hom
Grandfathered
I found this while scouring the internet for interesting items form Vanilla and I sunk a good 30 mins of my time into reading through this.
I thought it could do with a format update and some fresh links that actually work.
My favourite part has to be about Warlocks dismissing their pet in MC after they had the living bomb debuff, only to summon them in a crowded place one shotting low levels.
Enjoy.
-During original WoW alpha, Scholomance was supposed to be an outdoor elite area (probably where Sorrow Hill is now), but the developers made it so big and good that they decided to make it an instance.
-At the beginning, there were shields and bucklers. Rogues and Hunters could use bucklers, but they later removed them, and Rogues/Hunters couldn't equip shields anymore. There are still bucklers in game, but they are labeled as "Shields".
-Survival talents for Hunters was the "melee" tree and had a Lacerate ability which dealt less than 100 damage at level 60.
-Discipline tree for Priests was supposed to be a "melee" tree (like Monks in some other games), which is why Inner Fire increased attack power.
-In Vanilla beta, Dwarves could be Mages.
-Hunters were using focus as their resource system, but it regenerated while standing still, and was very overpowered so they gave them mana instead.
-Several classes had talents which increased stats by a raw number (for example 20/40/60/80/100 Spell Damage (not percent but just 100 Spell Damage)), and they didn't scale at all with gear/level.
-There was almost no Spell Damage on gear during early Vanilla. It wasn't a strange thing to see a level 60 Mage with less than 30 Spell Damage.
-The reason why there are so many cloaks with exactly the same stats in the starting areas was because cloaks also had armor types (for example cloth/leather/mail/plate cloaks)
-There were two big islands off the western coast of STV, which were removed, but if you go far enough with mount and water walking, you can reach the area where they were. You will see that you are zoning in Isle of Doctor Lapidis or Gillijim's Isle.
-Elwynn Forest, Stormwind and Westfall were the first zones that Blizzard made back before 2001. That is why they are crappier than other starting zones.
-Azshara has very little quests because Blizzard has designed it with a terrible layout, and they realized that too late. They thought most people would hate it so much, so they just didn't bother and left it for future expansions (Cataclysm)
-Their original design(back before alpha) was that Horde and Alliance each had only 100 quests in the game.(was said in a recent interview)
-At release, there were no quests at all in Silithus (or anything important), and it was added in a later patch.
-There were much less quests past level 50 at release, so players complained that they had to grind mobs in order to level, and Blizzard added more quests later.
-Blackrock Spire, Stratholme and Scholomance were all tuned for 15 people raids, and they were still way too hard even with 15 people, which they later toned down to 5 players (except for UBRS which is 10 player)
-Before TBC was released, you were able to blink through Deadmines portal and glitch it, cast slow fall off an unfinished tunnel, and reach a very early version of Hellfire Peninsula. Here is a video of it
-Emerald Dream was supposed to be released in Vanilla, as either zone/raid/continent. They scrapped it, but there are Emerald Dream zones in the game files, though not accessible in any way on official servers.
-T2 sets dropped in Molten Core, and had different graphics.
-Epic Mounts at release were just recolored normal mounts without armor. They removed them and replaced with armored mounts later (R.I.P Ivory Raptor).
-Tauren didn't have a mount at all, they had a Plainsrunning ability.
-Ironforge was by far the largest city in game, because it had two floors instead of one, and the one which exists today is smaller than before. The Great Forge was also visible in game. Here is a video of it
-Gnomeregan was supposed to be a city like all others, Ironforge had an elevator which led into Gnomeregan, but they turned it into an instance because it would create faction imbalance.
-Undercity was even more complicated to navigate, so they removed the second floor (it is still accessible in game).
-Humans and Orcs were the first Races Blizzard created in game.
-Human females and Orc males used a slightly different model.
-You would be scared if you saw how Female Trolls looked in alpha.
-Goldshire was a lot bigger, and it resembled a real village. But Blizzard realized that they can't make other starting zone hubs that big, and they removed a lot of buildings in Goldshire so it would be even for all zones.
-Overall Graphics in WoW are definitely improved since it's release, but in alpha, the graphics looked more realistic (but lower quality than now), and they toned them down.
-Naxxramas is still physically present in Eastern Plaguelands today. There is no way to enter it or see it (it is invisible). If you logged off your character in old Naxx before WotLK was released, you would appear in EPL Naxx with portals to Northrend. Video
-Undead were able to communicate with the Alliance.
-Undead were really Undead, so they could have been targeted by Exorcism and such spells (back when it only worked on undead and demons).
-Will of the Forsaken was a passive buff which made you immune to Sleep, Polymorph and Fear effects. That didn't last long.
-Cloaks weren't visible at all until beta, due to player request.
-CC effects didn't have reduced duration on PvP targets, so a Rogue or Mage could CC you up to 1 min (or more).
-Mages had an invisibility spell earlier, and you could cast Pyroblast while still invisible. It was removed because of an outcry from other players.
-There were no guards at neutral cities, so most of them were slaughter fests.
-Maraudon was added in a content patch.
-Warrior Charge ability used to teleport you to your target instead of increasing your run speed.
-Wands couldn't auto-shoot so you had to click it each time you wanted to hit.
-Spell schools used to have a skill system similar to todays weapon skills. "Your skill in Fire has increased to 93"
-There was only one flight path and graveyard in the Barrens. Ugh.
-Warlock spell Banish had a 30 minute cooldown for some reason.
-Rogues and Druids had "Feign Death" abilities before they were moved to the Hunter class.
-Mages had an ability called "Khadgar's Unlocking" which was like Rogue pick lock spell.
-The only Enchanting trainer at higher level was in Uldaman.
-Each major city had its own special auction house, so Darnassus was pretty useless.
-Although Azshara crater, a scrapped battleground, never appeared in game, it is in the game files.
-All wings of Scarlet Monastery were once a single instance, but they have split it into four because it was too big.
-The Black Morass instance (without the mobs and bosses) was in the game files since 2004.
-Hellfire Peninsula was supposed to be a 54-60 zone.
-Andorhal in Western Plaguelands was a very hard elite area (MC geared players had problems with it). Araj the Summoner was tuned for 20+ people. It also had ruined walls around it's borders, which were later removed.
-There are Programmer isle and Designer Isle in the game files but aren't accessible.
-Player Housing was briefly tested and scrapped completely. Here is an interesting picture http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Player_housing
-If you look at the beginning of the original WoW cinematic, you'll notice half of Silithus is missing on the map. That's because it wasn't there at that time.
-Blizzard definitely wasn't wrong when they said Emerald Dream was gonna look awesome.
-The very first legendary item that dropped was a necklace (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talisman_of_Binding_Shard ) that dropped off Baron Geddon. It was removed from the loot table, but the player who got it was allowed to keep it. Here is his armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Blackrock/Savorx/(You can't see it because it shows an error).
-Hunters were the last class to be introduced in Beta.
-Paladin Judgement had a cast time.
-Shaman Enhancement tree had a couple of tanking talents/spells, although they were never really able to tank anything other than occasional trash.
-Warlocks were able to summon people off cliffs, and Mages/some other classes were able to CC people underwater and make them drown.
-Warrior Recklessness used to reduce targets armor to 0.
-On release, there was no PvP content at all. It was added some months later(battlegrounds and honor system).
-Flight masters didn't summon mobs to help so they were sometimes camped constantly.
-Many people don't know this, but there is a "click to move" option in WoW. You can click on the spot on the ground, and your character will move to that spot, like in RPG games.
-Paladins had about a dozen seals removed, namely Seal of Fury, Seal of the Crusader, Seal of Sacrifice, Seal of Wrath and others. They also had Crusader Strike and Holy Strike in beta.
-I'm not 100% sure on this, but when you died you lost a small amount of XP.
-Warlock Felsteed mount was called "Nightmare".
-Kick and other interrupts had a 75% chance to hit.
-Mages had to spend 5 talent points in Arcane tree to make Arcane Explosion instant. Evocation was a talent also.
-Shamans had Magma Blast and Lightning Shock spells.
-Since the Vanilla definition of "Hybrid Class" really meant "Hybrid Class", the itemization was quite strange. Paladins/druids/shamans had all stats on their gear, and for some reason Rogues, Warriors and some other classes had spirit or some useless stat for them on their gear.
-Windfury Weapon procs could proc off eachother. So theoretically Shamans could one shot a raid boss if stars aligned.
-Paladin Reckoning talent could be stacked to infinite stacks. It was used to one shot Lord Kazzak, and it was hotfixed within 24 hours of that event.
-Mages and Priests had a "Sleep" spell.
-Eviscerate had a base damage that didn't scale at all, so a naked rogue would hit the same as a full T3 rogue.
-The best level 60 Warrior dps item was a level 44 mail gloves (Edgemaster's Gauntlets), because they had weapon skill bonuses.
-Rogue and Warrior mace specialization used to randomly stun people. They were changed to ARP bonuses in WotLK.
-Mortal strike hit for 200% weapon damage, making 50% healing debuff almost useless because you would 1-2 shot cloth.
-You weren't able to see buffs on enemy players, but Mages had "Detect Magic" spell.
-Deathwish and Enrage could stack for some scary DPS increase. (Enrage was 40%)
-There was a way to gain reputation with Wildhammer clan and Revantusk trolls, but they had no reward at all and they just removed it later.
-Bosses had only 8 debuff slots, so Warriors were sometimes kicked for speccing into Deep Wounds.
-Hunter and Warlock pets didn't scale with any stat at all.
-Many players think that the worst quest in Vanilla was "Deep Ocean, Vast Sea...", because the breath timer was only 60 seconds and Murlocs could move through walls.
-There was no Arcane resistance, but there was Holy resistance. Today it's vice-versa.
-Hunter Arcane Shot scaled from Spell Damage, which is why Hunter T2.5 set has Spell Damage bonus on it.
