Druids in vanilla couldn’t talk to NPCs in shapeshift forms.

I miss eyes of the beast, the ability that let you control your hunter pet, like a priest uses mind control.

The rogues detect trap! How could you forget !! The swirly animation

Remember when you used to get dismounted as soon as your mount was in ankledeep water? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Even if those things can sound like a chore to retail players, I still defend they added A TON of flavor to the game, and made you connect to your character much more. It really made the world feel more realistic.

"Hunters likely having the worst with ammo" *warlock kicks door down* "Excuse you? Did hunters have to farm mobs for hours to get enough ammo to summon an entire raid, only to farm more to give them cookies, then run out and have to farm more to summon their demons after every wipe?" No but seriously, soul shards were worse for that and didn't stack. I hope you have the super rare 20 slot soul pouch.

How about when different levels of armor had different repair costs? Such as cloth had the cheapest bill while plate was the most expensive to repair. I think this change took place in late Wrath, like around the Cata pre-patch or the patch before or after it. I never see this get brought up in any of these kinds of videos.

I always thought it was weird that we were not able to use entangling Roots inside caves, yet we were able to summon a beam of moonlight even though we were in the cave

Orcs actually had a racial bonus for 3 weapons: Two-handed Axes, One-handed Axes and Fist Weapons!

Even though Call of water fuels my nightmares up to these days, I miss class quest chains

You forgot some mobs being immune to certain types of damage, like robots and elementals being immune to poison, ghosts immune to bleeds, fire elementals having reduced damage against fire spells, and so on..

Yeah I feel you it makes sense. Like you couldn't use poisons on some machine bosses in TBC. Yeah I guess it could be a pain but it created a feeling of tradeoff and somewhat realism. I miss this.

Metamorphosis for Demo Warlocks. My fav ability :(

14:03. To be fair, there are plaguelands and end-game dungeons like Strat and Scholo (at that time they are 10-men dungeons, which almost feel like mini-raids) for lvl 50-60 players, so I would say undead does play a big role in vanilla end game contents, plus making paladins' anti-undead abilities to shine... for a while at least.

To those of you who think that we have nostalgia goggles on for liking this stuff, I think it was like a pandora's box to remove them. Before we learned about "convenience", most of us didn't think of these things as pure obstacles. I think it's an illusion to say that for instance flight in old-Azeroth "saves time." Before you had the ability to fly around everywhere, most of us saw the navigation of the world AS playing the game. So you're saving time from playing the game in order to...just play the game in another way. I agree that it wasn't all pretty. But I believe those old systems could have been improved while staying mostly intact. I love the idea that you could go out and farm some feathers or you could make gold in some way to then buy your feathers on the AH. They should have made collection more fun and engaging. Let players explore the world and find the best spots for gathering materials. Add more flight paths but don't allow flying - now your location actually has a weight and meaning to it. Add some compelling quests that eventually give you more teleportation necklaces that make travel easier. Let a culture form and emerge around all these systems.

Paladin and Warlock epic mount quests

A lot of this /sounds like/ a pain in the ass, almost all of it was actually a lot of fun.

Hunters Eyes of the Beast. Fun times were had :(

I actually didn't realize that the weapon specialization thing was removed. Derp.

RIP Exorcism... Paladins will miss you forever...

I play on a vanilla private sever and I can honestly say that these abilities make the game feel more full and fleshed out. It adds a good amount of depth to the world

Blood elf's mana tap and arcane torrent in early TBC...

I wish the hunter pet happiness thing was still in game

Polished as modern WoW is, it feels like the soul of the game has been ripped out over the years. Vanilla truly shines in RPG aspects, and the feeling of a big living world. I really can't wait for Classic.

