Ill never forget putting WoW into my CD drive for the first time and watching the installing process. Felt like it took forever. Ot was the most exciting boring moment of my life. I played for 8+ and went to sleep. Woke up and did it again. God I was blown away seeing people out in the open world. Someone flew over me on a griffen and I just was in love.
Same feeling man same feeling. My Dad got me WotLK for Xmas and I was hooked. WoW helped get me through some of the toughest times of my life, and also lost a lot of time to it.....I have not played since Legion, but if/when I get a PC again, I will be back on WoW.
When it says 'Unpacking Intro_1024.mpq', you already know it's an oldie 😀 (it means obviously the old 'high' 4:3 ratio resolution which is 1024x768). I still remember all this numbers exactly...
To both the individuals above me who don’t even question why this is strange: there are a lot of older people out there who remember a relatively recent time when this was the only way to play a game. Believe or not, digital distribution hasn’t always been around.
@@2BachShakur Iam 48 mate i queued up numerous times outside a shop for a game on release day iam old enough to remember cardboard pc boxes but get with the times i only own collectors editions for the nostalgia
Unfortunately there is nothing of the kind in the Battle Chest version of the game manual. Even the Bradygames guide has been updated (the Tauren race pages have no mention of plainsrunning, which is what I'm specifically looking for here as an indicator of age). Even the Silithus pages contain (relatively, of course) up to date information on what is going on in the zone. At launch, that zone was just a fancy placeholder, so there's clearly been some work put into that version of the game guide (the info in the back says it was published in 2007). As luck would have it, I also have access to the Collector's Edition of the original release, which comes with a much thicker game manual. On page 108 of this, there is indeed mention of plainsrunning! Score! And the art book... I *really* did not appreciate the cool stuff it had in it at launch. I browsed through it without knowing what the future held, but now that it's so many years later and I know what unfolded... wow!
Yup. Remember not so fondly having to reinstall WOW on a new computer and it was insert disc 1, insert disc 2.... wait, where's disc 3? I have discs 1, 2, 4, and 5. Where is 3?! It was always the middle disc that got lost lol
I'm surprised you're still playing despite it's ups and downs, I was out after Mists of Pandaria then came back for Legion and then quit after that. I've moved onto FFXIV now.
God damn this gave me a rush of nostalgia for something i didnt experience, I never played WoW but I do remember nights like this, finally getting my hands on a game i wanted. Putting that disk in and reading over everything that came with the case over and over again.
Reminds me of the time I first got Freelancer. Popped in the disk, and could barely contain my excitement, watching that install bar slowing nearing completion... Then bam! Being able to see the for the first time that cutscene where Freeport 7 got attacked by nomads. Ahh memories. And then there was Neverwinter Nights, and Diablo 2, and Ever Quest, and so on. So many old classics that are now just a point and click away on Steam or other platforms.
for real, back then you often had this ''pre-play'' experience where you were just exploring the stuff that was coming with the game before playing it. It was almost like tasting a fine wine for the first time.
I'm 34 and back when I was 16 this was how you played. It took me all night to install/patch the game and by the time it was done I had school in a couple hours but I played anyways and made an Undead Warrior and got it to like level 6 and was so tired the next day I fell asleep in science class.
I remember when my dad got me the CD back in 2009, installing it and watching the process while I download like 15GB or something with my brother on a 100KB/S internet and it took us an entire 2 days or something for it to complete, time flies!
I remember something similar as well 😅 our internet wasn't as slow but I still remember it taking a full day and night to install... Now adays that size is chump change LMAO
I had no shot of ever convincing my parents of paying monthly, so I had my beginnings in TBC on private server, was called Neverendless I believe. We were playing in an internet caffe and from like 15 PC's only 5 had WoW installed, and I remember we would wait in queue for our turn to play, while the ones sitting were raiding Black Temple. I was around 12 years old at the time and all I remember is running around Ghostlands doing quests and not wanting to do anything else in life but play WoW. Never gonna recapture that feeling again in gaming, closest I got to it was playing Elden Ring, the sense of mystery and exploration is amazing.
@@godkingemperor9782 Are we just talking PC? Because I have a physical copy of the collector's edition of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom arriving to my door in a few days.
All original versions up till Wrath of the Lich King don't run because of two reasons: 1) In 2008 WoW's servers were integrated into Battlenet, which means the original loader although it still connects to the server and gets downloaded is stuck at where it was last before the integration which was mid way through Burning Crusade. After the integration WoW no longer used its loader and instead used the Battlenet app, which at that time only had WoW and Starcraft on it in separate tabs. Originally The Original Discs + BC did work if you installed them and it just prompted you to swap over to Battlenet instead, but that has since been long removed, so the client simply gets stuck at the swap over point request because the server won't respond after updating the loader to the last version of the pre-battlenet version. 2) When Cataclysm released, the entire game engine was swapped out for a new one, which essentially means the base executable doesn't work anymore either nor does it update when installed, so it is forever stuck at the log in screen of the last pre-Cata version you have, either BC or WotLK. Current version of Retail WoW begun with Cata, which is why if you want to experience old WoW you had no choice but to use private servers until Blizzard introduced WoW Classic... which is just the new game engine running the old game assets because Blizzard are in the habit of deleting all their old stuff... despite leaving old stuff still up on their servers like the pre-battlenet loader. Unfortunately all these old discs are, outside of using them for a private server, are basically pretty paperweights and collectors items. Consigned to history like all DVDs now are.
Battle net app wasn’t available for beta until late cataclysm and wasn’t mandatory until mists of pandaria. Definitely wasn’t mandatory in burning crusade or wrath.
