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Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

Arbiter

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My wife is enjoying Diablo 2 Resurrected right now and I would like to show her World of Warcraft. Which servers would you recommend for TBC or WotLK experience?
 

Late Bloomer

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Apr 7, 2022
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My wife is enjoying Diablo 2 Resurrected right now and I would like to show her World of Warcraft. Which servers would you recommend for TBC or WotLK experience?
There are no TBC official server. WotLK is sadly quite inactive. The best idea at this point is to pick a server that has a high population, good ping, and suits you both (pve or pvp). If you want to get in on what most of the population is doing then you should consider hardcore classic. Here is the info I posted about HC classic a bit ago.

If you are on NA roll on Bloodsail Buccaneers
EU seems to be Hydraxian Waterlords

At a minimum get these mods (Scroll down on the bottom right hand side and select the "Wow Classic" download not the Wrath of the Lich King one.
Questie
Vendor Price
Hardcore Addon

Join one of these guilds.
https://classichc.net/guilds/

If you are not wanting to play on official servers then just try Turtle WoW.
 

pickmeister

Learned
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Nov 2, 2021
Messages
400
Looks like the only way to enjoy vanilla, in the end, is going to be this thing http://singleplayerproject.com/
Turtle WoW actually seems alright, if you need to play vanilla for some reason.

Project Epoch just looks like people who figured the "best of both worlds" was to have vanilla with the mechanics of TBC.
The last echo of Vanilla was Nostalrius and there's no repeating that with players of today. Everyone saw how shitty WoW Classic was. And I highly doubt private servers are any different but I'd gladly be proven otherwise.
 

ADL

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Oct 23, 2017
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Nantucket
Nostalgia-driven private servers always suck big time because there's a finite end to what you can do with them. Couple months of staggered content at best. Can't rebalance classes even if it's needed or else the purists will flip the fuck out. Turtle is Classic+ with significant custom content additions and rebalanced classes. If there's ever going to be something bigger than Nostalrius, it'll be one of these classic+/custom projects. Turtle has doubled over the past six months.
We're thrilled to announce that we've hit yet another milestone in Turtle WoW's history. There are currently 7100+ players online simultaneously. We would like to welcome each and every one of you for many adventures to come!

AI VoiceOver for Vanilla WoW

Exciting news! The AI VoiceOver Addon for the WoW Vanilla beta release is here! Big thanks to MrThinger for making this happen! Check it out to see what it does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uNsFkRNZg8

A few things to note:

  • The Addon is currently in beta which means you can expect bugs. Please report them in #addons channel on our Discord.
  • The Addon currently does not have voice overs for all zones and content. We will be gradually adding them and updating the Addon, this includes custom Turtle content.
  • The quality of some voices is not yet optimal, we are aware of this and will also gradually improve where necessary.
Get it here: https://github.com/mrthinger/wow-voiceover/releases/latest
Doubt it will ever happen as it seems Blizzard is only willing to do the bare minimum but I would love an official Classic+ reimagining of The Burning Crusade/WotLK expansions without flying mounts and group finder. Alternatively go full OSRS alternate timeline and ignore TBC/WotlK entirely and do a Emerald Dream expansion or some shit instead.
 

pickmeister

Learned
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Messages
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Good showcase of the Turtle WoW AI voice acting but oh my god, what a faggot "Now that is good. I did not think they're gonna have a single female voice. I know that sounds bad but typically, you know, it's a male dominated sphere and it was going to be a disappointing concept."

He's not just stupid, he doesn't even make sense.

EDIT: Watching another his video and in an attempt to say "differentiation" he puked out "differentation".

I'm always taken aback by these midwits.
 
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Lucumo

Educated
Joined
May 9, 2021
Messages
924
Looks like the only way to enjoy vanilla, in the end, is going to be this thing http://singleplayerproject.com/
Turtle WoW actually seems alright, if you need to play vanilla for some reason.

