To be fair, nobody likes losing. I’d blame it on Blizzard for not balancing factions for transfers. It’s human nature to not wanna join the losing side, and having to struggle in every bg or constantly getting ganked by large groups is something that we all know gets very tiring.
I love world pvp and rather be on a slightly losing side then a dominating side that kicks out losing side. However I am a minority in this idea but dam good pvp in sod even when the horde was winning most of the time was epic
I'll chime in with an opinion that back in the day was very popular - world pvp is hardly pvp, the pvp ppl actually cared about were the arenas, at least for a couple expansions. Battleground were a chore to do until you got what you needed and world pvp wasn't even a thought most of the time. Granted that tbc and forward area, but still kinda fits
Depends in which PVP you are thinking of, world pvp of course you don't like losing. Meanwhile a 14 day stalemate of AV where your own guildies joined when you did and you see each of them drop out then rejoin after doing their "day job" asking "is this the same AV?" only for you to say in /g chat "Yep" 😏😆😂
Of course no one like losing world pvp. But a 14 day stalemate in AV where you join the same AV with your guildies and watch as each of them leave to head off to their real jobs only to rejoin the AV after work and ask "is this the same AV?" and you answer in /gchat "Yep, same AV, I'll find you with my shaman" 😏😆😂 It's never about the winning or the losing but the journey and experiences you gain while winning or losing which matter 💯 😊
I unironically love both of these videos for 2 reasons. 1. Its such a fresh perspective on a game i've played for 17 years. I genuinely forget some of the hundreds of stories in each zone and quests. 2. doubling down on the clicking is such an authentic WoW player moment.
That addon that uses AI to voice all the quests has helped me a bit with better remembering the stories for each quest, I think its called Voice Over or something, pretty neat addon though.
@@selwrynn6702 it's great for vanilla. There's a ton of different voices that get the gender right and accents and so on. There is one for retail, but it's not nearly as good, one voice monotone, not even AI
I'm so glad that you acknowledged the real reason the clear rate for initial Naxx was so low(Burning Crusade's release timing). So many people for years had been just saying it was SO DIFFICULT THAT ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HAVE EVER CLEARED IT BEFORE CLASSIC, but my experience was "We cleared spider wing, and it's gonna take a WHILE for us to get everyone geared enough to even try to take the next wings... show of hands: who just wants to say 'screw it' since BC is gonna be out quicker than our gearing speed."
The DK wing, in particular the 4 horsemen, required 8 well geared tanks (from what I recall each horseman needed a tank swap and you originally had to swap tanks from one horsemen to the other due to their aoe debuffs that were fatal after a certain number of stacks). That was a huge hurdle for many guilds back then to get it done before BC release. And even after clearing the 4 wings, Sapphiron (who was then unlocked after) required ALL 40 PEOPLE in the raid to be decked in frost resist gear. Heck I remember death and taxes (the top NA guild back then) offering money for people to trade in the item to craft frost resist gear.
Exactly what happened to me. I had spent like 3 weeks raiding without getting a single drop, then had a priest steal the one piece of mage gear that dropped in Naxx before BC killed our raid schedule. I left my guild and quit the game for like 1 and a half years after that lol, not exactly a positive intro to the end-game grind.
Sure, BC made it trying to clear it be the height of madness, but as others had mentioned already, Naxx also took a lot of time, gear and consumables. The gates you had to boogie under to pass each hurdle were not trivial, and let's be real, until some of the more harsh boss mechanics were patched a bit, some of those hurdles would never be cleared by majority of guilds.
@@SinOfAugust Depends on what you call hard. People were just in general new to the game (and therefore, awful) and Naxx introduced a lot of boss mechanics players up to this point hadn't encountered in any of the other raids, like the Heigan Dance or Loatheb's whole anti-healing bubble. To show how much better the community as a whole had gotten, one just needs to look at Naxx 10/25, even if they had nerfed the bosses for Wrath, all core mechanics remained intact (Hell, Razuvious 25 still required at least one Priest for Mind Control) but players were able to handle it much better.
@@SinOfAugust Time, gear, and consumables are not skill gates. Again the BIGGEST hurdle was getting everything in time before it became obsolete. There's tons of stories of guilds "poaching" members of other guilds just so they could do Naxx, and that's the reason. You can only gear 40+ people SO fast. So what happened was you essentially had multiple guilds gearing up people separately then conglomerating those geared players together just to get it done before the expansion dropped.
Adding a comment to your statement about private servers: Having a video focus on a private server (even if not endorsing it or actively showing footage of said private server) will get you in legal trouble with Blizzard, as popular WoW UA-camr Nixxiom recently went through, so I think you made the right choice by not endorsing (or denouncing) private servers or showing extensive footage of those servers.
"It's a shame because dungeons really are a fun part of the game, but that fun is held hostage by basically random chance that you will have to play with someone who made it to level 35 not knowing how to use their abilities in a group." As someone who played Mythic Plus in Dragonflight and pretty much gave up in The War Within, these words resonate through my bones.
It's sad too because it makes the game inherently hostile to new and returning players. Boy was i in for a rude awakening as someone who hadn't played Retail since Legion and came back for TWW. It was just like Illidan said, i was not prepared. Now i at least don't die as much. Still suck tho. But at least my Shadow Priest of 15 years can keep on going. Crazy to think that i have played a WoW character for longer than many teenagers are alive right now.
There's just a massive creep in mechanical skill checks excluding more and more people from relevant retail pve content. Rotationaly, we are still somewhere in Legion-BfA difficulty and pace levels obviously depending on class since that can change quite often, but oh boi the other stuff.. My mage had 2 defensive buttons, barrier and iceblock, a third as arcane/frost in Legion. My mage in DF and TWW now has as many as some tanks had in Legion and you absolutely MUST use them in time or you just die to unavoidable damage in 12+ keys and to most mythic bosses. Add to that even more mandatory utility buttons you didn't have or needed to use before. It's just 2 more layers you have to constantly think about and be aware of in game design so much more than ever before. I'm a single guy in my mid 20s, it's whatever to me, I still have the time and eye-hand coordination to deal with it, but it just sucks to think this might get even worse and also how many people I've met in my classic guild that I just won't ever be able get near relevant retail content (despite them being genuinely interested) because it's gotten this bad.
Why do people constantly throw themselves into pugging M+ despite hating it? Considering TWW introduced Delves for solo gearing up to Heroic raid gear, you don't even have to do M+ to get AotC for Nerubar Palace. If you want to engage with M+, it's no different than progression in Vanilla. Find a guild, gear together, raid together. M+ is just infinitely more enjoyable with a group of guildies who are there to learn and improve together.
@@Ryan-sn3uo I don't hate it conceptually, I hate this iteration of it. I was fine pugging it in DF, and then I made some friends and it actually became even more enjoyable. Come TWW the pugging experience got significantly worse and all of my friends were enjoying it so much they quit, making it even worse. Tank nerfs, stricter healing requirements, fort/tyr at the same time, poorly thought out seasonal affixes, bad dungeon pool, disrupts no longer interrupting, all adds up to make a garbage experience. I would rather suffer through a +23 in S3 of DF with no lust, every other DPS wearing a pastiche of gear with the wrong stats, and a tank new to the game, than push +10s in S1 of TWW.
I was blissfully unaware of the classic relaunch when I dove into these videos. Phenomenal analysis, 10/10 content, but you have a lot to answer to my sleep schedule for
Honestly I'll stand by Thousand Needles, Desolace and Tanaris being legitimately good zones. I know it's cliche to slam on the stereotypical MMO quests of "Collect (X) things" or "Kill (X) mobs" but even as early as The Burning Crusade, zones started to feel increasingly video game-y and even artificial at times. It's difficult to put into words but it genuinely feels like things are not allowed to exist if they do not offer a form of player progression. Like if you look at almost any zone post-Vanilla, ALL of the space is used and you can realistically expect a complete tour of the zone just by doing the quests, with the questing experience itself being streamlined to be more convenient and lucrative for the player. Some of the more empty, missable, or traditionally "boring" zones really add to the world. There's a primal feeling of adventure I adore when I travel to Desolace, pick up a quest in one of the only points of refuge to be found in that hostile wasteland before promptly embarking on a journey across the zone, on foot, knowing that with each step I'm only traveling further and further away from the safety of civilization, and continuing forth despite lingering doubts. It's a feeling that I love in RPGs and haven't truly felt in WoW since I could fly over everything that could be an inconvenience and with death setting you back a minute utmost, even assuming you CAN die. TL;DR Desolace is actually the DARK SOULS of WoW Zones and I miss the Bonfires of Vanilla
On the topic of Desolace have you ever discovered that little Twilight Hammer village in the south east of the zone, its on the far side of the Magram camp that has the water in it, I for one had never seen it before this 2024 Classic re-release despite playin the game for the last 18 years. It's called Shadowbreak Ravine & was designed to be part of the Warlock level 40 mount quest but that part of the questline got cut, it has some really cool giant mushrooms I've never seen anywhere else though.
Funny you mention DS at the end there, I loved a lot of the areas in SotE precisely because they weren’t designed to give the player interactive content but more to just be experienced
@@selwrynn6702 Yeah! That's another thing about vanilla zones I loved, there's so many 'subzones' that contrasted heavily with most of the zones aesthetic(s) that always peaked your curiosity whenever you adventured into / near them. It's insane how even after nearly two decades I'm STILL finding areas that make me think "...was this always here? How did I miss this???" Also I agree Nick, despite it being a self aware joke I legitimately could've continued the FromSoft comparisons for a while (constant mechanical escalation over time, Stakes of Marika, early fast travel, etc). As for SotE I totally understand why people were annoyed with some areas being 'pointless' and I can agree with a lot of the criticism, but it really does add to the world building and immersion
I like Thousand Needles when I'm not in Thousand Needles. The zone takes forever to get around in(like Stonetalon), the verticality sucks, the elevators and mesas suck, the caves suck, the gathering is annoying, Shimmering Flats is very good for fast grindy leveling but it's also an open world BG most of the time. I don't like Desolace. The important quests are always either too low for my level or too high for my level and you will still be more than 10 levels below the requirement to do Maraudon after you do every quest in the zone. I'm only mentioning this to say that the full purple>orange>princess Maraudon is easily in the top 3 best 5 man dungeons in Vanilla, personally my favorite dungeon in the game. It's memorable because it's the only "faction choice" mechanic that exists in Vanilla if you don't count Bloodsail Buccaneers, even though the choice doesn't matter at all. Tanaris is obviously goated. It's always been the "this character is now a real character that will start raiding soon" realization zone for me.
