The ‘poke the Scarlets with torture sticks’ quest being entirely RNG based so it could take five mobs or fifty is truly a genius moment in game design.
It’s a shame that the singular quest sucks so much because the rest of the DK intro experience just oozes raw flavour. Best starting experience in the game. DH one is a pale imitation.
Not that I’m biased at all ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
To be fair, for most people levelling in the starting zones is damn awful.
It is boring, it is something they have already done, and it involves playing pressing one or two keys over and over.
It may be easy, but it’s awful and depressing, and if you don’t have a great motivation, it just sucks.
I dont get the hate for starter zones. They set the pace (or should at least, rip humans and night elves especially.) For your races or classes lore, the music is nostalgic and good. the DK starting area, the Wandering Isle, Teldrassil, Dun Morogh and Tirisfal are unmatched for their vibes. If any of them are slow (their not.) Or the lack of buttons is off-putting its…kind of a personal problem? idk what to say id rather go through Eversong than the sanded down substanceless experience of Exiles Reach even if its quicker
I mean, well, both yes and no? If they were really that great, you wouldn’t have a new starting zone designed for all races.
Starting zones are a slow and boring grind that a player who has been at this game for a while has done over and over.
Why would I go through something I have done ten times, something that offers nearly no challenge, and is fundamentally a slow waste of time, and consider it remotely fun and entertaining? It is not.
For me, levelling a low character in retail is absolutely boring and depressing, because I know there isn’t any challenge, everything I gain (gear, loot, bags) I will have to disregard in a couple of hours, there is nothing to gain outside of levels, which I only want in massive numbers, so I can experiment with a new concept I may not even enjoy.
Let alone the fact that the cataclysm quest experience is even more outdated than classic, with durotar having 5 minutes cinematics to show me the devastation of the land that is itself arguably outdated.
It’s amazing and should never change.
It’s amazing, however;
-it should absolutely change. Because this bit sucks. I was stuck there for like 10 minutes, and that’s inexcusable.
i remember in wrath i was there for the better part of 40 minutes before it did aha…
The trick with the poke scarlets quest is to dual-equip both pokers, round up 4-5 scarlets at once and just auto-attack each of them one at a time, tabbing between them. Gets it done in like 5~ minutes.
For whatever reason, equipping both doubles your proc chance for the quest per hit. Don’t ask me why.
Hello? You poke them twice as much seeing as you use TWO pokers. Should be called MORONspell. Jeez…
mine just kept telling me to go harder with them was my quest bugged?
I started playing on AD at the start of BFA, but I did spend half a decade on less… official alternatives.
Now, this is going to sound like heresy for most of you, but the server I played on, called Prologue ( RIP 
), was a roleplaying realm which had a free-for all PvP system always enabled. People could fight and wage war on each other, resulting in a far more intimidating, far less forgiving world where leaving town and going in the wilderness on your own could spell death or at least a mugging.
This, of course, created more adversarial relationships between players, whereas roleplay here is usually a cooperative process. Was it perfect? No. Would most people here go for that? Also no.
But damn it was fun. One of my fondest memories is myself and a few friends walking into Strahnbrad and finding a Neutral community trying to settle it which had to deal with frequent attacks from other factions. We somehow ended up defending it from both the Syndicate and a Stormwind-based nobleman who wanted to reclaim Alterac for the Alliance. 60+ man RP PVP fights ending with the taking of prisoners, independence for ‘The New Alterac Republic’ and three randoms who happened to be strolling into town being hailed as its new heroes and protectors.
As much as I enjoy the roleplay of today, the adrenaline of fighting for your life and being SURPRISED is unmatched.
Sounds too much like EvE Online…
Definitely not for everyone, but you’d be surprised how much more real characters become when there is actual danger and death out there.
To be fair I’ve been on Project Zomboid RP servers which had full PVP turned on and I’ve got to say I felt the same way, it was crazy running into other survivors scavaging in a super market and us both pointing guns at each other and trying to negotiate without killing each other or letting them know where our base was.
But Zomboid is a zombie apocalypse survival simulator, I’m not sure the same feeling would apply to Warcraft and it’s epic story telling.
I would imagine that life and death situations were much more common on what you describe, yes. It’s not like you’d get murdered as soon as you stepped out of a town, but strolling through the Plaguelands certainly came at a huge risk, and it encouraged people traveling on groups so that bandits/the enemy faction don’t see you as easy pickings.
The typical WoW character would be brave and defiant in the face of 5 enemies outnumbering them, but having the danger of actual death above your head forces you to act a little more… realistic.
Thankyou very much for that link. Some of the chats I had with Jørgen whilst a member of the SCW really shaped me as a player and an RPer back then and it was an honour to finally bring Nath in for justice when it happened, my only regret being that I left the Watch right after. It did fit baldie IC at the time though. 
But, as an answer to the original question… it was, for me, quite simply better. The reasons have been mentioned many times above, as well as more personal reasons for me as well, but yeah roleplay was better in Vanilla, went downhill during BC and had a brief upsurge for a good chunk of Wrath. It’s been downhill ever since.
I remember when at one point there was this idea going around that the only players who should be able to claim high military ranks for their characters, should be the ones who obtained the said rank through rated battleground achievements and titles.
It was quite a widespread opinion too, very weird times.