Project Epoch just looks like people who figured the "best of both worlds" was to have vanilla with the mechanics of TBC.
The last echo of Vanilla was Nostalrius and there's no repeating that with players of today. Everyone saw how shitty WoW Classic was. And I highly doubt private servers are any different but I'd gladly be proven otherwise.
How was it? I only played WoW for basically the first time after that on 2 1/2 private servers....and that was decently fun, apart from not knowing anyone and everyone expecting you to know everything. Lots of nationalities too. There was nothing funnier than randomly entering a tavern, only to find drunk Russian dwarves cheering on some dancing nelf on the table. Of course, I liked the emergent world PvP which would evolve from small 2v3 battles into 10v10 battles and then devolve again into smaller clashes. IIRC, concurrent players peaked at around 25k and there were tons of players at all hours.
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2018
Messages
7,713
Looks like the only way to enjoy vanilla, in the end, is going to be this thing http://singleplayerproject.com/
Turtle WoW actually seems alright, if you need to play vanilla for some reason.

Project Epoch just looks like people who figured the "best of both worlds" was to have vanilla with the mechanics of TBC.
The last echo of Vanilla was Nostalrius and there's no repeating that with players of today. Everyone saw how shitty WoW Classic was. And I highly doubt private servers are any different but I'd gladly be proven otherwise.
How was it? I only played WoW for basically the first time after that on 2 1/2 private servers....and that was decently fun, apart from not knowing anyone and everyone expecting you to know everything. Lots of nationalities too. There was nothing funnier than randomly entering a tavern, only to find drunk Russian dwarves cheering on some dancing nelf on the table. Of course, I liked the emergent world PvP which would evolve from small 2v3 battles into 10v10 battles and then devolve again into smaller clashes. IIRC, concurrent players peaked at around 25k and there were tons of players at all hours.
It was great but a shitshow at the same time. In the beginning it was so crowded you wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, a place where the starting zones had more skeletons blanketing the land than a Cambodian genocide pit. STV lived up to being the Vietnam war more than ever before given how packed the server was. You couldn't go 5 minutes without some form of ganking or faction conflict. Later on faggots made an outside crossfaction group to corner the market on Devilsaur leather literally calling themselves The Ungoro Mafia. Good luck ever finding any of the herbs that were used in raid consumables either.

Many memes were had
5e53919c3c5854f0050259e80aa6c9b04d06a1a3e4579a28e109ce4b711efe27.jpg



Then there was the final trail of tears people had when the announcement came in that Blizzard was coming in to shut it down.
945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399.gif
 

Lucumo

Educated
Joined
May 9, 2021
Messages
924
Looks like the only way to enjoy vanilla, in the end, is going to be this thing http://singleplayerproject.com/
Turtle WoW actually seems alright, if you need to play vanilla for some reason.

Project Epoch just looks like people who figured the "best of both worlds" was to have vanilla with the mechanics of TBC.
The last echo of Vanilla was Nostalrius and there's no repeating that with players of today. Everyone saw how shitty WoW Classic was. And I highly doubt private servers are any different but I'd gladly be proven otherwise.
How was it? I only played WoW for basically the first time after that on 2 1/2 private servers....and that was decently fun, apart from not knowing anyone and everyone expecting you to know everything. Lots of nationalities too. There was nothing funnier than randomly entering a tavern, only to find drunk Russian dwarves cheering on some dancing nelf on the table. Of course, I liked the emergent world PvP which would evolve from small 2v3 battles into 10v10 battles and then devolve again into smaller clashes. IIRC, concurrent players peaked at around 25k and there were tons of players at all hours.
It was great but a shitshow at the same time. In the beginning it was so crowded you wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, a place where the starting zones had more skeletons blanketing the land than a Cambodian genocide pit. STV lived up to being the Vietnam war more than ever before given how packed the server was. You couldn't go 5 minutes without some form of ganking or faction conflict. Later on faggots made an outside crossfaction group to corner the market on Devilsaur leather literally calling themselves The Ungoro Mafia. Good luck ever finding any of the herbs that were used in raid consumables either.
Many memes were had
5e53919c3c5854f0050259e80aa6c9b04d06a1a3e4579a28e109ce4b711efe27.jpg



Then there was the final trail of tears people had when the announcement came in that Blizzard was coming in to shut it down.
945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399.gif
Yeah, when a server is fresh, it's probably the most fun to play. My first server was...no clue how old but there were a lot of level 60 players. When I played on another server around a year later, that one was like three weeks old and a lot more interesting throughout the leveling process. Never did STV on either of the two servers since the quests elsewhere already give you enough exp that you can skip a whole region. Only later I heard that STV is apparently always a war zone. And yeah, I encountered the mafia myself. The first server was too old for it to apparently matter but on the second one, APES were calling the shots.
 