-Healing and Spell Damage were two separate stats. So leveling as a holy priest/paladin would be a suicide.
-Mage Arcane tree and Priest Discipline tree had talents that improved wand damage. This was removed in 3.0
-Wound poison would stack to 5 for 10/20/30/40/50% healing debuff.
-Dispelling poisons was actually a good tactic because it's application chance was much lower.
-Although never confirmed, there is a rumor that Ironforge Airstation was supposed to be a Gnome starting area.
-Priests had racial spells, but some of them were turned into baseline priest spells and some other removed. (human-desperate prayer/troll-hex of weakness/undead-devouring plague)
-There was a period in TBC when Orcs had bugged shoulder size (2x smaller), and worst of all, it took Blizzard 2-3 months to fix it.
-Undead had slightly bigger shoulder size than today.
-Recently, in the Ulduar patch, a GM accidentally mailed a player with Martin Fury. That is an artifact level shirt that has a "on use" effect that one shots everything. He used it to one shot Malygos, and couple of bosses in Ulduar. People noticed on his statistics tab that he had an abysmally high "Highest hit ever" number, and he got a permanent ban shortly after.
-Female Tauren had a lot of doors/obstacles that they couldn't fit through. They still do, but much less.
-Tauren were not being able to fit through the MC entrance window (next to the High Elf quest giver)
-And the best one! Instance servers being full, and 40 people jumping through the window of MC to zone in, inevitably falling into the lava, getting "Instance servers are full, try again later" message
-Trolls used to have a joke ( /silly emote) that said this "I kill two dwarves in da morning,I kill two dwarves at night,I kill two dwarves in the afternoon, and than I feel alrgiht.I kill two dwarves in time of peace and two in time of war,I kill two dwarves before I kill two dwarves, and then I kill two more." This was removed from the game, because it was a reference to smoking weed.
-There is a very creepy crypt behind Karazhan which is currently inaccessible except for hunters/shamans chain farsighting/eagle eye. It is pretty well done, and was probably shaping to become something, but Blizzard decided to abandon it.
-In alpha WoW, all instance portals used a "Dark Portal" model as a placeholder. There was one dark portal in underwater Azshara, which would lead to assume that there was supposed to be an instance in Azshara underwater. Maybe they just threw it there randomly, who knows. Pic https://i.redd.it/mopkg9xclz1z.jpg
-Meeting stones weren't used for summoning other people, they were used so you can look for other people who queued for that instance.
-Retaliation had no animation, and you couldn't see the buffs of your enemies, so Warriors could pop it against Rogues who had very little chance to notice it.
-After a patch in Vanilla, something got bugged and Warriors received one extra talent point, which allowed them to spec 31/21/0 and be very overpowered.
-People used to pay a lot for people that had a key to Upper Blackrock Spire.
-The Unstoppable Force (AV exalted weapon) used to knock back players instead of stunning them.
-There was a Hunter that stacked Spell Damage gear(for mend pet) and soloed Azuregos.
-The term "Globaled" which people oftenly say today when they get killed very fast, doesn't actually exist today. In vanilla, Mages could actually really "Global" you, using PoM/Pyro macro and double spelldamage trinket in one button. If it critted, it could one shot a raid geared Warrior.
-Warlocks could kill people in duels. (and I really mean "kill")
-There is an achievement called "Old School Ride". You need to have a first epic mounts that Blizzard added at release (the ones without armor). Since it costed 1000g (that was really a lot of money back then), and was removed pretty shortly after release, very few people got that achievement.
-Warriors often fell through the world when using Charge/Intercept, and Charge could be used in combat.
-Walljumping allowed you to carry the flag in WSG to an unreachable spot, making you invulnerable. If both flag carriers did that, the game could last until the players log out/dc (which could be days).
-Intellect increased the speed you gain weapon skills.
-Warlock Succubus pets used to have less clothes, but they added more later.
-Druids couldn't cast for a few seconds after leaving a form. There was a talent to allow that.
-Shamans had a talent that allowed them to equip two handed axes and maces.
-Since there were no casting bars, shamans and druids used hearthstone to lure interrupts so they can heal.(they have the same casting animation).
-There is an NPC next to Haris Pilton in Shattrath City (Ricole Nichie), that is only viewable by priests who have Eye of Divinity equipped.
-You could communicate cross-faction by using lines to make words( |-| | )
-Gurubashi Catacombs was an arena that was supposed to be the first arena in TBC, but got scrapped.
-After Feign Death timer ended, Hunters would really die.
-There is a cloth blue item set that drops in Scholomance. For some reason, it's set bonus increases defense.
-Hippogryphs in Azshara used to drop more money than any other mob in the game, so it was usually farmed by bots 24/7.
-Sap was breaking stealth, and there was a talent that gave 90% chance to the rogue to remain in stealth after using sap. Sucks if it didn't work and you got killed immediately in instances.
-In TBC beta, there was a quest reward dagger in Netherstorm that dealt arcane damage instead of physical. It scaled with spellpower, so mages would hit really hard with it in melee.
-Balance druids were utterly useless at Vanilla release. Than they added Moonkin form halfway through vanilla, but they still sucked.
-Deeprun Tram was supposed to connect Stormwind and Darnassus.
-Baron Rivendare's mount had about 0.02 chance to drop, so anyone that had it was considered a god (especially alliance). Today it is a 1% chance.
-Rogue detect traps ability had a "Swirly Ball" animation. All rogues loved it and spammed it all the time, and there was a huge outcry when Blizzard removed it.
-The rarest mount in game is Fluorescent Green Mechanostrider. http://www.wowwiki.com/Fluorescent_Green_Mechanostrider
-There is a cave in Dun Morogh, and when you enter it, you enter Silithus general chat.
-Rogues had a poison brewing profession, and poisons had stacks that were spent on attacking, and they had to refresh poisons on their weapons during bossfights.
-Blizzard said in Vanilla WoW many times that Shadowfang Keep is their favorite instance, and the one they have spent most time on.
-Orc racial Blood Fury only increased melee attack power by 25%, and when the effect expired, you lost 25% of your AP for 45 seconds. Also reduced healing by 50%. Overall it was useless for Orc Warlocks and resto/elemental Shamans.
-All Polearms were called Spears.
-You could swap armour and weapons during combat (now its only weapons).
-You didn't lose durability when dying, but you lost more durability during combat.
-Hunters gained 2 attack power per 1 point of agility.
-Hunters couldn't lay traps in combat. It was changed in TBC so you can do it, but with 2 second cast time.
-A good one: Survival talent tree for Hunters had a different name - "Outdoormanship"
-The paladin spell Holy Wrath was once named "Judgment"
-There was no countdown on duels.
-PvP trinkets were class specific, for example, Warrior trinket broke only stuns or warlock only snares (don't remember exactly).
-Healing spells had 30 yard range and classes had talents to increase its range.
-Barkskin increased your cast time and slowed melee speed.
-Enslave demon buff was dispellable, so the enslaved demon would attack the Warlock.
-Druids couldn't shapeshift to break Polymorph.
-Channelled spells (such as arcane missiles) couldn't be interrupted.
-Upon release, boats (and zeppelins?) were very unstable and buggy, so they disabled them for a short time until they fixed it. They added an NPC called Captain Placeholder which teleported players for some money. He was so popular, that players made a lament for him.
-Thrown weapons had charges, like todays ammo.
-In the patch that introduced TBC talents in Vanilla, it also introduced paladin/horde - shaman/alliance gear. Since there were no horde paladins and alliance shamans yet, those drops were just wasted.
-Night Elf guards in Darnassus and some other settlements are always female. Blood Elf guards are always male.
-WotLK in China was relased in August 2010, which is nearly 2 years later than it's release in Europe/NA.
-There is no WoW in Japan at all.
-Sylvanas in WoW had 3-4 different voice actors.
-Draenei were announced as a playable race 6-7 months after TBC was announced.
-Chris Metzen is the voice actor of Ragnaros/Nefarian/Thrall/Rexxar/Varian Wrynn/Deathbringer Saurfang/Algalon, and many more.
-Azjol-nerub was supposed to be a raid instance/zone instead of ToC, but left behind as blizzard realized that it was too big, so they put all of what they have done in OK/AN instances(it really is big). They also said in a recent interview that their biggest disappointment about WotLK is not making AN a zone.
-The longest instance corpse run was Crossroads-Razorfen Downs, because there was only one graveyard in Barrens. The longest non-instance corpse run was probably in Blade's edge mountains before they fixed graveyards there.
-Bind on pickup was called "Bind on Acquire".
-Everyone could see Spirit Healers, including people who are alive.
-There is a Spirit Healer west of Crossroads that is named "Koiter". He is a memorial to Michael Koiter, a Blizzard artist that died during the development of WoW.
-Battleground groups weren't formed automatically upon joining the BG, so it was "INV PLZ" spamfest during the first minutes.
-A Death Knight could Death Grip someone while standing on the Booty Bay boat, and that person would be sent flying across the continent, ending up below Alterac Mountains. Here is the video of it
-Hunters would usually go out of mana after 3 shots, so they were mostly auto shooting in PvP. However in PvE, you could FD+drink/swap gear.
-Unfortunately, Moonkins would just go out of mana after 3 spells. They were mostly brought there for the /dance.
-Paladin blessings lasted 5 minutes. So by the time you buffed 40 raid members, the first ones you buffed would have 2-3 minutes left on their blessings. So they were essentially just rebuffing the raid all the time.
-Warlock Death Coil had 10 minute cooldown, and didn't cause any horror effect.
-All mobs in the heavy-silithid areas in Silithus were elite. Also many other mobs in the game had elite status removed.
-Warlocks were able to summon people into battlegrounds, including people who are higher/lower level than the level bracket.
-The longest ever unkilled boss in WoW is Ouro the Sandworm(86 days after the first Twin Emperors kill), with C'thun and Onyxia just behind him. This is because he was very bugged at AQ release, and he is an optional boss.
