Anyone interested in Vanilla leveling?

[Neko]

So, back before WoD launched, I did some looking into private WoW servers and found a vanilla (patch 1.12) server that looked pretty legit...but then WoD came out and I never actually followed up with checking it out. For some reason after raid last night I was thinking about it, and decided to look into it further.

Downloaded the client and pointed the config file to the correct server, and it took right off. Made a gnome mage, set up key binds and killed some level 1 wolves...all pretty nostalgic. Within 5 minutes I already had several good memory/eyeroll/laughing experiences:

Original cinematic!
Original gnome intro!
No native 1080p video support (but still looks good at max settings!)
Default UI is not much different...
Keyring! (oh man, remember before keyring, where they were all just in our bags? yuck!)
My first two fireballs vs. my first level 1 wolf were resists.
After fighting two mobs in a row I went OOM on the third.
"Your skill in staves has increased to 2." "Your skill in staves has increased to 3." "Your skill in staves has increased to 4."
No auto loot and no option to turn it on - did we really have to press Shift to auto loot for every mob through all of Vanilla? Must have been an addon for that...

I did one quest and logged off, but I think the seed has been planted for some casual grinding.

Anyone interested in joining me? The thought of doing some of those old dungeons has me excited. Having a group of people to go through and laugh about how bad it is (and remembering how awesome we though it was) would make it all the better. Just think how cool it would be to RP walk through Stormwind for the Onyxia attunement quest again.

How can you say no to this face?
click for gnome!

[Marduk]

Hah, I love the nostalgia in your post but I won't be able to squirrel away the time to join you.

You (and those who join you) should totally share the fun with the rest of us in this thread though.

[Neko]

Haha, I actually had the idea of making a running "journal" of funny stuff.

I played for a couple hours again yesterday and made it to Kharanos and did the first few quests there. Ran into a dwarf warrior who was dying in the yeti cave so we teamed up - it's actually pretty cool how the harder low level stuff encouraged teamwork much more than it does now. After slaying 30-some yetis searching for some lost ammo, I remembered that it was outside the cave so we had to go all the way back out (dying once) and collect it. Took like 20 minutes to do one quest, fun stuff.

Something else I didn't remember - apparently quest givers didn't show on the minimap back then? Between that and no quest helpers, it's so much more immersive to actually have to:

1. Actually find the quests - I'm finding myself exploring all the buildings in an area to just make sure I'm not missing any quests.
2. Reading quests to see where to go, and even then it's usually in an unexplored area of the map so you have to find it.
3. Finding the mobs/items to complete the quests since nothing is highlighted on the world or minimap, you just have to figure it out.

More moments that made me laugh, with the dwarf:

Him: "treasure!"
Me: "Oh right, the dwarf treasure finding racial!"

Me: "sword in this chest for you."
Him: "cool, too bad I can't use it!"
Me: "haha, forgot you have to actually train new weapon skills."

Also, sitting down to drink and seeing my health regen faster...remember sitting down to increase health regen? I also died to two level 7 bears.
Oh, and the best one was when I moused over the intellect stat on my character sheet and saw that it not only increases your maximum mana, but increases the rate at which you gain weapon skills! I literally LOL'd at that one.
Conjuring water 2 at a time...but then it goes up by 2 when you level, until you learn the next rank, then it goes back down to 2 until you level again...
I'm almost level 8 and still have all white/grey gear - my only stat is armor!

Another cool thing is that there are people still actively creating addons for the 1.12 API, I'll have to post a screenshot of the UI I installed yesterday, it's quite impressive!

Anyways, that was more than I expected to write.

TL:DR: everyone should join in.

[Neko]

Oh yeah, and apparently the Ahn'qiraj war effort is underway on the server (started back in January). Depending on when they open the gates and what level my character is, I could stream out the event for people that want to see it happen "live" - definitely a unique moment in WoW for those that didn't get to participate back in the day.

I think most of the raiding guilds are EU, though, so if/when they open it I have a feeling it will be at some weird time of day - but it lasts for 10 hours so it might be possible to see some of it.

[Neko]

I know you guys have been dying for an update.

I actually ended up rerolling on a different server a week after starting (new server, crazy big population), and I finished the big leveling grind this afternoon:



It's fun to compare time played to 60 on this char vs. my very first one that hit 60 on March 5, 2005.

Old:

New:


Not sure what I'll do now - I had initially planned to keep going and see if I could find some casual raiding, but as this is a PvP server (with a very large population - at least twice as large as any vanilla realm back in the day), it's frustrating to try to do anything as all the griefers flock to horde. Wouldn't affect all the instanced stuff, but would be annoying to try to farm anything. Levels 51-60 were really rough since once you hit 51 you're worth honor to the 60's - they literally sit on flightmasters, in groups, and just gank people as they land as an example. I'd love to see the same developers open a PvE realm and get transfers working.

It was definitely a fun experience for the most part, though!

[Acklar]

That's awesome, I wish I had the time to have done it with you.

[Marduk]

Congrats Neko! I bet that was a nostalgic trip.

[Neko]

In case anyone was actually considering this, the server I've been playing on is planning to launch a PvE server which would make it much more friendly to level casually. From what I can gather this will be the first real PvE server in private server history, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. It is going to follow the same content roll-out schedule as the PvP server, which means it starts with just MC and Ony (and pre patch 1.4 gear stats on all gear), then Dire Maul, then AV + upgraded gear, BWL, etc.

If you never got to experience it back in the day, leveling up to 20 is worth it just to see how much the game has evolved (and leveling to 20 is a decent amount of playtime, haha). Leveling in Vanilla is definitely better with friends, so if anyone is interested let me know.

www.nostalrius.org

[Neko]

Giving this a bump.

BWL has been out on the server for awhile now, and ZG has been out for a couple weeks, so the next thing is Ahn'Qiraj. For those that never got to experience the AQ war effort and opening of the gates, there's still time to see it - it is currently scheduled for April/May (https://en.nostalrius.org/timeline).

With Legion not coming out until summer, it's a way to fill some time and experience something unique in WoW's history. Although with the server having recently broken the 10k-concurrent user mark, I have no idea how it will handle so may people in Silithus when the gates actually open!

[Lyricaa]

Damn, that is tempting!