Remember when...? (Remembering Vanilla/BC WoW and Petopia)

[Bowno]

Remember?

Forgive me if this sort of board isn't welcome. I just thought it would be fun to look back at the old days of WoW.. and of Petopia for that matter! As early as you can remember.
This isn't a board where we fight over whether or not the old days were better, but to sit back and reminisce the past together. The good, the bad, the strange and the silly.



Allow me to begin:

Remember when we started out with a melee weapon and a bow? Our first few levels were learning how to fight face to face, as we had Raptor Strike at level 1. No pet by our side! We had to wait till we were level 10 before we could even work towards making our new friends. It was worth it though. We learned how valuable a pet really can be starting out without one! Those first few levels on our own.. Then finally we have our first owl, boar, scorpion or what ever by our side backing us up!

[Dewclaw]

I miss the class geared quests. Learning to tame was one, the druid form quests another. It was a way to enrich the experience and really immerse yourself in the character's class.

[Jaspar]

I used to enjoy catching a cat to teach Bite to a wolf, etc.... but it wasnt fun when you had a couple of rares and no-where to store them.

Back then levelling meant something. Now its just that thing you rush through to get to 100. Missing so much content along the way.

[Lupen202]

Yep, I remember starting out without a pet, and using melee weapons. I do kind of miss my polearms, they were nice for transmog. I also remember the specific melee skills - counterattack, raptor strike and wingclip, and how we couldn't attack something if it was too close... I don't miss that. At all.


I also remember the pet happiness levels and having to feed them, and how the old pet interface looked. And you had to actually level your pets - if you tamed a pet that was lower leveled than you, you'd have to take it out and attack some things to get it exp. Unlike nowadays when they automatically level up to match your level.

[zedxrgal]

Pet talent trees. Where every point truly mattered on your pet. The old talent trees period. Awe man I do mist that.

Eye of the Beast.

Volley. I know a lot of hunters despised volley but I loved it.

As already said. I miss pet happiness. When you had to actually be worried your pet would run off. Ah good times good times.

When the Beast still had his boss tag.

Truly camping I somewhat miss. Sometimes waiting for days trigger happy with your finger hovered over the tame beast button. Macro at the ready!

Somewhat also miss when pets were unique. Like you had to have a wolf, cat etc for specific fights and raids. DO NOT miss elitist a-holes though and how cruel they were. But the challenge was enjoyable.

[Castile]

I miss that server reputation meant something as in you couldn't just change your name or server hop if you were a super douchebag. And if you ninja'ed something your name was mud.

I miss talent trees and pet talents. And quivers that looked like quivers on your back.

I miss my stats stick too. I don't miss melee hunters however!

I miss that grinding for another factions mount was a big thing and how proud my human warrior was to have a nightsaber.

And that fishing often got me better gear when leveling

[Lupen202]

Pet talent trees. Where every point truly mattered on your pet. The old talent trees period. Awe man I do mist that.

Eye of the Beast.

Volley. I know a lot of hunters despised volley but I loved it.

I forgot to mention these! I miss eyes of the beast a lot, and I actually liked volley too. But I guess Barrage does the same job (though you have to be careful with it).

Also quivers! Yes! I miss them too. :/ I had one from BC for the longest time until I lost it somehow.

[Bowno]

RIP Eyes of the beast. You will forever be missed D:

[Castile]

Also quivers! Yes! I miss them too. :/ I had one from BC for the longest time until I lost it somehow.

My horde had the one off the world dragon of nightmare - i think it was part of the Rok-delar questline. I think they just turned into bags...I really hope it's in my bank somewhere still!

[SpiritBinder]

My bookmarks are still http://www.maniasarcania.com/forums/ too, which also still happen to work

[Wain]

I didn't play Vanilla, sadly. My first experience of the game was a few months after BC began.

But I do remember the old Petopia forums I believe they can't be easily resurrected but it would be kinda cool if they could be put in an archive

[Makoes]

I miss class quests, teaching pets their rank abilities, Eye of the Beast, VOLLEY!!! (Why can't we have that instead of barrage? wouldn't have the random mob pulls anymore...) Quivers, those where awesome to have. Stat sticks...not so much except for the cosmetic look. I actually miss mana...I found things easier to manage.

