I left the nest. Went to Zul'jin and joined a prog guild.

Did heroic without wiping once except on fetid trash because they memepulled the whole room while doing lust reset haha. mythic mother offhand on first try. We wiped with 143k hp on the 67?m hp zek. 2/8 now, hopefully will do zek and vectis tomorrow.

raid nights r mondays, tuesdays and thursdays in the middle of the night, just the way I like it.

It's fun as fuck for someone who's never played wow before BFA. I have no idea how the game was, where people are coming from etc, but it's been a blast for me, learning how to kick the right stuff while doing m+, learning how to sim stuff, playing with azerite gear, and more than anything, learning how to blast bosses down and chasing damage meters.

oh since i haven't read the thread in a while @Hawkin in waycrest, stuff pulls through the floors in the courtyard. you can pull matron alma with laser matrix/blizzard/starfall/rain of fire etc. Obviously there's a tanking fix to that but it's super tilting to lose a timer off something like that cuz she just starts casting on you guys and you wipe.

 

lol, of all the realms to pick, you had to pick Zul'jin. I actually have a lot of connections there. A lot of guys from my original raid realm from vanilla ended up there (and some are still there). My friend of 15+ years and current roommate is in a 4/8 mythic guild there. In fact, when I was trying to get my heroic ghuun kill 2 weeks or so ago, it was that guild that I was doing it with. I remember you offering to come in for Zul and onwards, but ultimately we didn't get the kill on ghuun because there was too many alts.

 

I stopped playing in the middle of Warlords. Just got sick of the garrison grind and the 20-man requirement for mythic raids. We had the best 10-man team in our realm, and moving to 20 just killed the atmosphere.

It sounds like you have to spend weeks grinding out dailies and dungeons before you're geared enough to raid. Is it worth it to come back if you only have 10 or so hours per week to play?

 

Early expansion made acquiring gear harder, but now that we're almost done with the first raid tier, the "grind" is mostly optional. You can easily reach 345-350 by doing casual content which is pretty much the level entry for Normal and maybe Heroic Uldir depending on the group you're aiming for. It's easy to Pug M+ on horde side apparently, allowing you to enjoy that side of competitive WoW. PvP also rewards good gear for PvE so you can do either and still be useful in both. World Quest (dailies) are easily knocked out in an hour or so depending on your ilvl and are really not required, they're just a nice little boost. AP grind is pretty non-existent now that the catchup mechanic is so far along. You can reach level 20-21 without even trying which is plenty for casual content.

 

Yeah, 10 hours a week is plenty. levelleing 100-110 can be done in a couple of hours if you just do nothing but legion invasions (you can get the XP until 111 actually). The zones are pretty easy as well, and the dungeons are quick.

Levelling 110-120 is pretty quick too. Maybe 10-15 hours if you do questing. Alternatively, you can level through island expeditions, though they're pretty tedious. You can also do it through timewalking dungeons.

Gearing up once you're at 120 is super easy. Blizzard had the smart idea to release their catchup mechanism 3 weeks after launch. There's pretty much 3 level thresholds. 305 gets you into heroics (usually a skipable threshold). 320 gets you into warfronts and LFR. 340 generally is the minimum to get into Uldir.

Here's my guide I made up just now:

1) Arathi Rares. No requirement on these. There's 24 of them (I think?) in Arathi Highlands. People farm them for mounts and toys, though you can only do them once per warfront cycle which is about 3.5 weeks regardless of which faction controls it, but you can do them on every character. The droprate is like 20% so you'll get a couple of freebie 340 pieces (I think I got 4 on both my rogue and druid).

2) Weekly World Boss. Drops 355 gear. Probably worth it to use a reroll coin on it. I also think you need World Quests unlocked to do it, which you should either have or be close to having once you get to 120, so not a huge deal.

3) Arathi World Boss + quests. After your faction wins the warfront, you will have a portal to go to arathi, as well as some quests. One of them gives a 340 piece. You also have access to the world boss there which can give you a 370 piece, so I recommend using a reroll coin on him.

4) Timewalking Dungeons. No ilvl requirement on these, and they drop 335 gear. They're only up maybe like once a month though (I think twice so far since release? cata and mop). They're pretty funny since you can get items for slots typically taken by your azerite and heart necklace

5) Auction House. illvl 300 gear is crafted with expulsom, so it's not really worth it as it can be expensive. green ilvl 310 gear is from the islands, and generally not too expensive at this point. blue ilvl 325 gear is from island and can be pretty expensive. uldir boe gear ranges in price, but anything 370 and under can be had pretty cheaply these days (if you consider 30k cheap). I would only buy boe epics as a last resort (or if it's BiS I guess), but it is an option.

