Talent trees.
My paladin having its seals and auras back.
Larger dungeons, specifically Scholomace.
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BFA: I’m not very excited for BFA, but it was not that bad I guess, since I played it for over a month. Mythic+ and dungeon/raid mechanics were good, haven’t played the new raid. Arenas were ok. Other parts of the game are kind of underwhelming which is why I haven’t played it anymore.
Classic: I’m excited for the large world which is after 15 years familiar, but it’s home. Everything being a grind and taking a long time to do, I don’t have that much extra time as I did back then, but it gives value to everything in the game when it holds back stuff you can do and have for a long time. There isn’t things you have to do either, if you pass 2 weeks you didn’t really lose anything else than possible loot from raids, you didn’t miss some dailies or weeklies or your gear didn’t get inflated by any catch up gear or such.
Talent system, variety of items good ones bad ones and weird ones, no transmog, no LFD, no difficulty settings for raids. Having seemingly unnecessary stuff like reagents, but which give casting the spells that require them a special feel.
The game doesn’t do a good job directing you to a specific direction which gives more freedom for the players, so lot’s of things happen in the world. People go after their fortunes in varying ways.
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Talent trees.
Most levels have some ability or spell to learn.
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Class design was a lot more unique back then, and reward to effort was a lot better, bfa is too much about instant gratification rewarding, I don’t need to be showered with million identical pieces of loot every 4.3 minutes.
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don’t know yet.
Single-difficulty raids. No more farming the same raid instance multiple times a week. One and done.
Gold is used for more than just transmog and subscription time, and is an actual primary gameplay goal.
No flying mounts. At all. Ever. The scope of the world feels much larger because of this.
Classes are unique and fill a more specific niche than just healer, range/melee dps, and tank.
Specs are actually specializations and do not necessarily define your role, especially for hybrids.
People are in the world, because there is no LFD/LFG, summon stones don’t exist, and due to gold being primary gameplay people are out farming.
Hopefully there is minimal to no sharding. There is zero phasing.
Leveling is actually a journey and not a chore to get through. The game does not begin at endgame, it begins as you create your character.
I’m sure there are more reasons, but these are what I can think of off the top of my head.
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Totally agree with this. In retail, world feels like a waiting room for getting into the instanced multiplayer content. Since you “teleport” directly INTO the dungeon, it feels completely disconnected from the world.
Before LFD, the world and dungeons felt more seamless and connected, since you had to step into the instance portal. The travel time made failure (which was a possibility in Vanilla) a big deal. This meant that people were more inclined to be patient with group members and actually try to help others improve, because it was faster to help someone than it was to find a replacement.
The “gogogo” mentality didn’t exist as much, because that mentality lead to wipes. Instead, you had to carefully pull and CC mobs. I miss that playstyle. Honestly, modern wow feels more like a Diablo game than it feels like Vanilla.
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No you didn’t. Most of the pulls, if you didn’t have the right DPS class with you, you couldn’t CC anyway. Yet, miraculously, these groups still succeeded.
We were just collectively really really bad back then. We used to have tanks die because the healer was casting rank 1 heals while every mob from the initial pull was still alive. We relied so heavily on CC because drinking water was apparently just too hard.
Single instances, I don’t like how dungeons have multiple difficulties.
Having lfr, normal, heroic, mythic, mythic plus ,time walker, is going too far.
Time walkers seem to be ok on live their difficulty seems to be right for normal instances, but yeah I’d rather see dungeons with their own difficulty like mage terrance normal vs shadow labs being different.
Return to kharazhan had only mythic and mythic plus when it first came out, it was more difficult then myth dungeons and that’s the route live probably should of gone.
Also I don’t like how people don’t have to walk to instances on their own.
Only difficulty where it should be ok not to is time walking, because people are scattered around the world.