I do not miss purchasing ammo...running out mid raid SUCKED!!! Or inflated prices on the AH of the "best" ammo...

I do miss the talent tree, I felt it offered more in the way of freedom of play style.

[Lupen202]

Yeah I actually miss the old talent trees too. It was a lot of fun leveling up as a newbie and looking forward to getting the next talent point and spending it where I wanted. You still had the "best builds" but there was still a lot more freedom.

[Varethyn]

[Whispers] Maximum of 3 pets.
I came in late vanilla so I can't remember if it was even worse before then But I certainly remember the chore of limiting myself to only 2 keeper pets with the last slot primarily to get the next rank of pet abilities, which could only be found on specific beasts. I also remember when catching pets with said abilities gave the next rank automatically, then later got changed so that you actually had to use the ability a few times to learn it.

[Kalhoun]

I remember having to level up melee weapon skill for whatever weapon you currently had just so you could disengage properly or something to that effect.

And although I probably wouldn't want to have to do it again, I did kind of enjoy "working" on a pet; I tamed Humar when I was lvl 70 in BC and lvled him up on caster mobs in Terrokar. It was my down time hobby. "No raid tonight? Awesome, I can go work on Humar." I also liked the Loyalty system.

I did like how complicated pets seemed in Vanilla - that's how I found Petopia in the first place. There was just no other way to know what pet you had to go tame to learn what skill, or which had the best attack speed. I don't want to go back to "such and such is the best pet" scenario though; I'm hoping for a way for us Beast Masters to turn whatever pet we want into the best pet for whatever situation. I want my toaster wolf to do everything!

And even though I don't miss carrying around a bag full of ammo (or forgetting to go buy ammo before raid time), I do miss being able to craft the best ammo as an Engineer.

[Lupen202]

I totally forgot about weapon skills and having to level them. I remember grinding mobs in blasted lands for that at one point...

[Shinryu Masaki]

Well I stumbled on this video a few days ago, saw it back when it first came out, then this thread shows up, so I think it's a good time to post it and have a nostalgia blast from the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRevrAUjHnM

[Bowno]

Oh wow :U Great find on the video xD

[Falcon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpossC7tnnw

A video an old friend of mine from my original server made back in the old days.

One thing I really miss is pet loyalty. It always felt good to finally see 'Best Friend' underneath your pet's name when you'd look at its stat page, especially if it had been a rare you lost tons of sleep camping for.

[Wassa]

Remember when...

Bird of Prey family was called the Owl family.

Crabs used to be fuzzy. Pic1 / Pic2

Araga had a ringed tail.

The only pet moves where growl, cower, bite and claw? Dash was added for a few families later on in Vanilla. Special moves like screech, prowl, shield shell, etc even later in Vanilla.

Some pets had caster stats.

Pets had different attack speeds, with Broken Tooth and Bloodseeker Bat having the fastest attack speed at 1.0 and the slowest where the bears Ursius (2.4), Young Forest Bear (2.5) and Black Bear (2.5).

Some pets had natural resists. Snarler had 100 of all resists. Searing Roc had 240 fire resist.

Lupos did shadow damage.

Pets had different run speeds. Some pets like the Frostwolf in AV could outrun epic mounts.

You had to go out into the world and tame pets with moves like bite rank 5, fight with them for a bit so you learned the move, then teach it to your other pets.

BTW you only had three stable slots so you really only had two pets. The third slot needed to stay open to tame pets to learn moves.

And you had to level up all your pets from the level you tamed them as. I remember leveling my Grimtotem Spirit Guide from 30 to 70 grinding for hours.

Pet loyalty and the joy of getting your pet to the highest rank of best friend.

Feeding your pet. If you didn't feed them, they could get unhappy and run away.

Plus not only did you need to keep food on you, but arrows as well. If you ran out of arrows you had to melee everything.

Lastly, this one isn't hunter related, but here are my favorite two Vanilla WoW videos. Both are videos exploring the game. Some of these zones where never released to the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWMz7-7SGlo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsFpfQC_FME