Very cool vid; having been playing since Vanilla myself, here are some other things: -Paladins being Alliance-exclusive and Shamans being Horde-exclusive -Sentry Totem -Ghost Wolf/Travel Form only working outdoors -Having to do AQ20 to actually get higher ranks of certain skills edit: being able to equip ranged weapons on all classes in another slot (throwing weapons, wands, bows/guns/xbows) on TOP of having melee weapons, then later introducing these "relics" or whatever they were called that classes without ranged weapons (the hybrid classes) could use as stat sticks! There's also the ghostbuster quest item that people equipped in that slot as kind of a placeholder

I remember being called a genius during a Karazhan run when I suggested using turn undead during the Moroes fight in TBC. We didn't have enough cc for the adds and me being a paladin said, "Hey, I can fear undead so, how about I fear one of the adds." My guild loved me until the guild disbanded because of that.

A lot of this really helped with the immersion. It really made a lot of sense from a lore perspective too, like the priest abilities. I was a Night Elf Priest back then, and it'd make sense I had abilities based around Elune, versus a Dwarf, or otherwise - it's like they all worshipped their own entities. It was the thing I missed the most in Wotlk

DK presences were an iconic thing

As a hunter i really miss the old quiver days. It looked cool on your back, it added to the immersion. Yeah sure you had to sacrifice a bag slot for it, but i liked how you needed ammo and how you had different looking quivers when you used arrows. I loved that every class had to do quest for the new class weapons and special things. The game felt more rewarding and made the classes feel more their own thing. Now they can't even be arsed anymore to make different looking plate armors, Paladin and warrior armors all look the same, only difference is the color most of the time (Unless they adressed that now?). Wish they would make the classes more unique again and let you be creative in your class again, but in 2018 you can't let players be creative in their skills as that would confuse the poor mainstream gamer who doesn't want to learn it's class, no we can't have none gamers who don't give a fuck about investing some time into learning a game, feel like they are noobs, nope, we need to make them feel amazing and sacrifice depth to games cause of it. Yeah some things are rightfully removed, but they went so far ugh.

When I was a wee lad I had a warlock character. Upon reaching level 20 (I think it was) I was very excited to use a succubus, but could not, for the life of me, beat it into submission. I spammed searing pain and died to it to the point of rage--why did Blizzard make this so hard? As it turns out, the succubus would hit harder the more agro you had, and searing pain created a lot of agro. It was something to that effect. If it was not agro, maybe it was doing too little of damage. Either way, some of the class quests had really hard features that weren't really well known without the huge database websites and forums we have today. Another one when I was young was the druid water form. Took an entire day, along with the help of my brother's friend who had already done it.

Neat stuff! I really agree with #3 how it would be so much more interesting, in my opinion, to have more flavour to class/race interactions so people can have more options on how they could play/build a certain class. But similar flavour would be cool in general to see, not only in this specific way.

Awesome video man. Bring back that nostalgic feel. I remember leveling those base weapon skills was a bugger.

Correct me if I remember wrong, but didn't hunters have glyph for mend pet (?) in WotLK, that would give happiness every time it was used. So you didn't have to worry about feeding pet anymore

Maybe you'll still be reading these, hopefully you are. Hiru, you're awesome dude. I know how much work can go into videos like these, and the fact that you have time to prune everything to such a high standard but also get videos out frequently is really inspiring to see. I wanted you to know that I, (and I'm sure many others) come to your channel specifically wanting to itch that niche-top 10 vibe. Thes one about top 10 undead characters, "vampires", etc. You clearly really do your research in order to bring out new and refreshing stuff, man! It's nice to see wow Top 10s other than "top10 specs in vanilla wow" or "top 10 lore weapons" or something. Anyway, thanks for another video! Can't wait to dive in. :)

I still remember how my heart dropped when the pre-wrath patch hit and my poison crafting was gone.

You could do an entire video just on how hunters have changed since vanilla

As a rouge main, i really miss poison making. I have played a subtlety rogue since the first week of BC(when i started) and i really miss some of the things they have removed from the game. I have always mourned the loss of poison crafting. It was fun! It was unique! and it made you feel like a master rogue crafting poisons to fell your enemies.

I'm pretty sure that, at least in earlier parts of Vanilla, Warlocks couldn't use Drain Life or soul on anything machine-like, so golems and stuff as well.

