Why 1.12(including naxx) was not a good version of vanilla

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I’m not going to argue for an entire change at this point, but I will point out why 1.12 is actually not really a good version of vanilla wow.

-1.12 was released august 22nd 2006. This brought naxx, new av, cross realm battlegrounds, some class balancing (edit - my timeline on naxx was off. It came out 1.11). By this point mc and most earlier content was nerfed, classes were buffed. Battlemasters were added in cities, and auction houses were no longer just in ironforge and orgrimmar.

-2.0 was released december 5th 2006. This brought arenas and removed the old honor system, basically letting people buy any gear with honor points. Note that this is about 4 months after 1.12.

-Tbc released january 16 2007(about 5 months after naxx released)

Main points to consider:

The vanilla honor grind existed with cross server battlegrounds for about 4 months. Vanilla cross server battlegrounds existed only for about 4 months before arena came out. People only had about FIVE months to do naxx. That means potentially 20 clears of naxx roughly, POTENTIALLY, and that’s it. That means only 5 months of naxx gear if you were a bleeding edge guild.

With naxx gear, people can just completely obliterate you in bgs. TBC was coming so soon after that it did not matter - not everyone was able to clear naxx. However, if we are sitting in naxx gear for a year or more pvp will get REALLY bad - there is no resilience, so people will be hitting for insane numbers. After two years or so it will be all about oneshotting in pvp.

XREALM Bg’s - The vanilla honor grind was NOT primarily done under these conditions, by the time they were released most people who wanted to do it had gotten their ranks and AQ gear was more available. Xrealm bg’s killed the pvp community on most servers because before them you knew who people were on each faction. If you look at alterac valley on beta, cross realm is very similar to that experience - you will not know anyone and there is no incentive not to just afk or bot. Battlegrounds are FUN when people CARE - with cross realm people will not CARE about battlegrounds. This is the key to it, queues will be short but they will not be something people care about since they do not know anyone on either side.

I have heard people argue that they still knew people from their battlegroup but from my experience this is bs. I would see a kelthuzad premade and say on vent “kt premade” - I did not recognize any of the individual players or guilds and I grinded pvp ALL day.

Edit: I guess naxx released in 1.11(late june). I made a mistake on the timeline, but the general point still stands.

10 Likes
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After seeing how nerfed the 1.12 version of AV is i have concern that 1.12 MC and BWL will be an absolute joke in terms of difficulty.

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It’s going to be scuffed honestly. My only hope for an authentic experience at this point would be a tbc server starting at 2.0.

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Well, if you say so.

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google it.

edit - august 22nd. i was wrong, Ill edit the initial post.

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Are you sure about that?

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Based on google yes, and it also reflects what I remember. Most people were waiting for tbc - but yes based on google that’s the date.

edit: had put 2016

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They were never hard, but they’re going to be really easy with 16 debuff slots and 1.12 talent trees.

1 Like
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I think you meant 2006, which is what I was pointing out.

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you’re right

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Naxxramas released as its own major content patch, 1.11

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Naxxramas actually shipped on Patch 1.11 20 June 2006

I do agree with your post outside of this minor detail.

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I absolutely abhor crbg and will not sub if that’s the only way to bg.

It’s a community killer.

On pservers t3 guys blow up blue and T1 guys in few seconds. I do think they should have at least one server frozen in time at bwl. After that power creep just goes through the roof.

14

They should do tunning some, not to create a hardcore Vanilla, just to compensate for the fact that we start in 1.12

You’ll hear “mechanics were easy we have experience now”

Then, imagine a boss with no mechanics but with a lot of hp and hard damage, then he IS hard even without mechanics it gonna require a lot of gear/preparation to pass it.
Yep, it’s vanilla

But in 1.12 those boss are irrevelant because of itemization/talent/spells/classes.

They can’t see what gonna happen, they just don’t care at all if the content is a LFR/Rush thing like BFA where it just require a bit more time.

5 Likes
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Imagine my shock that someone wearing gear two tiers above someone else will have an easy time killing the lesser geared player.

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It’s not a shock, but it wasn’t common back then. My server had no Naxxramas clears by time BC launches.

I’m not against Naxxramas, just going down memory lane.

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Fully agree man. The 1.12 is not really a Vanilla experience; instead 1.12 is the vanilla catch up experience and does not truly give you the feel of raiding Molten Core, Ony, BWL, AQ 20, ZG or AQ 40 or even the Dungeons.

Instead it’s just the “hurry up and get to Naxx before TBC drops” patch…

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There’s no way to do this, unless Blizzard tries drastic, unheard-of steps to address faction imbalance. If most streamers go horde, for example, the alliance population on those servers is statistically going to be way, way lower.

I’m not spending my nights playing sitting in a city, waiting in a queue for 2 hours just to find a game, because I rolled horde on an unbalanced server.

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Thats what I was explaining in another thread concerning CRBGs. I’m pretty sure my server didn’t even have C’Thun killed by the time BC launched. (Server launched in mid-late 2005, but yeah…low-mid pop) anyways…suddenly I start seeing people with some AQ40 gear every BG, and some with Naxx gear. It was like being a paper tiger against the hurricane.

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This is something I am looking forward to. I despise how they went from resilience, or gear mattering, to a balanced game of everyone pretty much having the same stats.

It makes PvP completely invalidate everything you’ve achieved on your toon. I loved getting smashed, knowing one day I will be able to do what they’re doing… Maybe that is just me though, but I am also into twinking :slight_smile: See you in the fields!