The game installs from disc with no internet connection, it’s not connecting to a server for it. Blizzard continues to upgrade the game engine, but it is indeed the same engine blizzard released in 2004, just with a lot of improvements.
When it says 'Unpacking Intro_1024.mpq', you already know it's an oldie 😀 (it means obviously the old 'high' 4:3 ratio resolution which is 1024x768). I still remember all this numbers exactly...
there was no battle net back at the time, we had an account name and a password... they later create the battle net platform and made us all migrate our accounts there. When I saw the launcher I was shocked, I forgot it had that, so much nostalgia
I totally forgot all of that, battletag came in around wotlk - so much nostalgia unboxing all of that, I Rememeber it taking days to download both wow + burning crusade
Still have my original vanilla WoW box and all the individual discs and the sleeves they came in that had the different artwork on them, some night elves, some dwarves, etc. This is a huge nostalgia hit, I remember the installer screen, I remember the way the cd-keys were printed in those stickers on each disc sleeve, I uninstalled/reinstalled the game a lot, I remember the process pretty vividly lol.
The battlechest actually came out during wotlk I believe, it was a cheaper way to include both vanilla and TBC. Then all you had to buy was the wotlk expac, thats why the wrath booklet is in there.
I have a battle chest that’s before wotlk, has only the first two games and a book covering everything about the 2 games. Also I have a free trial key promo card haha
No, after wotlk was announced in 2007, I bought my friend battle chest before the Summer in 2008 with both Vanilla and TBC included as one they came out before Christmas in 2007 with a 25% discount of what both boxes seperatly would cost, sure it still cost around 80euro since the Game + Expansion cost 50euro seperatly in my country at that time, this was durning Season 3 and Sunwell raid
I Installed it over night. Timer ond the installer told me how many hours it takes. Set an alarm for 3am to wake up and check if I can change the Disc. If I remember correctly it took me like 24hours to install...it was a wild ride.
Vanilla WoW came on 5 CD's.. not even DVDs and took hours and hours just to install. Then you had get the game up to patch which could take days. Patch Tuesdays servers were down and everyone spent the day downloading at like 5KB/s. Crazy times.
3:03 Man, I remember staring at this installation screen while on the phone with my childhood friend- hyping each other up the whole time while flipping through the manuals.
If you go to the folder where you installed the game and change the Realmlist to an adres from some private server of your own server if you can run it dedicated then you can use this client to play. It's the exact same client as if you would go play on a private server like Stormforge and you download the client up there or you change your realmlist to there adres you will connect to there server with the account name and password you made on there website ofcourse.
I got this boxset when I was a kid. Only it didn't have the cd in it because it was the display one they put on the shelf and are meant to fill when you checkout. Got home, excited to see what the fuss was about, bam no cds. Thought maybe it was a code to enter. Nope just a cosmetic code for something on one of the pamphlets. Call the store and was told in no uncertain terms that it had been filled with the appropriate cds as they weren't in the inventory and made to feel like I was some sort of scammer trying to steal 2 sets. Left such a bad taste in my mouth, I not only never went to Kmart again, but never ended up playing wow. Gave 10 years of my life to Runescape instead. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like in the timeline the cds were actually there.
Just seeing this box again takes me back to the past. How I loved this game. I have never found this feeling on a game since. Probably because it was the first open world game I played.
Oh man I remember this. Installing this game on parents old pc with the tube monitor. It brings me back to golden days. Thanks for posting this man. I needed this and I didn’t even known it. Got to revisit a Core memory.
Oh man. I remember this all too well. The installing took almost one hour and the downloading of the updates/patches took almost 24 hours at 365 kb/s. Back then the only thing we had was copper for the internet connection and I live in a pretty remote location in Germany. The nostalgia hit me so deep, I took out my old vanilla box and read through the manual as I was watching this video. Thanks for the flashbacks.
I was 14 and did my first pre-order ever for the vanilla Collectors Edition of WoW from Babbage's. I kept it for years, even after I stopped playing. The box was gorgeous, and everything included was awesome. Plus the OG in game pets (Mini Diablo, Panda Cub, & Zergling). WC3 & Diablo 2 were my life in middle school and freshman year, then it was just WoW non stop, all on 56k dial up internet. This was awesome to see.
I found the old disc from when my parents first bought it, and I also found their everquest box. I wanted to see how it used to looked downloading again. I remember it taking ages.
Yes, it took forever back in the day. Plus PC's were painfully slow. I remember that it took almost a day and a half to just get some of the patches, then another day for updates.... like I said - it was painfully slow. lol
this was a throwback :D i remember me and my buddies used to buy like 5 of these battle chests for some reason.. kid logic i suppose :D thanks for the time capsule.. i remember the launcher and everything
I still have my instal disc at my parents house, sadly it had only 2 weeks of game time on it and my parents didnt understood that it has monthly subscriptiom and didnt wanted to pay for it, so i had to play on privates servers but i still remember playing on retail vanila for those 2 weeks, it was the best time of my life ❤ played on many privates and came back in bfa once i ve had my own job and could pay for my sub :D
i feel your pain i was given the disc box in 05 on my birthday and when we went home our computer couldn't handle wow at the time so never got to play it until 2019 but wow community seemed stand offish when i started and asked people questions or if yhey would like to go to dungeons i found while leveling so i decided to give up and play something else bumner i missed out on the golden age of wow i just played runescape like before i started wow because of the low pc requirements & still do.
You can play retail for free up to level 20, which doesn't sound like much, but since most of everything scales automatically nowadays you can enjoy questing, just no flying mounts or mailboxes.
Thing is, vanilla was already refered officially as "classic" as soon as TBC came out back then. And I think it was a very... classy way of calling it instead of just going "vanilla", which was overused and dumb, but guess now a distinction is necessary.
