than they do in current wow today, so it made pvp a very engaging and complex game.

Sometimes I feel modern wow pvp drags out too long and things are much more predictable.

The talent system was satisfying and made the game been playable in some many different ways… For example, rogues had like 10+ viable pvp talents builds. So many dynamic ways of changing your playstyle, for every class.

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Twinks

that is all

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Yes it was much less diverse and story driven. The vast vast majority of quests were just go kill X of Y or gather Z quests with the occasional escort quest thrown in. There was very little story and no cut scene or role play quests.

Bascially after you cleared UBRS/Strat/Scholo you were done if you weren’t raiding. None of the content had multiple difficulties so dungeons once you got your dungeon set that was it, they did eventually add a quest line to upgrade your dungeon set but since it was actually harder to get than just raiding there was little reason to do so.

You basically raided or did the pvp grind.

Pretty bad, if you didn’t raid you basically had no gear progression at max level.

It was good in the sense that blizzard was still treating it like the side game it was supposed to be. So it was basically a fun diversion that you didn’t take seriously. Balance sucked but that was okay because it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously so it was actually fun.

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Most are kill/collect type quests. A fair amount of travel/exploration/delivery quests to introduce you to new zones as well. Quite a few instance quests which must be collected from quest givers in the world prior to entry and may be part of a quest chain.

They remained very relevant. Amazing crafting recipes, crafting quests, class quests, crafting mats, rare mounts, a few BiS items and attunements for friends and guild members.

This is three parts. First is that especially early in the content (patch) releases, the “Old Zones” still have a lot of very good stuff. Expect to see 60s who are LFG for as low as Uldaman.

Secondly, 60s will very regularly be in Eastern/Western Plaguelands, Burning Steppes, Un’Goro Crater, Silithus, Feralas, Felwood, and Winterspring. That’s where the game is played for crafting, questing, reputations, attunements, dungeons etc.

Third is the many world bosses. Azuregos, Doom Lord Kazzak, and later the Dragons of Nightmare (Emeriss, Lethon, Taerar, Ysondre). There is also a boss in far south Tanaris, but I don’t remember his name… Not to mention the opening of Ahn’qiraj when it is time for that which is a massive world event.

Quite different actually. For a DPS melee it is all about +Weapon Skill, Hit%, Crit% and Attack Power. Anything that increases one of those stats while not sacrificing others is an upgrade. For a Warrior that could be Leather, Mail or Plate.

Many of the best in slot items for a melee DPS are actually what Vanilla players call “offset”, meaning it is not part of the class tier set.

Loot works a little differently for every raid tier. That said, the class sets for each tier tend to focus on what the class is most likely called on to to. For example the Warrior set bonuses and stats are oriented towards tanking. AQ40 is where the gear drops that is AMAZING for the DPS “off” specs (Shaman, Paladin, Warrior, et al).

The game, period. I don’t actually think it is possible to run out of things to do in Vanilla.

If you play on a PVP server, it is the best World PVP there has ever been in this game.

Battlegrounds (once introduced) and the honor system. This is notoriously difficult past about Rank 10, but until AQ40 the gear from it is actually pretty good and excellent for PVP.

Note that you must increase in rank to get the rank-related gear. For example, at Rank 3 you can purchase a Cloak, Rank 8 you can purchase a blue Chest and Legs. Rank 14 (the highest) you can purchase epic quality weapons. Each rank basically opens up the ability to purchase (with gold) something from the vendors.

There are also the battle ground reputations themselves. At exalted each has epic gear that can be purchased (with gold) .

My final comment on this is I noticed how many times you mention that players do “X” and are rewarded “Y”. Vanilla operates on a very different model in general.

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Nice conclusion to a great comment, Cheater!

This is the 50,000 feet view I have comparing what I know of Classic to BfA as well – in retail you are led by your nose through an overarching storyline where you are an important part of saving the entire planet from the Big Bad (Old Gods this time, is the indication) and Blizzard wants you to read and appreciate all the story. When they can’t trust you to read the text they’ll force-feed you cinematics (and to be fair, the cinematics and the story lines are quite cool, the first time you see/read them).

