The Classic Feeling isss… being level 60 and using a trinket to stun an enemy off you to get that CC off or slow or run item from a level 30+ rare far off the beaten path in the sea in arathi highlands… A lvl 52 or 53 mail chest piece from a level 55 dungeon that is preraid BiS for like 4 classes… Give me some more classic feeling examples!
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It’s different for everyone. The only thing people can agree on is that vanilla is very special and different… but no one can agree on WHAT makes it that way.
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- Grey items being awesome at first!
- that first few pouches you get being a gift from the gods!
- Missing! (less of a good thing)
- Doing stuff with other people randomly
- Reading quests
Thats all I can think of right now based off of the hour I played of Hardcore last night.
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The thing that separates Vanilla from everything after it is its direct correlation to EQ and by extension D&D. The design philosophies fall directly into Brad McQuids original concepts of a “Virtual World” that WoW escapes the moment you walk through the Dark Portal.
Post Vanilla WoW is good for what it is, but only Vanilla is a true Virtual World MMORPG.
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Linken’s boomerang! Skull of impending doom! Some of the dumb situational crap you gather that is cool. Getting a pattern for an item (Star Belt) that you make one or at most two of BUT it is still cool. Fishing up the ONE ring (not as nice as the two ring) in ungoro crater when you are level 60 and have no use for it. That obnoxious noise that your argent dawn signet gives off when you log onto your toon, makes it feel really super important. The world and the factions FEEL relevant.
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but do you really need those items? If you need that 15min cd trinket to win every battle or your need that mail to top dps, oh well
Classic is being excited for white gear upgrades and your first green pieces of gear.
Classic is venturing around the world to different quests, dungeons, and raids to build the best gear for what you want to do.
Classic is knowing the names of the pieces of gear and them having significance seeing someone wearing them.
Classic is the imbalance of each class and the strengths and weaknesses that they all have.
Classic is the simplicity in abilities and talents, without layers and layers of systems creating complexity without depth.
Classic is adventuring around the world with your friends and joining others to take down even more monumental challenges, making more friends along the way.
Classic is being sad when hitting level 60 because the leveling journey has come to an end.
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aweosme examples
What is “The Classic Feeling” to me? There are things that I’ve missed as the game has moved on, and these are the things I’ve learned are the most fun for me about WoW:
- Running into the same people over and over, randomly, and then often organically getting to know them, sometimes ending up in the same guilds.
- On a PVP server, running into the same enemies in the world, it is especially fun when you’ve been ganked and you level up and get revenge. It’s also fun to group up and kill a higher-level ganker with others in the world.
- Server rivalries, guild rivalries, and even server drama. The crazy sandbox stuff that makes memories and doesn’t repeat.
- Talking to someone who was on your server 19 years ago and even if you didn’t really know each other well, you jointly remember the servers crashing after that horde raid on Ironforge, or the name of the shadow priest that ganked in BRM, or the AQ gate opening craziness, or the names of the guilds you fought against to kill Azuregos.
- All those toys and consumables, some of which are really fun and make a difference.
- Ranking with others in PVP, really getting to know people at their best and their worst, but still getting through it together, and learning to get better and better both as an individual and as a team, where premade vs premade play is the peak of fun (I almost didn’t include this with the rank changes but I have to, that’s a big part of the classic feeling for me).
- Helping guildies farm their BiS.
- Progressing as a raid guild through the content, although this is the one thing that has persisted for years.
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Couple more examples:
- Meeting people out in the world while questing or just to win a random pvp encounter, and then chatting for a while in whispers adding to friends and being friends for years.
- Running WC / Deadmines on an alt
always so fun - Getting meaningful upgrades while leveling and looking forward to that next powerboost!
- Long WSG matches with everyone trying hard
- PVPing with the same people (whether allies or enemies - you remember the people you meet and adjust how you play and how focused you are based on how good they are)
- Doing goofy stuff - making your class do something it wasn’t designed to do because you couldn’t find the exact person that fit that niche.
- Prepering for things - whether buying consumes for raid or pvp, getting wb, seeking summons, etc. you can do a lot prior to an activity to improve the chances of success.
- Dueling outside main cities
- Pvp in STV
- Pvp in black rock mountain
- Doing raids for the first time as a new characters - and then again fully geared much later!
- Trying new classes and feeling like a noob all over again - especially in those first pvp encounters.
- Raging at people from PVE servers in AV (then feeling bad about it later and realizing they are nice ppl too)
- Giving random stuff to lowbies that you know will help their journey
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Most of those are positive, some are mixed feelings, but still important for classic feel to me:
- Game being meaningful from level 1
- Going into a new zone and seeing yellow / orange monster levels, levelling up, and seeing them turn green then grey.
- Spending time leveling professions at level 7
- Getting that random first green drop
- Getting first blue item
- Getting weapon upgrade on melee and suddenly hitting like a truck
- Actually paying attention to autoattacks and individual swings
- Autoattacking with wands
- Waiting 5 seconds in combat to regenerate mana
- Going out to grind at some random level 23 to get gold for skill upgrades
- Going into a dungeon is a central experience of the evening or even week
- These old school thick HP bars and classic damage numbers
- Spending an evening finally doing that long quest on the other side of the world that you’ve been putting off before it becomes grey
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Having raid lead yell “ burn it down!” after both tanks die and the boss is sitting at 11%.
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The true feeling of classic in 2005 (for me)was:
-the mystery
-the adventure of walking through a new zone for the first time
-discovering new things along the way
-not knowing what the meta is(nor caring about it either)
-tri speccing your character cause you thought it would be good
-getting new gear that makes a large impact
-no gdkps
-allowing all specs into raid
-not rushing to max level
I feel a lot of my thoughts from 2005 is what the devs are attempting to bring to SoD and I appreciate them for it so much.
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I know its TBC era but…
I’m still traumatized by those huge fel things in Hellfire Peninsula.
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A lot of what people find fun about hardcore are the elite dangers like that.
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Bro said remembering ppls names is a classic feeling LMAO 
What was the point of that reply?
Maybe try answering the OP instead of only replying to be pointlessly rude.
Remembering peoples names from the game ABSOLUTELY is a “Classic feeling” to me, in addition to the list of other things I shared.
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I definitely remember the names of pvp gamers I run into - especially if they defeat me multiple times.
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oh that classic feeeelin 
it’s gone, gone, gone…
The Classic Vanilla feeling? or the Vanilla feeling. Two totally different things. Classic Vanilla players (generalizing) are lazy players too that want an easy way to win by following a spreadsheet. In this vein, i honestly wouldn’t mind a Retail progression mindset to show some presence so at least some part are willing to bang their heads against the wall for hours trying to figure something out and not get frustrated about it and quit.