I still have my old discs, started late vanilla and up till maybe a month or two after wotlk. God I miss those days, everything was new and exciting and you could explore an entire new world with millions of others who has just as little of a clue of what they were doing as you had.
I also still have the original CDs of Vanilla, BC and WotLk in their first version. Incidentally, Vanilla needed 5 CDs for the installation back then. Now they're just decoration for the living room. My boss worked for Blizzard in France at the time and is mentioned by name in the manual of WotLk.
oooh, I had the very same box and after hitting level 55 I wanted to instantly play a death knight, so I asked my friend to bring the WotLK expansion from the store with him and I gave him the money afterwards. The launcher is pure nostalgia. After installing wotlk it was this typical blue/grey/yellow based look. And then the bad news: Download newest patch. My download speed was 0.3 mb per second and it took several hours until I could start playing my dk. I remember myself being 12 years old and fucking the air because I was so hyped after reaching level 55 lmao
I forgot how nostalgic a spinning disk sounds when loading up an old game on PC!.. I wouldn't want to go back, but it really holds something special having a tangible object that you own.
You were correct when you said you didn't play the OG WOW lol. Battlenet wasn't required back in the OG WOW days. Your email or the account name you chose when you got the game and signed up was what you needed to log in lol.
I remember me and my brother buying one in maybe 2011 or 2012 before MoP came out at a game shop in Finland. Was so excited when walking back home. Those were the days.
@@god6384good for you. I was a four-year-old child back when Wow was released, so didn’t really play computer games, much less those in English. I still think it as a game from my childhood, eventhough it had existed for many years before I started playing it, and have many fond memories of exploring new zones with my Orc warrior
Dude that "Play" button, the font and all is crazy. My first intro into WoW was early 2008 and I bought a battle chest along with a copy of WoTLK. I was so excited to play, was on a miniature holiday with my family - the night I bought WoW I woke up in the middle of the night and took the family laptop into the corner of the hotel, put the disc in and was greeted with a 2 day long download. Defeated I wished the trip away so we could finally get home and I could download the game on the family PC. All of the research I did prior to playing and finally logging in for the first time was unmatched. Such a great universe, makes me want to play Classic again. Hope to see Classic+ so I can enjoy new content in the old world.
11:24 It looks like the new "classic crusade" the heads are stretched more vertically, but it could be the resolution is just weird with your disc installed version because it automatically changed the resolution.
To answer your question, back then you made a WoW account that was it's own separate thing. B-net was for online matches for their other games like Starcraft and Warcraft. Around Wrath they turned b-net in to a broader "Blizzard games manager" (for lack of a better term) and you had the option to keep a separate WoW account or merge with b-net. Most merged since there was a lot of benefits to being connected to b-net like chatting with people regardless of server/faction and I am pretty sure they gave you a pet and some other stuff. Eventually the merge became mandatory. If you had an account from before, the account page will still display it with that name actually instead of WoW1, WoW2, etc.
We all just wanna enjoy the old days man. if i had a time machine id become the biggest / best streamer possible and enjoy all these classics / nostalgia .
Account names stopped being a thing around I believe 2011 when cata took over. Only those who played before the change still have account names. Now it is simply your email.
There was something magical about the entire experience, from looking at the art on the box as a kid, to not understanding how to install it as I could barely understand English. I had the copy of the base game laying around in my room for months, until I managed to figure it out. I will never forget the moment I first logged in and sealed my fate as a gamer
This is a lot of nostalgia for me Early 20's and WoW was one of the first video games I had played Started in TBC as a Gnome Rogue Played WoTLK as a Draenei Death Knight All the memories, stopped after a while and came back for a bit and was an off and on until WoD basically MoP was the last I played entirely to say the least
You started in TBC? Damn. Vanilla WoW was the best WoW ever made, and it was really special playing it brand new with everyone else, with no one knowing what to expect, or what lies ahead.
@@AmyLovesYou It was pretty great back then Also strange you replied today, I've recently been thinking of a song that was used in an old WoW montage and I went the distance and watched and listened to a lot of WoW montages until I found the same So for you to reply today about WoW is quite spectacular! Early WoW and even each new expansion was a treat for everyone to explore in an mmorpg filled world, it was all exciting and still is thinking of it
Wow, this is so cool to see. I got World of Warcraft as a Christmas gift all the way back in December 2006. I think the install was using 4 or 5 CDs haha My dad told me that the store cashier warned him that the game was very addictive. Spoken from personal experience :P
I'm installing the whole process right now... starting from vanilla to Pandaria then seeing how much I have to do afterwards... we'll keep you updated.
Yes. It's subscription based and you connect to servers. If you really don't want to pay I would recommend private servers. Less legal (you won't get into jail for it) but free, and mostly run by a dedicated team who cares.
Wow this video gives me so many memories!! It took 24 freaking hours of installing back in the day for my computer. I remember that install screen well. Thank you sir!
The reason it didn’t install battle net launcher is because there wasn’t one originally. WoW used to launch natively during vanilla, up until like early WoTLK, around the time achievements were put in.
Account name was just something you made up. If you wanted any hope of logging in, you probably would have to try your current login, which is now your email. When they switched to email, your old account name was no longer used. I can't remember if that became your battle tag or not. Also, obviously there are no servers running that old software, so, if they have anything at all running, it would most likely just direct you to the website to download the current game. As far as expansion packs, you had no choice, you were running the latest client and game. However, for example, if the current pack was BC and you just installed vanilla, you were playing BC on BC servers, but you did not have access to BC content. You could not go to outland, level past 60, or go to the Drenai Area, but you were playing side by side with BC players in the same vanilla content that they had, which would have been nerfed from the vanilla days to speed up leveling.
