The game before they had seasons

Community General Discussion
61

Old WoW had patches with new raids and new, stronger gear, but it did not have seasons, and was distinct from what we have now.

Seasonal WoW: We have different tracks of gear (from explorer-track through myth-track), which are earned in progressively more difficult content, and each track has its own range of potential item levels. However, when the new season begins, we have, effectively, all-new tracks of gear. Season 2 explorer gear isn’t the same, item level-wise, as Season 1 explorer gear. Each new season raises the gear level ceiling, but it ALSO raises the gear level floor. By the last season of an expansion, world quests are giving you gear that is objectively stronger than Season 1 raiding gear, while the raid that was “current” in Season 1 is still giving you that old gear, which cannot be upgraded and which is weaker than easier-to-acquire gear of the current season.

Traditional WoW: Every new raid offers progressively higher item-level gear, increasing the iLevel ceiling with every major patch. However, gear acquired from world drops, from quests, from dungeons, and from earlier raids remains the iLevel it was on expansion release. Doing a run of the Steamvault while Black Temple is the current raid doesn’t reward you any different loot from doing a run of the Steamvault while Sunwell Plateau is the current raid. Likewise, if your guild was going slower or you missed the early expansion, you’re not immediately jumping into Sunwell Plateau because you’re not geared for it. The way you gear for it is by running Black Temple (and the way you gear for that is running Hyjal, and the way you gear for that is by running Tempest Keep, and the way you gear for that is running Karazhan, etc)

There are positives and negatives to both. Traditional WoW was, obviously, MUCH less alt-friendly, whereas the newer seasonal WoW is very friendly to alts by comparison. On the other hand, seasonal WoW tosses raids in the trash the second the new season starts, effectively shrinking the expansion and severely limiting total amount of content.

I think, in a perfect world for me, we would retain the alt-friendly seasonal nature of current WoW (increasing the iLevel ceiling AND floor), but maybe retain access to old raids throughout the expansion as valid forms of content and gearing. I wouldn’t want “last season” raids replacing “current season” raids as the cutting edge gearing content, though, so it would have to be balanced somehow.

2 Likes
62

Old raids cant be max ilvl rewards though, which would make them instantly thrown away.

63

There are lots of people who, even at the end of a given season, aren’t fully decked out in myth-track gear. I would venture to guess that the majority of WoW players aren’t in full myth-track gear at any point in any expansion.

2 Likes
64

Ok?

But it would have to be like that all the way down.

Heroic old raid cant give the same ilvl rewards as heroic new raid.

The amount of guild drama that would be caused if old raids remained relevant would be intense.

65

Feels exactly the same, aside from dungeons being relevant the enitre xpac instead of the first two weeks.

66

Well that’s what I’m wondering about.
It couldn’t be exactly like traditional WoW if we wanted to keep raising the iLevel floor every season, but there could be other gameplay loops that kept the “current” raid relevant while allowing old raids to offer the same gear item level.

Possibly only allow Mythic difficulty in the current raid. Possibly build something into the current raid, like a seasonal currency or set of unique rewards. Trinkets from old raids being “better” might cause trouble, but also might not.

67

This would cause people to riot.

It absolutely would.

Because people arent going to raid every night of the week. They dont want to, outside of some specific circumstances.

People also arent going to be happy if the raid that drops their BIS is the one not being run that week.

68

You mean like back in BC where you had to progress through each raid tier to get to the current one and there was a constant problem of guilds poaching raiders from less progressed guilds and guilds would get stuck in progression because of it?

Wasn’t a good system.

4 Likes
69

WoW players don’t riot. They complain impotently on the forums and then get over it.

They wouldn’t need to.

70

I feel like people that bring up how the game was better for the few years that seasons didn’t exist never actually raided back then, and they are blind to just how bad this was.

5 Likes
71

Not at all, the old system required you to run the older stuff to gear up for the new tiers
and the difference in lvls wasnt so extremely that it made everything you had obsolete and had to start over.

1 Like
72

And then I sat down and logged out. For like a week.

2 Likes
73

NOT like this, maybe ‘tier sets’ became ‘old’ and not efficient, but they weren’t grayed out after a patch. There was no ‘upgrades’. This like the main post says it does feel like you are reset and all that time/effort is kind of meaningless.

2 Likes
74

Seasons don’t grey out our tier sets. What are you talking about? Season 1 tier set bonuses are still working in season 2.

75

When you get a BiS gear in Black Wing Lair in July of 2005, you had been wearing it for 18 months until TBC is released January of 2007. That was me.

Unlike you, you came late in Vanilla then a month after, TBC got released. It’s like you started TWW in January 2025 last month of Season 1 and Season 2 got released a month after and got an upgrade.

1 Like
76

I’ve been here since end of July 2006. Ran all of the raids with a friend’s guild up until BC released.

Not sure why this even matters, it’s still the same point.

Or are you just looking to feel better about yourself for being around a year or two longer?

77

But not in 30 sec, your full set became obsolete. The point is… you had several months then a new Season… new Tier is released. From Vanilla, up to now, it is the same.

The Season was invented for PvP. They lined the new release of Raid Dungeon on Season.

1 Like
78

I didn’t say you replaced your full set in 30 seconds. I did say,

That’s what happened to me with the AQ staff. Not the whole set all at once.

Yeah…? That’s what we’ve all been saying? I’m not following.

79

Hush brah you’re hard stuck at 7s you got no room to judge others

80

I prefer Greens to replace everything when new Season starts. Players get excited when they get an upgrade. If you are in complete BiS before the new Season, it would take a while before you see an upgrade on a new Season. Like ilevel 639 people is so bored this week becoz Season 2 hasnt started. They are not getting anything this week.