pickmeister

Learned
Joined
Nov 2, 2021
Messages
400
How was it? I only played WoW for basically the first time after that on 2 1/2 private servers....and that was decently fun, apart from not knowing anyone and everyone expecting you to know everything. Lots of nationalities too. There was nothing funnier than randomly entering a tavern, only to find drunk Russian dwarves cheering on some dancing nelf on the table. Of course, I liked the emergent world PvP which would evolve from small 2v3 battles into 10v10 battles and then devolve again into smaller clashes. IIRC, concurrent players peaked at around 25k and there were tons of players at all hours.
Pretty much what Frank Capicoli wrote.
It was great. Me and my older brother were disappointed in WoW since about half of WotLK and kept talking about vanilla good old days like in a retirement home so for us it was a wet dream coming true.

Obviously we weren't the only ones who felt that way. Retail was already in its Pandaria or Warlords phase (can't remember) and all the private servers were in a sorry state. And now, suddenly, in this severe drought, Nostalrius has appeared. A server, where things just worked. It was buggy at times, sure, but compared to any other private server at the time, there was simply no comparison.
Me and my bro, we haven't even reached max level on Nostalrius because we just kept fucking around and that was enough for us. We didn't even mind getting ganked to oblivion because there were dozens of us in the same mess.
At times, there was this attempted peace in STV because everyone of us wanted to just do quests without being overly bothered and a second someone broke it, everyone from the other faction went out of his way to pile on the guy and camp his corpse so he never did that again.
Then I remember once, there was this menace of a guy in STV who was much higher level than the rest of us. He ganked so many people that he pretty much became our raid boss and there was about 20 of us on his ass. With an added difficulty of him having a mount and we had to catch him on our own feet but we managed eventually.
Also the internet (and the world) was still in a different state. I could already see the accelerating decline and freedom slowly being taken away, normal people being getting more desperate for validation on the internet, materialism on the rise by the day and so on. And suddenly there's this island of freedom where people are just having fun and here I am, running around Durotar, having fun and people spam nigger jokes in the general chat.
I still remember the two best ones:
What does a bicycle and nigger have in common?
Neither works without chains.
What's the difference between a nigger and family sized pizza?
Family sized pizza is capable of feeding a family of 5.
I don't know what to say. It was just fun. Fuck, even the guild name The UnGoro Mafia is funny. Internet full of normies today is not capable of not taking itself seriously and simply having fun without walking on eggshells.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Good showcase of the Turtle WoW AI voice acting but oh my god, what a faggot "Now that is good. I did not think they're gonna have a single female voice. I know that sounds bad but typically, you know, it's a male dominated sphere and it was going to be a disappointing concept."

He's not just stupid, he doesn't even make sense.

EDIT: Watching another his video and in an attempt to say "differentiation" he puked out "differentation".

I'm always taken aback by these midwits.
That's pretty retarded, yeah. There are tons of girls online who are willing to do voice acting for a pittance or even for free. This dumbass is just talking out of his ass. This is what happens when people are too lazy to bother checking their facts when they've already formed their opinions.
 
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Joined
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Messages
7,713
Then I remember once, there was this menace of a guy in STV who was much higher level than the rest of us. He ganked so many people that he pretty much became our raid boss and there was about 20 of us on his ass. With an added difficulty of him having a mount and we had to catch him on our own feet but we managed eventually.
Man I remember doing that on my UD lock as soon as I hit 60. Before everybody hit the sweaty phase of raid gearing it was some of the best pvp I enjoyed as a non pvper. It started out as people leveling asking for help against this human rogue that stalked the northern troll ruins ganking people. We fought so many times neither being able to actually land the killing blow since neither of us were geared, it was fear spam and dots vs stuns but he'd always have a way to escape death. They eventually got bored and moved on so I ran down the river to Nessingwary's camp to kill other alliance there until they all banded together to kill my squishy cloth wearing ass. Would've been more fun if I was specd into the soul link build.