In Vanilla, my impression and faulty memory is (for pre-Cataclysm Azeroth questing) that you start out as a normal schmoe and you level up and you just do what you do.

After a long time (because leveling to max was a big portion of the time you spend /playing rather than something to rush through to get to the “actual” game that starts at max level) you got to max level and, while you could go into dungeons and raids and kill the Big Bad, you certainly didn’t have to and arguably the majority (although people’s opinions and estimations on this vary widely) didn’t clear raid content and many never set foot inside a raid instance.

This. Right there. I’m so looking forward to this. Farming the world. Leveling alts. Doing what I want to do and not feeling like I’m doing it wrong because Blizzard is “encouraging” me to grind a M+ keystone or raid or accept purples raining from the sky in a warfront or whatever it is they want me doing in game.

In live, I know it’s still up to me, but it just feels different when I do what I want. I can’t put my finger on it. I’m hoping that Classic gives me a different feeling in this respect.

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This is patently untrue except for the part about no cut scenes (well, the AQ scepter quests players got to see a couple of cut scenes IIRC). Vanilla had multiple stories spanning the two continents and the quests told the stories. There were mini-stories that were self-contained, mini-stories which fed into larger stories that resolved in dungeons, and mini-stories which fed into larger stories which fed into dungeons and then raids.

Now, the “problem” with the sort of early quest design of vanilla is that a lot of people didn’t read the quest text and simply followed the directions to “go here, do this, bring X back to Y” and then came away with the impression like the person I quoted above. This led to Blizzard honing the vanilla formula over the next two expansions and then finally chucking it completely in favor of the themepark carnival ride-style quest design they introduced in Cataclysm.

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There was only raiding. That was it, at max level.

This is why the game was so flawed, because you reached a point where all there was for you was stagnation.

There was nothing else to do but raid, which required you to be in good with a raiding guild that could do it. Then you had to be able to do 5 nights a week, 5 hours a night, in order to have the DKP to compete with over 40 people (in the guild, in order to field 40 people on those nights. )

Later expansions, especially Legion (well, even BFA) have so much more to do. Even an expansion that isn’t that great, like BFA, has a million more things to do than classic. I’ve not set foot in a dungeon or raid, with a group, in BFA; Meanwhile, I have a 392 ilevel and have been feeling like I’ve progressed.

In “Vanilla”, I reached a point where I could not raid and basically had nothing to do. So I was messing around with other games like “Lord of the Rings Online.” I got an invite to the Burning Crusade expansion beta, which really made me see how much they had improved Wow. So I pretty much stayed in that beta, until the release of BC. I think there was about a 2 week period before the release, after the beta was over.

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^
Another person who constantly complains about/puts down Vanilla but can’t seem to stay away from the Classic forums.

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There were some quests that would take you to multiple zones, take help from groups to complete in a timely manner, and take 5 or more levels to complete, as well as take you into and out of dungeons, and other continents and capital cities. One thing I mention to people is that just about every named npc in the capital cities has a quest associated with them. It takes a lot of exploring to find our what their part in the world is.

Dungeon set or tier 0 was a thing to do. Otherwise, you could still be going into dungeons for more resistance gear or some rare drops. I knew guys all the way up to AQ40 raiding who’d still need some dungeon items. And there was gold to make by farming boe blues to sell to low levels.

The big endgame zones were Silithus, Eastern Plaguelands, and around Blackrock mountain. STV is also a jungle for all player levels. There’s lots of important farming in other zones too like Wintergrasp and Feralas and Felwood (I forget it’s name, above ashenvale.)

There were raid quest chains and reps you’d do world stuff for too. And Class quests, at least for some classes.

Getting a drop was tougher, there weren’t vendors either really. Crafting had good stuff, mats were expensive. The old world recipes in retail wow have had a lot of materials removed especially in Leatherworking.