Some fun little tid-bits: 1. The Vile Reef is believed to be related to the tide stone, and was sunk by Neptulon (the Elemental Lord of water) after its power was abused by the troll who wielded it in that era. As of Classic the tide stone is possess by a goblin on an island full of water elementals, you are sent to claim it by the guy in charge of Booty Bay, Baron Revilgaz. 2. The other way to fight Archaedas is in the hallway between the final 2 rooms as you can hop up and down on the massive bits that jut out from the wall which will allow you to kite him so that he never actually is able to hit the tank, so he just has to keep agro while the dps kill him. (you can only effectively hop up and down on the sloped areas when the hallway is descending so keep that in mind. 3. in Desolace there is a little area in the far south east of the zone called Shadowbreak Ravine, it is behind the Margram centaur village that has all of the water in it, if you can get on the far side of all the water you will find a very small break in the mountains that will lead you there. The area is filled with Twilight Hammer warlocks & Felhunters, but there is no actual quest that sends you there. The area was originally intended to be involved in a questline which Warlocks would have to complete to learn their level 40 mount before it was severely cut down, to that end there is a stables area with Felsteeds in it. You can see the area as unexplored when Pat opens up his map while in the zone, 1:13:25 is one of the timestamps he does so. I only discovered the existence of this place last month during the 20th anniversary re-launch of Classic & it is worth a little detour from your questing if only to see the giant mushrooms that have a blue glow which I do not believe appears anywhere else (though I could be wrong on that). 4. There is a very obscure theory that Maraudon is actually a Titan facility (by obscure I mean literally 1 guy made a video on it, but its a good video). See when the Titans were fighting the Old Gods for control of the planets the Old Gods had already subjugated the Elemental Lords and so the minions of the Titans had to fight the elementals, and Princess Theradras is likely one of the daughters of the Elemental Lord of earth (Therazzane). Additionally the centaurs do not build stone architecture anywhere but there are a series of stone structures throughout the zone that, while not Greco-Roman in style, are clearly FAR too big for the Centaurs to have constructed even if they DID create stonework structures. The last evidence that points to this theory is the Earth Giants within Maraudon as all Giants are Titan creations, which is denoted in that their classification type is "Giant" not "Elemental" which would make it all the more tragic that the giants guarding the way to the final boss Princess Theradras were once her jailors, now bent to her will. I believe this was intended upon the creation of Desolace, but if it was it has since been abandoned as in the Cataclysm revamp of the zone they removed all of the giant stone arches around the Maraudon entrance. Again if it works this is the link to that video ua-cam.com/video/mg2PiW8KMkI/v-deo.html if it doesn't the channel is Jediwarlock a great channel that covers WoW lore that's actually found in game rather than book stuff. 5. On the topic of Mage AoE, ironically the 2nd best AoE class is actually the Paladin through their Consecration spell, combined with Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura, but unlike the mage they actually have to sit and tank mobs while AoEing so there is some trade off, mages get to run away and AoE at range while Paladins (and to a lesser extent Warlocks) have to sit there and take damage to AoE effectively. 7. On the Isle of Dread in Feralas, that unique cave has an interesting feature seen nowhere else. The quest that sends you there to kill a single guy, and the path to him is just a straight shot, he is on a little island at the back as there is a small lake inside the cave, not unusual within WoW, but if you go to the right as you come to the water part of the cave, you will find a part that is deep enough that you can swim, and if you dive down there you will swim through a tunnel that comes up to another cave section with 4-5 more naga spawns & an ore node. The area was originally supposed to house the guy you are sent to kill by the quest, but it was too hidden I guess, so instead there is a rare naga spell caster that will spawn down there from time to time. 8. As Pat talks about quest items in Feralas around the 2:57:00 mark I am reminded that interestingly in addition to some quest items being weird there are quest items that actually require certain professions to equip, sure Engineering has lots of gear it can make that can only be used by Engineers, but one of the quests from the Greenwarden in Wetlands has a choice of rewards, one of which is a 1h sword that requires 100 Herbalism called the Phytoblade its just a green sword with a proc to deal some nature damage, the stand out feature is requiring Herbalism to wield, I remember seeing at least 1 other item like this but I cannot recall it off the top of my head. 9. Interestingly all the profession in Vanilla were created by 1 guy, they have have been somewhat iterated on after, but he created the groundwork for all of the professions & most of the actual items you craft & gather. 10. For the additional zone areas Pat mentions at 3:52:00 ish there is a guy who threw together some mockup zones that could've been used for these areas, done in the style of the minimap, assuming it works this is a link to the imgur file that has all the maps he put together imgur.com/a/chromeddragons-classic-wow-zones-tvpk9SS The "Blackened Marshes" and "Headland" serve as ideas for the areas east of the Burning Steppe while "Ship's End Cove" serves as to liven up the area where the Deeprun Tram is exposed to water. 11. There was a particular barrow den in Felwood that actually WAS supposed to be a dungeon, that being the one in Jaedenar which is totally unique from other barrow dens, there is a rather tedious escort quest down there, and once you complete the escort you are sent back down there to go even further in and fight a bunch of named enemies that certainly seem like they were designed to be dungeon bosses originally. Behind the final boss is the area that was (I believe) supposed to be the start of what would've been the dungeon, but besides a potential Thorium Vein there is no reason to go there now. 12. On the topic of Arthas & Stratholm to this day the developers who created that level and story do not understand why the playerbase sees Arthas' choice there in a sympathetic light, sure it was not a good action, but still the best one he could've taken in that scenario, but the devs see it as what made him irredeemably evil. 13. So the reason the High/Blood Elves look so bad is because, yes they are a relic of an older version of the game when it was running in the Warcraft 3 engine, there are a few other models that suffer from the same problem but are less noticeable, the ones I can name off the top of my head are 4 different human models & the ogre model that was changed soon after launch to the one we all know and love today. The 3 human models are the human workers which you can see in the Defias Miners in Deadmines, the human rogue which is used by the Defias Watchman, also in the Deadmines. The Pirate captain model which is used by a few NPCs, most notably Fleet Master Firallon of the Bloodsail Buccaneers, the 4th one is a human foreman model that I swear exists I just cannot remember the name of one. 14. Interestingly for Paladins, they were so under-used that even on private servers they were very underdeveloped, however they've seen a bit of a renaissance since the 2019 release of Classic, as many new strategies have been discovered to make the class even more lethal in PvP. One thing Pat didn't mention, likely because he didn't get to a high enough level on them is that Paladins are, as I mentioned above, the second best AoE class behind mages, however being able to do AoE like they can makes them very good as dungeon healers with the asterisk of "in the right hands" as mana management becomes crucial for Pally tanks. Also when Greater Blessings were release with patch 1.9 (This was the AQ patch) Paladins actually became able to raid tank as well, though not as effectively as warriors. This is because Greater blessings target all members of the raid with the same class as the person you cast it on, the Righteous Fury ability increases the threat of your Holy attacks, and Blessing of Kings is considered a Holy spell, so spamming in gives you threat from every raid member who it was cast on. This made them very good at picking up ads like the whelps in Onyxia, and allowed Paladins the dreams of being tanks in high tier raiding, but again Warriors were still far more reliable. In this guide if you scroll down they go into all the math behind how it works www.wowhead.com/classic/guide/lights-bulwark-protection-paladin-tanking Another interesting thing with Paladins is due to the mechanics of how Seal of Righteousness works as technically a second attack so when they are not leveling as Sword & Board rather than 2handers they actually prefer the fastest 1h weapons to the point that a Flurry Axe (a level 42 world drop epic) is their best in slot pally tanking weapon throughout all of Vanilla due to its proc granting a chance at an extra swing which makes this 1.5 speed weapon effectively 1.3 speed. Seal of Righteousness also double procs the Lifestealing enchant which is a weird little quirk but I'm getting too deep into the weeds here. This note has become too long so I will continue in the replies.
NERD jk bud, lmao. Your knowledge is impressive. This game in its original iteration is my favorite video game world barely beating out The lands between.
Youre referencing JediWarlock's video about Mauradon. I just wanted to shout his name out because he is criminally under-followed. One of the best WoW lore channels on YT and only has ~20k subs
For the Desolace Greco/Roman structures thing, those are Night Elf ruins. That asid, there is some other stuff that isn't really seen anywhere else or used for that purpose, though, particularly the valley with the Undead. Of course, the actual stonework around Maraudon itself is ??? so its still a viable point on that. And yeah, HE/BE being sketchy textures on the night elf model, good times.
@@selwrynn6702 the arthas disconnect is depressing. The devs are confusing brutal actions with cruel ones. To me, the real "insane evil, he snapped" moment is when he betrays the mercenaries and burns his ships. Unlike stratholme, its not done for any kind of visible good, it's just furthering his goal of revenge on malganis.
for the record, as a retail player, the instructions for unlocking every single allied race did still read as a bizarre labyrinth of arbitrary objectives to be able to play a slight variation on an existing race. or perhaps for the more savvy among us - a timesink to get a couple more months of sub money out of a playerbase rapidly losing trust in a game.
I still think half of them should have just been customizations, but to call it bizarre labyrinth of arbitrary objectives? It was just a rep and short questline. And even that rep requirement is removed. No way you struggled with that.
@@Ryan-sn3uoI think it’s what they wanted in the first place: bring more customization. But they couldn’t do it via old races at the time so they made it via new. In SL they rebuild something with customization options that allowed them to do properly from now on. But allied races were already in the game. Situation. They might thought about dractyr already then so couldn’t avoid the problem with poor customization tools anymore. It just happened that they avoided it just before hitting the wall again and finally resolve problem.
I got lucky because I had been actively playing when each one was added I had already fulfilled all the unlock conditions before they were introduced, so all I had to do was the questline, if I hadn't been active at the time I am quite certain I would have been just as confused as everyone else though.
@@Ryan-sn3uo It's not really just a rep grind, though. I unlocked the Void Elves (and by extension, Lightforged Draenei) and the obtuseness was getting to the point where I could access the relevant reputation faction. I had to do the Argus campaign from Legion, but I had to first figure out how to even unlock any of the Argus stuff since there were some pre-reqs that still had to be completed when I did it during BFA. The whole campaign element of each expansion in modern WoW is, quite frankly, obnoxious as hell.
There is a Private server out there, that shows what paladins _could_ have been, had it not been for a seemingly small choice rather late in development. Paladin's originally had an ability they got early on, called Holy Strike. It was to Paladins, what Heroic Strike is to warriors. it cost mana, had about a 6 second CD, and increased the damage of the paladin's next attack by a number of holy damage. The ability was removed shortly before launch, because they felt it was just too similiar to the warrior. In my personal opinion, and having played a Paladin on this particular PS that restored that ability and having seen for myself, this small choice is the *main* cause for the Paladin being relegated to a buffbot disappointment in vanilla. Its actually kind of insane, just how big a difference one damage spell makes. It doesnt look like much either, but it played so well with other paladin spells, that its clear to see this ability would have been in their main dps rotation. Seal of the Crusader had a judgement that increased holy damage done to an enemy. This works fine with something like Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command, but Holy Strike would have also been included here, and it would have made Paladins dps viable. im not kidding. This became apparent midway through the PS's life, where Paladin's ended up needing to be nerfed SO hard as to move SoC down 3 rows on the talent tree. Paladins with this one ability, became damage dealers, and Ret Paladins were especially OP. Dishing out some crazy holy damage. its one of the crazier things ive learned about WoW. that this one spell was so integral to the class, that having it made them very strong, and removing it made them a noticeably unfinished class that got shoehorned into a disappointing endgame role. Edit: i wasnt sure if crusader strike was OG or an addition of the PS. but i wrote this literally seconds before he addressed it all in the video. and god dammit, im not removing this comment now lol. Either i got some things wrong and i get shame, or i added to the conversation lol Edit 2: I recently just got back on that PS yesterday, and they did a complete talent tree rework and changed some abilities. Crusader strike and holy strike were both changed and are no longer their originals
To reply to your edit, original crusader strike (holy damage version of Sunders) is what essentially became Judgement of the Crusader. Holy Strike unlike Crusader strike never had an equivalent spell filling the vacuum in vanilla so your comment is very valid.
I had just booted up youtube to look for a video to listen while I play WoW and this was the first recomendation with "1 minute ago" underneath it. Perfect timing.
The middle sections of the game not being as prioritized as the start makes sense. One of the big writing mistakes is to either have a bad beginning or end, as that is what most people will remember. The endgame content is very important for games since that is what most people will be playing. The beginning is still important as that will help new players gauge if they like the game. If you have to cut content for budget, the middle is the best place to do it in a book, movie, or video game.
Endgame will objectively be what the fewest players engage with. Look at the Steam Achievements for any game, even if they only take a few hours to beat. Only like 30% of people max tend to reach the final level/boss. With the biggest dropoff being after the opening then during the precise middle of the game. MMO's are just really good at retaining players who push through to end game. And managing to get large influxes due to social advertising (one person pulling in a friend from work).
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 Sure but the endgame is also where your most hardcore players are and you need to ensure that they are at least not hiving a bad experience if you want to keep them, seeing guys in full epic gear walking around the cities back in the day was aspirational for people still leveling as it further added the allure of what is still waiting for you out there. Additionally endgame content is by its nature going to be done over and over again so it needs to be made such that its still enjoyable when repeated, thus some additional care needs to go into its crafting, at least in a game like Classic WoW.