No sharding and cross realm, I played on pvp server and it made what ever Pvp servers I went to that were balanced unbalanced faction wise. I wen’t to some that were near 50 50 not exactly on average people playing. Cross realm in max level content legion screwed up one realm I was in, because we were linked with imbalance servers like illidan that were 90% horde or so.
Plus having shards that have no contact with others allows them to be different from others, you could have a server filled with trashy people or a server filled with rpg people or a server with people who aren’t min maxers.
Class design as well, I don’t like the whole spec/role system, I miss being able to heal raids as a ret paladin choosing infinite mana and hot heals over cleave heals.
Being able to tank as unholy or frost or old blood felt nice as well, they should of never redesign dks from any dk can tank to only unholy dks can summon undead minions and using resurrect ally to no longer turn them into a ghouls.
What bfa needs is real necromancers who can turn their dead allies into undead.
I mainly miss old talent trees and being a class and not a spect.
Paladins should be able to heal if they put on healer in bfa despite being ret spect, but stats now only benefit what is assigned making primary stats useless and nothing more then an ap stat that does the same thing.
No Go go go mentality and rushing the dungeon
Levelling is much better
Community
No LFG/LFR
I just want to be an adventurer, BFA has made me a messiah/saviour/Best thing happened to Horde etc etc… which is annoying
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Plain better world design, and more compelling and unique class designs.
I did an entire video review of BFA, and compared it heavily to vanilla/bc. You can mail me in game or something if you want a link to it.
In some capacities there was still a pretty good amount of RNG (Cenarion Boots didn’t drop from Lucifron for my guild for over a year), but there was, generally, a greater sense of accomplishment and value in what you were doing. It was more challenging to level and gear. Many places had attunements to get faster access to certain parts of instances (Staff of Celebras, Key to the City in Stratholme, Scarlet Key, etc.) that could make you useful to your group. Dungeons were larger and generally less linear. There was just… a greater sense of pride in all of your accomplishments in vanilla.
Don’t misunderstand - there are certain elements that I enjoy somewhat in modern WoW (generally, I preferred Legion>BFA, however), but the sense of accomplishment is drastically more diminished. Gear accomplishments get almost completely reset with each new tier. You don’t need keys or attunements, generally, to do most things. Interconnected zones can make a zone feel more alive, but it can make it feel more lonely when you realize you’re the only from your server that you’ve passed. Although things are faster now, you have no real connection. I generally say “Thanks all!” at the end of things like Island Expeditions, but most others rarely have a single response.
Classic is more simplistic in some ways, but it’s also more challenging in others. It felt … more real. In BFA, I can handily gather a group of mobs and solo them down (most of the time) without issue. In vanilla, if you accidentally pulled another mob… it might be a long walk for you back to claim your body haha.
I think, also, to some degree, modern WoW is somewhat overwhelming in the sheer number of things to do (and some you have to repeat for a looooooooooooooooong time). I don’t know if I could handle it as a new player. Even now, I don’t think I could ever get close to 100% of achievements unless I sacrificed my soul and at least a year of my life. There’s also been a more dangerous trend with this development group to force you into a certain pattern. “We don’t want you to do it this way. We want you to do this so you experience the content and then you can do it this way.” For example, the portals removal in the next patch. Although it might make the world feel “larger” (longer), it’s not done for player benefit. People generally don’t like something being taken away from them when they’re accustomed to it. They’ve gone too far in the direction that they’ve gone to try and take back the conveniences they gave players in modern WoW and except players to be happy or not lash out.
Also, at least with classic/vanilla, you’re going to know what you’re getting. You know the races. You know the classes. You know the quests. You know the schedule. Your abilities aren’t going to change. A class/spec you love will not be gutted and completely changed because of random reasons just because we are in a new expansion. There’s a greater sense of permanence that’s almost completely lost in BFA.
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I was going to play Classic but this forum and people on it makes me never want to play that game again.
I probably should have said “carefully pull or CC”. The point being, you could not chain pull multiple groups and AoE them all down like you do today. Tanks couldn’t hold threat on large groups like they can today. It was a different game.