-If warlocks cast Detect Invisibility in Ruins of Lordaeron or Raven Hill in Duskwood, they can see invisible level 50ish mobs, which can only be seen with this method. They were added so Aliiance Warlocks had a quick way to farm shards while in Stormwind.
-In alpha, there was a "profession" called "Survival Skills". It was used for making campfires (which can now be made with cooking) and torches.
-Those torches were used for scouting. Back than, the graphic engine was a bit different. Darker areas, such as Duskwood, were really "dark" and you couldn't see anything past 20-30 yards in front of you. Torches were used to increase visibility in those darker areas. Many NPC's in Duskwood still hold torches in their hands.
-Cataclysm was in development before WotLK was released.
-If you lower the music settings in settings, and increase ambient sounds to max, you can go to Undercity throne room, and hear the dialogue between Arthas and his father before he killed him.
-In the tunnel before Undercity throne room, you can see rose petals that people threw on Arthas before he killed his father. You can also see blood on the floor as Terenas' bloodied crown fell.
-You can also increase ambient/lower music settings in Raven Hill catacombs and Karazhan crypts. I won't reveal what you will hear
-Moonkin Starfall wasn't cancelled when switching to animal forms. They could do travel form + starfall. It also broke stealth in 30 yard radius, and also did RNG 3 second stun.
-The most overpowered class ever in WoW was Retribution Paladin during the first 24 hours of Patch 3.01 (the one with WotLK talents at level 70). Divine Storm dealt holy damage, and they could do bubble + avenging wrath, with bubble not reducing damage by 50%. Best 24 hours in my life.
-Flight paths were not connected, so you needed to pick the next stop each time you land.
-A questgiver in Borean Tundra has a name "Gorge the Corpsegrinder", which is a tribute to George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, the singer of Cannibal Corpse.
-World of Warcraft was announced in September 2001, and was in development for about a year before that announcement, which means WoW has been in development for 10 years.
-Death Knights and some other classes were planned to be released with original WoW, but they were saved for later.
-In planning stages of WotLK development, they had 3 options for a hero class: Necromancer, Runemaster and Death Knight. In the end, they "combined" all three into one, giving DK's Necromancer niches such as diseases and corpse exploding, and Runemaster niches, their rune resource system. Which is why we will never (99,94%) see those two classes in game.
-Nefarian class calls also has a Death Knight call. Why Blizzard returned to an oldschool instance in WotLK is unknown.
-During the first few months of TBC, there was always a pile of skeletons below Aldor Elevator. Players often called it "elevator boss" and even wrote tactics for defeating it. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/12473117591
-Mind Numbing poison and Curse of Tongues reduced cast speed by 60%.
-If a player under the effect of Curse of Tongues types something in chat, they will speak in [Demonic] language.
-There is a huge smiley face below Karazhan.
-On TBC release, Karazhan gear was weaker than gear from heroic dungeons, and they had to completely reitemize almost all drops.
-Heroic dungeons on TBC release were so hard that many players considered heroic SL/SH and Arcatraz to be impossible to do even in Karazhan gear. They were later nerfed but players still avoided those dungeons like a plague.
-Wintergrasp was supposed to have aerial combat, which was removed. You can see it on your WotLK CD box.
-Onyxia has a "Deep Breath" ability. In vanilla WoW, players didn't know what triggered Deep Breaths(it was just random), which led to many theories and speculations. You can see some here http://www.wowwiki.com/Why_does_Onyx...Deep_Breath?
-There were many jokes like that, for example: "LOOT THE HOUNDS", "kite to vael's room", "furnace behind Golemagg", and many more.
-Here are the old talent trees https://legacy-wow.com/vanilla-talents/hunter-talents// Make sure to check out Survival Hunter tree.
-Blizzard was balancing raids around classes having restricted roles. Only Warriors could tank, priest was by far the best healer, druids were there to innervate the priests, shamans were used mostly as out of combat ressers, and paladins were usually busy rebuffing the raid with 5 minute blessings. Druids, Paladins, and Warlocks(early, before they were buffed their damage was horrible) had no viable dps specs at all.
-Hybrid classes usually dealt about 50% less damage than pure classes. "What is this Feral Druid doing here? Tell him to spec resto and innervate the priests!"
-Not directly related to the game, but shortly after TBC was released, and caused massive shaman nerfs, the shaman community had a massive outcry on the forums. The CM called Tseric had a job to moderate the forums, and after going insane from all the whining, he started to ban ANYONE who posted on the shaman forums(no matter what you posted). He was fired from Blizzard shortly after that.
-Next to Horde Inn in Dalaran, there is a sewer with an NPC at the bottom of it. It is only reachable by engineers using Wormhole Generator.
-If you enter the house north of Goldshire at 7:40 am, you will see 5 children forming a pentagram. You can hear banshee screams, creepy music, and the C'thun sound file saying "You will die".
-In Duskwood, at Beggar's Haunt tower, there is a twisted path behind leading to an area called "Knight's Hollow", it has an unmarked grave with two statues, the same ones found at Dark Portal.
-The wandering tauren female in STV called Samantha Swifthoof currently has no use, but earlier she taught Plainsrunning skill for Tauren.
-Tauren is an anagram for "Nature".
-The area west of Dun Morogh called "Newman's Landing", is used as an area where Alliance characters are dropped upon creation, before the intro video starts. If you stand at a certain spot you will notice level 1 characters appearing for a brief instant before they disappear.
-In the area west of Tirisfal Glades, you can see four large spikes rising from the ground, with each one being taller than the previous one. This is probably the result of a bored developer.
-If you swim east of Tirisfal Glades, you will find an abandoned tower. That area in lore is called "Northeron" but in game it was never implemented.
-If you swim from Tanaris to south of Silithus, you will find a Tauren building with a cave next to it.
-Shade of Aran in Karazhan has a special quote if someone in the raid is wearing Atiesh, saying "Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??"
-If someone enters SM:Cathedral with a Corrupted Ashbringer, there is a neat special event.
-The blocked off portal close to Old Town in Stormwind was supposed to be for player housing.
-There is a lonely street in Stormwind called Cut Throat Alley, accessible through Dwarven District.
-A'dal in Shattrath hits for over 100,000 damage and becomes invulnerable at low health. Blizzard made this change after some players started kiting Fel Reavers to Shattrath City and used them to kill A'dal.
-If you attack a player in Throne of the Elements in Nagrand, you will get one shot by the elemental lords.
-If you look closely at the Blink spell icon, you will notice it is a Dwarf blinking.
-The Emblem of Triumph vendors at the trial of the crusader portal are named "Isimode" and "Faesrol" (easymode and faceroll). They are a joke by Blizzard about Paladins being easy to play.
-There is a grave of Invincible (Lich King's mount) in Tirisfal Glades.
-Karazhan was supposed to have a flight path on top of it. There are actually Gryphon flight path nests on one terrace, but they serve no purpose.
-If you are playing on US servers, you can roll a human on server Moonguard, and walk to Goldshire Inn. Warning: What is seen cannot be unseen.
-In the graveyard of Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, there is a grave which when you click on says the following: "Here lies a soldier stout-hearted, he tried to fight but only farted"
-Affliction Warlocks with engineering could use Gnomish Mind Control Cap to MC people and drain their mana with Dark Pact.
-If you read "Ramaladni's Blade of Culling" backwards, you get the word "Indalamar". Indalamar is a WoW player who posted a video of Warrior damage being too high during vanilla WoW beta, and Blizzard made many nerfs to Warrior class the same day. He became famous within the warrior community, and was later hired by Blizzard as an item developer.
-US game clients have a "Randomize Name" option at the character creation screen, but EU clients don't have that option.
-There were four trinket slots back in alpha as you can see on this picture http://i8.tinypic.com/25k6geg.jpg (also note the old interface)
-You can also drag items into your character's portrait on the character tab to equip them.
-The ropes and wood on the Orgrimmar entrance walls are actually drawn on the wall instead of being on it.
-Warlocks in alpha and early beta were wearing leather armor.
-To join a battleground, you needed to be at the entrance portal of that battleground, because there were no battlemasters in Capital Cities.(WSG=North Barrens/Ashenvale, AV=Hillsbrad Foothills, AB=Arathi Highlands)
-There were bosses that were completely immune to some schools of magic, and poisons. Mages had to raid Molten Core with frost spec, and Rogues lost quite a bit of DPS on poison immune bosses.
-Before rested experience was revamped, you could go into negative experience if you didn't rest, earning like -25% or -50% experience.
-Mages could use Blink while on a flight path to cancel it and fall off.
-Warrior Charge and Intercept was affected by snare effects, so you would end up way behind your target.
-Rend dealt very low damage during Vanilla and tbc, and Warriors almost never used it.
-In beta the final protection Warrior talent was Combat Endurance, which allowed 10% of your spirit regeneration to continue while in combat.
-Curse of the Elements and Curse of Shadow used to give negative resistance, and they also allowed negative resists, giving you a chance to hit for double damage.
-Warlock Firestones and Spellstones were items that were used in offhand slots(and later in wand slot). Firestone gave you a chance on melee hit to deal fire damage, and spellstone removed all magic effects from you. They were changed into weapon enchants they are today.
-Guild Leaders of MC/BWL raiding guilds often asked their members to set their hearthstone to Kargath.
-Shortly after WotLK release, a Mage found out they can Spellsteal Bone Shield from a trash mob in Naxxramas. It absorbed a lot of damage and coupled with the talent Incanter's Absorption, mages could solo pretty much everything in Naxx.
-Gamon had an ability that knocked back and dismounted the target. Priests were able to Mind Control him and throw people off the tower with flight paths.
-Before dismounting in water was removed, Gnomes were dismounted by shallow water in Zangarmarsh/Swamp of Sorrows, where other races had no problems with it.
-Mages in beta had an ability called "Phantasm", which is like mirror image on live.