I always kinda figured that the Scarlet Graveyard is full of the Undead because it was where the Crusaders would dump all the people they've tortured to death. Since the Scourge needs to taint the ground to keep their undead walking, the whole corruption in the area automatically resurrects the dead, creating a living garbage pile that the Crusaders haven't yet figured out what to do about. The Undead polluting their environment was even kept in Cataclysm; the areas of the Plaguelands that have been reclaimed by the Argent Dawn are healing and returning to their state previous to the third war, however the areas claimed by the Forsaken haven't (and are actually getting worse), implying that the existence of the Forsaken is itself causing this corruption due to it originating with the Scourge. The Plaguelands in general are my favorite zones in the game. The western half is a bit meh, but the Eastern Plaguelands are oppressive, bleak and hostile, perfect for a true endgame zone and contain some of the most depressing story content, facing all the atrocities you comitted in WC3 on a deeply personal level (like the whole Darrowshire questline) makes them really memorable. And behind all of it, is Stratholme, the smoking spectre at the horizon, where all of this destruction started. When i was originally starting out back in Wrath, when the old world was still intact, i spent a lot of time grinding the Argent Dawn to Exalted simply because i liked their faction so much, while sitting between Levels 58 and 62, without me realizing that i had accidentally skipped half of Outland or that green quests don't offer as much XP as yellow and orange ones...
Finished watching the video a few things: 1. Corrupted blood was not the first in-raid mechanic to be exploited by pet classes to grief other players, since boss abilities could also target pets in general. This included abilities like Baron Geddon's living bomb, which hunters would use their pets to smuggle the bomb out of MC by dismissing their pet and then later resummon it in a city (Normally in a populated auction house) to then have it go off inside it and kill other unsuspecting people. 2. The corrupted blood pandemic was quite awful for everyone involved, even the people at Blizzard. You did mention that the debuff would also jump into NPCs, but also that it would just 1 shot low level players since the debuff would end up in starting zone's quest givers. So they would be effectively be barred from doing any meaningful content if a friendly patroling NPC was carrying the plague. Usually for situations like this Blizzard would take down the server and hope things would not get further out of hand. 3. Griefing on WoW was a regular thing, even to your own faction members. Hunters were the kings of griefing due to their ability to kite very powerful enemies into their friend's, or foe's, capital city to cause mayhem. This would be either very high level NPCS like: Teremus the Devourer (Elite Black Dragon in Blasted Lands with no quests associated with him and had the ability to place a dot on everyone in 45 yrds that would heal him for a substancial amount of health) and Raid bosses like Azuregos or Lord Kazzak. Lord Kazzak being the worst offender since his abilities allowed him to heal up a whole lot of HP every time he killed an enemy, this could be a player or an NPC. Kazzak being kited to Stormwind would mean Stormwind would become a deathtrap for anyone and Kazzak would stick in the city for hours since his Shadow Bolt Volley would hit NPCs and those NPCs would alert the guard spawner and add more bodies for Kazzak to get HP from. The latter one would later be despawned by GMs after a few hours. 4. Exploits and glitches were prime during the time period. The one that really stuck out to me was Reckoning bombing, or Reckbomb. Paladins in Vanilla had a talent called Reckoning which allowed them to gain 1 stack of it every time they would get critically hit by a melee attack, when the paladin auto attacked the reckoning stacks would be consumed and every stack would be an extra attack. The problem was that Reckning had a no stack limit and the stack consumption was not limited. This allowed players to get into a duel and have the paladin sit on the floor and another player hit the paladin, causing a 100% chance to hit on the paladin, and then get a stack of reckoning. Repeating that for several hours until they felt they had enough stacks and go solo an outdoor raid boss. This spawned the infamous Reckbomb on Kazzak, killing the boss in a few seconds since the server needed to process over 1k auto attacks that were done in a second. Blizzard hotfixed the ability very quickly. There were other exploits that were more involved, but relied on players actually tampering with the models in their gamefiles to replace them and gain access to areas they were not meant to be. For some reason the colision box of a model is tied to the model itself, so if you were to replace an entire building with different one, you'd be moving through places that normally you'd not be able to move because the server trusted the client to not be lying. To other players you'd be flying and to your game you were just moving up on a horde watchtower and the server would trust your point of view over the other people. This could happen in PVP, specially in WSG, in which people would swap areas below the flag rooms so they would be able to pick up the flag and then run below the entire battleground to their flagroom and cap the flag uncontested. A case of this happening in raiding was with the guild 'Overrated', what they did was replace the floor/wall texture right below the first boss of the raid in order to access the last boss of the raid as quickly as possible, Blizzard banned the guild after they found out about it. The creation of the Warden system was made to combat those exploits like that, where the game would now check if files were tampered with before you are able to log in to prevent such things, also is now more agressive in terms of players being in places they are not meant to be at all. Hell before that, Blizzard would use NPCs (Guardians of Blizzard) to kill any players that were in out of bounds areas that were not supposed to be in. Loved the video Pat, watched every retrospective so far. I hope with the announcement of the anniversary stuff that a TBC/Wrath video happens in the future.
As someone who has watched your Morrowind retrospective a concerning number of times (like literally it could be more than 20 times in entirety over the years). I must say the reason you probably like Desolace's environment is because it is most similar zone to Vvardenfel -- it's as close to venturing frome Molag Amur to the Grazelands as you will find in this game, it even features tribes of indigenous people. I hope to be blessed with your retrospectives for many years to come.
To answer why Medhiv helped Stormwind in the Gurubashi war: Sargeras's hold over him began gradually over time and was never quite absolute. At the time of the Gurubashi war, Medhiv chose to help his friends of his own volition, though during the siege he unleashes his full power for the first time on the Gurubashi, which IIRC is the first point where Sargeras begins to exert more and more control over him. Regarding Kargath, not sure if I'm misinterpreting what you said, but I think you're saying that he died before vanilla? If so, he's actually still alive and is the leader of Illidan's felorcs in TBC. He dies in the Shattered Halls dungeon. The TBC questing does make mention of how tragic it is that a hero of the old horde became a fel orc, but like you mention, he really wasn't a good guy going off of the Warcraft 2 game/novelization. Funnily enough, WoD kind of simultaneously turns his sadism up to 11 while also giving him a somewhat sympathetic former slave backstory. Resource scarcity is actually the justification Garrosh uses to go to war. Yeah, he kind of hated the alliance already, but the Cataclysm apparently wrecked what little farmland Durotar had and that, along with leftover animosity from the Wrathgate and some Twilight Hammer false flag massacres, lead to the escalation into full conflict. This has been muddied over time, especially in Chronicle, because Blizzard decided after the fact that Garrosh just being a warmongering Orc Supremacist was a cleaner story explanation. So its kind of a mess... Funnily enough, the ogre mound in Dustwallow was actually a location in Warcraft 3's bonus campaign. Which also explains them being a part of the Horde. So, they're actually the one of two ogre locations in vanilla with a specific explanation from a previous game. (The other being the ones in Alterac who were mind controlled by Sylvanas during the undead campaign). Even if you had played Dragonflight, you wouldn't have gotten answers concerning the new Centaur. Blizzard didn't bother to explain where the Dragonflight Centaur come from, only that they're apparently far more ancient than the Kalimdor Centaur... This is despite them also having connections to nature through their longstanding alliance with the green dragonflight. Yeah... modern Blizz are really lazy when it comes to world building their minor factions. Also, Emerald Dream was finally made a full zone in Dragonflight. Though it's obviously still "just a small part of the entire dream" Unless I'm misremembering, I think the original reasoning for the Dwarves attacking AV is because some titan relics were said to have been found in the area. So it wasn't quite as blatantly expansionistic as them just wanting another snowy mountain to colonize. The reason Theredras dies rather than go to deepholm is that she was never sealed into deepholm. The elemental plains were originally artificial realms created by the titans to imprison the elementals. For some unexplained reason, maybe just affinity or some titan mumbo jumbo, the elementals became bound to these plains in such a way that they return there when dying rather than permanently dying. Theredras, who never went there, didn't get that benefit. Of course, in reality its just a lore oversight that they later explained away. Pour one out for HotS. The last gasp of Blizzard's original artistic sensibilities. Taken too soon. Oh, and trust me, you don't hate Cata too much. Fuck Cataclysm. Vrykul aren’t immortal. The ones on northrend put their entire society to sleep with magic at one point to stave off evolving(degenerating from their pov) into humans. They wake up shortly before wrath. They were asleep for thousands upon thousands of years. Wait you reference that… but yeah they aren’t immortal. The ones from legion die at the same pace as everyone else and have a whole tomb complex and death priest caste.
There is an explanation for centaurs on Dragon Isles. They’ve been took there by Ohn'ahra. I don’t remember the details but it’s quite it. Though I remember that developers was thinking on explanation even during development and several people told their own versions. This might made you (and many others) think that there is no explanation at all.
@ I already knew about that. That explains why they’re in the dragon isles. But it doesn’t explain how these centaur existed before zaetar and Theredras birthed the desolace centaur. Because the dragon isles centaur existed for thousands of years earlier with no explanation.
Ah yes a fellow desolace enjoyer, tremendous w of a video and again the more casual writing style you’ve taken on is great especially accompanied by a casual experience. I’m not a member of your merchants guild but your work has helped me regulate and get though some of the harder times of my life when the only way out was through. I turn my adblocker off for your work sir pat I sincerely wish you the best. Also the “turning off pvp” joke about the pvp Andy’s blocking people on the forums was 12/10
Part 1 is incredible, I’ve seen countless wow videos and played the game since day 1 and you still had so much great input about every topic. I’m only about 60% of the way through it but I needed that during a long road trip last week. It’s hilarious how well you figure out lore and general storyline faults
I don't matter, but love your content. As someone who has played WoW since I was 4 back in 2006/7 but has never really interacted with Warcraft outside of watching challenge runs, I have loved these in-depth runs though the lore. Sometimes I got confused, but within a few sentences I was back on track understanding what you were discussing and why it mattered. I love your long form content and these WoW videos really resonate with me. Even if you don't see this or don't care, thank you for all of your amazing content and countless hours of enjoyable rewatching.
At 04:33:00, Something you may not be aware of is the reason for acronyms and quick speech actually comes from EQ. Before the days of Discord, TeamSpeak, or even Roger Wilco, players in EQ had to coordinate all group content via text. Any way you can type something faster and get your point across was not only helpful, but could mean the difference between losing a lot of progress on death and survival. Most early WoW players (and certainly the most experienced early WoW players) came from EQ, so the player culture started with that as a baseline and evolved from there.
On the nochanges point: it was never about preserving the original game as it was because it was perfect. Of course there are a lot of things in vanilla that sucked and the game would improve by changing them. Some nochanges people have lost the plot and deny even this. But if you were around in 2016-17 and remember the discussions that began nochanges you'd know that wasn't the case. The point of nochanges was in principle to prevent Blizzard from tarnishing what the fans wanted. "No changes, even if that means keeping shit game design and bugs: because we know it's a slippery slope that leads to cash shops". In that regard I think the nochanges crowd were absolutely right. It only took 1 classic expansion for blizzard to start this. Now we have boosts, shop mounts and wow tokens.
Inclined to agree with this. MadSeason’s good to look at as a chronicler of what happened at the time and the fallout since. I think the principle was that Blizzard simply could not be trusted to get it right if any changes were implemented and if private servers were going to be removed then a legal alternative needed to be there instead.
Glad to see some desolace love in this video. I always enjoyed that zone even as a kid and enjoyed the vibes of that area. It was really cool to me to be in a zone so few other people would ever visit.
love ur videos man, ur first one on wow actually made me and my friend pick it up and start playing again. Trying out classic for the first time atm and having a blast, tysm!
Maraudon up until Cataclysm, literally through the pre-patch was Princess Theradas titan prison. It has similar naming conventions to that in Ulduman. It has since been retconned. Part of the reason classic Desolace has all those metal pillars sprouting throughought was to help hint towards this and there are other bits of lore in the game signifying this but it was never really spelled out up until Cho'gall was fuckin around in the pre-patch and calls it her prison directly, because that was the stated lore both externally and internally at the time. Then Cataclysm revamped the world and Chronicles further retconned a few things here or there and that aspect of the lore was cut out. I assume whoever worked on the cata pre patch quests did not know about the revamp details in cata's desolace for whatever reason.
Great video man. I've been playing for 14 years and its great to see a deep, thorough dive like yours on one of my favorite games. Also your summary of vanilla lore really made me appreciate the original writing
The way you talk about Cataclysm reminds me of how me and my guildmates felt about the Nightfall expansion in Guild Wars 1. Nightfall was a watershed moment for the game, when the PvP community realized Arenanet was changing course to making a 'WoW killer' instead and launched one of the most broken pvp metas in the games' lifespan.