I think the overworld interactions and progress was much better than the actual end game of grinding raids for loot.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
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Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
That's part of the reason why WoW sucks worse now, by the way. The current WoW Classic project (and newer) all think of progression as a necessary evil to suffer before getting to enjoy that endgame experience.
 

pickmeister

Learned
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Nov 2, 2021
Messages
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That's part of the reason why WoW sucks worse now, by the way. The current WoW Classic project (and newer) all think of progression as a necessary evil to suffer before getting to enjoy that endgame experience.
Exactly. I remember playing on Ragnaros server during vanilla days, and in the guild I joined was a guy that never reached max lvl with his one and only character. He played quite often but he just fucked around.
Everyone in the guild knew him, did quests, went into a dungeon with him but while we were already 60s raiding, he was still somewhere around 50 and having his fun. The most chill guy ever.
And while he might be an extreme example, I don't remember people being in such a rush to get to the end, get all the BiS gear (BiS wasn't even a thing), and camp in the main city, jerk off, and complain the game is boring.
 

Delterius

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Dec 12, 2012
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Entre a serra e o mar.
Looks like the only way to enjoy vanilla, in the end, is going to be this thing http://singleplayerproject.com/
Turtle WoW actually seems alright, if you need to play vanilla for some reason.

Project Epoch just looks like people who figured the "best of both worlds" was to have vanilla with the mechanics of TBC.
Looked at their forums and what a blast from the past. You have people complaining about the lore like its 2007, making the exact mix of points regardless of how unreasonable (some) became after TBC's release. LOVE it.
 

Hobknobling

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That's part of the reason why WoW sucks worse now, by the way. The current WoW Classic project (and newer) all think of progression as a necessary evil to suffer before getting to enjoy that endgame experience.
Exactly. I remember playing on Ragnaros server during vanilla days, and in the guild I joined was a guy that never reached max lvl with his one and only character. He played quite often but he just fucked around.
Everyone in the guild knew him, did quests, went into a dungeon with him but while we were already 60s raiding, he was still somewhere around 50 and having his fun. The most chill guy ever.
And while he might be an extreme example, I don't remember people being in such a rush to get to the end, get all the BiS gear (BiS wasn't even a thing), and camp in the main city, jerk off, and complain the game is boring.
Ragnaros-EU? I faintly remember the guy. A server celebrity. I also remember the people who were always sitting in front of the bank in Ironforge. Probably 10-12 hours everyday for years just sitting around there in the same exact spot and chatting with the occasional dungeon in-between.

It is interesting how a technical necessity ("sharding") caused these unintended social interactions. Server communities only exist in a Goldilocks zone where the servers have the appropriate amount of players relative to the content size of the game.
 
Vatnik
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That's part of the reason why WoW sucks worse now, by the way. The current WoW Classic project (and newer) all think of progression as a necessary evil to suffer before getting to enjoy that endgame experience.
To be fair, I doubt you'll be able to say that 40-60 was fun even in 2004. A guy in our uni finished levelling up his first character and ran around the dorm naked and yelling eureka. Precisely because it was the end of suffering and the beginning of the game.
1-30 felt fun. Because of this, I levelled up 10+ alts. But after 40, it became such a trudge.

The reason for this problem is in the core of the design. I would've fixed it with three changes
- make solo content impossibly difficult after level 40, forcing people to party up
- start small raiding content at level 40
- allow losing XP and delevel

If 60 level characters fell back to 50 level after a particularly grueling wipe session, then 50s would always be taken into late game raiding, and it'd be fine. That's how it was in some MUDs.

This unhealthy obsession with "levels" in their design was obvious to me even back in 2004. A 10 level difference in PVP meant GG because the hit chance was impossible. But if it wasn't for that, then you would've been able to compete in pvp and pve with that guy. The difference was artificial. A lot of wow design came from casualisation of previous, solid mechanics. Some of that stuff worked, other fired back. But it's a long story, for another time.
 