-This was recent, but mining took more than one cast to pick up everything.
-In Beta, Shamans were the class that had Combat Resurrection spell instead of Druids. It was given to Druids because Shamans were a horde-only class.
-Earthbind totem had no cooldown, so Shamans could kite infinitely.
-Each time a Shaman did a talent respec from Enhancement, he lost all weapon skill with two handed maces/axes, because they were a talent in the enhancement tree.
-Some green-quality lowbie shields could get a random enhancement with +Shadow Power, even though no shield-using class can benefit from Shadow Spell damage bonus.
-Hunters in TBC could macro their entire rotation into one button, and bind it to mouse scroll.
-Destruction Warlock rotation in TBC consisted of just spamming Shadow Bolt and nothing else.
-Southeast of Hammerfall in Arathi Highlands, there are rocks which are shaped like "LOL" http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/File:LOL_in_Highlands_mountain_side.jpg
-There is a level 40 Ogre quest giver in Dustwallow Marsh called Draz'Zilb. Try reading his name backwards.
-The Goblin auction houses in Booty Bay, Everlook and Gadgetzan were not linked.
-The word "Min-maxing" pretty much didn't exist during vanilla raiding. Also most people weren't using any rotation at all.
-Raiding Herbalists usually had a dreadful job of farming Potion/Flask mats before raids.
-Before it was fixed, Hunters and Warlocks would resurrect without their pets in Battlegrounds, so they had to resummon them each time they died. There was also no buff that reduced mana cost of your spells after you resurrected.
-The Horde starting cave in AV was a little bit north of where it is now, but Blizzard moved it down because Horde would get to Balinda faster than Alliance would get to Galv.
-The low level Rams/Wolves in Alterac Valley were added so lower level players who joined the battle would kill them to level and upgrade friendly troops with turn-in items.
-If you've never done Ogri'la dailies in Blade's Edge Mountains, there is a very awesome event called "Shartuul's Transporter", available once you reach Honored reputation. I would recommend doing it, as it is one of the most cool and challenging solo content in the game.
-One of the auctioneers in Undercity is named "Yarly", which is a joke on the "Orly" meme.
-An NPC in the Echo Isles event is called Zild'jian <Vol'jin's Wardrummer>. Zildjian is the biggest Cymbal producer company in the world.
-In Uldaman, there are some Dwarves at the start of the instance, and you can find "Gni'kiv Medallion" and "Staff of Tsol", when you read those two backwards, you get "Lost Vikings" which is one of the first Blizzard games.
-Haste rating didn't exist on gear at all.
-Wowhead didn't exist in early vanilla WoW, and most people didn't know about Thottbot, which made General/Trade chat much more active than today. Barrens chat...
-There were no built-in Raid Frames, so the only way to see it was to use CTMod addon.
-Most zones had only one graveyard. This was a bit problematic in big zones such as Barrens and STV.
-Some raid buffs such as Auras and Totems were only group wide.
-Some raid additions such as /raidwarning, the ability to mark mobs and Threat Meters(wait 3 sunders) were only available with specific addons, before Blizzard added them into the game themselves.
-There were no Guild Banks, so most guilds used low level characters to store everything the guild needed.
-If a level 60 Hunter tamed a level 20 pet, the pet would remain level 20 instead of jumping to 55.
-Grand Marshal/High Warlord gear had about MC level stats, so by AQ40/Naxx it was really outdated when compared to raid gear.
-Resilience didn't exist, so there was almost no difference between PvE and PvP gear.
-Paladin and Warlock mounts used to cost 150 mana to summon.
-Armor Penetration used to reduce enemy armour by static amount. So if you had 1500 ARP and your enemy had 2000 armour, you would attack him with just 500 armour. It was very OP against cloth and pretty weak against plate.
-Alchemists could create flasks only at an Alchemy Lab. There were only two in the game, one in Scholomance and the second one was in BWL. So they had to go there each time they wanted to create a flask.
-Engineering was by far the best profession for PvP. Stuff like Grenades and Mind Control Helmets were used much more often than today.
-At Vanilla release and in the following months, due to overcrowded servers, players very often experienced the infamous ’’loot lag’’. You would get stuck in the loot position from looting pretty much anything, even using gathering professions.
-In the Statistics tab of Achievements window, you can see a picture of Nozdormu in the background, if you look carefully.
-Before Blood Elves were added to the game, Alliance outnumbered Horde on most realms. Ha.
-The longest Arena season was Season 8, which lasted 37 weeks, and the shortest were seasons 4 and 5. Most players consider S2 to be the best (except ret paladins
) and S5 the worst season (see below why).
-When Death Knights were added in WotLK they were extremely overpowered. They had a talent (Shadow of Death) which turned them into a ghoul when they died, and that worked in Arena too. Oh, and five words: Glyph of Death and Decay.
-There were no Paid Character Transfers, so if you wanted to play on another server, you had to reroll, no matter how geared your characters were.
-You had to run on foot till Level 40, because there were no mounts at level 20. And they were also much more expensive.
-Trolls had the weakest Racials for most of Vanilla and TBC. There was even a famous joke “I’m regenerating 5 Health per second, and there is nothing you can do about it!”
-The most popular Horde race/class combination was Undead Rogue. I’m sure Alliance Warlocks/Priests remember them well…
-Warlock and Paladin epic mounts weren’t trainable, they required you to complete a long (and epic) questline, which sadly got removed.
-Before WotLK was released, Dalaran was just a huge purple dome in Alterac Mountains.
-Former Paladin talent “Illumination” used to return 100% of the mana cost if it was a critical heal.
-Paladins had no Divine Plea, so once you ran out of mana, you had almost no ways to get it back.
-Potions could be used multiple times in a single boss fight, bringing lots of potions to the raid was a must.
-Windfury Totem applied a Windfury Weapon effect on the weapons of players affected by the totem, instead of giving a flat haste increase.
-Some Shaman totems were merged together in one totem, such as Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totem.
-Shamans had “Windwall Totem” spell, which reduced ranged damage taken.
-Players were always dismounted when entering water.
-Dwarf Stone Form racial made the player immune to poison/disease/bleed effects for 8 seconds, but was nerfed because of DK’s.
-Players needed to stand next to a Lexicon of Power to apply a glyph.
-Druids weren’t able to use Polearms.
-Dalaran Arena’s size was increased by 25% in patch 3.2
-Orgrimmar arena (Ring of Valor) was supposed to be like Gurubashi Arena, where you can fight players of your own faction, though this was never implemented.
-When Ring of Valor was released in WotLK, it was very buggy and Blizzard had to disable it for some time. It also was a bit different: there were flame walls which dealt fire damage (DK’s could Death Grip + Chains of Ice you into the flames), and you didn’t start on an elevator, but behind a wall.
-Almost all CC effects (except stuns) had a chance to randomly break on players.
-Here is the Vanilla login screen
(that soundtrack is way too epic, so listen it till the end!)
-In TBC, the “final boss” of the expansion (Illidan/Black Temple) was released in the first content patch (both SSC and TK were available on release, but were very buggy).
-Cloak of Shadows was a Subtlety talent early in TBC, and had a 2 minute cooldown.
-Battlegrounds did not award experience at all.
-Each World Tree (in Feralas/Ashenvale/Duskwood/Hinterlands) had a big green Dragon boss guarding the portal.
-Anachronos was located outside of Caverns of Time, and was attackable, but could not be killed.
-Since Cataclysm was in development before WotLK was released, that means that Blizzard is probably developing the next expansion right now.
-Many zones had a different level range, for example Eastern Plaguelands was level 53-60 but now it is 40-45.
-Talent trees before Cataclysm were a bit bigger and players had 71 points to spend in it.
-On the old Blizzard website, there was a page which listed mobs that killed the most players. For most of Vanilla, the top two spots were held by Defias Pillager and Vaelastrasz the Corrupt.
-Everyone who played through Westfall in Vanilla remembers Defias Pillagers. Their Fireballs literally hit for 20-30% of your health, and pulling more than one of them was almost always a certain death.
-Vaelastrasz the Corrupt is the boss that rightfully earned the title “Guild Breaker”. He was only the second boss in Blackwing Lair, but he was pretty much harder than Nefarian. Guilds coming from Molten Core spent many, many nights on him and Razorgore…
-On July 6, 2010 Blizzard announced that they will implement the Real ID system on their forums. Very soon after that, a QQ storm of biblical proportions happened on the forums. It was by far the biggest outcry in the history of WoW, there was a thread with more than 2000 pages. 3 days later, Blizzard decided to cancel it. “Thou shalt not speaketh about Real ID”.
-Most Raids in Vanilla and TBC required players to complete extensive attunement quest chains. Here is a funny interactive video about the Horde Onyxia attunement quest chain. (Click on the annotations)
-There is a High Elf mob named “Adon” who stands at the Ghostlands portal in Eastern Plaguelands. He serves no purpose at all, Blizzard just added him to indicate that the content behind him will come in an “addon”.
-According to Blizzard, Kul Tiras may be available in a future patch in Cataclysm.
-Argent Tournament event in Icecrown was originally supposed to be in Crystalsong Forest, but they decided to put it in Icecrown instead because of lag from Dalaran.
-Dwarf Stoneform Racial used to reduce movement speed.
-Blizzard had to bulk up Blood Elf male models in TBC alpha, because they were even slimmer than today (hard to imagine that).
-Rogues were probably the most popular class in Vanilla, but now they are second to last, only behind Warlocks.
-Night Elf Hunters were by far the most hated race/class combination. If there was one in your pug group (and especially named after Legolas), the chance for that group to succeed was very small.
-There is a Toyota commercial featuring World of Warcraft. You can see it here
-WotLK had a Zombie Infestation event shortly before release. It was largely inspired by ZG Corrupted Blood incident. Although it caused a very big outcry, many of us will remember it as one of the most fun events in the game. Braaaaaaains!