I'm shocked that the AQ war was considered a failure by Blizz, I thought that was one of the best ideas they ever had. It felt like so much to contribute to an actual war effort.
A note on the paper card game - one of the main designers was a professional magic the gathering player and wow degen Brian Kibler. The connection is very strong
Pat dropping this 45 mins before I go live is something I see as a personal attack. Not to my channel, no real overlap but to me as a person with way too much time on his hands who wishes they could watch the whole thing rn!
To me leveling is the best part of vanilla closely followed by pre-raid bis 5 man farming. I think raiding is miserable. The character progression of original classic is unparalleled for me. I will be revisiting 1-60 many many times throughout my life. I have never once considered the minor faction conflictions of zones and have hardly read any quest text in the game despite having played it since i was 13. Fantastic video I will certainly return for a rewatch.
Your talk abou Azshara (and cata in general) really speaks to why i quit playing around the time. Not only did the open ended nature of the quests and zones get removed, but the player was no longer a random adventurer in a world of advwnturers, they were the main character, saving everyone personally, and there were other people in the world too, who were also the hero of legend and story.... it sucked
I've always hated this take because we've always been the hero. At level 60 we kill 2 gods, the main general of the undead forced, and an elemental lord. We have been the hero of azeroth since vanilla.
Man, this is so good. I have been earnestly anticipating the second part of this. Glad you've developed a following because I'm sure a ton of time and effort went into this. Glad to see almost a half a million views on part one. Congrats!
1:14:33 "The thought was that they thought it would be cool if players could collect cards in the game world" And then FFXIV did that and everyone loved it.
Good to see some love for Desolace. It's still my favourite zone of vanilla. I still remember getting there for the first time as Alliance and feeling like I really shouldn't be there. Like I was entering a place where something terrible had happened. I always loved the fact that it was so understated, unlike Felwood that felt almost like a cartoonish Halloween zone. Like a zone that had been inhabited before, but then something happened and everything died. Basically a Chernobile feel before Stalker games.
if WoW content had actual Analysis like this I'd watch more, a lot of youtubers just talk about what has happened and I'm like "yeah, thanks man, really eye opening to repeat what I saw happened in the game" instead of having something to actually say like this dude
i want you to know that i REALLY appreciate your videos. stellar work. i've been watching the wow videos while leveling on yet another fresh classic server. thank you for your content.
Just finished the video, and I have to say thanks for making it. I cannot imagine how much work went into it. I'm primarily a wotlk enjoyer, but vanilla will always hold a special place in my heart for how genuine it is. I think you did it justice.
While many call it niche and it doesn't have a high player count, I can't not play Warlock for all the reasons outlined. People want you for summons and healthstones, you can flex well between solo and group content based off summoned demons and dmg outputs, you have some of the best cheese options for fights with fears, void sacs, and insta demon summons if you're based and play Demonology. And I'm glad the class flavor from the texts was mentioned, i gained a lot of new appreciation for the original writing team for all the lil bits they included in Warlock quest text to just add to the fantasy. Also, going Engineering for even more wacky untility and fly ass goggles is a must. Edit: i also lament meta lock being locked to SoD. A caster, pet, dot dmg tank is one of the most unconventional class designs I've ever seen, but it worked, and it was really really damn fun (especially season 2 when demo meta could use Soul Link). I wish there was a way they could bring this mechanically into retail or somewhere where it could be experimented with further. Also on the topic of SoD, season 1 and 2, especially 1 were much better imo in terms of the content people were doing and the meta not being a big deal. Season 3 introduced way too many grinds and loops that just aren't reflective of Classic, the coin farm, the nightmares, etc, really hurt the fun and the vibe and the first two seasons had going strong
I like to watch these videos so that I can pretend to be a video game dev taking notes and learning from the criticisms. Makes me feel alive. Neat! Great video as always good sir
Ganking lowbies was a much smaller issue before Classic Era realms where players ran out of things to do and resorted more and more to ganking lowbies.
Not gonna lie, hearing any amount of time frame in fantasy games makes me always ponder, if writers know what a year is. 10.000 years doing pretty much nothing, building cities and stuff in less than 10. Has anyone looked at a calendar once?
I put on a Patrician video and watch intently until I fall asleep. The next night I start at the last part I remember. Eventually, I manage to watch the entirety of these videos. It's like watching the daytime-TV cut and my sleep is the commercials.
As a former player who even had his off-spec food bound to a key, I agree that I was severely disappointed by the lack of utility spells bound to variations of SHIFT, ALT and MOUSEWHEEL UP/DOWN. Shame on you Pat. Cuck/10.
As someone who only played WoW casually over a decade ago, I will say I didn't understand a lot of the lore stuff but I still found it enjoyable to watch.
regarding Scarlet monastery, I think mono-loot dungeons is an interesting idea. In order to increase your chance of getting the loot you want, you can leverage your social connections to get the other type of character to help you. BRD, the greatest dungeon in wow's history, also functionally has elements of this, since players will do spesific runs for only a small selection of the dungeon's bosses, such as angerforge runs, prison runs, or arena runs.
"If I cover [expac]..." please do. I could listen to entire series about WoW from you. It would be a great undertaking, but I'm sure many of us would dig it.
6:32:38 can confirm. We did guild donations to pay for Thunderfurys, Protection Pots, T3 mats, etc. that were kept in mind when doing LC, (with a cap on how much people could donate to prevent buying, 15g a month at most). The same people who constantly complained about how we were taking peoples money, were the same who never said thank you when they got 10x that value in free protection pots and other things. It was exactly like being the government.
Actually had the Speedy Racer Goggles on an old mage of mine and I used it for Transmog for much of that mages life through cataclysm/mists/etc. Being one of the few goggles out there not requiring engineering and they looked pretty snazzy.
I have a lot of respect for you for doing these amazing videos. I have listen all of your works and its inspiring the effort. I wish I could find the time, energy and perseverance to do a 20hrs video about anime hehe
Fun fact. Hammerfall got its name from the Swedish metal band of the same name. One of the artists at Blizzard was a fan and had created a few album covers for the band.
Seeing the Altar of Storms in Burning Steppes was neat, but man I wish there was some ogre-magi there as well. Its what the altars were originally made for, upgrading Ogres to Ogre-Magi in WC2
Thanks for a release before some long holiday shifts. The first time I played WoW was on my brother's account at the tail end of TBC when I was 7 years old. Memories of running around in this game stuck with me pretty well considering when it happened. My main ended up being a draenei hunter that stopped at lv 36 with my favorite pet being a windserpent I got from a trip to the barrens. Don't ask why I went. I only remember that is where I was. I was mystified by the game, and I was sad when my brother stopped playing and my family gave up their internet connection. I would later have access to Internet while I was in high school, playing some f2p games like LoL, but one day I saw the trailer for Warlords of Draenor and acted on pursuing some old memories. Turns out times did change, and for a lot of players it was significantly for the worse, but for someone who was basically new, I never felt the lack of content too sorely. I explored the older zones and watched videos on high end content and lore (Thank you Nobbel and Preach) and I ended up getting pulled in more as time continued. I started Alliance, but I ended up liking the horde more for their characters. Plus their building interiors always felt a little more cozy and warm to me, probably due to an abundance furs and open fires. I tried basically every class before finally landing on my favorite character, my Pandaren Monk. From there I ended up running with a couple of guilds before finding my home, and we raided together casually through the last patch of WoD and Legion. I left the game at Legion's end for school and tried a return to Shadowland's start, but I wasn't feeling it after the first raid dropped, mainly because my old guild died in BFA and I wasn't having fun in PUGs since everyone seemed like too much of a try-hard now. I ended up trying out ffxiv looking for a new adventure as I found a little enjoyment out of a try I gave it another time, and ironically Asmongold ended up doing the same the following week, and I saw WoW basically shatter behind me as I left. Even then, I don't regret my time in WoW. I remember it fondly even now, and I might even make a dip back in when it suits me. I wondered for a bit about why what you said in your first video was true, how nobody really makes videos like this for WoW, but now I feel a bit clearer after thinking on it. Stories in games have always been a background that exists to support the player's experience, but WoW's nature seems to produce more stories from the players themselves than from the lore or the world. I'm sure plenty of people who experienced the content that was interested in its story can vaguely remember the highlights. Sure a story beat about a gang of adventures walking in to bring the fallen prince Arthas to justice can be important, but I think the memory of the Dave, the feral druid getting mobbed by skeletons because he drew the aggro of his cat IRL is going to weigh on people's minds about as heavily. I remember how I soloed the last 10% of a heroic boss when my guild had some alt runs of Hellfire Citadel and I filled in for offtank. I remember our Australian druid who woke up to raid with us before he went in to work because his timezone was across the globe. I remember when, in Silvermoon, an undead female rogue came out of stealth and offered me a guild invite to an 18+ guild, which I turned down, explaining to her that I was 8. I never felt the draw of classic other than curiosity because to me WoW is and always was a game that grows and changes. I think people remember the time they spend with it more than remembering IT specifically. Again, thanks for making this. It gave me a lot of food for thought, and I'll probably have it thrown on in the background until your New Vegas video.
I dont know if it was intentional or not, but Patrician saying that donaters' names are going by now and then having a full minute of nothing but footage on screen was the most impactful moment of the video. I felt that
God how I wish the Warlock would have been a melee caster class, I always wanted to throw shadow magic and dots while swinging a two handed sword with leather armor or something lol
Perfect timing, now I'll have something to do while I don't sleep.
Cmon man, didn't have to put it like that...
The real sleep loss is rewatching the first video again before starting this one.
@@TheZugiest If you watch them both at 2x speed then you can miss exactly 1 good night's rest.
by the time of this comment you still aren’t finished with this video
Most PvPers I've known don't like PvP, they like winning. The proof is how many pvp servers became one sided once transfers opened up.
To be fair, nobody likes losing. I’d
blame it on Blizzard for not balancing factions for transfers. It’s human nature to not wanna join the losing side, and having to struggle in every bg or constantly getting ganked by large groups is something that we all know gets very tiring.
I love world pvp and rather be on a slightly losing side then a dominating side that kicks out losing side. However I am a minority in this idea but dam good pvp in sod even when the horde was winning most of the time was epic
I'll chime in with an opinion that back in the day was very popular - world pvp is hardly pvp, the pvp ppl actually cared about were the arenas, at least for a couple expansions. Battleground were a chore to do until you got what you needed and world pvp wasn't even a thought most of the time. Granted that tbc and forward area, but still kinda fits
Depends in which PVP you are thinking of, world pvp of course you don't like losing.
Meanwhile a 14 day stalemate of AV where your own guildies joined when you did and you see each of them drop out then rejoin after doing their "day job" asking "is this the same AV?" only for you to say in /g chat "Yep" 😏😆😂
Of course no one like losing world pvp.
But a 14 day stalemate in AV where you join the same AV with your guildies and watch as each of them leave to head off to their real jobs only to rejoin the AV after work and ask "is this the same AV?" and you answer in /gchat "Yep, same AV, I'll find you with my shaman" 😏😆😂
It's never about the winning or the losing but the journey and experiences you gain while winning or losing which matter 💯 😊
I unironically love both of these videos for 2 reasons. 1. Its such a fresh perspective on a game i've played for 17 years. I genuinely forget some of the hundreds of stories in each zone and quests. 2. doubling down on the clicking is such an authentic WoW player moment.
That addon that uses AI to voice all the quests has helped me a bit with better remembering the stories for each quest, I think its called Voice Over or something, pretty neat addon though.
@@selwrynn6702 it's great for vanilla. There's a ton of different voices that get the gender right and accents and so on. There is one for retail, but it's not nearly as good, one voice monotone, not even AI
I'm so glad that you acknowledged the real reason the clear rate for initial Naxx was so low(Burning Crusade's release timing). So many people for years had been just saying it was SO DIFFICULT THAT ONLY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HAVE EVER CLEARED IT BEFORE CLASSIC, but my experience was "We cleared spider wing, and it's gonna take a WHILE for us to get everyone geared enough to even try to take the next wings... show of hands: who just wants to say 'screw it' since BC is gonna be out quicker than our gearing speed."
