With LK now (officially!) looming on the horizon, I’d like to take the time and take a look back… before patch 2.0, before Burning Crusade was even heard of…
I’m talking old school WoW. When frost wasn’t for PvP, it was for raiding Molten Core. When Alterac Valleys could last hours… even days. When AV lasting ten hours was par.
Soon, you’ll see people saying things like “man, remember back when Pyroblast had a 6 second cast time?” or “remember when rogues had to be behind a target to use Mutilate?”
And trust me, this will happen. You’ll be flying somewhere, and you’ll see someone in general describing how Totems used to only affect the one party, or mages used to have to spec for Ice Block… and everyone else will be like “Woah!” and “What… you serious? That can’t be right”.
And you’ll be sitting there, shaking your head, if only they knew…
Trolls! Remember when you could only activate Berserking after being critically struck? And how it lasted 30 seconds? Or when it increased damage you took?
Remember when Battlemasters didn’t exist? Or Meeting Stones? Or when there wasn’t a cap on the number of players you could bring into any given Dungeon?
Mages! Remember…
… when you had to spec into Arcane to get Evocation?
… rolling ignites?
… when frostbite was near the end of the frost tree, and took 5 points?
… when Arcane Explosion had a cast time?
… when Mana Shield only absorbed spell damage?
… when Combustion guaranteed a critical strike on your next spell?
… when Counterspell lasted for 15 seconds?
… when Polymorph lasted it’s full duration against PvP targets?
… when Improved Scorch read “burns the target for an additional 5/10/15/20/25% damage over 4 seconds”? Yes, it took 5 talent points.
… how if you were casting a spell, and left combat, the spell would be interrupted?
… Arcane Mind applied to total mana, rather than Intellect?
… falling through the world via Blink?
… when you could press space bar to increase the range of your AoE abilities?
… when Mage Armor didn’t exist? And then got a new icon?
… when Pyroblast had a cooldown?
And those are just the ones I can think of, off the top of my head.
Man, so many good remembers going back here…
When PoM Pyro, and some trinkets, really COULD one shot pretty much anybody.
I can still remember weird things like Spirit Bond being the end tree talent for Beast Mastery hunters (which, at the time, simply restored 20 health to the hunter every time the pet hit something) and Innervate being something only resto druids had.
Ahh, yes, and when Diminishing Returns were first introduced, and then applied to Frost Nova… and then, thanks to Ice Lance, broke almost instantly on damage.
I ditched frost for a long, long time because of that.
Anyone remember when you could Polymorph someone underwater, and watch them drown?
Or how about 4k health meaning that somebody was seriously stacking stamina?
Or when a hunter’s Feign Death caused resurrection sickness?
Oh, and rogues… remember Throwing Weapon Specialization? Or Blind getting parried?
Paladins! How’s about when Blessing of Kings was the end tree talent for Retribution? And Repentance was at the bottom of the Protection tree? Or the original Holy Strike? How about Dominance Aura?
A year down the line, we’ll be well into Wrath, with new loots, new bosses, totally new class structures, and so on.
When these things come up, feel free to chime in with a good natured “get off my lawn, ya damn kids!”
You’ve been around long enough. You deserve it.
Or when the Meeting Stones put you in some invisible “queue” to find a group for the instance you were standing in front of, curiously clicking away on the big glowy rock…
Did that ever actually work?
Or when casting Aimed Shot wouldn’t take you out of Shadowmeld, so you could just stand on a huge rock in the barrens plinking away at rogues all day…
I miss that.
Or when Polymorph could be kept on a pvp target forever.
/kept a gnome warrior sheeped in EPL for 20 min back in the day. Ahh memories
Ah… nostalgia. I approve of this thread.
You mentioned it, but…
… when you’d run through Strat or Scholo with 14 other people (albeit at least 7 of them were probably on follow).
… you’d reset instances by breaking party and forming it again.
I remember having to put 3 talent points into Improved Sap on my rogue just so I wouldn’t break stealth 90% of the time when I sapped something. Oh I was so glad when they changed that.
And what about the big controversy with roof snipers who would stand on the roofs in lowbie towns shooting everyone and the guards couldn’t do anything about it.