You should've mentioned TBC's alliance and blood elfs paladin abilities, alliance races had Seal of Vengeance which was better for tanking and Blood elfs had Seal of Blood which was amazing for dps. EDIT: Seal of Blood also dealed a lil'bit of dmg always when you hit with your melee attacks and 35% of the damage dealt when using a judgement

Don't forget Warlock's Soul Shard's XD Plus Hunters and Warlocks had special bags they could get that held only ammo/shards.

This was great. The realism was great, although a pain in the ass if you were not paying attention. Getting lost in the game, paying attention to those details would have been great.

Idk, I really liked that the game was somewhat more complex back in the days, like how you needed enough spell penetration on hunters to eunsure Mark of the Wild or Mage's _can't remember armor_ doesn't "resist" your Frost Trap in Arena and to do more damage with your elemental abilities, while also having to cap hit rating so you can't miss against players or for those who did PvE for bosses. Also since talent's allowed more "personal" customization, while overall every spec had it's key talents there were some which could've been changed to match your taste. Like how hunter's had the talent which gave them bonus damage against the type of enemies they currently tracked. Well atleast I do remember these being fun as I started playing just before SWP got released and I really enjoyed TBC and obviously the legendary Wotlk that came after. Now BFA, it's fun _(mainly because I haven't played for years)_ but we really don't have any of these "tips and tricks" like we used to, also I really miss the Reputation Quests, while some of them were the basic "collect this, kill that" there were some unique related to that specific faction, also all of them on the zone related to them. Now it's just the same world quests over and over again doesn't matter which zone you go to, honestly only the Tortollan minigames impressed me when it came to world quests rest got boring pretty fast but since it levels up your Artifact necklace you have to get REPUTATION else Magni won't upgrade the ilvl which is a huge loss when you compare someone who is "friendly" with one who is "exalted".

These characteristics added a much more intimate and connected experience to the game and your character. This stuff is such a core part of a "fantasy RPG" its a shame so much was removed.

Another lovely top 10. Great work, Hiru.

I enjoyed playing a Paladin in Vanilla. I learned pretty quick though if you wanted any ranged abilities for them you needed to be an Engineer, because that profession offered thrown weapons and Shrink Rays among other fun things.

your videos make me miss vanilla ever so more.

one of my favorite moments from TBC: that moment where a demo specced lock used metamorph against a pally and the pally goes "YOU DONE EFFED UP NOW!"

I miss divine intervention. Great video, thank you.

This makes me miss old WoW. I loved having to collect reagents and get new skills by learning them. It made you feel like you were actually growing as a character, instead of just "everything works all the time and you know everything" :/

I miss reagents for spells and abilities. They added so much to the game.

I remember casting Mind Vision as priest, targeting unsuspecting Horde players. They would notice the debuff targeting them, then run around panicking due to being observed by a (possible higher level) enemy. Meanwhile I would stand inside a big bush and enjoy myself until a mob strayed too far and attacked me (often leading to a well deserved death for me).

In 2006 when I started my first character, a rogue, I had to farm Fadeleafs to craft Vanish Powder to use Vanish ability, farm Blindweed to craft Blinding Powder to use Blind, do quests and farm materials to make poisons... All while waiting to get to level 40 so I could get my first 60% mount. These days everything feels so automated.

"paladins were mainly brought to raids because of their buffs" That and the fact they were some of the best single target, mana efficient healers with some of the best utility in the entire game. Once a paladin got some crit, the essentially started to have unlimited mana due to the talent in holy that refunded mana on healing crits. The main design problem with paladins wasn't that they didn't have damage abilities, it was that all their damage was tied to spell power instead of strength. The closest paladins came to being able to dps was by getting the full AQ40 set, which increased flat spell power and using Nightfall or a Naxx weapon.

In short; Blizzard removed, over time, every once of flavor

It’s really interesting seeing all this stuff I remember no longer being in the game. I stopped playing right before Cataclysm and haven’t returned since, so it’s been a minute.