The DK wing, in particular the 4 horsemen, required 8 well geared tanks (from what I recall each horseman needed a tank swap and you originally had to swap tanks from one horsemen to the other due to their aoe debuffs that were fatal after a certain number of stacks). That was a huge hurdle for many guilds back then to get it done before BC release. And even after clearing the 4 wings, Sapphiron (who was then unlocked after) required ALL 40 PEOPLE in the raid to be decked in frost resist gear. Heck I remember death and taxes (the top NA guild back then) offering money for people to trade in the item to craft frost resist gear.
Exactly what happened to me. I had spent like 3 weeks raiding without getting a single drop, then had a priest steal the one piece of mage gear that dropped in Naxx before BC killed our raid schedule. I left my guild and quit the game for like 1 and a half years after that lol, not exactly a positive intro to the end-game grind.
Sure, BC made it trying to clear it be the height of madness, but as others had mentioned already, Naxx also took a lot of time, gear and consumables. The gates you had to boogie under to pass each hurdle were not trivial, and let's be real, until some of the more harsh boss mechanics were patched a bit, some of those hurdles would never be cleared by majority of guilds.
@@SinOfAugust Depends on what you call hard. People were just in general new to the game (and therefore, awful) and Naxx introduced a lot of boss mechanics players up to this point hadn't encountered in any of the other raids, like the Heigan Dance or Loatheb's whole anti-healing bubble. To show how much better the community as a whole had gotten, one just needs to look at Naxx 10/25, even if they had nerfed the bosses for Wrath, all core mechanics remained intact (Hell, Razuvious 25 still required at least one Priest for Mind Control) but players were able to handle it much better.
@@SinOfAugust Time, gear, and consumables are not skill gates. Again the BIGGEST hurdle was getting everything in time before it became obsolete. There's tons of stories of guilds "poaching" members of other guilds just so they could do Naxx, and that's the reason. You can only gear 40+ people SO fast. So what happened was you essentially had multiple guilds gearing up people separately then conglomerating those geared players together just to get it done before the expansion dropped.
The first part of this kept me company in bed when I was sick with the flu, happy to watch this one as well
Hope you’re well!
man ive got the flu now too, you gave it to me!
The flu is a goverment lie
Adding a comment to your statement about private servers:
Having a video focus on a private server (even if not endorsing it or actively showing footage of said private server) will get you in legal trouble with Blizzard, as popular WoW UA-camr Nixxiom recently went through, so I think you made the right choice by not endorsing (or denouncing) private servers or showing extensive footage of those servers.
Is this something Blizzard is in any way justified in doing? Haven't heard about this before.
@@dongordon2754 nah but will it stop them? Also nah
@@dongordon2754 It's a relatively new policy they've set up a few years ago. Hardly justified, but corporations can do anything.
So I found around a million videos about private servers. They all going to jail now?
"It's a shame because dungeons really are a fun part of the game, but that fun is held hostage by basically random chance that you will have to play with someone who made it to level 35 not knowing how to use their abilities in a group."
As someone who played Mythic Plus in Dragonflight and pretty much gave up in The War Within, these words resonate through my bones.
you lasted a lot longer than me i quit doin mythic+ back in bfa 😭
It's sad too because it makes the game inherently hostile to new and returning players.
Boy was i in for a rude awakening as someone who hadn't played Retail since Legion and came back for TWW. It was just like Illidan said, i was not prepared. Now i at least don't die as much. Still suck tho. But at least my Shadow Priest of 15 years can keep on going. Crazy to think that i have played a WoW character for longer than many teenagers are alive right now.
There's just a massive creep in mechanical skill checks excluding more and more people from relevant retail pve content.
Rotationaly, we are still somewhere in Legion-BfA difficulty and pace levels obviously depending on class since that can change quite often, but oh boi the other stuff..
My mage had 2 defensive buttons, barrier and iceblock, a third as arcane/frost in Legion.
My mage in DF and TWW now has as many as some tanks had in Legion and you absolutely MUST use them in time or you just die to unavoidable damage in 12+ keys and to most mythic bosses.
Add to that even more mandatory utility buttons you didn't have or needed to use before.
It's just 2 more layers you have to constantly think about and be aware of in game design so much more than ever before.
I'm a single guy in my mid 20s, it's whatever to me, I still have the time and eye-hand coordination to deal with it, but it just sucks to think this might get even worse and also how many people I've met in my classic guild that I just won't ever be able get near relevant retail content (despite them being genuinely interested) because it's gotten this bad.
Why do people constantly throw themselves into pugging M+ despite hating it? Considering TWW introduced Delves for solo gearing up to Heroic raid gear, you don't even have to do M+ to get AotC for Nerubar Palace. If you want to engage with M+, it's no different than progression in Vanilla. Find a guild, gear together, raid together. M+ is just infinitely more enjoyable with a group of guildies who are there to learn and improve together.
@@Ryan-sn3uo I don't hate it conceptually, I hate this iteration of it. I was fine pugging it in DF, and then I made some friends and it actually became even more enjoyable. Come TWW the pugging experience got significantly worse and all of my friends were enjoying it so much they quit, making it even worse. Tank nerfs, stricter healing requirements, fort/tyr at the same time, poorly thought out seasonal affixes, bad dungeon pool, disrupts no longer interrupting, all adds up to make a garbage experience.
I would rather suffer through a +23 in S3 of DF with no lust, every other DPS wearing a pastiche of gear with the wrong stats, and a tank new to the game, than push +10s in S1 of TWW.
I literally just finished ACT 1 and was bummed out that two may be a while away…
This is a joyous day. Blessings upon thee ✨
Bro’s not Joseph Anderson 💀
I was blissfully unaware of the classic relaunch when I dove into these videos. Phenomenal analysis, 10/10 content, but you have a lot to answer to my sleep schedule for
Honestly I'll stand by Thousand Needles, Desolace and Tanaris being legitimately good zones. I know it's cliche to slam on the stereotypical MMO quests of "Collect (X) things" or "Kill (X) mobs" but even as early as The Burning Crusade, zones started to feel increasingly video game-y and even artificial at times. It's difficult to put into words but it genuinely feels like things are not allowed to exist if they do not offer a form of player progression. Like if you look at almost any zone post-Vanilla, ALL of the space is used and you can realistically expect a complete tour of the zone just by doing the quests, with the questing experience itself being streamlined to be more convenient and lucrative for the player.
Some of the more empty, missable, or traditionally "boring" zones really add to the world. There's a primal feeling of adventure I adore when I travel to Desolace, pick up a quest in one of the only points of refuge to be found in that hostile wasteland before promptly embarking on a journey across the zone, on foot, knowing that with each step I'm only traveling further and further away from the safety of civilization, and continuing forth despite lingering doubts. It's a feeling that I love in RPGs and haven't truly felt in WoW since I could fly over everything that could be an inconvenience and with death setting you back a minute utmost, even assuming you CAN die.
TL;DR Desolace is actually the DARK SOULS of WoW Zones and I miss the Bonfires of Vanilla
On the topic of Desolace have you ever discovered that little Twilight Hammer village in the south east of the zone, its on the far side of the Magram camp that has the water in it, I for one had never seen it before this 2024 Classic re-release despite playin the game for the last 18 years. It's called Shadowbreak Ravine & was designed to be part of the Warlock level 40 mount quest but that part of the questline got cut, it has some really cool giant mushrooms I've never seen anywhere else though.
Funny you mention DS at the end there, I loved a lot of the areas in SotE precisely because they weren’t designed to give the player interactive content but more to just be experienced
@@selwrynn6702 Yeah! That's another thing about vanilla zones I loved, there's so many 'subzones' that contrasted heavily with most of the zones aesthetic(s) that always peaked your curiosity whenever you adventured into / near them. It's insane how even after nearly two decades I'm STILL finding areas that make me think "...was this always here? How did I miss this???"
Also I agree Nick, despite it being a self aware joke I legitimately could've continued the FromSoft comparisons for a while (constant mechanical escalation over time, Stakes of Marika, early fast travel, etc). As for SotE I totally understand why people were annoyed with some areas being 'pointless' and I can agree with a lot of the criticism, but it really does add to the world building and immersion
I like Thousand Needles when I'm not in Thousand Needles. The zone takes forever to get around in(like Stonetalon), the verticality sucks, the elevators and mesas suck, the caves suck, the gathering is annoying, Shimmering Flats is very good for fast grindy leveling but it's also an open world BG most of the time.
I don't like Desolace. The important quests are always either too low for my level or too high for my level and you will still be more than 10 levels below the requirement to do Maraudon after you do every quest in the zone. I'm only mentioning this to say that the full purple>orange>princess Maraudon is easily in the top 3 best 5 man dungeons in Vanilla, personally my favorite dungeon in the game. It's memorable because it's the only "faction choice" mechanic that exists in Vanilla if you don't count Bloodsail Buccaneers, even though the choice doesn't matter at all.
Tanaris is obviously goated. It's always been the "this character is now a real character that will start raiding soon" realization zone for me.
Some fun little tid-bits:
1. The Vile Reef is believed to be related to the tide stone, and was sunk by Neptulon (the Elemental Lord of water) after its power was abused by the troll who wielded it in that era. As of Classic the tide stone is possess by a goblin on an island full of water elementals, you are sent to claim it by the guy in charge of Booty Bay, Baron Revilgaz.
2. The other way to fight Archaedas is in the hallway between the final 2 rooms as you can hop up and down on the massive bits that jut out from the wall which will allow you to kite him so that he never actually is able to hit the tank, so he just has to keep agro while the dps kill him. (you can only effectively hop up and down on the sloped areas when the hallway is descending so keep that in mind.
3. in Desolace there is a little area in the far south east of the zone called Shadowbreak Ravine, it is behind the Margram centaur village that has all of the water in it, if you can get on the far side of all the water you will find a very small break in the mountains that will lead you there. The area is filled with Twilight Hammer warlocks & Felhunters, but there is no actual quest that sends you there. The area was originally intended to be involved in a questline which Warlocks would have to complete to learn their level 40 mount before it was severely cut down, to that end there is a stables area with Felsteeds in it. You can see the area as unexplored when Pat opens up his map while in the zone, 1:13:25 is one of the timestamps he does so. I only discovered the existence of this place last month during the 20th anniversary re-launch of Classic & it is worth a little detour from your questing if only to see the giant mushrooms that have a blue glow which I do not believe appears anywhere else (though I could be wrong on that).
4. There is a very obscure theory that Maraudon is actually a Titan facility (by obscure I mean literally 1 guy made a video on it, but its a good video). See when the Titans were fighting the Old Gods for control of the planets the Old Gods had already subjugated the Elemental Lords and so the minions of the Titans had to fight the elementals, and Princess Theradras is likely one of the daughters of the Elemental Lord of earth (Therazzane). Additionally the centaurs do not build stone architecture anywhere but there are a series of stone structures throughout the zone that, while not Greco-Roman in style, are clearly FAR too big for the Centaurs to have constructed even if they DID create stonework structures. The last evidence that points to this theory is the Earth Giants within Maraudon as all Giants are Titan creations, which is denoted in that their classification type is "Giant" not "Elemental" which would make it all the more tragic that the giants guarding the way to the final boss Princess Theradras were once her jailors, now bent to her will. I believe this was intended upon the creation of Desolace, but if it was it has since been abandoned as in the Cataclysm revamp of the zone they removed all of the giant stone arches around the Maraudon entrance. Again if it works this is the link to that video ua-cam.com/video/mg2PiW8KMkI/v-deo.html if it doesn't the channel is Jediwarlock a great channel that covers WoW lore that's actually found in game rather than book stuff.
5. On the topic of Mage AoE, ironically the 2nd best AoE class is actually the Paladin through their Consecration spell, combined with Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura, but unlike the mage they actually have to sit and tank mobs while AoEing so there is some trade off, mages get to run away and AoE at range while Paladins (and to a lesser extent Warlocks) have to sit there and take damage to AoE effectively.