-It was not possible to transfer a character from a PvE server to a PvP server. Blizzard said many times that they won’t make it possible, but they eventually caved in.
-Players in China are playing a heavily edited version of the game. Due to censorship, anything related with Death had to be removed. So Death Knights are called “Fade Knights”, with abilities such as Fade Coil, Fade and Decay, Spirit World Strike (Death Strike) etc.
-Here is how Lord Marrowgar looks in China http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/christoki/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNDI3NzUzNg==/?ref=
-There was a character progression system called Path of the Titans, planned to be released with Cataclysm, but was cancelled. It was supposed to be heavily linked with Archaeology and was very big and complicated. You can read about it here http://www.wowwiki.com/Path_of_the_Titans
-When Race Change feature was released, many Horde players rushed to change to Undead. Few days later, Blizzard announced a major nerf to Will of the Forsaken, which left many players heartbroken. Nice timing!
-In Season 5, some Engineering items such as Rocket Boots and Gnomish Lightning Generator were usable in arena. At one point, over 70% of the highest rated players had Engineering as their profession.
-In original Naxxramas in Vanilla, there was a door in Spider Wing which could be moused over to see the name “Doodad_Nox_door_spider02”, and Blizzard never bothered to fix it.
-On US forums, there was a Community Manager called Caydiem. In one thread about Rogues, she said that “she had seen BWL many times, was in a pro raiding guild and that Rogues were fine". Some days later, someone actually found what her in-game character was. It turned out she had not seen BWL at all, and was using Silent Fang as her main-hand weapon. For months after that, even mentioning Silent Fang earned yourself a ban.
-The only Flight Path in Silithus was at the camp close to the entrance from Un’Goro. And also all mobs in Silithus didn’t drop any loot at all.
-There is a mob in Twilight Highlands called ’’Mia the Rose“. Her name is a reference to Mia Rose, a pornographic actress who was an avid WoW player.
-Low level Night Elf players had to run through Wetlands, Loch Modan and Dun Morogh to reach Ironforge. Without a mount.
-Before Blizzard ended the Beta test in 2004, they summoned a very large amounts of demons and other big mobs just for fun. Here is how that looked like http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/End_of_beta_event
-During the Cataclysm beta Blizzard added a mob(s) called ’’Epicus Maximus“, flying above The Maelstrom . You can read about it here http://www.wowwiki.com/Epicus_Maximus
-The Battle for Gilneas battleground was supposed to be a 40vs40 BG in the City of Gilneas, but Blizzard decided to make it smaller and 10vs10.
-The Wrathgate questline in Dragonblight had a Battle for The Undercity quest in it’s quest chain, but it got removed in Cataclysm because of phasing issues.
-Rogue energy used to regenerate 20 every 2 seconds.
-The most nerfed boss in the game is Magtheridon, with Yogg-Saron being behind him. After all the changes, Magtheridon was pretty much 2x easier than he was at TBC release.
-Leveling 1-60 was much, much slower than today. Since most people were new to this game, it took about 2 months to reach 60 for most people.
-In Molten Core, behind the boss called Golemagg the Incinerator, there was a furnace that dealt a lot of damage (around 3-4k per second) when you get close to it. MC raiding guilds used to trick new players, telling them they will see Ragnaros when they look into it. Next thing that happens, 15 people are instantly dead.
-In 2008, Blizzard announced a console game called ’’ World of Warcraft: The Molten Core’’ as the April Fools joke. You can read more about it here http://www.wowpedia.org/World_of_War...he_Molten_Core
-Also the 2008 April Fools was the ’’Bard“ class for WotLK. It was so cool, that some people actually believed in it! http://www.wowpedia.org/Bard_(hero_class)
-But probably the best April Fools was the 2004 Ogre race joke. http://www.wowpedia.org/Ogre_(April_Fools)
-You had to be within about 10 yards of the player to inspect him. When people in Epic gear stood in a Capital city, there would be dozens of people around inspecting him.
-There was a thing called ’’walljumping“. You could jump on walls and slowly climb to reach stuff that isn’t supposed to be reached (before flying mounts), but it was removed unfortunately.
-There is an axe called Arcanite Reaper. This weapon was infamous during Vanilla because of it’s 3.8 weapon speed, which made it extremely powerful in the hands of Warriors and Enhancement Shamans. Arcanite Reaper Hooooooo!
-Thottbot was the site that people used before wowhead.
-Some Hunters used to roll on most weapons that dropped in instances, using an excuse ’’HUNTER WEAPON!“ This later became a popular joke, with people leaving ’’HUNTER WEAPON!“ comments on Thottbot even on weapons that Hunters couldn’t use. (And sometimes even on items that were not weapons at all).
-Hunters had an epic quest line to obtain an epic Staff and Bow. To complete this quest you needed to kill 4 strong demons, all by yourself (no pets, and no heals or the demon will despawn). It was made so the Hunters who complete it were ’’skilled“ and knew how to kite.
-Being a level 60 Dwarf Priest often meant instant raid spot because of Fear Ward, no matter what your gear was.
-Some Warlocks used to dismiss their pets once they get Living Bomb debuff on Baron Geddon in Molten Core, and resummon them in a crowded place. Here is how it looks like
-Warrior tanks in Vanilla (when they were the only tanks) usually didn’t even spec fully into Protection, most of them were Fury.
-You couldn’t see the talents of another players by inspecting them, so many healers were healing in a DPS spec, to avoid respec bills.
-You couldn’t have both Horde and Alliance characters on a PvP server.
-Before the Spellpower revamp at WotLK release, some items had Spell Damage bonus on specific schools, for example + Fire Spell Damage or Nature Spell Damage.
-Before BWL was released, Blizzard released some screenshots from the instance, showing a raid fighting Chromaggus in the room of Vaelastrasz the Corrupt. When some guilds got to Chromaggus and started wiping on him, they thought that the only way to defeat him was to ’’kite him to vael’s room“. Later, some guilds as a joke started suggesting that tactic for any boss they had difficulties with, even if that boss wasn’t in Blackwing Lair. That became a very popular joke that people were using even in TBC.
-It was(is?) possible to reach an early and unfinished version of Zul Gurub when jumping from Karazhan. Here is the video for it
-Here is an interesting video showing exploration of some unreleased zones
-If you cast a water walking buff on you (such as Path of Frost), and jump from a high distance into the water, you will suffer fall damage and die.
-In 2007 Jeff Kaplan said in an interview that Blizzard had "actually done a lot of work on the Emerald Dream but we scrapped what we had for bigger, grander plans.“
-Shamans had a totem called Sentry Totem, which was considered by many players to be the least used spell in the game. It was actually a well known spell, though mostly because of it’s uselessness. Cataclysm left many Shamans heartbroken, because Sentry Totem was removed.
-Before Hunter pets were normalized, all pets had different stats and attack speed. There was a rare cat mob in Badlands called Broken Tooth which could be tamed by Hunters. He was considered the ultimate Hunter pet, because he had a 1.0 attack speed (before buffs), which made him a true nightmare for casters.
-If you died from jumping off Bloodvenom Post in Felwood, you would appear at the closest graveyard in Darkshore. Although that graveyard is pretty close to your corpse, the only way to reach it was to go all the way through Darkshore, Ashenvale and Felwood, which means you are going to run for about 20 minutes, making it the longest corpse run in the game.
-Hunter Marksmanship talent tree had a different name – “Ranged Combat”, probably because Survival was the melee tree.
-Before it was fixed in early TBC, Engineers could use Gnomish Universal Remote to control Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula and easily kill players.
-Shaman ability Stormstrike could be stacked multiple times on one target, which was used to get one of the highest critical hits in Vanilla. Here is a video of it
-Warlock spell Ritual of Summoning didn’t create a Meeting Stone-like portal, it was used to summon individual players. Warlocks sometimes had to farm 30+ Soul Shards to summon the whole raid.
-At release, there were no additional skill bars, you had just the main skill bar and you had to flip pages. You had to use an addon to have more bars, before Blizzard added it.
-In Stratholme, there is a raid instance portal behind Baron Rivendare’s building. It was probably meant to be an entrance to Naxxramas early in the game development, but it was never implemented.
-If you kill a boss called Stonespine in Stratholme, there is a chance that he will drop a cloak that is white and looks longer than your average cloak or cape.
-Sylvanas Windrunner in Vanilla and TBC used a Night Elf model instead of the one she has now.
-Warrior spells Retaliation/Shield Wall/Recklessness used to share cooldowns, and it was a 30 minute cooldown.
-Hunters who have 31 point Beast Mastery talent are able to tame Chromaggus in Blackwing Lair.
-There was a legendary weapon called Andonisus, Reaper of Souls which could be acquired only during the fight with a boss called Atiesh in Stratholme, though it was usable for only 5 minutes to help with that particular bossfight.
-You can see Azeroth in some areas of Black Temple.
-Like Honorable kills, there were Dishonorable kills, which were gained by killing civilian NPC’s, and they could reduce player’s rank all the way to zero.
-Shaman Reincarnation spell used to cause Resurrection Sickness early in Vanilla.
-Paladin Judgement spell worked a bit different. Each Seal had a different effect when unleashed, and casting Judgement also consumed the seal. For example, Seal of the Crusader used to increase Holy damage taken, and Seal of Command (which was the most used seal) dealt Holy damage, and that damage was 3x higher if the target was stunned.
-Notorious movie director Uwe Boll once attempted to apply for job of director for the Warcraft movie, to which Blizzard CEO Paul Sams replied "We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you."
-All Taunt abilities had only 5 yard range.
-In lore, Teldrassil is supposed to look like this, but in game it had to be made as a Baobab because of game engine limitations.
Props to Palidan on MMO Champion for this
And further props to Thorë who re-posted this onto the bizzard forums.
I thought it could do with a format update and some fresh links that actually work.
My favourite part has to be about Warlocks dismissing their pet in MC after they had the living bomb debuff, only to summon them in a crowded place one shotting low levels.