I still remember running to Best Buy with my buddy to go buy Wrath of the Lich King the day it released. While grabbing it I ran into a complete stranger who asked me what server I played on, I told him "Moonrunner!" and he told me his. My buddy looked at me like I was the biggest dork in the world. Good times
I got TBC for Christmas back in the day and then had to leave for a 3 week family vacation in the Canadian wilderness the next day. I took both of those strategy guides with me and read them cover to cover multiple times while I fumed about not being home and playing.
IIRC, the cd keys were just for creating an account, to make sure you had actually purchased the game. Anyone could install it, but you needed a key to make an account so you could actually play.
I still remember copying the desktop shortcut of wow onto a usb off of the computer of my cousin thinking I could just pull it over our family computer and play wow
i don't know what other country done, but in my country, they released WoW in 5 CDs, not 2 DVDs, had to slowly and continuously changing the discs during installation, took days for first update, and that was the most enormous game I've ever had
consider subbing if you enjoyed! gonna make a part 2 trying to get onto a private server!
I nou part two is up already and this video could be old but still I wonder what would happen if you clicked on upgrade mine account button🤨🤔😁
@@milosnovakovic1724combat level 77
❤
@gankfrombush my $1500 rig does not have one. Nor even a space to add one. Lol
@@milosnovakovic1724î
Ill never forget putting WoW into my CD drive for the first time and watching the installing process. Felt like it took forever. Ot was the most exciting boring moment of my life. I played for 8+ and went to sleep. Woke up and did it again. God I was blown away seeing people out in the open world. Someone flew over me on a griffen and I just was in love.
Same feeling man same feeling. My Dad got me WotLK for Xmas and I was hooked. WoW helped get me through some of the toughest times of my life, and also lost a lot of time to it.....I have not played since Legion, but if/when I get a PC again, I will be back on WoW.
When it says 'Unpacking Intro_1024.mpq', you already know it's an oldie 😀 (it means obviously the old 'high' 4:3 ratio resolution which is 1024x768). I still remember all this numbers exactly...
@@wherethetreegrows 640x480 anyone
Absolute Magic.
Happy child
Kinda crazy that we’ve come to a point where owning a physical copy of a game (at least for PC) is regarded as archaic and obsolete.
Because it is?
It is lol. Disc's ate just a license to use a digital copy nowadays anyway
To both the individuals above me who don’t even question why this is strange: there are a lot of older people out there who remember a relatively recent time when this was the only way to play a game. Believe or not, digital distribution hasn’t always been around.
@@2BachShakur Iam 48 mate i queued up numerous times outside a shop for a game on release day iam old enough to remember cardboard pc boxes but get with the times i only own collectors editions for the nostalgia
yeah me too, i used to have quite few cd's to play on pc. Im glad for the digital version
Read the manual, its a hoot how much stuff from the alpha/beta made it into the manual that never actually saw live play, like Tauren's plainsrunning.
Unfortunately there is nothing of the kind in the Battle Chest version of the game manual. Even the Bradygames guide has been updated (the Tauren race pages have no mention of plainsrunning, which is what I'm specifically looking for here as an indicator of age). Even the Silithus pages contain (relatively, of course) up to date information on what is going on in the zone. At launch, that zone was just a fancy placeholder, so there's clearly been some work put into that version of the game guide (the info in the back says it was published in 2007).
As luck would have it, I also have access to the Collector's Edition of the original release, which comes with a much thicker game manual. On page 108 of this, there is indeed mention of plainsrunning! Score! And the art book... I *really* did not appreciate the cool stuff it had in it at launch. I browsed through it without knowing what the future held, but now that it's so many years later and I know what unfolded... wow!
turtle wow pserver has plainsrunning go check it out
@@enricotodaro6240 best version of wow there is
@@rasmuserlandsson2204 true
Turtle WoW players under every WoW video desperately trying to convince you to install their snoozefest mod
I remember when I got WoW for my birthday, it was a 5 disc install. I still have them. They are proudly displayed with my other WoW collectibles.
I had to get my dad to pay my IT working cousin to install it for me cause I didn’t know how and neither did he lol
Yup. Remember not so fondly having to reinstall WOW on a new computer and it was insert disc 1, insert disc 2.... wait, where's disc 3? I have discs 1, 2, 4, and 5. Where is 3?! It was always the middle disc that got lost lol
how can i not remember, it was so freaking long, took 4-5 days to install from cd
I still have the original release discs of ultima online, star wars galaxis and WoW
In my opinion it was the best time/era of mmos
And the installation took like an hour (that is if you didn't get any erorrs), these days I can download Classic in like 5 minutes.
Been playing the game for close to 19 years now, and man did this take me back!!! Those were the days! Thanks for sharing! :)
Aww someone doesnt wanna grow up.
For the Horde !
@@paugasolina5048I've met people as old as 82 that play this game. You really must be a joy to be around in real life.
I'm surprised you're still playing despite it's ups and downs, I was out after Mists of Pandaria then came back for Legion and then quit after that. I've moved onto FFXIV now.
@paugasolina5048 The gas gurgler doesn't know that video games aren't associated with the aging process of someone. Shocking.
God damn this gave me a rush of nostalgia for something i didnt experience, I never played WoW but I do remember nights like this, finally getting my hands on a game i wanted. Putting that disk in and reading over everything that came with the case over and over again.
Reminds me of the time I first got Freelancer. Popped in the disk, and could barely contain my excitement, watching that install bar slowing nearing completion... Then bam! Being able to see the for the first time that cutscene where Freeport 7 got attacked by nomads. Ahh memories.