One thing I was happy to see go was the hunter ‘dead zone.’ Never made sense anyway. Who ever heard of not firing a weapon at a target at point-blank range?
How about when Holy Nova was the 31 point talent for Holy and had a cooldown?
When Shadow Priest and Feral Druids were the last thing in anyone wanted in a raid?
Good times. I shall definitely be calling people whipper snappers.
[quote]Or when the Meeting Stones put you in some invisible “queue” to find a group for the instance you were standing in front of, curiously clicking away on the big glowy rock…[/quote] (Lassirra)
oh! oh! I remeber that! It actually worked for me once! I got into a Deadmines run that way back on my first toon… we had no healer or tank, so nothing happened, but the stone did actually form a group 😀
ah… good times.
Thanks for this wonderful thread! It made my day! 😀
Remember when warriors had to stack str for threat?
When gear progression was linear and fun, instead of confusing and most likely a sidegrade?
When set bonuses made you piss your pants?
Here’s a really old one, for any beta-rs, remember when hunters didn’t have mana, but focus bars just like their pets?
I still press space bar when AOEing on my mage!!
oooooh shit, now I can not only sit with my friends in a Pub talking about “how we make things when we were younger” in RL … Now I can do the same in Ogrimmar´s canteen about wow
Great post man!
[…] over at Critical QQ posted an interesting article: Things to Make You Feel Old, which discusses a lot of the major game changes us “old timers” have seen from the […]
… when Mage Armor didn’t exist? And then got a new icon?
I remember that icon quite well. I was so upset that there was a huge patch that buffed everyone, and then under “Mages” all it said was “Mage Armor now has a new icon.”
Tha’s right, little nooblet, it took 40, yep, 40 people to raid Molten Core. Quite a sight, yessir, quite a sight…
With my priestly perspective, I can think of a couple of things that stand out:
* In the beta, priests could select talents and be a melee-focused class;
* Resurrection used to be castable during combat;
* All of the “Power Word” spells were known as “Holy Word”;
* Holy Fire benefited from Fire damage and took five seconds to cast;
* Holy Nova had a cooldown and would temporarily reduce aggro much like Fade;
* We had a Mind Rot spell, which drained mana from our opponents;
* Power Word: Shield was nerfed to be castable only on party members and used to cause a thirty second debuff, which could be dropped by 15 seconds using talents;
* Inner Fire used to increase melee damage;
* And many more!
I’ve been playing since beta (albeit on my brother’s account), so I’ve seen a lot of changes over the years! I still miss playing a priest like she was a monk; that was fun.
Also, I remember patch 1.1 when Molten Core was released. Before that, Upper Blackrock Spire was considered “end-game” and I think that you could have fifteen people in it!
Yeah, you could have fifteen people in UBRS. Sad thing is, it was considered difficult enough then (with the gear available) to warrant that many.
Gah, the Holy Fire thing. I remember that quite well. I was running Uldaman, and these blue shoulders dropped that had nothing but + fire damage on them. Of course, being a fire mage, I rolled need…
And so did a priest… and the priest won…
Every time I got to type AE for Arcane Explosion, I still type IAE… and then backspace…
Damn I did it then too, and I wanted to type IAE… damn I did it again and… I am not hitting backspace again…
I remember when you could mind control people and jump them off the ledge into lava…
or in EOTS off the edge into the abyss…
haha.
I really hope that does come out eventually. I know they must be working on a way to stop it
from a hunter point of view.
you could not raid with having aimed shot talented as it was the only shot tha did damage arcane shot used to do about 170 dmg.
when shadowmeld didnt break and you could 2 shot a mage or 3 shot a rogue before they saw you.
when the demons for the hunter epic bow quest used to spawn every 4 hours for 20 mins and there were always at least 3 hunters waiting to have a go at them.
when traps could be laid only out of combat.
when feign death meant that you only paid 20 silver repairs after 11 wipes.
thats enough for now im becoming emotional with the memories.
[…]Tha’s right, little nooblet, it took 40, yep, 40 people to raid Molten Core. Quite a sight, yessir, quite a sight…[…]
yeah..and now you can do it with like 5 well geared ppl 🙂
I havent been around from the begining, but been around about a year preBC …so much of this i rememember….
good post Euri …as always
I remember when Soul Link only lasted for (what was it?) two minutes, but diverted 50% of incoming damage to your demon.