Paladin's Divine Intervention. That ability was so cool and so fitting with the paladin theme as this holy protector, sacrificing themselves to protect someone for what was honestly a long time. 3 minutes, to bathe your target in light to make anything from the outside world unable to harm them. To even affect them. It couldn't be dispelled or stolen, only the target protected could choose to remove your ward from them.

HECK YECK NEW VID BOI

I miss the world building. WoW now feels like a generic action RPG.

Yeah, that Defensive Stance quest; it was still around in some form when the LFD tool was introduced. Happened a couple of times, got grouped up with some warrior who hadn't done his def stance quest chain...

I absolutely loved ritual of doom, I really miss it, plus the warlock demon quests in general, they created more of an emotional bond with your demon, I can still list all of their individual names off the top of my head, and have good memories of each of them. It gave a lot more meaning to minions.

3:30 what is that warlock set? edit - Oh. It's a druid set. That looks awesome on a lock though.

At the end of the day a lot of these were huge pains in the ass to deal with from a balance and fairness perspective, but it was all these little things that made everything feel unique and special, which is a big part of why vanilla is remember so well despite being punishingly difficult in many aspects.

I always felt that from a lore perspective your characters classes just got more powerful as they better learned to use their abailities over time, like the warlock pet summons. Sure it was difficult for them in early WoW, but as they had more and more practice with it, it became easier for them to summon demons and thus could teach new warlocks without having them go gather a bunch of stuff for a ritual.The whole Black Harvest questchain and backstory in Pandaria was centered around how all classes are looking for new ways to improve themselves, like Mages looking into time magic to learn Time Warp.

i know u talked alot about hunters but changing diffrent aspects was such a major part for me back then that really helped with the fantasy

TL;DR "Eventually fun was removed from the game"

I think the whole leveling thing should be mentioned aswell. The whole point of leveling is to grow up together with your char, to learn and master. Today, you can max a char in around 3 days or less, which ended up in people not knowing how to play their class efficiently, not having a connection to their char, which now hangs out in Orgrimmar or Stormwind with shiniest equip, but no idea how they got it. If you saw a max level char before, you could be pretty damn sure the person behind it could tell you a fuckton of interesting things about it.

Thanks again my Friend. Great vid! I think some of the nerfs you mentioned in this vid ( and many others you've blessed us with) were the ones that really disappointed me the most as WoW progressed, since the nerfs did remove a lot of the fantasy traits associated with these classes that had significant Lore value to them (i.e the Pally traits and Warlock traits). Since a lot of them were also removed simply for "convenience", it became evident how much WoW got "dumbed down" to attract a more wide audience that had little (if any) previous experience with fantasy RP type games and it became far more just a simple "number crunch" exercise as you progressed. I suspect this is also one of the reasons that "WoW Classic" became so popular with the Old Guard players, whom remembered when it wasn't a race to best gear end game but more a fun and thrilling experience to level up using traits and abilities that made you unique and therefore more relevant to your interests. Regardless of the convenience factors the newer Retail version provides, many of us actually enjoyed the uniqueness of our developed 'toons and were quite sad to see them either eliminated or stupefied. Now, it's no more than a math quizz as you level and "how you play" means far less than "what you play". I left Retail at the end of WotLK simply because outside the main character lore story aspects, I found it incredibly boring and silly. But...I came back for Classic. It's not quite as good as Vanilla was but pretty dang close. ;)

You forgot detect and disarm traps for rogues, we had to be on the front on Ice Crown Citadel to disarm the traps on the first floor, also it was great to disarm the hunter traps in pvp.

“Trolls & their bows.” I’m pretty sure I never saw trolls use bows in WC II or WC III. Throwing axes and throwing spears are the true troll weapon of choice.

Unable to apply bleeds to machines, or poisons, Shackle undead for Priests.

I remember "Ritual of Doom" quite fondly. When I was a lowbie questing in Elwynn Forest, someone summoned a doomguard in Goldshire and it started killing everybody, lol.