Enjoy.
-During original WoW alpha, Scholomance was supposed to be an outdoor elite area (probably where Sorrow Hill is now), but the developers made it so big and good that they decided to make it an instance.
-At the beginning, there were shields and bucklers. Rogues and Hunters could use bucklers, but they later removed them, and Rogues/Hunters couldn't equip shields anymore. There are still bucklers in game, but they are labeled as "Shields".
-Survival talents for Hunters was the "melee" tree and had a Lacerate ability which dealt less than 100 damage at level 60.
-Discipline tree for Priests was supposed to be a "melee" tree (like Monks in some other games), which is why Inner Fire increased attack power.
-In Vanilla beta, Dwarves could be Mages.
-Hunters were using focus as their resource system, but it regenerated while standing still, and was very overpowered so they gave them mana instead.
-Several classes had talents which increased stats by a raw number (for example 20/40/60/80/100 Spell Damage (not percent but just 100 Spell Damage)), and they didn't scale at all with gear/level.
-There was almost no Spell Damage on gear during early Vanilla. It wasn't a strange thing to see a level 60 Mage with less than 30 Spell Damage.
-The reason why there are so many cloaks with exactly the same stats in the starting areas was because cloaks also had armor types (for example cloth/leather/mail/plate cloaks)
-There were two big islands off the western coast of STV, which were removed, but if you go far enough with mount and water walking, you can reach the area where they were. You will see that you are zoning in Isle of Doctor Lapidis or Gillijim's Isle.
-Elwynn Forest, Stormwind and Westfall were the first zones that Blizzard made back before 2001. That is why they are crappier than other starting zones.
-Azshara has very little quests because Blizzard has designed it with a terrible layout, and they realized that too late. They thought most people would hate it so much, so they just didn't bother and left it for future expansions (Cataclysm)
-Their original design(back before alpha) was that Horde and Alliance each had only 100 quests in the game.(was said in a recent interview)
-At release, there were no quests at all in Silithus (or anything important), and it was added in a later patch.
-There were much less quests past level 50 at release, so players complained that they had to grind mobs in order to level, and Blizzard added more quests later.
-Blackrock Spire, Stratholme and Scholomance were all tuned for 15 people raids, and they were still way too hard even with 15 people, which they later toned down to 5 players (except for UBRS which is 10 player)
-Before TBC was released, you were able to blink through Deadmines portal and glitch it, cast slow fall off an unfinished tunnel, and reach a very early version of Hellfire Peninsula. Here is a video of it
-Emerald Dream was supposed to be released in Vanilla, as either zone/raid/continent. They scrapped it, but there are Emerald Dream zones in the game files, though not accessible in any way on official servers.
-T2 sets dropped in Molten Core, and had different graphics.
-Epic Mounts at release were just recolored normal mounts without armor. They removed them and replaced with armored mounts later (R.I.P Ivory Raptor).
-Tauren didn't have a mount at all, they had a Plainsrunning ability.
-Ironforge was by far the largest city in game, because it had two floors instead of one, and the one which exists today is smaller than before. The Great Forge was also visible in game. Here is a video of it
-Gnomeregan was supposed to be a city like all others, Ironforge had an elevator which led into Gnomeregan, but they turned it into an instance because it would create faction imbalance.
-Undercity was even more complicated to navigate, so they removed the second floor (it is still accessible in game).
-Humans and Orcs were the first Races Blizzard created in game.
-Human females and Orc males used a slightly different model.
-You would be scared if you saw how Female Trolls looked in alpha.
-Goldshire was a lot bigger, and it resembled a real village. But Blizzard realized that they can't make other starting zone hubs that big, and they removed a lot of buildings in Goldshire so it would be even for all zones.
-Overall Graphics in WoW are definitely improved since it's release, but in alpha, the graphics looked more realistic (but lower quality than now), and they toned them down.
-Naxxramas is still physically present in Eastern Plaguelands today. There is no way to enter it or see it (it is invisible). If you logged off your character in old Naxx before WotLK was released, you would appear in EPL Naxx with portals to Northrend. Video
-Undead were able to communicate with the Alliance.
-Undead were really Undead, so they could have been targeted by Exorcism and such spells (back when it only worked on undead and demons).
-Will of the Forsaken was a passive buff which made you immune to Sleep, Polymorph and Fear effects. That didn't last long.
-Cloaks weren't visible at all until beta, due to player request.
-CC effects didn't have reduced duration on PvP targets, so a Rogue or Mage could CC you up to 1 min (or more).
-Mages had an invisibility spell earlier, and you could cast Pyroblast while still invisible. It was removed because of an outcry from other players.
-There were no guards at neutral cities, so most of them were slaughter fests.
-Maraudon was added in a content patch.
-Warrior Charge ability used to teleport you to your target instead of increasing your run speed.
-Wands couldn't auto-shoot so you had to click it each time you wanted to hit.
-Spell schools used to have a skill system similar to todays weapon skills. "Your skill in Fire has increased to 93"
-There was only one flight path and graveyard in the Barrens. Ugh.
-Warlock spell Banish had a 30 minute cooldown for some reason.
-Rogues and Druids had "Feign Death" abilities before they were moved to the Hunter class.
-Mages had an ability called "Khadgar's Unlocking" which was like Rogue pick lock spell.
-The only Enchanting trainer at higher level was in Uldaman.
-Each major city had its own special auction house, so Darnassus was pretty useless.
-Although Azshara crater, a scrapped battleground, never appeared in game, it is in the game files.
-All wings of Scarlet Monastery were once a single instance, but they have split it into four because it was too big.
-The Black Morass instance (without the mobs and bosses) was in the game files since 2004.
-Hellfire Peninsula was supposed to be a 54-60 zone.
-Andorhal in Western Plaguelands was a very hard elite area (MC geared players had problems with it). Araj the Summoner was tuned for 20+ people. It also had ruined walls around it's borders, which were later removed.
-There are Programmer isle and Designer Isle in the game files but aren't accessible.
-Player Housing was briefly tested and scrapped completely. Here is an interesting picture http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Player_housing
-If you look at the beginning of the original WoW cinematic, you'll notice half of Silithus is missing on the map. That's because it wasn't there at that time.
-Blizzard definitely wasn't wrong when they said Emerald Dream was gonna look awesome.
-The very first legendary item that dropped was a necklace (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talisman_of_Binding_Shard ) that dropped off Baron Geddon. It was removed from the loot table, but the player who got it was allowed to keep it. Here is his armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Blackrock/Savorx/(You can't see it because it shows an error).
-Hunters were the last class to be introduced in Beta.
-Paladin Judgement had a cast time.
-Shaman Enhancement tree had a couple of tanking talents/spells, although they were never really able to tank anything other than occasional trash.
-Warlocks were able to summon people off cliffs, and Mages/some other classes were able to CC people underwater and make them drown.
-Warrior Recklessness used to reduce targets armor to 0.
-On release, there was no PvP content at all. It was added some months later(battlegrounds and honor system).
-Flight masters didn't summon mobs to help so they were sometimes camped constantly.
-Many people don't know this, but there is a "click to move" option in WoW. You can click on the spot on the ground, and your character will move to that spot, like in RPG games.
-Paladins had about a dozen seals removed, namely Seal of Fury, Seal of the Crusader, Seal of Sacrifice, Seal of Wrath and others. They also had Crusader Strike and Holy Strike in beta.
-I'm not 100% sure on this, but when you died you lost a small amount of XP.
-Warlock Felsteed mount was called "Nightmare".
-Kick and other interrupts had a 75% chance to hit.
-Mages had to spend 5 talent points in Arcane tree to make Arcane Explosion instant. Evocation was a talent also.
-Shamans had Magma Blast and Lightning Shock spells.
-Since the Vanilla definition of "Hybrid Class" really meant "Hybrid Class", the itemization was quite strange. Paladins/druids/shamans had all stats on their gear, and for some reason Rogues, Warriors and some other classes had spirit or some useless stat for them on their gear.
-Windfury Weapon procs could proc off eachother. So theoretically Shamans could one shot a raid boss if stars aligned.
-Paladin Reckoning talent could be stacked to infinite stacks. It was used to one shot Lord Kazzak, and it was hotfixed within 24 hours of that event.
-Mages and Priests had a "Sleep" spell.
-Eviscerate had a base damage that didn't scale at all, so a naked rogue would hit the same as a full T3 rogue.
-The best level 60 Warrior dps item was a level 44 mail gloves (Edgemaster's Gauntlets), because they had weapon skill bonuses.
-Rogue and Warrior mace specialization used to randomly stun people. They were changed to ARP bonuses in WotLK.
-Mortal strike hit for 200% weapon damage, making 50% healing debuff almost useless because you would 1-2 shot cloth.
-You weren't able to see buffs on enemy players, but Mages had "Detect Magic" spell.
-Deathwish and Enrage could stack for some scary DPS increase. (Enrage was 40%)
-There was a way to gain reputation with Wildhammer clan and Revantusk trolls, but they had no reward at all and they just removed it later.
-Bosses had only 8 debuff slots, so Warriors were sometimes kicked for speccing into Deep Wounds.
-Hunter and Warlock pets didn't scale with any stat at all.
-Many players think that the worst quest in Vanilla was "Deep Ocean, Vast Sea...", because the breath timer was only 60 seconds and Murlocs could move through walls.
-There was no Arcane resistance, but there was Holy resistance. Today it's vice-versa.
-Hunter Arcane Shot scaled from Spell Damage, which is why Hunter T2.5 set has Spell Damage bonus on it.
-Healing and Spell Damage were two separate stats. So leveling as a holy priest/paladin would be a suicide.
-Mage Arcane tree and Priest Discipline tree had talents that improved wand damage. This was removed in 3.0
-Wound poison would stack to 5 for 10/20/30/40/50% healing debuff.
-Dispelling poisons was actually a good tactic because it's application chance was much lower.