And then there was Neverwinter Nights, and Diablo 2, and Ever Quest, and so on. So many old classics that are now just a point and click away on Steam or other platforms.
for real, back then you often had this ''pre-play'' experience where you were just exploring the stuff that was coming with the game before playing it. It was almost like tasting a fine wine for the first time.
And that was all the knowledge you had to play the game
The good ol days 🤭
I'm 34 and back when I was 16 this was how you played. It took me all night to install/patch the game and by the time it was done I had school in a couple hours but I played anyways and made an Undead Warrior and got it to like level 6 and was so tired the next day I fell asleep in science class.
Seeing the old loading screen, the download screen with the ally vs. horde….gave me BIG chills. THIS is nostalgia.
Damn 500 likes… ❤️
yeah it's crazy i miss those days back when WoW was actually good
@@JohanLiebert1 WoW is good now in its own way lol
Wow was never good.
@@thecrimsonfuckeralucardlor5087 leave.
@@thecrimsonfuckeralucardlor5087 you better say nothing, oxy
I remember when my dad got me the CD back in 2009, installing it and watching the process while I download like 15GB or something with my brother on a 100KB/S internet and it took us an entire 2 days or something for it to complete, time flies!
I remember something similar as well 😅 our internet wasn't as slow but I still remember it taking a full day and night to install... Now adays that size is chump change LMAO
@@kllause6681 And now we’re not even impressed with a 140MB/S 🤣
After my first install, the launcher auto downloaded a patch, I kid you not, took a whole week to complete...I was on dial up internet lmao
oh man i remember begging my mom to buy me this at walmart and she actually did. now convincing her to pay $15 a month was a different story lol
I had no shot of ever convincing my parents of paying monthly, so I had my beginnings in TBC on private server, was called Neverendless I believe. We were playing in an internet caffe and from like 15 PC's only 5 had WoW installed, and I remember we would wait in queue for our turn to play, while the ones sitting were raiding Black Temple. I was around 12 years old at the time and all I remember is running around Ghostlands doing quests and not wanting to do anything else in life but play WoW. Never gonna recapture that feeling again in gaming, closest I got to it was playing Elden Ring, the sense of mystery and exploration is amazing.
Flying to Stormwind from Westfall through Elwynn Forest for the first time was something special.
Old stuff was soo cool and creative with design, I miss it. All games where cool back then.
yeah know it sucks because everything is digital which means you don't own anything.
@@godkingemperor9782 Are we just talking PC? Because I have a physical copy of the collector's edition of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom arriving to my door in a few days.
@@godkingemperor9782 With GOG you own all it's like steam but you own the game
@@neortik7 yeah but what if they ever decide to close down shop? you would lose access to those games.
@@godkingemperor9782 normally it's yes even without log in on an other computer you can keep the games
All original versions up till Wrath of the Lich King don't run because of two reasons:
1) In 2008 WoW's servers were integrated into Battlenet, which means the original loader although it still connects to the server and gets downloaded is stuck at where it was last before the integration which was mid way through Burning Crusade. After the integration WoW no longer used its loader and instead used the Battlenet app, which at that time only had WoW and Starcraft on it in separate tabs.
Originally The Original Discs + BC did work if you installed them and it just prompted you to swap over to Battlenet instead, but that has since been long removed, so the client simply gets stuck at the swap over point request because the server won't respond after updating the loader to the last version of the pre-battlenet version.
2) When Cataclysm released, the entire game engine was swapped out for a new one, which essentially means the base executable doesn't work anymore either nor does it update when installed, so it is forever stuck at the log in screen of the last pre-Cata version you have, either BC or WotLK. Current version of Retail WoW begun with Cata, which is why if you want to experience old WoW you had no choice but to use private servers until Blizzard introduced WoW Classic... which is just the new game engine running the old game assets because Blizzard are in the habit of deleting all their old stuff... despite leaving old stuff still up on their servers like the pre-battlenet loader.
Unfortunately all these old discs are, outside of using them for a private server, are basically pretty paperweights and collectors items. Consigned to history like all DVDs now are.
well typed :)
Battle net app wasn’t available for beta until late cataclysm and wasn’t mandatory until mists of pandaria. Definitely wasn’t mandatory in burning crusade or wrath.
The game installs from disc with no internet connection, it’s not connecting to a server for it. Blizzard continues to upgrade the game engine, but it is indeed the same engine blizzard released in 2004, just with a lot of improvements.
and the Warcraft 3 tab!
When it says 'Unpacking Intro_1024.mpq', you already know it's an oldie 😀 (it means obviously the old 'high' 4:3 ratio resolution which is 1024x768). I still remember all this numbers exactly...
It's like owning the keys to doors that don't exist anymore.
but they do exist. the doors are private servers. You can even host your own Mangos server with bots and play WoW offline.
there was no battle net back at the time, we had an account name and a password... they later create the battle net platform and made us all migrate our accounts there. When I saw the launcher I was shocked, I forgot it had that, so much nostalgia
There was a battlenet back then, but it was used for Starcraft, Warcraft 2&3 and Diablo 2
I totally forgot all of that, battletag came in around wotlk - so much nostalgia unboxing all of that, I Rememeber it taking days to download both wow + burning crusade
Yeah but soon came a special WoW downloader file.
Battle net existed since like 1996
There was no battlenet intergration for wow until mid 2009
Still have my original vanilla WoW box and all the individual discs and the sleeves they came in that had the different artwork on them, some night elves, some dwarves, etc. This is a huge nostalgia hit, I remember the installer screen, I remember the way the cd-keys were printed in those stickers on each disc sleeve, I uninstalled/reinstalled the game a lot, I remember the process pretty vividly lol.