6) World Quests. There's a fine balance to walk here. They have staggered 1 day timers. I like to save them as long as possible, since they scale to your level, up to a certain point. So, I'll save weapon ones as long as possible in hopes of reaching an ilvl threshold to bump up the reward another 5 ilvls. Of course, completing them is better than letting them expire. Also, there are daily WQ rewards, which can be items.

7) Warfront Quest. Warfronts are the catch up mechanism, but they do require ilvl 320. So once you are there, I recommend doing your first one which will give you a 370 piece. Hopefully that takes you up an ilvl threshold to increase the scaling on world quest rewards.

8) Weekly Quest. Only some of them reward items. Timewalking quest gives you a 355. Mythic quest gives you a 370. If they're up, I'd get them done asap.

9) LFR is sort of optional at this point, but I would get it done.

10) Warfront spam. Warfronts reward ilvl 340 gear, and it's semi-random. You have a lesser chance of getting repeats, though it can still happen. So, if you get a few pieces of gear from lfr, warfronts will generally reward items other than those slots. A match takes 20-30 minutes, so you can gear up pretty fast. They're super boring though, especially if you're grinding them in hopes of a titanforge.

11) Mythics. The dungeons are good, but are just full of trash making them pretty tedious at time. And, why spend 30 minutes in a mythic when you can just do a warfront? But, when the warfront (or timewalking) isn't up, then this is what you do. Plus, if you have a profession, you need 15 hydrocores for your first 355 crafted item. Getting into mythics can actually be pretty rough these days if you dont make the group yourself. Like, week 1, ilvl 310-320 was enough, but 10 weeks in, lots of people are overgeared and simply doing them for quests.

12) Heroics. Honestly, I don't see the point of them. But, I suppose if warfronts and timewalking aren't up, and you've done all the world quests, and you can't get into a mythic, then I suppose you can do a heroic. Even then, I'd probably just keep trying to get into a mythic rather than do a heroic, with the only exception being if there's a dungeon WQ that gives a mythic item, which can happen.

 

Lol that was thorough. Thanks for all the info. If I can find the time, I might subscribe again. Probably have to wait until I take a break from writing. WoW is a time killer.

 

Man, this thread is as dead as the game is. It's amazing, we're 3 months in and it feels like we're already at that point where we're treading water as if it's that year-long wait between the last raid and the next expansion.

My sub is still active, but I haven't been playing that much. Usually, it's been my warrior of late, but I don't think I've even done a normal Uldir in about a month. I'll do like the world bosses and the weekly quest if it's an item, and that's about it for current content. But, what I have been doing is farming legendaries. It's actually been a pretty sick month in that regards.

1) Eye of Sulfuras on my rogue (who can't use it)

2) Another Eye of Sulfuras on my rogue (back to back weeks)

3) Mainhand warglaive on my warrior. Couldn't actually loot it, because apparantly I had that one already in my bank from 4+ years ago and forgot about it.

4) Binding from Garr on my Warrior. As above, apparantly I had this one already too :<

5) binding from Garr on my rogue.

6) binding from Garr on my rogue. :< duplicate

7) offhand warglaive on my rogue.

8) Eye of Sulfuras on my warrior!

Fun fact: I've already completed Sulfuras once before. I had it on my vanilla enchancement shaman. But that account has been banned for almost a decade, so I wanted to get it on my current account. I will say that actually crafting it is still pretty difficult, or maybe just annoying. It's actually sort of similar to how it was back in the day. First bottleneck is Blood of the Mountains. You get them rarely from mining dark iron ore, and also like a 5% drop from molten destroyers, of which there's only like 6 in the entire instance. You'll likely have to buy them off the Auction House, which if you don't have any, will likely be a 10k+ expense, and there's not probably not going to be enough of them available. Secondly, it's the main bottleneck, the same one as vanilla for me personally, and that's Arcanite Bars. Back then, the transmution was on a cooldown, so without some coordiation, it could be awhile before you have 50 of them. In BfA, there's simply just a supply issue. The main source of these currently is probably from yellow gem bags, since I doubt many people are farming thorium. And, you need 50. Luckily, I had about 20 in my bank, but it took me the better part of 3 weeks to buy up all the ones I needed from the Auction House. People list them for about 100g which is cheap, but it's always small quantities. Lastly, I will mention the Dark Iron Bar requirement, which essentially means that you'll mostly likely need your own blacksmith and smelter, elsewise you'll be paying someone else a lot of gold for their time.