7. On the Isle of Dread in Feralas, that unique cave has an interesting feature seen nowhere else. The quest that sends you there to kill a single guy, and the path to him is just a straight shot, he is on a little island at the back as there is a small lake inside the cave, not unusual within WoW, but if you go to the right as you come to the water part of the cave, you will find a part that is deep enough that you can swim, and if you dive down there you will swim through a tunnel that comes up to another cave section with 4-5 more naga spawns & an ore node. The area was originally supposed to house the guy you are sent to kill by the quest, but it was too hidden I guess, so instead there is a rare naga spell caster that will spawn down there from time to time.
8. As Pat talks about quest items in Feralas around the 2:57:00 mark I am reminded that interestingly in addition to some quest items being weird there are quest items that actually require certain professions to equip, sure Engineering has lots of gear it can make that can only be used by Engineers, but one of the quests from the Greenwarden in Wetlands has a choice of rewards, one of which is a 1h sword that requires 100 Herbalism called the Phytoblade its just a green sword with a proc to deal some nature damage, the stand out feature is requiring Herbalism to wield, I remember seeing at least 1 other item like this but I cannot recall it off the top of my head.
9. Interestingly all the profession in Vanilla were created by 1 guy, they have have been somewhat iterated on after, but he created the groundwork for all of the professions & most of the actual items you craft & gather.
10. For the additional zone areas Pat mentions at 3:52:00 ish there is a guy who threw together some mockup zones that could've been used for these areas, done in the style of the minimap, assuming it works this is a link to the imgur file that has all the maps he put together imgur.com/a/chromeddragons-classic-wow-zones-tvpk9SS The "Blackened Marshes" and "Headland" serve as ideas for the areas east of the Burning Steppe while "Ship's End Cove" serves as to liven up the area where the Deeprun Tram is exposed to water.
11. There was a particular barrow den in Felwood that actually WAS supposed to be a dungeon, that being the one in Jaedenar which is totally unique from other barrow dens, there is a rather tedious escort quest down there, and once you complete the escort you are sent back down there to go even further in and fight a bunch of named enemies that certainly seem like they were designed to be dungeon bosses originally. Behind the final boss is the area that was (I believe) supposed to be the start of what would've been the dungeon, but besides a potential Thorium Vein there is no reason to go there now.
12. On the topic of Arthas & Stratholm to this day the developers who created that level and story do not understand why the playerbase sees Arthas' choice there in a sympathetic light, sure it was not a good action, but still the best one he could've taken in that scenario, but the devs see it as what made him irredeemably evil.
13. So the reason the High/Blood Elves look so bad is because, yes they are a relic of an older version of the game when it was running in the Warcraft 3 engine, there are a few other models that suffer from the same problem but are less noticeable, the ones I can name off the top of my head are 4 different human models & the ogre model that was changed soon after launch to the one we all know and love today. The 3 human models are the human workers which you can see in the Defias Miners in Deadmines, the human rogue which is used by the Defias Watchman, also in the Deadmines. The Pirate captain model which is used by a few NPCs, most notably Fleet Master Firallon of the Bloodsail Buccaneers, the 4th one is a human foreman model that I swear exists I just cannot remember the name of one.
14. Interestingly for Paladins, they were so under-used that even on private servers they were very underdeveloped, however they've seen a bit of a renaissance since the 2019 release of Classic, as many new strategies have been discovered to make the class even more lethal in PvP. One thing Pat didn't mention, likely because he didn't get to a high enough level on them is that Paladins are, as I mentioned above, the second best AoE class behind mages, however being able to do AoE like they can makes them very good as dungeon healers with the asterisk of "in the right hands" as mana management becomes crucial for Pally tanks. Also when Greater Blessings were release with patch 1.9 (This was the AQ patch) Paladins actually became able to raid tank as well, though not as effectively as warriors. This is because Greater blessings target all members of the raid with the same class as the person you cast it on, the Righteous Fury ability increases the threat of your Holy attacks, and Blessing of Kings is considered a Holy spell, so spamming in gives you threat from every raid member who it was cast on. This made them very good at picking up ads like the whelps in Onyxia, and allowed Paladins the dreams of being tanks in high tier raiding, but again Warriors were still far more reliable. In this guide if you scroll down they go into all the math behind how it works www.wowhead.com/classic/guide/lights-bulwark-protection-paladin-tanking Another interesting thing with Paladins is due to the mechanics of how Seal of Righteousness works as technically a second attack so when they are not leveling as Sword & Board rather than 2handers they actually prefer the fastest 1h weapons to the point that a Flurry Axe (a level 42 world drop epic) is their best in slot pally tanking weapon throughout all of Vanilla due to its proc granting a chance at an extra swing which makes this 1.5 speed weapon effectively 1.3 speed. Seal of Righteousness also double procs the Lifestealing enchant which is a weird little quirk but I'm getting too deep into the weeds here.
This note has become too long so I will continue in the replies.
NERD
jk bud, lmao.
Your knowledge is impressive. This game in its original iteration is my favorite video game world barely beating out The lands between.
Youre referencing JediWarlock's video about Mauradon. I just wanted to shout his name out because he is criminally under-followed. One of the best WoW lore channels on YT and only has ~20k subs
Loved this. Add more as you come to think of it, please!
For the Desolace Greco/Roman structures thing, those are Night Elf ruins. That asid, there is some other stuff that isn't really seen anywhere else or used for that purpose, though, particularly the valley with the Undead. Of course, the actual stonework around Maraudon itself is ??? so its still a viable point on that.
And yeah, HE/BE being sketchy textures on the night elf model, good times.
@@selwrynn6702 the arthas disconnect is depressing. The devs are confusing brutal actions with cruel ones. To me, the real "insane evil, he snapped" moment is when he betrays the mercenaries and burns his ships. Unlike stratholme, its not done for any kind of visible good, it's just furthering his goal of revenge on malganis.
for the record, as a retail player, the instructions for unlocking every single allied race did still read as a bizarre labyrinth of arbitrary objectives to be able to play a slight variation on an existing race. or perhaps for the more savvy among us - a timesink to get a couple more months of sub money out of a playerbase rapidly losing trust in a game.
I never found "get exalted with x (by which time you should of done their quest chains anyway), do quest" to be that complicated
I still think half of them should have just been customizations, but to call it bizarre labyrinth of arbitrary objectives? It was just a rep and short questline. And even that rep requirement is removed. No way you struggled with that.
@@Ryan-sn3uoI think it’s what they wanted in the first place: bring more customization. But they couldn’t do it via old races at the time so they made it via new.
In SL they rebuild something with customization options that allowed them to do properly from now on. But allied races were already in the game. Situation.
They might thought about dractyr already then so couldn’t avoid the problem with poor customization tools anymore. It just happened that they avoided it just before hitting the wall again and finally resolve problem.
I got lucky because I had been actively playing when each one was added I had already fulfilled all the unlock conditions before they were introduced, so all I had to do was the questline, if I hadn't been active at the time I am quite certain I would have been just as confused as everyone else though.
@@Ryan-sn3uo It's not really just a rep grind, though. I unlocked the Void Elves (and by extension, Lightforged Draenei) and the obtuseness was getting to the point where I could access the relevant reputation faction. I had to do the Argus campaign from Legion, but I had to first figure out how to even unlock any of the Argus stuff since there were some pre-reqs that still had to be completed when I did it during BFA. The whole campaign element of each expansion in modern WoW is, quite frankly, obnoxious as hell.
There is a Private server out there, that shows what paladins _could_ have been, had it not been for a seemingly small choice rather late in development.
Paladin's originally had an ability they got early on, called Holy Strike. It was to Paladins, what Heroic Strike is to warriors. it cost mana, had about a 6 second CD, and increased the damage of the paladin's next attack by a number of holy damage. The ability was removed shortly before launch, because they felt it was just too similiar to the warrior.
In my personal opinion, and having played a Paladin on this particular PS that restored that ability and having seen for myself, this small choice is the *main* cause for the Paladin being relegated to a buffbot disappointment in vanilla.
Its actually kind of insane, just how big a difference one damage spell makes. It doesnt look like much either, but it played so well with other paladin spells, that its clear to see this ability would have been in their main dps rotation. Seal of the Crusader had a judgement that increased holy damage done to an enemy. This works fine with something like Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command, but Holy Strike would have also been included here, and it would have made Paladins dps viable. im not kidding.
This became apparent midway through the PS's life, where Paladin's ended up needing to be nerfed SO hard as to move SoC down 3 rows on the talent tree. Paladins with this one ability, became damage dealers, and Ret Paladins were especially OP. Dishing out some crazy holy damage.
its one of the crazier things ive learned about WoW. that this one spell was so integral to the class, that having it made them very strong, and removing it made them a noticeably unfinished class that got shoehorned into a disappointing endgame role.
Edit: i wasnt sure if crusader strike was OG or an addition of the PS. but i wrote this literally seconds before he addressed it all in the video. and god dammit, im not removing this comment now lol. Either i got some things wrong and i get shame, or i added to the conversation lol
Edit 2: I recently just got back on that PS yesterday, and they did a complete talent tree rework and changed some abilities. Crusader strike and holy strike were both changed and are no longer their originals
To reply to your edit, original crusader strike (holy damage version of Sunders) is what essentially became Judgement of the Crusader. Holy Strike unlike Crusader strike never had an equivalent spell filling the vacuum in vanilla so your comment is very valid.
Whats the server
man. i would love you covering future expansions. and id imagine vanilla would be the longest so hopefully easier for future videos
I had just booted up youtube to look for a video to listen while I play WoW and this was the first recomendation with "1 minute ago" underneath it. Perfect timing.
Comment from 5 hours ago. You can't have finished the video yet. This is a wild series and I love it.
@samringwald I didn't, I commented before I watched it. It's Patrician, you know it'll be good before it starts.
The middle sections of the game not being as prioritized as the start makes sense. One of the big writing mistakes is to either have a bad beginning or end, as that is what most people will remember. The endgame content is very important for games since that is what most people will be playing. The beginning is still important as that will help new players gauge if they like the game. If you have to cut content for budget, the middle is the best place to do it in a book, movie, or video game.
Based pfp
Endgame will objectively be what the fewest players engage with.
Look at the Steam Achievements for any game, even if they only take a few hours to beat. Only like 30% of people max tend to reach the final level/boss. With the biggest dropoff being after the opening then during the precise middle of the game.
MMO's are just really good at retaining players who push through to end game. And managing to get large influxes due to social advertising (one person pulling in a friend from work).
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 Sure but the endgame is also where your most hardcore players are and you need to ensure that they are at least not hiving a bad experience if you want to keep them, seeing guys in full epic gear walking around the cities back in the day was aspirational for people still leveling as it further added the allure of what is still waiting for you out there.
Additionally endgame content is by its nature going to be done over and over again so it needs to be made such that its still enjoyable when repeated, thus some additional care needs to go into its crafting, at least in a game like Classic WoW.
I always kinda figured that the Scarlet Graveyard is full of the Undead because it was where the Crusaders would dump all the people they've tortured to death. Since the Scourge needs to taint the ground to keep their undead walking, the whole corruption in the area automatically resurrects the dead, creating a living garbage pile that the Crusaders haven't yet figured out what to do about. The Undead polluting their environment was even kept in Cataclysm; the areas of the Plaguelands that have been reclaimed by the Argent Dawn are healing and returning to their state previous to the third war, however the areas claimed by the Forsaken haven't (and are actually getting worse), implying that the existence of the Forsaken is itself causing this corruption due to it originating with the Scourge.
The Plaguelands in general are my favorite zones in the game. The western half is a bit meh, but the Eastern Plaguelands are oppressive, bleak and hostile, perfect for a true endgame zone and contain some of the most depressing story content, facing all the atrocities you comitted in WC3 on a deeply personal level (like the whole Darrowshire questline) makes them really memorable. And behind all of it, is Stratholme, the smoking spectre at the horizon, where all of this destruction started. When i was originally starting out back in Wrath, when the old world was still intact, i spent a lot of time grinding the Argent Dawn to Exalted simply because i liked their faction so much, while sitting between Levels 58 and 62, without me realizing that i had accidentally skipped half of Outland or that green quests don't offer as much XP as yellow and orange ones...
