When "Classic" WoW Really Died

Rediscover your love for fantasy by listening to Songs of Chaos: link.michaelrmiller.co.uk/MadSeason People point at Cataclysm as the expansion to separate "classic" from "current", but is it really true?

for me "classic" died when my friends got too sweaty and it was no longer about rolling alts and goofing around together

Classic died for me the first time I had someone whisper me, “Link your logs”

id argue the spirit of vanilla is dead space and emptiness, the long walks in-between zones, the tasteful thickness of it. My god, it even has an elite mob.

"classic" died in the later patches of WoTLK. the new "classic" died when TBC released

For me, it was actually TBC that did it. Most of Azeroth and 1-60 were immediately invalidated for a new tiny world. The sentiment became, "All I gotta do is rush to level 58 so I can get to the real game!" I can't blame them for introducing expansions like this at the time, but I think if we could go back it would be much better if the focus was on expanding what exists without paving over it.

Thanks so much for spotlighting Songs of Chaos man! Very honoured you've been enjoying the listen 🎧 For everyone who gives my books a chance, thank you so much, I deeply appreciate it!

I simply miss when games weren't overrun with people who treat them like it's life-or-death. Many, many people have forgotten the concept of simple, casual fun that games used to be.

Blizzard is really uncomfortable with people being any level below the level cap.

Here's what the "spirit of WoW" was to me. I was 12 and I decided that weekend to just chill at home and play some WoW. I was lvl 43 and wanted to reach 44 that weekend so I could equip the Phantom Blade. I'd just acquired the recipe but I still had to craft the weapon. After checking my bank and inventory I put aside a bag for the materials, I remember that the most complicated step was getting a potion of invisibility which back then was particularly hard since Alchemist wasn't that popular in the opening months of Vanilla. I then contacted my guild, it was one of those hangout guilds where the leader and his wife were absolutely addicted to the game and had a fully leveled character while also having two mid level alts. Another player agreed to sell me a few mithril bars on the cheap and another had alchemy. I went on a wild goose chase looking for the materials he had asked for the potion, we couldn't link the recipe, or at least we didn't know how if we could so I had the materials linked and went off. I needed some other stuff for the sword. I eventually got everything to craft a Phantom Blade and even though it wasn't much for warrior, or at least that was the notion people had, I still used it a fair bit. I reached 44 while looking for the materials and questing that weekend. It was a small thing but it was super fun. I remember there being a couple of NE warriors that I'd meet from time to time, they were always around the same level as me and I'd catch them in dungeons or out questing. It was fun bumping into them, we'd chat. Ended up playing a few Stratholme runs with them. BC was a wild ride. I had just been sent to live with my grandmother. I couldn't play the pre patch or the release. I'd level up a shaman on another server, Argent Dawn, where my school best friend was playing, to level 45 or 50 prior to moving out. The new friends that I made in school had played WoW in a private server but wanted to play the real thing. I told them the server but they didn't want to play in a rppvp server so they made their characters in Darkmoon Faire which was brand new at the time. They'd reach level 70 at some point and I was hyped listening to their stories. Like how they 4 manned a heroic dungeon at 2 am, a warrior, a paladin healer and a warlock with some random dude they picked up. By the time I got to play I was a bit miserable. Ended up finding a raiding guild that had just started out, we managed to do half of Karazan on the first week, did everything up to lib on the second and by the third we had it down. I was a "really good dps". It took me forever to get the mindblade for ele shaman. I loved the guild, Absolution, but our leader, Nichiniyo or something along those lines, was an absolute ass, he was known for being a "sarcastic bastard", being older now I feel like he thought he was being cute with a reputation like that, fact was that a absolute godly prot warr had left the guild and another chad of a feral druid also said goodbye, both officers, which prompted him to make a "pact" with a "sister guild" we had never heard up to that point, went in for a trial run for TK. Talk of "crushing lootreaver". We got to the dude, got him to 4% and wiped on the second try. Third try we went for the stacking on the boss strat since a lot of people had died to the balls, we failed at not even 60%. Leader calls it. Starts messaging me asking me why I hadn't healed. "elemental shaman chief, not my job" "but your set has healing bonuses" "I'm a dps man I ranked 4th on recount" "had you healed we'd have downed him" I remember being really upset, my class leader was a tosser that left the guild to play with a friend and then came crawling back, I remember his name, Nadjin or something like that, he died so many times to the balls because he couldn't see them. I'd grinded potions and elixirs for that run, leveled first aid to help with personal healing, had contacted my group mates prior so we could talk positioning so they could get the benefits for the totems. My heart sank when I saw another ele shaman from the new guild with the set shoulders from reaver, they had gone in on thursday which was the day I couldn't play, I had so many dkp stored for a set item. I left shortly after and didn't pick up Wow again until close to LK dropping. LK started with me paying for a server transfer. My mates had a really decent raiding guild ready to take me in. I specced enhancement since they needed it and we went on to clear everything up to and including mimiron. The raiding experience had definitely been streamlined with heroics being a small step up in difficulty, rep being easyer to farm thanks to the tabards and there being only one raiding rep. There were a few "stories" from our leveling but nothing as wild as what they'd tell me from vanilla and BC. We didn't clear ulduar before toc sadly, I had a chat with the 10 man organizer and if I had participated in it earlier we'd have cleared it, I only participated once because they were short a member.