Another fun fact: I've completed thunderfury before as well. That one was actually on my mage, during cataclysm. But again, that account is gone. Anyways, I'm actually pretty close to having all the legendaries currently available, though RNG is always a factor. I'm working on Shadowmourne, though I'm currently stuck in the beginning on the slime absorbing part, since I can't figure out how to solo it. Most of those questlines seems to have a gimmick like that, like I remember Dragonwrath being almost impossible for a really long time. Also, working on the rogue daggers. Dragonsoul is just a terrible raid though. Sure, you make like 2k gold everytime you clear it, but it's so tedious. nearly every fight has long RP dialogue, and the spine of deathwing is just stupid. I got the last of the first set of fragments I needed last week, so this week I'll be doing the interim quests (which I assume also have a nearly unsolable part at some point) before I have to go back to dragonsoul and get more fragments. Beyond that, there's completing thunderfury, which I suspect will happen sooner rather than later, the warglaives, which apparently monks can use as well, and Thoridal, which hopefully won't take forever. That will make it so I'd only be missing 2 legendaries, first being Atiesh, which hasn't been obtainable in a decade and I was never in line for one in vanilla, and the WoD ring, which I quest the expansion just after BRF came out and never finished. Ohwell.

ANYWAYS, all that is just filler nonsense that none one but me cares about. So, with that out of the way, I will come out and say it. I have broken the cardinal rule of WoW. I have been playing on a private server. Northdale, specifically. I will say, for as much as BfA has led me to hating this game, Northdale has reignited my love for it. I've had dreams about it! I honestly couldn't say when the last time I actually had a dream about WoW was, but I've been having them consistently since I've started playing there.

So, the question I guess, is why now? Why not just wait the 9-12 months for classic to come out? The issue for me, is that I'm hyped right now. I don't think it would have been possible to maintain that hype until next summer. I figure that 9 months is enough time to see all as much content as I want, going off my previous experience of rerolling on Uldaman, which came out in May, and making it up to Naxxramas by the time TBC came out, about 9 months later. And, I am playing Alliance on here, since I plan on playing Horde when Classic comes out, which is a completely different leveling experience. Sure, it will probably taint Classic a bit for me, but probably not much.

I'm not going to gush over the virtues about how Vanilla is better than BfA. There's a million threads on reddit for that. But, I will say that I have recaptured what I felt was missing. Everything you do in the game actually feels like it matters. Your character actually feels like it's getting stronger as you level up. There are no handouts, no instant gratification. The world actually feels like it's alive. You can have as much or as little social interaction as you want. But, most importantly, it captures the essence of what an MMORPG actually is, and it's fun. It's not just a trip down memory lane, like visiting a museum. It's a legitimately good game. I'm not saying it's perfect, as there are plenty of things in later expansions that I think improved the game, but as a whole, I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience so far.

 

I'm desperate for classic just so everyone can fuck off to it and hopefully stay there.

I was there for that. Modern WoW has huge problems, but the only thing I miss from Vanilla is the sense of community per server.

You can nostalgia jizz all over IF all day. I'd take Boralus every time.

 

100% agree. Vanilla wow was ass, by modern standards, and Classic is going to be a shitshow. The demand is purely from morons blinded by nostalgia.

Personally, I'd much prefer if they just removed the cross-realm functionality (dungeon queues and sharding primarily) from the actual game and let there be server communities again.

 

What has frustrated me about Blizzard, in both SC2 and WoW, is that they are extremely stubborn and refuse to make any kind of daring changes.

I would much rather have had longer dungeon and BG queues, and the sense of community servers had. I still remember the days of WSG in classic, where everyone in the BG knew each other, It made it so much more fun. After they added cross server functionality, all I ever did was raid, as you could at least still have that.

However, once LFG was added, you didn't even necessarily need that. So it only really became about progression. Of course, I am definitely still nostalgic. But I do think all of you are correct, vanilla will flop because it'll just be old WoW with all the modern features which were its antithesis.

 

I thought about not responding, but honestly, I find the mindless rage about classic to be hilarious. Sure, my faith in Blizzard to actually put out a good product is pretty much non-existent going by their recent track record in the last 5 years - it's part of the reason I didn't wait for Classic to come out. But calling vanilla asstastic by modern standards is hilariously naive. Nostalgia will only get people in the door. Being a genuinely good game is what will get people to stay. It's not about reliving old memories, it's about making new ones. People will realize that eventually.

 

Considering the huge player base for really old classic games, like Golden eye, it is naive to think Classic will flop. There is a huge amount of people who live games for those flaws and classic feel.