I remember when Diminishing Returns wasn’t implemented, and Fear didn’t have a damage cap.
Yay for Seduce-Nuking.
I remember when warlocks were considered free honor kills.
…Paladins’ “seal” of fury would cause hidden non-damage attacks to build extra threat. The thing was, these hidden attacks would proc things like judged wisdom and return insane amounts of mana…well insane for then, like 250+ per strike. In a way, it was a kinda cool playstyle. You could sit back spamming heals til you were oom, then run up judge wisdom, throw up seal of fury and have your bar full in about 20 seconds.
…Seal of the Crusader didn’t have a damage reduction (eventhough the tooltip claimed it did), so leveling with a slow 1 hander paired with the +40% swing speed kicked up your damage pretty damn high.
…you could start casting arcane missles at a mounted target, and all of the ticks would hit them no matter how far away they got (I think, although there might have been a VERY large range, much larger than it is now anyway).
-Spell schools used to be a skill you had to level
I saw this in an old video and if you go to SFK (unless they fixed it) the ghosts that lower your skills have a chance to lower your skill with your spell schools als
-Hunters had bucklers in beta
This upset me when they changed it when the game came out
-Hunters last tallent in survival was a lame strike skill that did little damage
-There was a bug that if you were casting a spell and something new targeted you you had a chance to get interrupted when your spell was finished casting
I remember:
Back to a time when a mage’s arcane missiles could basically hit anything in sight if you switched targets in mid-cast. I saw Hakkar and his entire entourage of trash pulled halfway across ZG this way.
You couldn’t chain flight points. If you wanted to fly from Org to Freewind Post, you flew to Crossroads, then you flew to Freewind. Also, if you wanted to go to Ratchet or Camp T, you walked or rode. No fp. No 2nd fp in Felwood. Un’goro didn’t have an fp. Silithus basically had nothing. Rebel Camp fp wasn’t there.
I remember when Dire Maul and BWL didn’t exist. Not to mention ZG and we won’t even talk about AQ.
I tanked Scholo/Strat/BRS almost every night in 10-man (Scholo/Strat) and 15-man (BRS) raids. I basically learned to tank in Scarlet Monastery.
Anyone here been on PTR? Have you seen the key achievements? I have all but 2 on my main. All I’m missing is the one from Dire Maul for some reason, and the new key.
I remember before there was any honor.
I remember a time when you could be summoned into instances the way you can now. I got summoned in to tank Drakk when a tank couldn’t hack it 6 or 8 times.
I remember being one of the tanks on Twin Emps, 9K health buffed to the gills. Now my prot warrior has almost 10K in DPS gear unbuffed. I leveled that warrior as prot before shield slam. I don’t even remember what the 31-point prot talent was. I had an arms/prot mix leveling, I know.
Healing Touch was used for MT heals once. Remember that?
You could actually 10-man any of the Azeroth instances, and 15-man BRS. I remember hearing about 40-man Deadmines, too, but never was in one.
Who here remembers Hakkar 1.0? I tanked him. I tanked the 2nd server kill of Hakkar 2.0 on my (then) server. Anyone remember the differences?
Dark Coffer runs. ’nuff said.
The dragonkin in south Dustwallow were elite, as were the green ones in Swamp of Sorrows. Did they take the elite-ness off the blues in Azshara, too?
I remember running Maraudon for NR gear on the runup to Huhu.
I could probably go on and on, but that’s a long enough post, I think.
I remember when getting cheat death was ok for raiding for that one cave in you forgot to move out of, and you didnt have to wear full S2 to get use of it.
on last comment accidentally pressed enter srry, to continue: lol that was like 2 patches ago, havent been playing very long, tried to run UBRS but no one ran it after BC came out =( Thats the reason i started WoW i saw the leeroy jenkins video and i started playing =P
I remember when I was playing my druid and I had no idea about the other two talent trees until I was in my late 20’s…lol…those were the days. Oh, Old WoW, I miss you. ❤