Finished watching the video a few things:
1. Corrupted blood was not the first in-raid mechanic to be exploited by pet classes to grief other players, since boss abilities could also target pets in general. This included abilities like Baron Geddon's living bomb, which hunters would use their pets to smuggle the bomb out of MC by dismissing their pet and then later resummon it in a city (Normally in a populated auction house) to then have it go off inside it and kill other unsuspecting people.
2. The corrupted blood pandemic was quite awful for everyone involved, even the people at Blizzard. You did mention that the debuff would also jump into NPCs, but also that it would just 1 shot low level players since the debuff would end up in starting zone's quest givers. So they would be effectively be barred from doing any meaningful content if a friendly patroling NPC was carrying the plague. Usually for situations like this Blizzard would take down the server and hope things would not get further out of hand.
3. Griefing on WoW was a regular thing, even to your own faction members. Hunters were the kings of griefing due to their ability to kite very powerful enemies into their friend's, or foe's, capital city to cause mayhem. This would be either very high level NPCS like: Teremus the Devourer (Elite Black Dragon in Blasted Lands with no quests associated with him and had the ability to place a dot on everyone in 45 yrds that would heal him for a substancial amount of health) and Raid bosses like Azuregos or Lord Kazzak. Lord Kazzak being the worst offender since his abilities allowed him to heal up a whole lot of HP every time he killed an enemy, this could be a player or an NPC. Kazzak being kited to Stormwind would mean Stormwind would become a deathtrap for anyone and Kazzak would stick in the city for hours since his Shadow Bolt Volley would hit NPCs and those NPCs would alert the guard spawner and add more bodies for Kazzak to get HP from. The latter one would later be despawned by GMs after a few hours.
4. Exploits and glitches were prime during the time period. The one that really stuck out to me was Reckoning bombing, or Reckbomb. Paladins in Vanilla had a talent called Reckoning which allowed them to gain 1 stack of it every time they would get critically hit by a melee attack, when the paladin auto attacked the reckoning stacks would be consumed and every stack would be an extra attack. The problem was that Reckning had a no stack limit and the stack consumption was not limited. This allowed players to get into a duel and have the paladin sit on the floor and another player hit the paladin, causing a 100% chance to hit on the paladin, and then get a stack of reckoning. Repeating that for several hours until they felt they had enough stacks and go solo an outdoor raid boss. This spawned the infamous Reckbomb on Kazzak, killing the boss in a few seconds since the server needed to process over 1k auto attacks that were done in a second. Blizzard hotfixed the ability very quickly.
There were other exploits that were more involved, but relied on players actually tampering with the models in their gamefiles to replace them and gain access to areas they were not meant to be. For some reason the colision box of a model is tied to the model itself, so if you were to replace an entire building with different one, you'd be moving through places that normally you'd not be able to move because the server trusted the client to not be lying. To other players you'd be flying and to your game you were just moving up on a horde watchtower and the server would trust your point of view over the other people. This could happen in PVP, specially in WSG, in which people would swap areas below the flag rooms so they would be able to pick up the flag and then run below the entire battleground to their flagroom and cap the flag uncontested. A case of this happening in raiding was with the guild 'Overrated', what they did was replace the floor/wall texture right below the first boss of the raid in order to access the last boss of the raid as quickly as possible, Blizzard banned the guild after they found out about it.
The creation of the Warden system was made to combat those exploits like that, where the game would now check if files were tampered with before you are able to log in to prevent such things, also is now more agressive in terms of players being in places they are not meant to be at all. Hell before that, Blizzard would use NPCs (Guardians of Blizzard) to kill any players that were in out of bounds areas that were not supposed to be in.
Loved the video Pat, watched every retrospective so far. I hope with the announcement of the anniversary stuff that a TBC/Wrath video happens in the future.
Thanks for the info
The legend is back. It is hard to overstate how usefull this videos on long workshifts.
As someone who has watched your Morrowind retrospective a concerning number of times (like literally it could be more than 20 times in entirety over the years). I must say the reason you probably like Desolace's environment is because it is most similar zone to Vvardenfel -- it's as close to venturing frome Molag Amur to the Grazelands as you will find in this game, it even features tribes of indigenous people.
I hope to be blessed with your retrospectives for many years to come.
To answer why Medhiv helped Stormwind in the Gurubashi war: Sargeras's hold over him began gradually over time and was never quite absolute. At the time of the Gurubashi war, Medhiv chose to help his friends of his own volition, though during the siege he unleashes his full power for the first time on the Gurubashi, which IIRC is the first point where Sargeras begins to exert more and more control over him.
Regarding Kargath, not sure if I'm misinterpreting what you said, but I think you're saying that he died before vanilla? If so, he's actually still alive and is the leader of Illidan's felorcs in TBC. He dies in the Shattered Halls dungeon. The TBC questing does make mention of how tragic it is that a hero of the old horde became a fel orc, but like you mention, he really wasn't a good guy going off of the Warcraft 2 game/novelization. Funnily enough, WoD kind of simultaneously turns his sadism up to 11 while also giving him a somewhat sympathetic former slave backstory.
Resource scarcity is actually the justification Garrosh uses to go to war. Yeah, he kind of hated the alliance already, but the Cataclysm apparently wrecked what little farmland Durotar had and that, along with leftover animosity from the Wrathgate and some Twilight Hammer false flag massacres, lead to the escalation into full conflict. This has been muddied over time, especially in Chronicle, because Blizzard decided after the fact that Garrosh just being a warmongering Orc Supremacist was a cleaner story explanation. So its kind of a mess...
Funnily enough, the ogre mound in Dustwallow was actually a location in Warcraft 3's bonus campaign. Which also explains them being a part of the Horde. So, they're actually the one of two ogre locations in vanilla with a specific explanation from a previous game. (The other being the ones in Alterac who were mind controlled by Sylvanas during the undead campaign).
Even if you had played Dragonflight, you wouldn't have gotten answers concerning the new Centaur. Blizzard didn't bother to explain where the Dragonflight Centaur come from, only that they're apparently far more ancient than the Kalimdor Centaur... This is despite them also having connections to nature through their longstanding alliance with the green dragonflight. Yeah... modern Blizz are really lazy when it comes to world building their minor factions. Also, Emerald Dream was finally made a full zone in Dragonflight. Though it's obviously still "just a small part of the entire dream"
Unless I'm misremembering, I think the original reasoning for the Dwarves attacking AV is because some titan relics were said to have been found in the area. So it wasn't quite as blatantly expansionistic as them just wanting another snowy mountain to colonize.
The reason Theredras dies rather than go to deepholm is that she was never sealed into deepholm. The elemental plains were originally artificial realms created by the titans to imprison the elementals. For some unexplained reason, maybe just affinity or some titan mumbo jumbo, the elementals became bound to these plains in such a way that they return there when dying rather than permanently dying. Theredras, who never went there, didn't get that benefit. Of course, in reality its just a lore oversight that they later explained away.
Pour one out for HotS. The last gasp of Blizzard's original artistic sensibilities. Taken too soon.
Oh, and trust me, you don't hate Cata too much. Fuck Cataclysm.
Vrykul aren’t immortal. The ones on northrend put their entire society to sleep with magic at one point to stave off evolving(degenerating from their pov) into humans. They wake up shortly before wrath. They were asleep for thousands upon thousands of years. Wait you reference that… but yeah they aren’t immortal. The ones from legion die at the same pace as everyone else and have a whole tomb complex and death priest caste.
There is an explanation for centaurs on Dragon Isles.
They’ve been took there by Ohn'ahra. I don’t remember the details but it’s quite it.
Though I remember that developers was thinking on explanation even during development and several people told their own versions. This might made you (and many others) think that there is no explanation at all.
@ I already knew about that. That explains why they’re in the dragon isles. But it doesn’t explain how these centaur existed before zaetar and Theredras birthed the desolace centaur. Because the dragon isles centaur existed for thousands of years earlier with no explanation.
Ah yes a fellow desolace enjoyer, tremendous w of a video and again the more casual writing style you’ve taken on is great especially accompanied by a casual experience. I’m not a member of your merchants guild but your work has helped me regulate and get though some of the harder times of my life when the only way out was through. I turn my adblocker off for your work sir pat I sincerely wish you the best. Also the “turning off pvp” joke about the pvp Andy’s blocking people on the forums was 12/10
Maradoun is the best classic dungeon imo.
Part 1 is incredible, I’ve seen countless wow videos and played the game since day 1 and you still had so much great input about every topic. I’m only about 60% of the way through it but I needed that during a long road trip last week. It’s hilarious how well you figure out lore and general storyline faults
I don't matter, but love your content.
As someone who has played WoW since I was 4 back in 2006/7 but has never really interacted with Warcraft outside of watching challenge runs, I have loved these in-depth runs though the lore. Sometimes I got confused, but within a few sentences I was back on track understanding what you were discussing and why it mattered. I love your long form content and these WoW videos really resonate with me. Even if you don't see this or don't care, thank you for all of your amazing content and countless hours of enjoyable rewatching.
You matter son.
You matter, friend.
At 04:33:00, Something you may not be aware of is the reason for acronyms and quick speech actually comes from EQ. Before the days of Discord, TeamSpeak, or even Roger Wilco, players in EQ had to coordinate all group content via text. Any way you can type something faster and get your point across was not only helpful, but could mean the difference between losing a lot of progress on death and survival. Most early WoW players (and certainly the most experienced early WoW players) came from EQ, so the player culture started with that as a baseline and evolved from there.
On the nochanges point: it was never about preserving the original game as it was because it was perfect. Of course there are a lot of things in vanilla that sucked and the game would improve by changing them. Some nochanges people have lost the plot and deny even this. But if you were around in 2016-17 and remember the discussions that began nochanges you'd know that wasn't the case.
The point of nochanges was in principle to prevent Blizzard from tarnishing what the fans wanted. "No changes, even if that means keeping shit game design and bugs: because we know it's a slippery slope that leads to cash shops".
In that regard I think the nochanges crowd were absolutely right. It only took 1 classic expansion for blizzard to start this. Now we have boosts, shop mounts and wow tokens.
Inclined to agree with this. MadSeason’s good to look at as a chronicler of what happened at the time and the fallout since. I think the principle was that Blizzard simply could not be trusted to get it right if any changes were implemented and if private servers were going to be removed then a legal alternative needed to be there instead.
Your well structured and entertaining long form content is always such a treat for me. Thank you for putting this stuff together.
Glad to see some desolace love in this video. I always enjoyed that zone even as a kid and enjoyed the vibes of that area. It was really cool to me to be in a zone so few other people would ever visit.
love ur videos man, ur first one on wow actually made me and my friend pick it up and start playing again. Trying out classic for the first time atm and having a blast, tysm!
Perfect podcast material for Minecraft grinding 👌
Really pushing for that 10 minute mark for the sweet ad revenue with this one 😂
I've waited years for this
Maraudon up until Cataclysm, literally through the pre-patch was Princess Theradas titan prison. It has similar naming conventions to that in Ulduman. It has since been retconned. Part of the reason classic Desolace has all those metal pillars sprouting throughought was to help hint towards this and there are other bits of lore in the game signifying this but it was never really spelled out up until Cho'gall was fuckin around in the pre-patch and calls it her prison directly, because that was the stated lore both externally and internally at the time. Then Cataclysm revamped the world and Chronicles further retconned a few things here or there and that aspect of the lore was cut out. I assume whoever worked on the cata pre patch quests did not know about the revamp details in cata's desolace for whatever reason.
love that you persistently point out how horrible the horde have been over the years.
FINALLY PART 2. I've legitimately watched part 1 around 3 times by now. Good stuff as always Pat.
Perfect for my work shift tonight, excellent work as always!
Great video man. I've been playing for 14 years and its great to see a deep, thorough dive like yours on one of my favorite games. Also your summary of vanilla lore really made me appreciate the original writing
The structure of this video's segments is absolutely psychotic lol
The way you talk about Cataclysm reminds me of how me and my guildmates felt about the Nightfall expansion in Guild Wars 1. Nightfall was a watershed moment for the game, when the PvP community realized Arenanet was changing course to making a 'WoW killer' instead and launched one of the most broken pvp metas in the games' lifespan.