The battlechest actually came out during wotlk I believe, it was a cheaper way to include both vanilla and TBC. Then all you had to buy was the wotlk expac, thats why the wrath booklet is in there.
i bought mine for like 20$ back in the day.
I have a battle chest that’s before wotlk, has only the first two games and a book covering everything about the 2 games. Also I have a free trial key promo card haha
@@compton_187 can confirm. Got it before WOLTK
yeah ur wrong about the release date mans most ppl just purchased it for that
No, after wotlk was announced in 2007, I bought my friend battle chest before the Summer in 2008 with both Vanilla and TBC included as one they came out before Christmas in 2007 with a 25% discount of what both boxes seperatly would cost, sure it still cost around 80euro since the Game + Expansion cost 50euro seperatly in my country at that time, this was durning Season 3 and Sunwell raid
I remember begging my mom for the battle chest when I was a kid and all my friends at school were playing gosh the nostalgia
Bro imagine waking up from like 15 year coma and first thought is ”I’m gonna go play some WOW Tbc” lol
And then you open your web browser to see what's going on and the first thing that pops up is Tiktok 💀
@@Mr.RealityReady for coma pt. 2
I miss the old blizzard :(
We all, brother, we all
4:00 I totally forgot about that login window!
I remember having to wait all day as my computer installed each disc. Simpler times, great days.
I Installed it over night. Timer ond the installer told me how many hours it takes. Set an alarm for 3am to wake up and check if I can change the Disc. If I remember correctly it took me like 24hours to install...it was a wild ride.
@@DivisionG1eNHay same
Vanilla WoW came on 5 CD's.. not even DVDs and took hours and hours just to install. Then you had get the game up to patch which could take days. Patch Tuesdays servers were down and everyone spent the day downloading at like 5KB/s. Crazy times.
Waiting all day to install a game was simpler?? People miss the good old memories, not the actual things.
3:03 Man, I remember staring at this installation screen while on the phone with my childhood friend- hyping each other up the whole time while flipping through the manuals.
If you go to the folder where you installed the game and change the Realmlist to an adres from some private server of your own server if you can run it dedicated then you can use this client to play.
It's the exact same client as if you would go play on a private server like Stormforge and you download the client up there or you change your realmlist to there adres you will connect to there server with the account name and password you made on there website ofcourse.
I got this boxset when I was a kid. Only it didn't have the cd in it because it was the display one they put on the shelf and are meant to fill when you checkout. Got home, excited to see what the fuss was about, bam no cds. Thought maybe it was a code to enter. Nope just a cosmetic code for something on one of the pamphlets. Call the store and was told in no uncertain terms that it had been filled with the appropriate cds as they weren't in the inventory and made to feel like I was some sort of scammer trying to steal 2 sets. Left such a bad taste in my mouth, I not only never went to Kmart again, but never ended up playing wow. Gave 10 years of my life to Runescape instead. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like in the timeline the cds were actually there.
Just seeing this box again takes me back to the past. How I loved this game. I have never found this feeling on a game since. Probably because it was the first open world game I played.
I remember it vividly installing wow for the first time on my garbo pc and not even knowing if it will work.
Oh man I remember this. Installing this game on parents old pc with the tube monitor. It brings me back to golden days. Thanks for posting this man. I needed this and I didn’t even known it. Got to revisit a Core memory.
he also record with camera the dispaly for the oldschool feeling 10/10
3:28
I wonder how many people were tricked here into thinking hunters have such a big blasting hand cannon
Oh man. I remember this all too well. The installing took almost one hour and the downloading of the updates/patches took almost 24 hours at 365 kb/s. Back then the only thing we had was copper for the internet connection and I live in a pretty remote location in Germany. The nostalgia hit me so deep, I took out my old vanilla box and read through the manual as I was watching this video. Thanks for the flashbacks.
I miss having actual physical copies of games. :(
"You will own nothing and be happy."
"one of those cd... Disc drive things" What the fuck
The installer itself should be playing a song that's nowhere else to be heard. And it's a damn good one as well.
The shaping of the world ua-cam.com/video/NhrxGCMzRL0/v-deo.html
The Shaping of the World ;)
aka Asmongold's outro
lol you can listen to it online
I was 14 and did my first pre-order ever for the vanilla Collectors Edition of WoW from Babbage's. I kept it for years, even after I stopped playing. The box was gorgeous, and everything included was awesome. Plus the OG in game pets (Mini Diablo, Panda Cub, & Zergling). WC3 & Diablo 2 were my life in middle school and freshman year, then it was just WoW non stop, all on 56k dial up internet. This was awesome to see.
I found the old disc from when my parents first bought it, and I also found their everquest box. I wanted to see how it used to looked downloading again. I remember it taking ages.
Yes, it took forever back in the day. Plus PC's were painfully slow. I remember that it took almost a day and a half to just get some of the patches, then another day for updates.... like I said - it was painfully slow. lol
Everquest? Its like you haven't payed attention to Jimmy's Story at all:)
I remember It took me 4 days to download on my dads crappy windows xp way back when
God... EverQuest took me back when my parents installed it onto my computer along with the Dark Age of Camelot downloading screen LOL
@@issacehowardjr679 It took days to download vanilla Lineage II. Goodness gracious that was rough on 56k internet.
Still got my original discs on my shelf and the original strat guide
2.3.0, not the vanilla disk, it's the one bundled with the burning crusade (which is obvious in hindsight when he shows the box at the start)
*slams down the dvd reader*
"Why does it sound like that?"
Oh my, such nostalgic overload.
The nostalgia hits hard!
this was a throwback :D i remember me and my buddies used to buy like 5 of these battle chests for some reason.. kid logic i suppose :D thanks for the time capsule.. i remember the launcher and everything
Rich kids?