Absinthe

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Messages
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Yeah there are a ton of issues with WoW's design, but for the most part 40-60 is when you get to experience a 31 point talent and can go to town on more advanced dungeons while typically obtaining new useful abilities for your class. So there is some cause to enjoy 40-60. But it's true that the difficulty of leveling rises and, especially if you're bad, grind can start to creep on you. Inefficient leveling can be the bane of your existence doing 40-60, and to that effect classes that are bad at leveling (when you don't just do party content, whether in a dungeon or in the open world) will find those levels more painful also. Conversely if you are playing a Warlock you can solo level pretty easily and at level 40 you might to decide to spec Soul Link and be a dungeon tank just because you can, so how much fun you're having really depends on what you're doing. If you're solo leveling a Warrior it's a pain, no doubt.
 
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pickmeister

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Ragnaros-EU? I faintly remember the guy. A server celebrity. I also remember the people who were always sitting in front of the bank in Ironforge. Probably 10-12 hours everyday for years just sitting around there in the same exact spot and chatting with the occasional dungeon in-between.

It is interesting how a technical necessity ("sharding") caused these unintended social interactions. Server communities only exist in a Goldilocks zone where the servers have the appropriate amount of players relative to the content size of the game.
Yup, Ragnaros-EU. That's the one

To be fair, I doubt you'll be able to say that 40-60 was fun even in 2004. A guy in our uni finished levelling up his first character and ran around the dorm naked and yelling eureka. Precisely because it was the end of suffering and the beginning of the game.
1-30 felt fun. Because of this, I levelled up 10+ alts. But after 40, it became such a trudge.
You're right, I forgot about that. 1 - 30 is fine, especially for the Alliance. They had Wetlands and Duskwood where Horde had no reason to go. Horde on the other hand had to share Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothils and in both, Alliance had stuff to do in.
30 - 40 is when the real faction war starts in Arathi Highlands, Desolace, Alterac Mountains and especially STV. But it's doable. Tons of quests to do.
But 40 - 60 is without a doubt the shittiest part due to a lack of content. Half of the zones have about 10 lousy quests tops scattered all over the place sending you to the other side of the continent for lousy rewards and the second half of the zones is frequented by 60s happy to rape you. So either you reach 60 by doing all the available quests for your level and lose your mind in the process or you somehow combine it by running dungeons and grinding in a secluded spot.
I remember my bro finishing his undead mage up in the north of Eastern Plaguelands grinding high elf mobs for days. The zone was mostly empty as it was long before the zone overhaul.
Looks like they prioritized new player experience and dropped the ball in most of 40+ zones.
 

KazikluBey

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Messages
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Not for nothing, they limited the open beta to level 30, or maybe 40. I remember Deadwind Pass being a nice grinding spot around lvl 50, as no one has any reason to be there.
 

Arbiter

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But it's a long story, for another time.

Coincidence or an elaborate pun?

"With the power you now posses your choices are limitless - but these are choices for another time".



Edit: Human version is even closer:
"but that is a story for another time"

 
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Lucumo

Educated
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May 9, 2021
Messages
924
I think the overworld interactions and progress was much better than the actual end game of grinding raids for loot.
Most definitely for me. Level 60 was usually when the game would get rather boring, especially since I didn't have a guild. Alterac Valley was fun at least.

Man I remember doing that on my UD lock as soon as I hit 60. Before everybody hit the sweaty phase of raid gearing it was some of the best pvp I enjoyed as a non pvper. It started out as people leveling asking for help against this human rogue that stalked the northern troll ruins ganking people. We fought so many times neither being able to actually land the killing blow since neither of us were geared, it was fear spam and dots vs stuns but he'd always have a way to escape death.
UDs always seemed to like world PvP. I fought for ~4 hours with some undead mage in The Shimmering Flats. Similarly, when farming drops in the Un'Goro Crater to sell, so that I could buy the leather from the mafia, there was some undead rogue I fought over many days.
 

Elttharion

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Blizzard is doing something new with Classic. Either seasons, HC or Classic+ I guess. This dude used to be the lead dev for the game.
 

SerratedBiz

Arcane
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
4,143
It was allegedly confirmed that Blizzard reached out to the creators of the HC mod for ideas on how to better implement a Hardcore mode to Classic realms. The team purportedly provided them with high priority changes, low priority changes and then some other stuff which Bliz may or may not follow through with to inject Classic with a reanimation solution.

It'd be weird to see Classic+ as done by Bliz. There are so many private servers which have attempted some kind of Vanilla+ that I wonder how far Bliz would take it, but my guess would be "probably not much".
 

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