-Although never confirmed, there is a rumor that Ironforge Airstation was supposed to be a Gnome starting area.
-Priests had racial spells, but some of them were turned into baseline priest spells and some other removed. (human-desperate prayer/troll-hex of weakness/undead-devouring plague)
-There was a period in TBC when Orcs had bugged shoulder size (2x smaller), and worst of all, it took Blizzard 2-3 months to fix it.
-Undead had slightly bigger shoulder size than today.
-Recently, in the Ulduar patch, a GM accidentally mailed a player with Martin Fury. That is an artifact level shirt that has a "on use" effect that one shots everything. He used it to one shot Malygos, and couple of bosses in Ulduar. People noticed on his statistics tab that he had an abysmally high "Highest hit ever" number, and he got a permanent ban shortly after.
-Female Tauren had a lot of doors/obstacles that they couldn't fit through. They still do, but much less.
-Tauren were not being able to fit through the MC entrance window (next to the High Elf quest giver)
-And the best one! Instance servers being full, and 40 people jumping through the window of MC to zone in, inevitably falling into the lava, getting "Instance servers are full, try again later" message
-Trolls used to have a joke ( /silly emote) that said this "I kill two dwarves in da morning,I kill two dwarves at night,I kill two dwarves in the afternoon, and than I feel alrgiht.I kill two dwarves in time of peace and two in time of war,I kill two dwarves before I kill two dwarves, and then I kill two more." This was removed from the game, because it was a reference to smoking weed.
-There is a very creepy crypt behind Karazhan which is currently inaccessible except for hunters/shamans chain farsighting/eagle eye. It is pretty well done, and was probably shaping to become something, but Blizzard decided to abandon it.
-In alpha WoW, all instance portals used a "Dark Portal" model as a placeholder. There was one dark portal in underwater Azshara, which would lead to assume that there was supposed to be an instance in Azshara underwater. Maybe they just threw it there randomly, who knows. Pic https://i.redd.it/mopkg9xclz1z.jpg
-Meeting stones weren't used for summoning other people, they were used so you can look for other people who queued for that instance.
-Retaliation had no animation, and you couldn't see the buffs of your enemies, so Warriors could pop it against Rogues who had very little chance to notice it.
-After a patch in Vanilla, something got bugged and Warriors received one extra talent point, which allowed them to spec 31/21/0 and be very overpowered.
-People used to pay a lot for people that had a key to Upper Blackrock Spire.
-The Unstoppable Force (AV exalted weapon) used to knock back players instead of stunning them.
-There was a Hunter that stacked Spell Damage gear(for mend pet) and soloed Azuregos.
-The term "Globaled" which people oftenly say today when they get killed very fast, doesn't actually exist today. In vanilla, Mages could actually really "Global" you, using PoM/Pyro macro and double spelldamage trinket in one button. If it critted, it could one shot a raid geared Warrior.
-Warlocks could kill people in duels. (and I really mean "kill")
-There is an achievement called "Old School Ride". You need to have a first epic mounts that Blizzard added at release (the ones without armor). Since it costed 1000g (that was really a lot of money back then), and was removed pretty shortly after release, very few people got that achievement.
-Warriors often fell through the world when using Charge/Intercept, and Charge could be used in combat.
-Walljumping allowed you to carry the flag in WSG to an unreachable spot, making you invulnerable. If both flag carriers did that, the game could last until the players log out/dc (which could be days).
-Intellect increased the speed you gain weapon skills.
-Warlock Succubus pets used to have less clothes, but they added more later.
-Druids couldn't cast for a few seconds after leaving a form. There was a talent to allow that.
-Shamans had a talent that allowed them to equip two handed axes and maces.
-Since there were no casting bars, shamans and druids used hearthstone to lure interrupts so they can heal.(they have the same casting animation).
-There is an NPC next to Haris Pilton in Shattrath City (Ricole Nichie), that is only viewable by priests who have Eye of Divinity equipped.
-You could communicate cross-faction by using lines to make words( |-| | )
-Gurubashi Catacombs was an arena that was supposed to be the first arena in TBC, but got scrapped.
-After Feign Death timer ended, Hunters would really die.
-There is a cloth blue item set that drops in Scholomance. For some reason, it's set bonus increases defense.
-Hippogryphs in Azshara used to drop more money than any other mob in the game, so it was usually farmed by bots 24/7.
-Sap was breaking stealth, and there was a talent that gave 90% chance to the rogue to remain in stealth after using sap. Sucks if it didn't work and you got killed immediately in instances.
-In TBC beta, there was a quest reward dagger in Netherstorm that dealt arcane damage instead of physical. It scaled with spellpower, so mages would hit really hard with it in melee.
-Balance druids were utterly useless at Vanilla release. Than they added Moonkin form halfway through vanilla, but they still sucked.
-Deeprun Tram was supposed to connect Stormwind and Darnassus.
-Baron Rivendare's mount had about 0.02 chance to drop, so anyone that had it was considered a god (especially alliance). Today it is a 1% chance.
-Rogue detect traps ability had a "Swirly Ball" animation. All rogues loved it and spammed it all the time, and there was a huge outcry when Blizzard removed it.
-The rarest mount in game is Fluorescent Green Mechanostrider. http://www.wowwiki.com/Fluorescent_Green_Mechanostrider
-There is a cave in Dun Morogh, and when you enter it, you enter Silithus general chat.
-Rogues had a poison brewing profession, and poisons had stacks that were spent on attacking, and they had to refresh poisons on their weapons during bossfights.
-Blizzard said in Vanilla WoW many times that Shadowfang Keep is their favorite instance, and the one they have spent most time on.
-Orc racial Blood Fury only increased melee attack power by 25%, and when the effect expired, you lost 25% of your AP for 45 seconds. Also reduced healing by 50%. Overall it was useless for Orc Warlocks and resto/elemental Shamans.
-All Polearms were called Spears.
-You could swap armour and weapons during combat (now its only weapons).
-You didn't lose durability when dying, but you lost more durability during combat.
-Hunters gained 2 attack power per 1 point of agility.
-Hunters couldn't lay traps in combat. It was changed in TBC so you can do it, but with 2 second cast time.
-A good one: Survival talent tree for Hunters had a different name - "Outdoormanship"
-The paladin spell Holy Wrath was once named "Judgment"
-There was no countdown on duels.
-PvP trinkets were class specific, for example, Warrior trinket broke only stuns or warlock only snares (don't remember exactly).
-Healing spells had 30 yard range and classes had talents to increase its range.
-Barkskin increased your cast time and slowed melee speed.
-Enslave demon buff was dispellable, so the enslaved demon would attack the Warlock.
-Druids couldn't shapeshift to break Polymorph.
-Channelled spells (such as arcane missiles) couldn't be interrupted.
-Upon release, boats (and zeppelins?) were very unstable and buggy, so they disabled them for a short time until they fixed it. They added an NPC called Captain Placeholder which teleported players for some money. He was so popular, that players made a lament for him.
-Thrown weapons had charges, like todays ammo.
-In the patch that introduced TBC talents in Vanilla, it also introduced paladin/horde - shaman/alliance gear. Since there were no horde paladins and alliance shamans yet, those drops were just wasted.
-Night Elf guards in Darnassus and some other settlements are always female. Blood Elf guards are always male.
-WotLK in China was relased in August 2010, which is nearly 2 years later than it's release in Europe/NA.
-There is no WoW in Japan at all.
-Sylvanas in WoW had 3-4 different voice actors.
-Draenei were announced as a playable race 6-7 months after TBC was announced.
-Chris Metzen is the voice actor of Ragnaros/Nefarian/Thrall/Rexxar/Varian Wrynn/Deathbringer Saurfang/Algalon, and many more.
-Azjol-nerub was supposed to be a raid instance/zone instead of ToC, but left behind as blizzard realized that it was too big, so they put all of what they have done in OK/AN instances(it really is big). They also said in a recent interview that their biggest disappointment about WotLK is not making AN a zone.
-The longest instance corpse run was Crossroads-Razorfen Downs, because there was only one graveyard in Barrens. The longest non-instance corpse run was probably in Blade's edge mountains before they fixed graveyards there.
-Bind on pickup was called "Bind on Acquire".
-Everyone could see Spirit Healers, including people who are alive.
-There is a Spirit Healer west of Crossroads that is named "Koiter". He is a memorial to Michael Koiter, a Blizzard artist that died during the development of WoW.
-Battleground groups weren't formed automatically upon joining the BG, so it was "INV PLZ" spamfest during the first minutes.
-A Death Knight could Death Grip someone while standing on the Booty Bay boat, and that person would be sent flying across the continent, ending up below Alterac Mountains. Here is the video of it
-Hunters would usually go out of mana after 3 shots, so they were mostly auto shooting in PvP. However in PvE, you could FD+drink/swap gear.
-Unfortunately, Moonkins would just go out of mana after 3 spells. They were mostly brought there for the /dance.
-Paladin blessings lasted 5 minutes. So by the time you buffed 40 raid members, the first ones you buffed would have 2-3 minutes left on their blessings. So they were essentially just rebuffing the raid all the time.
-Warlock Death Coil had 10 minute cooldown, and didn't cause any horror effect.
-All mobs in the heavy-silithid areas in Silithus were elite. Also many other mobs in the game had elite status removed.
-Warlocks were able to summon people into battlegrounds, including people who are higher/lower level than the level bracket.
-The longest ever unkilled boss in WoW is Ouro the Sandworm(86 days after the first Twin Emperors kill), with C'thun and Onyxia just behind him. This is because he was very bugged at AQ release, and he is an optional boss.
-If warlocks cast Detect Invisibility in Ruins of Lordaeron or Raven Hill in Duskwood, they can see invisible level 50ish mobs, which can only be seen with this method. They were added so Aliiance Warlocks had a quick way to farm shards while in Stormwind.