Goddamit, UA-cam, no I don't want to watch any random WoW videos you can find, I want to finish watching this one.
Just got a text from my boss saying my eight hour shift was actually going to be a thirteen. Thank you for your help in getting me through it.
Is that even legal?
The man got the Emerald Whelp on his hunter alt in Swamp of Sorrows and didnt blink
Saw that as well! its like what a 0.1% drop. I remember farming it for days trying to get the old whelp collection.
I'm shocked that the AQ war was considered a failure by Blizz, I thought that was one of the best ideas they ever had. It felt like so much to contribute to an actual war effort.
The way you say Tanaris, Feralas, and Hyjal are ways I've never heard them pronounced.
As someone who never played WoW but loved WC3, Its interesting to see what the game was.
A note on the paper card game - one of the main designers was a professional magic the gathering player and wow degen Brian Kibler. The connection is very strong
It’s my sleepover, I get to pick the movie.
Pat dropping this 45 mins before I go live is something I see as a personal attack.
Not to my channel, no real overlap but to me as a person with way too much time on his hands who wishes they could watch the whole thing rn!
It's funny how the hunter was thought out as 'the Aragorn' archtype but was not available to humans in vanilla
To me leveling is the best part of vanilla closely followed by pre-raid bis 5 man farming. I think raiding is miserable.
The character progression of original classic is unparalleled for me. I will be revisiting 1-60 many many times throughout my life. I have never once considered the minor faction conflictions of zones and have hardly read any quest text in the game despite having played it since i was 13.
Fantastic video I will certainly return for a rewatch.
That was a pretty cool video. I feel like you've gotten way better at writing endings since the Morrowind video!
Certified (World of Warcraft) Classic
Your talk abou Azshara (and cata in general) really speaks to why i quit playing around the time. Not only did the open ended nature of the quests and zones get removed, but the player was no longer a random adventurer in a world of advwnturers, they were the main character, saving everyone personally, and there were other people in the world too, who were also the hero of legend and story.... it sucked
I've always hated this take because we've always been the hero. At level 60 we kill 2 gods, the main general of the undead forced, and an elemental lord. We have been the hero of azeroth since vanilla.
Man, this is so good. I have been earnestly anticipating the second part of this. Glad you've developed a following because I'm sure a ton of time and effort went into this. Glad to see almost a half a million views on part one. Congrats!
1:14:33 "The thought was that they thought it would be cool if players could collect cards in the game world"
And then FFXIV did that and everyone loved it.
I could listen to you go through burning crusade and Wrath lore like this for days. Maybe Cataclysm.
Good to see some love for Desolace. It's still my favourite zone of vanilla. I still remember getting there for the first time as Alliance and feeling like I really shouldn't be there. Like I was entering a place where something terrible had happened. I always loved the fact that it was so understated, unlike Felwood that felt almost like a cartoonish Halloween zone. Like a zone that had been inhabited before, but then something happened and everything died.
Basically a Chernobile feel before Stalker games.
I liked Desolace cause it was a Fallout 3 aesthetic to it before Fallout 3 even came out.
I came for the nostalgia and stayed for the storytelling. What an amazing watch, this series! Thank you!
if WoW content had actual Analysis like this I'd watch more, a lot of youtubers just talk about what has happened and I'm like "yeah, thanks man, really eye opening to repeat what I saw happened in the game" instead of having something to actually say like this dude
i want you to know that i REALLY appreciate your videos. stellar work. i've been watching the wow videos while leveling on yet another fresh classic server. thank you for your content.
Just finished the video, and I have to say thanks for making it. I cannot imagine how much work went into it. I'm primarily a wotlk enjoyer, but vanilla will always hold a special place in my heart for how genuine it is. I think you did it justice.
While many call it niche and it doesn't have a high player count, I can't not play Warlock for all the reasons outlined. People want you for summons and healthstones, you can flex well between solo and group content based off summoned demons and dmg outputs, you have some of the best cheese options for fights with fears, void sacs, and insta demon summons if you're based and play Demonology. And I'm glad the class flavor from the texts was mentioned, i gained a lot of new appreciation for the original writing team for all the lil bits they included in Warlock quest text to just add to the fantasy.
Also, going Engineering for even more wacky untility and fly ass goggles is a must.
Edit: i also lament meta lock being locked to SoD. A caster, pet, dot dmg tank is one of the most unconventional class designs I've ever seen, but it worked, and it was really really damn fun (especially season 2 when demo meta could use Soul Link). I wish there was a way they could bring this mechanically into retail or somewhere where it could be experimented with further.
Also on the topic of SoD, season 1 and 2, especially 1 were much better imo in terms of the content people were doing and the meta not being a big deal. Season 3 introduced way too many grinds and loops that just aren't reflective of Classic, the coin farm, the nightmares, etc, really hurt the fun and the vibe and the first two seasons had going strong
Good shit, as always. I've never even touched WoW but this was very informative, thank you for the videos.
This has been an amazing video. And I hope you had fun making it. Really this one specifically is special, thank you
I like to watch these videos so that I can pretend to be a video game dev taking notes and learning from the criticisms. Makes me feel alive. Neat!
Great video as always good sir
"Primitive race like (list here)... and gnomes"
Sometimes your dry deliveries just hit the best
Was great to watch both segments while playing the fresh classic launch, well done.
Looking forward to the remaining 100 parts for each zone and feature added to WoW over the 20 year history.
Wow. I'm totally blown away by these documentaries. Well done.
Ganking lowbies was a much smaller issue before Classic Era realms where players ran out of things to do and resorted more and more to ganking lowbies.
This might be one of my favorite intros ever. Dude did not pull any punches
Just want to say that I would enjoy an expansion analysis whenever you get around to making them!
I'm so glad this is so quick and short. I love brevity.
Funnily enough, in terms of time, unless you catch the boat to feathermoon precisely on either side, its faster to swim.
Not gonna lie, hearing any amount of time frame in fantasy games makes me always ponder, if writers know what a year is. 10.000 years doing pretty much nothing, building cities and stuff in less than 10. Has anyone looked at a calendar once?
Gotta remember they're California devs, where it takes 10 years to not build rail. They're simply extrapolating from experience!
I put on a Patrician video and watch intently until I fall asleep. The next night I start at the last part I remember. Eventually, I manage to watch the entirety of these videos. It's like watching the daytime-TV cut and my sleep is the commercials.
OMG, thank you, I was experiencing withdrawals after Part 1... It's like a TV Show that you were engrossed into finally ending.
As a former player who even had his off-spec food bound to a key, I agree that I was severely disappointed by the lack of utility spells bound to variations of SHIFT, ALT and MOUSEWHEEL UP/DOWN.
Shame on you Pat. Cuck/10.
I just got a fever after going to bed and can't sleep. Your timing is impeccable! ❤
As someone who only played WoW casually over a decade ago, I will say I didn't understand a lot of the lore stuff but I still found it enjoyable to watch.
regarding Scarlet monastery, I think mono-loot dungeons is an interesting idea. In order to increase your chance of getting the loot you want, you can leverage your social connections to get the other type of character to help you. BRD, the greatest dungeon in wow's history, also functionally has elements of this, since players will do spesific runs for only a small selection of the dungeon's bosses, such as angerforge runs, prison runs, or arena runs.
I appreciate you censoring the stacks of silk cloth and the bolts of silk cloth. Truly the most sensual of all the textiles in WoW.
"If I cover [expac]..." please do. I could listen to entire series about WoW from you. It would be a great undertaking, but I'm sure many of us would dig it.
6:32:38 can confirm. We did guild donations to pay for Thunderfurys, Protection Pots, T3 mats, etc. that were kept in mind when doing LC, (with a cap on how much people could donate to prevent buying, 15g a month at most). The same people who constantly complained about how we were taking peoples money, were the same who never said thank you when they got 10x that value in free protection pots and other things. It was exactly like being the government.
Actually had the Speedy Racer Goggles on an old mage of mine and I used it for Transmog for much of that mages life through cataclysm/mists/etc. Being one of the few goggles out there not requiring engineering and they looked pretty snazzy.
Finally caught up on part 1 this morning and I don't have to wait! Woo!!
I have a lot of respect for you for doing these amazing videos. I have listen all of your works and its inspiring the effort. I wish I could find the time, energy and perseverance to do a 20hrs video about anime hehe
These videos make going to work a whole lot easier. Thanks buddy
Fun fact. Hammerfall got its name from the Swedish metal band of the same name. One of the artists at Blizzard was a fan and had created a few album covers for the band.
So much less ads, thanks patrician, you are a hero
Seeing the Altar of Storms in Burning Steppes was neat, but man I wish there was some ogre-magi there as well. Its what the altars were originally made for, upgrading Ogres to Ogre-Magi in WC2
Bro I’m gonna watch this whole thing I promise I promise
This came out quick! You’re a man of your word. Thank you, time to dig in.
Enjoying listening to this whilst levelling the new classic realms!
Thanks for a release before some long holiday shifts.
The first time I played WoW was on my brother's account at the tail end of TBC when I was 7 years old. Memories of running around in this game stuck with me pretty well considering when it happened. My main ended up being a draenei hunter that stopped at lv 36 with my favorite pet being a windserpent I got from a trip to the barrens. Don't ask why I went. I only remember that is where I was. I was mystified by the game, and I was sad when my brother stopped playing and my family gave up their internet connection. I would later have access to Internet while I was in high school, playing some f2p games like LoL, but one day I saw the trailer for Warlords of Draenor and acted on pursuing some old memories. Turns out times did change, and for a lot of players it was significantly for the worse, but for someone who was basically new, I never felt the lack of content too sorely. I explored the older zones and watched videos on high end content and lore (Thank you Nobbel and Preach) and I ended up getting pulled in more as time continued.
I started Alliance, but I ended up liking the horde more for their characters. Plus their building interiors always felt a little more cozy and warm to me, probably due to an abundance furs and open fires. I tried basically every class before finally landing on my favorite character, my Pandaren Monk. From there I ended up running with a couple of guilds before finding my home, and we raided together casually through the last patch of WoD and Legion. I left the game at Legion's end for school and tried a return to Shadowland's start, but I wasn't feeling it after the first raid dropped, mainly because my old guild died in BFA and I wasn't having fun in PUGs since everyone seemed like too much of a try-hard now. I ended up trying out ffxiv looking for a new adventure as I found a little enjoyment out of a try I gave it another time, and ironically Asmongold ended up doing the same the following week, and I saw WoW basically shatter behind me as I left. Even then, I don't regret my time in WoW. I remember it fondly even now, and I might even make a dip back in when it suits me.
I wondered for a bit about why what you said in your first video was true, how nobody really makes videos like this for WoW, but now I feel a bit clearer after thinking on it. Stories in games have always been a background that exists to support the player's experience, but WoW's nature seems to produce more stories from the players themselves than from the lore or the world. I'm sure plenty of people who experienced the content that was interested in its story can vaguely remember the highlights. Sure a story beat about a gang of adventures walking in to bring the fallen prince Arthas to justice can be important, but I think the memory of the Dave, the feral druid getting mobbed by skeletons because he drew the aggro of his cat IRL is going to weigh on people's minds about as heavily. I remember how I soloed the last 10% of a heroic boss when my guild had some alt runs of Hellfire Citadel and I filled in for offtank. I remember our Australian druid who woke up to raid with us before he went in to work because his timezone was across the globe. I remember when, in Silvermoon, an undead female rogue came out of stealth and offered me a guild invite to an 18+ guild, which I turned down, explaining to her that I was 8. I never felt the draw of classic other than curiosity because to me WoW is and always was a game that grows and changes. I think people remember the time they spend with it more than remembering IT specifically.
Again, thanks for making this. It gave me a lot of food for thought, and I'll probably have it thrown on in the background until your New Vegas video.
I dont know if it was intentional or not, but Patrician saying that donaters' names are going by now and then having a full minute of nothing but footage on screen was the most impactful moment of the video. I felt that
God bless you for uploading this the week before I have to drive ten hours for Christmas.
God how I wish the Warlock would have been a melee caster class, I always wanted to throw shadow magic and dots while swinging a two handed sword with leather armor or something lol
part two, nice. Really liked your first one and Im looking forward to this one.