 

The fact that multiple unofficial vanilla/bc/etc servers has been thriving surely indicates that. In essence, it boils down to what makes a game good or not. This is subjective. From a standard of difficulty in raids for example, vanilla was bad. In the way it kept a community together it was miles ahead.

For me, I think modern WoW has become a raid/arena simulator with a treadmill on the side - the world no longer feels alive. You trudge to some markers, press some buttons and move on. Need some consumables? Move to the AH and press your addon for the cheapest one. Need a group for x activity? Queue it with anonymous 'might as well be NPC's because you'll never see them again' and run through it. Even raiding to a degree, you find 19 muppets who fuck up at the same rate you do and make a couple of friends doing it. Even they are interchangeable to a degree, if it doesn't work out or someone annoys you just apply to another guild and transfer there. The human interaction has become voluntary, and thus community obsolete.

Personally, I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy the old game merely to find community relevant and necessary again. Maybe another MMO will fulfill that need, maybe I've outgrown MMOs.

 

I never said it would flop. I hope it's wildly successful so everyone can fuck off to it, lol.

You can go back to no transmog, 40m raids and spending an eon finding groups. You can go there and be happy.

 

That's my point? I can't imagine there's not gonna be millions of people at launch, but if it's still got a 7 digit playerbase a year in, I'll be shocked.

By modern standards, Vanilla wow is a terrible game. There's a few elements that are pretty decent, but it's far and away worse in most respects. People love their nostalgia, so there's not gonna be any shortage of people willing to hop in, but I don't expect many to actually stick around for long.

 

I'm just curious as to what the vaunted "modern standards" you keep mentioning are. It's hard to make a counter arguement when I literally have no idea what your point of reference is. Fortnight? Overwatch? RDR2?

 

I mean straight-up modern standards for MMOs, as applies to TOR, WoW, Rift, etc. Just off the top of my head, Vanilla WoW was a colossal fuckfest of a grind, with individual levels taking as much as multiple days, incredibly poorly designed quests (see: Zhevra hooves being ~1% drop from a fairly rare and spread out mob when you needed 4 of them, Mankrik's wife being in the opposite direction from where the quest directs you, breadcrumb quests that have you running across the zone only to immediately turn around and run all the way back, etc), poorly laid out zones that are unintuitive as fuck to navigate (I'm looking at you Searing Gorge), and there were precisely zero catch-up mechanics, so if you fell behind at all on the leveling/gearing curve for your server, you were pretty much fucked in terms of getting into raids/guilds (at least until you found ~50 assholes similarly behind).

I could list more issues with the design too if I really wanted, like the class design being rather dull, with most classes only having one or two viable builds at all, let alone different specs (ie: lolpaladins), or how paladins come into raid and their job is literally spending 85+% of their time casting blessings on the whole raid to keep up 5 minute buffs on 39 other people, or how the short-bus out-of-combat res was a thing, etc, etc, but I'm starting to ramble, so w/e.

There's a reason these are no longer a thing in WoW, or even the broader genre, when you really look at it, and it's not because they were great game design.

Vanilla WoW was fantastic for its time, but much like Half-Life 2, it didn't age well. It defined a genre, and as a direct consequence, everything about it is tired, lacking literally everything subsequent iterations have built upon the foundation it laid, and definitionally cliche. The gold standard for modern MMOs is "Vanilla WoW, with a bunch of tweaks, improvements, and quality of life changes", and Vanilla WoW simply doesn't have the tweaks, improvements, and quality of life changes that let it meet that standard.

 

I like the slow leveling personally. Let you really do zones thoroughly.

 

I actually happen to agree on the whole. The problem arises from the surrounding systems not supporting it. It's not so much that the leveling was slow as you occasionally straight up ran out of content for your level and had to go out and mindlessly murder mobs for a while to get to the next tier of levels. This wasn't a huge problem for WoW (it was significantly worse in TOR when that first launched, and don't even get me started on the Final Fantasy MMOs), as it was most commonly the result of someone not making proper use of rested XP, but when part of the game design relies on the player not playing the game, there's a problem.

 

I played Vanilla wow on Kronos servers for 2 years. And most of the stuff you mentioned are actually what enjoyed the most about it. The struggle and the grind was yea a bit much, but it was that exact struggle that brings people together. Made some really good friends during Onyxia Attunement when the npc bugged out right at the end and we had to slog through it again. Stayed with those guys for the whole time I played even tho we were in different guilds but could still meet up at ironforge while jumping on top of the cart.

I don’t know, even a chep knock off was pretty lovely from my relatively modern standarts, considering I started during Draenor, playrd through most of the Legion and contnious subscriber since BFA launch.

I much prefer classic.