RIP classic died for 1000000000 time

I would also say Faction Transfers to me really killed Classic in general, We saw so many communities on Realms go from "somewhat balanced" to 1 sided as PvE players realized that PvP meant ganking and griefing, To me my years on pservers taught me that if you don't incentivize players to pick the "inferior" faction then you end up heavily lopsided, I also think the Mega sized realms were a mistake as again taking from pservers you realize very quickly that a population of 3-5k is actually quite healthy and ensures resources are obtainable for anyone that wishes to put the time in, Community truly to me died the second they opened those realm transfers, whats worse is they repeated it again with SoD, I think for me as I age I realize my money just better spent elsewhere as well, WoW has truly been a long journey but I think for many it's just over, but we sure as hell got some great memories out of it!

For me it’s always about the journey, to often I find myself not reaching my destination. Meeting a NPC who asks “Can you help me?”. “Of course, that’s why I’m here”. Then I see something on the horizon that needs harvesting….or run into another NPC who asks “Can you help me?” “Of course I can!” I say…..🙃

I wish the Dungeon finder had been limited to Server only. That way you could still make bonds with people.

I really feel it was the community. Vanilla allowed you to get to know the people on your server, both Alliance and Horde. The realm forums were so great for talking smack about pvp, or just chatting with other folks on your server. Our guild was formed December 2004 and I'm still friends with many of the folks who played the game then, to this day. "Classic" brought some of that feeling back, for a couple of years at least. There is no replacing the original run through though. I can still remember the first time running into SW and IF, like it was today. It was overwhelming and amazing.

Classic ended with the ingame store.

I remember the week that Dungeon Finder came out was the last week my guild did dungeon runs together, and my playstyle as a tank shifted from tanking for my guild to tanking for gold because I could just do it all day with 0 downtime.

My favorite WoW moment to this day was sitting in Ironforge with my real-life brothers, just typing to each other via our in-game characters well into the night. We were able to say things we couldn’t say in person. We were level 25 or so, and didn’t end up playing together for long after that. My sister and brother-in-law divorced shortly after and I lost my best in-game friend and best real-life friend. Just typing this makes me feel like I valued WoW as a vehicle to bond with my family above all else. It really was a social device disguised as a video game. I miss those days.

I’ve been playing on a TBC private server where they don’t allow addons. The community is pretty small (400 people so far) but wow it makes you realize how much bloat there is with modern wow and the way Blizzard started to implement the addons people developed into their own UI. Having no addons and just the basic interface is pretty fun actually.

As a newer player, I only played dragonflight and remix, maybe 2 weeks, then decided to try classic wow, I been there the last few weeks and I can see why people still have such a love for it. I am having a great time there.