@@Chadgigington Jelly?
@@jedi-hamster5329 lool, I'm just wondering why you'd buy 5. I mean I probably bought more than that over the years for recruit a friend
Bro I haven’t seen that old log in screen in forever, wow thank you bro.
The CD keys allowed you to add the games to your battle net account they also included game time
It sounds like that because it's on an uneven surface and you are scratching your disc
I still have my instal disc at my parents house, sadly it had only 2 weeks of game time on it and my parents didnt understood that it has monthly subscriptiom and didnt wanted to pay for it, so i had to play on privates servers but i still remember playing on retail vanila for those 2 weeks, it was the best time of my life ❤ played on many privates and came back in bfa once i ve had my own job and could pay for my sub :D
i feel your pain i was given the disc box in 05 on my birthday and when we went home our computer couldn't handle wow at the time so never got to play it until 2019 but wow community seemed stand offish when i started and asked people questions or if yhey would like to go to dungeons i found while leveling so i decided to give up and play something else bumner i missed out on the golden age of wow i just played runescape like before i started wow because of the low pc requirements & still do.
You can play retail for free up to level 20, which doesn't sound like much, but since most of everything scales automatically nowadays you can enjoy questing, just no flying mounts or mailboxes.
The sacrilege of naming a HDD partition A: has every Floppydisc spinning in their grave
wow from 2004 should be called "vanilla wow" respectfully, and the rerelease of vanilla wow back in 2019 should be addressed as "classic wow"
It’s almost like that’s exactly what they are both referred as
Thing is, vanilla was already refered officially as "classic" as soon as TBC came out back then. And I think it was a very... classy way of calling it instead of just going "vanilla", which was overused and dumb, but guess now a distinction is necessary.
who the fuck cares lmao
"respectfully"
@@Masterwar15 no one did that
I felt OLD AF watching this video.
I still have my old discs, started late vanilla and up till maybe a month or two after wotlk. God I miss those days, everything was new and exciting and you could explore an entire new world with millions of others who has just as little of a clue of what they were doing as you had.
Companies don't seem to want to make these kinds of MMOs anymore. Blue Protocol seems promising though.
They will work with a wow emulation like WoW Classic Single Player Project look it up :D
@nomadzz6166 there should always be a way to play games you own, otherwise it is renting. Thanks for this.
I also still have the original CDs of Vanilla, BC and WotLk in their first version. Incidentally, Vanilla needed 5 CDs for the installation back then. Now they're just decoration for the living room. My boss worked for Blizzard in France at the time and is mentioned by name in the manual of WotLk.
oooh, I had the very same box and after hitting level 55 I wanted to instantly play a death knight, so I asked my friend to bring the WotLK expansion from the store with him and I gave him the money afterwards. The launcher is pure nostalgia. After installing wotlk it was this typical blue/grey/yellow based look. And then the bad news: Download newest patch. My download speed was 0.3 mb per second and it took several hours until I could start playing my dk. I remember myself being 12 years old and fucking the air because I was so hyped after reaching level 55 lmao
I forgot how nostalgic a spinning disk sounds when loading up an old game on PC!.. I wouldn't want to go back, but it really holds something special having a tangible object that you own.
Damn i havent seen that window for years. The one that was replaced by battle net. They used to put a lot of wow information on that page
You were correct when you said you didn't play the OG WOW lol. Battlenet wasn't required back in the OG WOW days. Your email or the account name you chose when you got the game and signed up was what you needed to log in lol.
Nice! Still works all these years later. All that time I spent on this with my team at Blizzard paid off!
You worked on WoW?
You worked on WoW?
You worked on WoW?
You worked on WoW?
You worked on WoW?
Still have my OG 4 cd instalation discs for vanilla at home before the time dvd took over the cd,.That Change disc note was like a kid event.
I remember me and my brother buying one in maybe 2011 or 2012 before MoP came out at a game shop in Finland. Was so excited when walking back home. Those were the days.
that's like yesterday... I was already playing in 2004-2005 lmao I didn't even play anymore by the time mop came around
@@god6384good for you. I was a four-year-old child back when Wow was released, so didn’t really play computer games, much less those in English. I still think it as a game from my childhood, eventhough it had existed for many years before I started playing it, and have many fond memories of exploring new zones with my Orc warrior
Dude that "Play" button, the font and all is crazy. My first intro into WoW was early 2008 and I bought a battle chest along with a copy of WoTLK.
I was so excited to play, was on a miniature holiday with my family - the night I bought WoW I woke up in the middle of the night and took the family laptop into the corner of the hotel, put the disc in and was greeted with a 2 day long download.
Defeated I wished the trip away so we could finally get home and I could download the game on the family PC.
All of the research I did prior to playing and finally logging in for the first time was unmatched. Such a great universe, makes me want to play Classic again. Hope to see Classic+ so I can enjoy new content in the old world.
11:24 It looks like the new "classic crusade" the heads are stretched more vertically, but it could be the resolution is just weird with your disc installed version because it automatically changed the resolution.
To answer your question, back then you made a WoW account that was it's own separate thing. B-net was for online matches for their other games like Starcraft and Warcraft. Around Wrath they turned b-net in to a broader "Blizzard games manager" (for lack of a better term) and you had the option to keep a separate WoW account or merge with b-net. Most merged since there was a lot of benefits to being connected to b-net like chatting with people regardless of server/faction and I am pretty sure they gave you a pet and some other stuff. Eventually the merge became mandatory. If you had an account from before, the account page will still display it with that name actually instead of WoW1, WoW2, etc.
the chair squeak really makes this quite nostalgic
We all just wanna enjoy the old days man. if i had a time machine id become the biggest / best streamer possible and enjoy all these classics / nostalgia .