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It’s not about things that BFA doesn’t have. It’s about the things it does have… the things like LFR, RDF, warmode, phasing, CRZ, sharding, arena, new talent systems, each spec essentially being a separate class…
Bfa has many more things Jan classic and those things take away from the community aspect of the game. What is missing in modern wow is the soul of the game. Classic is basic but the people I play with keep me coming back for more. The community is what bfa is missing, the soul of the game is gone.
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It is actually rewarding to get stuff in classic. Getting some items were extremely difficult, but once you got them, you knew that you were finally done. In BFA, you are a rat in a maze gearing up where items drop more, but there is always the chance of titanforging where you could be better off.
Classes were also classes and not just a set of specs that act as subclasses that you can swap from out of combat. Shadow priests can actually heal if they have healing gear on (not as well as a holy priest, but still decent) and dps warriors can tank with tank gear on (not as well as a tank speced warrior, but still decent). Notice I said a tank speced warrior and not a prot warrior. There is a spec that spends more points in fury and grabs only some key talents in prot that is used for geared tanks to output the best threat. In BFA, you can’t heal other players more than a tiny amount as shadow and there is no way to effectively tank as fury.
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In Classic, locations on the map feel like a part of a living world, in retail wow they are just cardboard cutouts.
Current: Organized arenas, exotic pets, transmog is iffy…
Classic: Leveling will mean something, dungeon loot will mean something, I have a set list of BiS items to aim for, more RPG elements, no titanforging…
Maybe a nicer way for them to do this, was to have warlock NPCs at the outposts near dungeons. When your queue pops you are summoned to the Warlock NPCs and you have to ride out to the dungeon. this would be fantastic for pvp servers because you could try to intercept your enemy faction. It also actually makes sense and is connected in an immersive way to the WoW.
I can imagine there would be strategy in reaching the dungeon safely. Maybe they could design the world around this principle and offer 2 - 3 routes so that the enemy has to actually do more than sit on the choke point and camp you.
I played Vanilla and quit before Ulduar patch in WOTLK. I mained a mage Vanilla-BC and DK until I quit and I came back just before BFA launched. To be clear, I hit cap in BC. So:
BFA:
-Better rotations. Only interesting Vanilla-tier rotation for mages was the 2pc t5 set in BC.
-Questlines overall.
-Boss mechanics. Opulence and Storm wall are both very cool and tight.
Classic:
-Adventure. The game felt more alive, immersive, and interactive. I started as a farm boy in Elwynn, who gradually explored the land, helped people, made allies and friends, and ultimately raided and took down big baddies in epic fashion.
-Single difficulty content. Raids are supposed to be the best of the best banding together to do what the rest cannot. Pretending everyone in Azeroth is a hero is nonsense. This ties into adventure, as downing ie Illidan speaks for itself without qualifier. The journey plus the achievement and not just the achievement mattered (well, I downed mythic Jaina). This applies to m+ as well, as the experience is cheapened drastically. I can remember my wonder the first time I fought my way to the Earthsong Falls in Mara and downed Princess. I have no such experiences in BFA.
-No pruning. As a mage, I am baffled why I suddenly forget how to cast spells like fireball as frost. It leads to dumbed down gameplay and less complexity. To that end…
-Old talent trees. These offered a small power gain (sometimes big) and something to look forward to as I leveled. At 60, it offered a depth and creativity (to a degree) in class design.
-Leveling. Essentially the adventure. Leveling was gameplay, not a means to an end.
-Mana, threat, CC. These added depth and teamwork.
-Shamans vs Paladins. This played into faction fantasy pretty heavily. Uneven footing is one thing Vanilla got right.
-Community. Last and important. I could not do Hogger without help. I could not queue for deadmines and treat my party like bots. Relationships grew naturally and were necessary for survival.
All in all, the world was a living and breathing adventure in Vanilla, with more depth and RPG elements. BFA is a dumbed down dungeon simulator with pvp.
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