Things I don't like about vanilla

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I played a bit of vanilla, leveled few characters and raid MC.

I enjoy this version of game, I enjoy things that later game versions removed. However there are few things that I don’t enjoy.

I’m not looking at fixing it, but just thought it would be interesting to discuss it.

Layers. I don’t know better solution, but I still hate them. I don’t want to install addons, I don’t want to layer hop, I’m trying to play the game the way it was designed. And I want other to do so. If the layers are the way to play the game, give me UI to switch the layer without addons.

Overcrowded server. I’m playing on Spineshatter and it is very populated server. I had to abandon my thoughts about leveling profession. I can round few circles in some zone and mine zero ores. I can log in at night to check for Broken Tooth and find 20 hunters running around. This is frustrating.

Broken tanking. Right now most tanks are warriors, wearing few leather pieces and running with two one-handers. I’m playing WoW since original TBC, I played tank most of the time and that’s not the way I envisioned vanilla tanking. I want tanks to spec prot. I want tanks to wear full plate and shield. I want DPS players to watch for threat. That’s not happening, that’s not the way the game was supposed to be played.

Some addons feel essential. Retail WoW made a lot of changes that allows one to play without addons. Vanilla WoW provides API for unit health, for precise threat values and playing without this information is severely handicapping yourself. There should be option to display unit health in standard UI. There should be option to display target threat value. Also bosses should be reworked to incorporate better visuals. For example Geddon puts a debuff that you are supposed to run away with. This debuff is almost invisible and hard to notice without addons. In Retail WoW these things usually provide better visual feedback, so you can perform basic raid mechanics without any addons. I’m not talking about reworking whole fights, just a little improvements here and there which won’t affect most people anyway, but would affect those who prefer to play without addons. I also would add that AH is just unusable without addons.

Broken gearing. It is wrong that warriors stealing leather from rogues. It is wrong that holy paladin wants exactly zero of T1 pieces and instead fishes AH for +healing greens which are somehow BiS for many slots. Tier sets must be BiS for corresponding phases. Classes should want to use their armor type. One easy fix would be to add +100% of primary stat if one wears all plates, and Intellect also should provide +healing. May be there are better ways to fix this issue, but that’s the issue nonetheless.

Broken Dire Maul groups. I don’t know exactly why that happens, but I just can’t find any groups in DMN non-tribute run. Actually I have problems finding ANY groups in DM as a healer. LFG tool filled with healers. I don’t know why DPS players don’t want to go there. It is fun dungeon and it contains some nice items, but I struggle to find groups for it. I didn’t have that problem for any of other dungeons in game. Sure, tank shortage is understandable, but with enough waiting I usually was invited sooner or later. That doesn’t happen with Dire Maul.

Raids are too easy. At least for now. I never saw Ragnaros sumerging and I’m raiding MC from the third week of its release or something like that. I never saw Onyxia breath. I probably didn’t see many other fight abilities, like Shazzrath is supposed to do something, right? I’m not looking for hard raids, I’m looking for adequate raids with original fights, I want to actually experience abilities bosses are supposed to use. May be things will get better with later raids, we will see about it.

World buffs promote toxic behaviour. I actually like world buffs, they are nice RPG sprinkle. But the way they work is when raid dies, everyone extremely unhappy. Not just because they have to spend 10 minutes running from GY, but because they can’t parse anymore. I don’t know a good solution for this issue, but there should be one. I literally saw people bullied enough to leave the guild because they blew raid on Geddon once. I played mythic raids in retail, I endured hundreds of wipes, I endured weeks of wipes and I never met such hostility towards one’s peers. It entirely caused by the game design. May be make world buffs not having expiration timer or something like that. Like you got the buff and it’s there for the full week, no matter what.

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Im only gonna adress 1 point of all the things you mention.
Raid difficulty. Yes vanilla have never been “hard”, but you can make it “harder” and make bosses do mechanic by going in with 20 man groups in mc/ony.
Not only does it increase difficulty but it makes more players get more loot.
Also the less warriors you have in a group the longer fights.

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Vanilla is the game launched in EU in 2005 and lasted until TBC took over in early 2007. I am not sure why you are bringing this up now - 20 years after.

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Every single one of the points you made, save for the layering issue, is more of a comment on player behaviour than vanilla WoW.

Vanilla has few inherent problems as a pure gaming client, unless you class Blizzards seeming attempts to foster such behaviour among modern players, and lack of action to address such issues.