"Top 10 Removed Class Fantasy Abilities" I cant forget the strip of the warlock demonology form...

Omg ....raiding back in the day...5 full bags of ammo...and still ran out.

Keeping your pet at full happiness was easy, i actuaply liked to feed my tiger. I loved that you needed these reagents too

One thing that I think was really cool RP for death Knights was the different types of runes you could use for different abilities. It made it seem like the runes were much more tied to their source of power rather than being some random resource

you literally answered a question ive had for years in just your intro, I always wondered what that poor reagent vender sold was used for

I wish they would return the priest racial

This video was great! Have to say vanilla and even Bc WoW was much more of an rpg now it’s kinda just a shell of an rpg

I miss when abilities made sense like this even if it came with inconveniences

Not sure if it was just the innocent noob in me but I really loved the train pet options. As well as the fact that you had to gather abilities by capturing pets with them

Blizzard sure has a hard on for removing things

Exorcism and all the anti undead skills worked against forsaken?

Warlocks doing ritual of summoning was the funniest part of the game sometimes. Praying you wouldn't die was exhilarating.

Great vid mate.

So this is how they drain wow of all its uniqueness

Anyone miss pet disarm/pet Web

10:28 If I recall correctly, Humans didn't have hunters until much later (Cataclysm), when the pet acquisition requirements you talk about were removed.

Quiver models when hunters equipped a bow or crossbow. Nowdays only Marksmen get quivers when transmoging or wielding their artifact weapon.

It is complicated to maintain a good balance between flavor and actual gameplay balance. While all of this made the game feel more organic, I can't really blame Blizz for preferring to keep things simple. It would be a real shame if out of 5 raids within an expansion my character was only kind of useful in 2 because of the type of mobs or my class being a niche. WoW is a gigantic game with a huge number of classes, enemy types, etc. It would be great to see an MMO, maybe a tad smaller in scope, try to tackle this issue in a more organic way.

Weren't the undeads status changed from undead to humanoid in vanilla beta because pallys were to op than against the horde?

AND THIS is what i miss the most :( the lack of all the RPG aspects So excited for Vanilla to get all nostalgic and having the features back :)

It's all coming back August! I'm so excited

This sounds like a bunch of reasons why WoW WAS awesome lol

10 reasons why I stopped playing. Coming back for classic.

Love your videos Hirumaredx, and I had an idea for one to pass on to you. 'Top 10 Bosses that have to be defeated because of the Player's actions.' I got this idea while leveling an allied race alt in Duskwood and of course I did the Stitches quest. How many other quest, dungeon, or raid bosses have their been that are loose in the world because the players helped them out in some way. Off the top of my head in addition to Stitches I an think of Hakkar in the original ZG raid and Bloodlord Mandokir in the CATA dungeon version of ZG. Are there enough other bosses like this to fill out a video?

I'm pretty sure that exorcism and holy wrath worked against people playing forsaken if I remember correctly, and (if I do remember this right) that was really cool and actually gave you buttons to press in pvp at times

I feel it's quite unfair that you considered the usefullness of the undead only abilities to only apply to Naxramas when two endgame zones where filled with undeads and Scholomance and Stratholme where immensely popular 10 man raids filled with undeads that everyone had to grind at some point.

Hiru you forgot to add metamorph for warlocks(including all their cool spells they had like demonic leap, apotheosis making them literal tanks, immolation aura, chaos wave, shadow claw, charge.) , demonic pact, soulshards (in their old form). Also no mention of Infernal stone to summon infernal, or how the ritual of doom could kill the warlock whocast it? Come on man #pewdiepieisbetter

Don't forget Kadger's unlocking spell, which was removed before WoW even went live. It let mages open lock boxes with a spell, but apparently rogue's felt slighted at the risk of lousing out on randoms running to them to trade a locked box into their face uninvited.

Orcs at one point had a bonus for fist weapons as well. The way they phased it out had them be extra expertise on the specialized weapon.