Leveling alts was a big thing. I know you say Max Level. But if you played a lot, you’d have time off, and you and guildies and other friends would level alts. Nowadays, leveling is not really a group thing, so leveling alts cause you want a break from endgame grinds is just a solo activity and not immersive. You could solo of course just for some peace and quiet. Other people can tell you about other max level stuff.

I guess I’ll mention farming and AHing. Top guilds needed guys who farmed heavy and worked the AH. Biggest mistake you can make as a guild leader going into Classic is not recruiting a good team of heavy farmers who to them that is endgame. Top Guilds would still often buy gold to help make raid night enjoyable and progress. It sounds cringe to say it, but it was true.

It was very rock paper scissors. But it’s important to state and be upfront about, Gear Matters. Basically if you are in quest greens, and minimal blues, you will get dumped on, and really not contribute to any team efforts. And with gear, you can actually sometimes beat paper with rock, or beat scissors with paper. Other classes like Rogue could use cc and gear independent damage abilities to naked kill other players. But for most part, get gear, know your class, know your role, know your counter class, and you’ll have a good time much of the time.

And as far as how imbalanced counter classes were, I was complete noob warlock, could still beat almost all frost mages. Meanwhile just about every frost mage could beat any warrior. Other counters like shaman v priest were a thing. Warrior v rogue. Only great gear difference could make a reliable difference. But it was still fun. If you were the underdog class you could learn to play and hold on longer and longer as you got better skills and knowledge and more gear. I had more fun pvping at all levels in Vanilla/TBC. Imbalances didn’t bother me.

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Yes, if you play like this in Vanilla there won’t be a lot for you to do. Vanilla is an MMO.

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There’s a lot more to do than raid at max level including farm (which you actually have to do), pvp (world and bgs), world bosses. The game just isn’t on rails telling you exactly what to do.

I also think you might be the only person who’s said they feel progesssion in bfa.

Just because you have a narrow view of end game in classic doesn’t make that a correct statement. Max level in classic is about player generated content, not islands with cut scenes.

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We had fewer quest types I suppose, but we also had longer quest chains (Ony attunement, Darrowshire for example). The rewards you also got from some quests could potentially be pre-raid BiS for your character, or at the very least would stick around for a loooong time. You also had to read the quest text to figure out where to go a lot of the time. This inadvertently had people reading the individual stories of the zones they were in and the quests they were doing.

You had your dungeons in normal mode and that was that. I would argue that they were more difficult than even maybe mythic 0 now. For example, you HAD to long CC (poly, freezing trap, sap) multiple mobs in some packs in the old dungeons, simply because your group, no matter how geared or how good, would not survive. I legitimately have never seen any long CC needed in current content.
Otherwise you would just farm these same dungeons, same difficulty, over and over for your attunements, gear, etc. There was also never any warforging or such, so once you got your piece, you had it. That was as good as that piece was going to ever get. You could still go back to old dungeons once you started raiding to farm them for gold, materials, or to help guildies gear up/finish quests.
To do Onyxia you needed 40 people attuned to her, and that meant multiple BRD runs for each of them.

Basically materials, attunements, and PvP. Blacksmiths could create the Lionheart Helm, a BiS for DPS warriors I believe, and you had to get your Thorium from somewhere. Those previously mentioned attunement quests also sometimes had you going back to older zones.
Oh, forgot the Hydraxian dude in Azshara. You had to go through his quests for the reagent to summon Ragnaros.

Raids, dungeons, PvP, epic quest chains, reputation, farming gold/materials. Hunters had the Ancient Petrified Leaf quest starter off Majordomo. Priests had their Benediction thing from somewhere. Not sure on the details for that. There was also a lot more of ‘make your own goals and achievements’. Also no transmog, so Im sure someone could claim that standing on top of the capitals mailbox in full tier armor and flexxing is a legitimate form of content lol

In 1.12 and in the proper phase that comes out, we’ll have a honor bar kiiiinda like now. It tracks your honorable kills and honor received and grants you a spot in the rankings based on the rest of your server. There is gear rewards, potions, tabards, and the only titles in the game for going higher up. As in my last answer its more of a ‘pick your own goal’ kind of deal.