Even the layering can, in a manner of speaking, be blamed on player behaviour because many players campaigned for huge megaservers after Classic WoW’s reveal - they wanted an experience similar to the private servers they’d grown accustomed to - and Blizzard listened.

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was never a thing in Vanilla. It should in my opinion also not have been a thing in Classic or Anniversary.

was never a thing in Vanilla. It is a problem created by Blizz by not creating enough servers at launch of Classic and Anniversayr: See layers.

This is how it was in Vanilla, that it is not so now, is a player-made problem. Try going to Era servers, or the HC servers. There we still do it the Vanilla way - mostly :wink:

I care to disagree. I have one for fun addon. one to make up for Blizz’s changes (would like more) and one convenient - could do without that one :wink:

I agree!

Raids, groups and World buff. Not Vanilla either, but modern player behaviour.

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I mean you can have no layers, but it would create more queque times. Then ppl will complain about that it takes 3 hour to login😅

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Come to the era realms instead! No layering and a tight knit community :slight_smile:

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It’s not broken, it gives you more options to get gear other then just clear last raid. If you want “higher ilvl=always better” go retail.

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I’m not reading that - you are complaining about a 20 year old game that wont change.

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I had no problem on Spineshatter for getting mining (and engi) at high level, just did it while leveling (questing).
I was suprised about DM too (as a healer also) and tanking / gear services in general are a quite boring 2025 behavior.

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For guilds that expect full world buffs and have a good comp this won’t change. for the more casual guilds they are going to be met with a Vael wipe. Then they are going to be met with a few firemaw wipes. They are never going to be able to consistently clear BWL without problems. Week after Week. These guilds don’t make it through AQ and they won’t be alive in Naxx.

While yes, raids are easy. You will start to see casuals dropping from the raiding scene.

Most of your other complaints are just vanilla game design or crying about needing to make your own DM-Non Tribute run. I did it many times on both and healer and a tank.

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Or you just keep a eye on your debuffs and its easy to see if you have it…

That sounds like a retail thing, the mixing and matching is a part of vanilla.

All the physical DPS actually need from DM is at most the bow and the ring (that happens to be from trib)

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And yet you proceed to list a bunch of things you want to get fixed… What is even the point of this thread? You know that Blizzard isn’t going to change Classic. It is what it is.

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Im also trying out classic since i loved that game until they made to meny changes. But now i try i see nothing is really bad ah is broken by items with 2 stam and 2 strg cost 500 gold for just green lvl 10 item so any new commers that either comes back to have fun or new players who wanna give classic a chance. The ah prices just leaves one heartless at trying any more since as one who just started again dont have such gold and dont wanna buy gold, also none plays bg any more just only lvl 60 player or there about i loved in the old days taking a little time of lvling and play bg but so far no game yet. Hope that some old player would rethink there gold prizes on stuff since i think meny new player that dont have some one rich playing might give up since it so sad… really hope old players would welcome new one or old recommers to play a little instead of trying to get a billion gold in a game where in the end the god dont so much for one who all ready have all gear.

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Because if there are no other same items in stock, and if you have one, you can post for any price as you want xD But it doesnt mean that anyone buy it for that price

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True, and also maybe some of those could be used for twinks so people make them very pricey.

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And I might also ask: how do you fix bad player behaviour? Given that most of the issues he raised are the fault of players making terrible decisions, rather than any inherent fault of the game client.

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It is fault of the game design. You can’t blame players for not wanting to hinder their gameplay. If game allows tanks to survive without shield while not providing protection warriors adequate threat generation with shield, you can’t blame them going to tank with swords. That’s the reasonable thing to do. And game could fix that by introducing hidden threat multiplier when tanking with shield or by increasing boss autoattack damage to the levels where it’s not possible to survive without shield.

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The bad player behavior is the result of the game design, just like Etly said.

So the issue remains. It’s obviously a problem with game design, but it can’t be solved because the design of Classic is set in stone. Fixes and design changes are applied in later expansions.
There is plenty of stuff about classic I would love to change and tweak, but I know that it won’t happen. The best thing I can do is play whatever version of the game that is closest to my preferences, and deal with the flaws I can’t change.

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Design of the classic is not set in stone. May be for Era it should have been set in stone. But for Anniversary realms it’s definitely not set in stone. Changes happened. Just recently they announced to increase black lotus spawn rate. That’s exactly the example of small change which intended to fix one of game issues.