Sin'dor
Veteran
So I was sitting in a realm-queue yesterday, and I got to thinking about the ways that I'd "passed the time" back during the Vanilla queues... and I recalled that on more than one occasion I had read the whole game manual cover-to-cover.
My original copy got lost during a move at some point, but it turns-out that Blizzard™ has it available online... so I decided to flip-through it today.
Holy crap, the nostalgia!
It's one thing to play the game again "as it was back then", but that's still all pretty familiar... it can't quite recapture that "first time" feeling of everything being new and exciting.
...but reading the manual, and how it explained basic concepts as-if I'd "never played" before? That seriously "took me back"... I suddenly remembered what it felt like when I was trying to get DirectX™ installed, or decyphering how the 20 different character-attributes worked, or figuring-out what to do after my first death.
Reading those same words that I'd read as a noob, was the first thing that really reminded me of how amazing it felt to play this game back when I was a noob.
I haven't had the time to read all that much of it, yet (no queue today)... but I did spot a few interesting items, particularly things that never actually made it into the final release!
For example... there was the "Exiled from your own capital" mechanic:
...or the "Spirit Healers delete experience" mechanic:
...but fortunately, the most important feature has always been present:
Anyway... if you've got some time to kill (and you can't spend it playing WoW), give the Classic™ manual a peek and let us know if it does anything for ya'!
(...and just for bonus nostalgia, I also dug through my old "WoW 2004" folder and found a scan of the original "Deluxe Wall Map" that you may remember Blizzard™ selling back during the Vanilla launch.)
My original copy got lost during a move at some point, but it turns-out that Blizzard™ has it available online... so I decided to flip-through it today.
Holy crap, the nostalgia!
It's one thing to play the game again "as it was back then", but that's still all pretty familiar... it can't quite recapture that "first time" feeling of everything being new and exciting.
...but reading the manual, and how it explained basic concepts as-if I'd "never played" before? That seriously "took me back"... I suddenly remembered what it felt like when I was trying to get DirectX™ installed, or decyphering how the 20 different character-attributes worked, or figuring-out what to do after my first death.
Reading those same words that I'd read as a noob, was the first thing that really reminded me of how amazing it felt to play this game back when I was a noob.
I haven't had the time to read all that much of it, yet (no queue today)... but I did spot a few interesting items, particularly things that never actually made it into the final release!
For example... there was the "Exiled from your own capital" mechanic:
...or the "Spirit Healers delete experience" mechanic:
...but fortunately, the most important feature has always been present:
Anyway... if you've got some time to kill (and you can't spend it playing WoW), give the Classic™ manual a peek and let us know if it does anything for ya'!
(...and just for bonus nostalgia, I also dug through my old "WoW 2004" folder and found a scan of the original "Deluxe Wall Map" that you may remember Blizzard™ selling back during the Vanilla launch.)
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