So basically you'd be Asmongold?
You have the power to go back in time and you choose to become a streamer?
Wow, I really forgot about that launcher at 4:00
Account names stopped being a thing around I believe 2011 when cata took over. Only those who played before the change still have account names. Now it is simply your email.
Having my original Vanilla, BC, Wrath, and Cata boxes is def a special thing to still have. Even if I may not play as much as I use to
There was something magical about the entire experience, from looking at the art on the box as a kid, to not understanding how to install it as I could barely understand English. I had the copy of the base game laying around in my room for months, until I managed to figure it out. I will never forget the moment I first logged in and sealed my fate as a gamer
This is a lot of nostalgia for me
Early 20's and WoW was one of the first video games I had played
Started in TBC as a Gnome Rogue
Played WoTLK as a Draenei Death Knight
All the memories, stopped after a while and came back for a bit and was an off and on until WoD basically MoP was the last I played entirely to say the least
You started in TBC? Damn. Vanilla WoW was the best WoW ever made, and it was really special playing it brand new with everyone else, with no one knowing what to expect, or what lies ahead.
@@AmyLovesYou It was pretty great back then
Also strange you replied today, I've recently been thinking of a song that was used in an old WoW montage and I went the distance and watched and listened to a lot of WoW montages until I found the same
So for you to reply today about WoW is quite spectacular!
Early WoW and even each new expansion was a treat for everyone to explore in an mmorpg filled world, it was all exciting and still is thinking of it
The old school launcher window made me 12 years old for a second
Wow, this is so cool to see. I got World of Warcraft as a Christmas gift all the way back in December 2006. I think the install was using 4 or 5 CDs haha
My dad told me that the store cashier warned him that the game was very addictive. Spoken from personal experience :P
I remember waiting hours and hours for one disk to install, then having to change to the next. Such simpler times
Dvds?! So nice. I think I had 5 CDs and had to keep changing them.
Original game was on 4 CDs, TBC was on 1 DVD.
Takes me back
yea all you are doing is installing an old client.
ppl download them to play private servers btw.
I'm installing the whole process right now... starting from vanilla to Pandaria then seeing how much I have to do afterwards... we'll keep you updated.
huuuuuge throwback
His only favorite friend must have been so happy seeing himself in the friends list
I be been wanting to play wow but don’t want to pay monthly. Do you still have to pay to play the physical copy?
Yes. It's subscription based and you connect to servers. If you really don't want to pay I would recommend private servers. Less legal (you won't get into jail for it) but free, and mostly run by a dedicated team who cares.
You can play a character up to level 20 for free though!
Private servers. A lot of people do that
What kind of retarded question is that
Turtle WoW is what's big right now.
“I have one of them cd disk drives” like it’s some ancient technology 😂 great content bro
i know i went to the shop to buy the game and the salesman said: dont buy it, you cannot stop playing xD
Wow this video gives me so many memories!! It took 24 freaking hours of installing back in the day for my computer. I remember that install screen well. Thank you sir!
that halo2 thing felt so fake
I can confirm you didn't need to switch disks whilst walking through the dark portal
The reason it didn’t install battle net launcher is because there wasn’t one originally. WoW used to launch natively during vanilla, up until like early WoTLK, around the time achievements were put in.
You were not prepared.
Those aren't CD's they are DvD's. The original game came on CD and there were like 5 CD's not just 1 DvD.
CD to DVD meant 7.8x space. And that was a single-layer DVD, not the double-layer ones from later.
$1500 sounds about right with inflation adjustment
Account name was just something you made up. If you wanted any hope of logging in, you probably would have to try your current login, which is now your email. When they switched to email, your old account name was no longer used. I can't remember if that became your battle tag or not.
Also, obviously there are no servers running that old software, so, if they have anything at all running, it would most likely just direct you to the website to download the current game.
As far as expansion packs, you had no choice, you were running the latest client and game. However, for example, if the current pack was BC and you just installed vanilla, you were playing BC on BC servers, but you did not have access to BC content. You could not go to outland, level past 60, or go to the Drenai Area, but you were playing side by side with BC players in the same vanilla content that they had, which would have been nerfed from the vanilla days to speed up leveling.
10:25
before cata, there actually was an account name instead of your e-mail and/or battletag
it basically worked like a regular username
Hang on...we can still play TBC? Or is it just that your account only has TBC?
I still remember running to Best Buy with my buddy to go buy Wrath of the Lich King the day it released. While grabbing it I ran into a complete stranger who asked me what server I played on, I told him "Moonrunner!" and he told me his. My buddy looked at me like I was the biggest dork in the world. Good times
"What is my account name? Is it my battletag?" is the most zoomer thing I've heard on UA-cam lol
I got TBC for Christmas back in the day and then had to leave for a 3 week family vacation in the Canadian wilderness the next day. I took both of those strategy guides with me and read them cover to cover multiple times while I fumed about not being home and playing.
IIRC, the cd keys were just for creating an account, to make sure you had actually purchased the game. Anyone could install it, but you needed a key to make an account so you could actually play.
It’s a picture of the lich king and he only guesses that maybe it’s about wotlk.
I still remember copying the desktop shortcut of wow onto a usb off of the computer of my cousin thinking I could just pull it over our family computer and play wow
Every 5 seconds "this is funny, thats funny, those are fun"
"I have one of those CD drives here..." - wow, hearing this makes me feel really old. I remember CD's to be THE technology.
I fell in love with wow reading the manual even before internet came to my house...
i don't know what other country done, but in my country, they released WoW in 5 CDs, not 2 DVDs, had to slowly and continuously changing the discs during installation, took days for first update, and that was the most enormous game I've ever had