-In alpha, there was a "profession" called "Survival Skills". It was used for making campfires (which can now be made with cooking) and torches.
-Those torches were used for scouting. Back than, the graphic engine was a bit different. Darker areas, such as Duskwood, were really "dark" and you couldn't see anything past 20-30 yards in front of you. Torches were used to increase visibility in those darker areas. Many NPC's in Duskwood still hold torches in their hands.
-Cataclysm was in development before WotLK was released.
-If you lower the music settings in settings, and increase ambient sounds to max, you can go to Undercity throne room, and hear the dialogue between Arthas and his father before he killed him.
-In the tunnel before Undercity throne room, you can see rose petals that people threw on Arthas before he killed his father. You can also see blood on the floor as Terenas' bloodied crown fell.
-You can also increase ambient/lower music settings in Raven Hill catacombs and Karazhan crypts. I won't reveal what you will hear
-Moonkin Starfall wasn't cancelled when switching to animal forms. They could do travel form + starfall. It also broke stealth in 30 yard radius, and also did RNG 3 second stun.
-The most overpowered class ever in WoW was Retribution Paladin during the first 24 hours of Patch 3.01 (the one with WotLK talents at level 70). Divine Storm dealt holy damage, and they could do bubble + avenging wrath, with bubble not reducing damage by 50%. Best 24 hours in my life.
-Flight paths were not connected, so you needed to pick the next stop each time you land.
-A questgiver in Borean Tundra has a name "Gorge the Corpsegrinder", which is a tribute to George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, the singer of Cannibal Corpse.
-World of Warcraft was announced in September 2001, and was in development for about a year before that announcement, which means WoW has been in development for 10 years.
-Death Knights and some other classes were planned to be released with original WoW, but they were saved for later.
-In planning stages of WotLK development, they had 3 options for a hero class: Necromancer, Runemaster and Death Knight. In the end, they "combined" all three into one, giving DK's Necromancer niches such as diseases and corpse exploding, and Runemaster niches, their rune resource system. Which is why we will never (99,94%) see those two classes in game.
-Nefarian class calls also has a Death Knight call. Why Blizzard returned to an oldschool instance in WotLK is unknown.
-During the first few months of TBC, there was always a pile of skeletons below Aldor Elevator. Players often called it "elevator boss" and even wrote tactics for defeating it. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/12473117591
-Mind Numbing poison and Curse of Tongues reduced cast speed by 60%.
-If a player under the effect of Curse of Tongues types something in chat, they will speak in [Demonic] language.
-There is a huge smiley face below Karazhan.
-On TBC release, Karazhan gear was weaker than gear from heroic dungeons, and they had to completely reitemize almost all drops.
-Heroic dungeons on TBC release were so hard that many players considered heroic SL/SH and Arcatraz to be impossible to do even in Karazhan gear. They were later nerfed but players still avoided those dungeons like a plague.
-Wintergrasp was supposed to have aerial combat, which was removed. You can see it on your WotLK CD box.
-Onyxia has a "Deep Breath" ability. In vanilla WoW, players didn't know what triggered Deep Breaths(it was just random), which led to many theories and speculations. You can see some here http://www.wowwiki.com/Why_does_Onyx...Deep_Breath?
-There were many jokes like that, for example: "LOOT THE HOUNDS", "kite to vael's room", "furnace behind Golemagg", and many more.
-Here are the old talent trees https://legacy-wow.com/vanilla-talents/hunter-talents// Make sure to check out Survival Hunter tree.
-Blizzard was balancing raids around classes having restricted roles. Only Warriors could tank, priest was by far the best healer, druids were there to innervate the priests, shamans were used mostly as out of combat ressers, and paladins were usually busy rebuffing the raid with 5 minute blessings. Druids, Paladins, and Warlocks(early, before they were buffed their damage was horrible) had no viable dps specs at all.
-Hybrid classes usually dealt about 50% less damage than pure classes. "What is this Feral Druid doing here? Tell him to spec resto and innervate the priests!"
-Not directly related to the game, but shortly after TBC was released, and caused massive shaman nerfs, the shaman community had a massive outcry on the forums. The CM called Tseric had a job to moderate the forums, and after going insane from all the whining, he started to ban ANYONE who posted on the shaman forums(no matter what you posted). He was fired from Blizzard shortly after that.
-Next to Horde Inn in Dalaran, there is a sewer with an NPC at the bottom of it. It is only reachable by engineers using Wormhole Generator.
-If you enter the house north of Goldshire at 7:40 am, you will see 5 children forming a pentagram. You can hear banshee screams, creepy music, and the C'thun sound file saying "You will die".
-In Duskwood, at Beggar's Haunt tower, there is a twisted path behind leading to an area called "Knight's Hollow", it has an unmarked grave with two statues, the same ones found at Dark Portal.
-The wandering tauren female in STV called Samantha Swifthoof currently has no use, but earlier she taught Plainsrunning skill for Tauren.
-Tauren is an anagram for "Nature".
-The area west of Dun Morogh called "Newman's Landing", is used as an area where Alliance characters are dropped upon creation, before the intro video starts. If you stand at a certain spot you will notice level 1 characters appearing for a brief instant before they disappear.
-In the area west of Tirisfal Glades, you can see four large spikes rising from the ground, with each one being taller than the previous one. This is probably the result of a bored developer.
-If you swim east of Tirisfal Glades, you will find an abandoned tower. That area in lore is called "Northeron" but in game it was never implemented.
-If you swim from Tanaris to south of Silithus, you will find a Tauren building with a cave next to it.
-Shade of Aran in Karazhan has a special quote if someone in the raid is wearing Atiesh, saying "Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??"
-If someone enters SM:Cathedral with a Corrupted Ashbringer, there is a neat special event.
-The blocked off portal close to Old Town in Stormwind was supposed to be for player housing.
-There is a lonely street in Stormwind called Cut Throat Alley, accessible through Dwarven District.
-A'dal in Shattrath hits for over 100,000 damage and becomes invulnerable at low health. Blizzard made this change after some players started kiting Fel Reavers to Shattrath City and used them to kill A'dal.
-If you attack a player in Throne of the Elements in Nagrand, you will get one shot by the elemental lords.
-If you look closely at the Blink spell icon, you will notice it is a Dwarf blinking.
-The Emblem of Triumph vendors at the trial of the crusader portal are named "Isimode" and "Faesrol" (easymode and faceroll). They are a joke by Blizzard about Paladins being easy to play.
-There is a grave of Invincible (Lich King's mount) in Tirisfal Glades.
-Karazhan was supposed to have a flight path on top of it. There are actually Gryphon flight path nests on one terrace, but they serve no purpose.
-If you are playing on US servers, you can roll a human on server Moonguard, and walk to Goldshire Inn. Warning: What is seen cannot be unseen.
-In the graveyard of Honor Hold in Hellfire Peninsula, there is a grave which when you click on says the following: "Here lies a soldier stout-hearted, he tried to fight but only farted"
-Affliction Warlocks with engineering could use Gnomish Mind Control Cap to MC people and drain their mana with Dark Pact.
-If you read "Ramaladni's Blade of Culling" backwards, you get the word "Indalamar". Indalamar is a WoW player who posted a video of Warrior damage being too high during vanilla WoW beta, and Blizzard made many nerfs to Warrior class the same day. He became famous within the warrior community, and was later hired by Blizzard as an item developer.
-US game clients have a "Randomize Name" option at the character creation screen, but EU clients don't have that option.
-There were four trinket slots back in alpha as you can see on this picture http://i8.tinypic.com/25k6geg.jpg (also note the old interface)
-You can also drag items into your character's portrait on the character tab to equip them.
-The ropes and wood on the Orgrimmar entrance walls are actually drawn on the wall instead of being on it.
-Warlocks in alpha and early beta were wearing leather armor.
-To join a battleground, you needed to be at the entrance portal of that battleground, because there were no battlemasters in Capital Cities.(WSG=North Barrens/Ashenvale, AV=Hillsbrad Foothills, AB=Arathi Highlands)
-There were bosses that were completely immune to some schools of magic, and poisons. Mages had to raid Molten Core with frost spec, and Rogues lost quite a bit of DPS on poison immune bosses.
-Before rested experience was revamped, you could go into negative experience if you didn't rest, earning like -25% or -50% experience.
-Mages could use Blink while on a flight path to cancel it and fall off.
-Warrior Charge and Intercept was affected by snare effects, so you would end up way behind your target.
-Rend dealt very low damage during Vanilla and tbc, and Warriors almost never used it.
-In beta the final protection Warrior talent was Combat Endurance, which allowed 10% of your spirit regeneration to continue while in combat.
-Curse of the Elements and Curse of Shadow used to give negative resistance, and they also allowed negative resists, giving you a chance to hit for double damage.
-Warlock Firestones and Spellstones were items that were used in offhand slots(and later in wand slot). Firestone gave you a chance on melee hit to deal fire damage, and spellstone removed all magic effects from you. They were changed into weapon enchants they are today.
-Guild Leaders of MC/BWL raiding guilds often asked their members to set their hearthstone to Kargath.
-Shortly after WotLK release, a Mage found out they can Spellsteal Bone Shield from a trash mob in Naxxramas. It absorbed a lot of damage and coupled with the talent Incanter's Absorption, mages could solo pretty much everything in Naxx.
-Gamon had an ability that knocked back and dismounted the target. Priests were able to Mind Control him and throw people off the tower with flight paths.
-Before dismounting in water was removed, Gnomes were dismounted by shallow water in Zangarmarsh/Swamp of Sorrows, where other races had no problems with it.
-Mages in beta had an ability called "Phantasm", which is like mirror image on live.
-This was recent, but mining took more than one cast to pick up everything.
-In Beta, Shamans were the class that had Combat Resurrection spell instead of Druids. It was given to Druids because Shamans were a horde-only class.
-Earthbind totem had no cooldown, so Shamans could kite infinitely.
-Each time a Shaman did a talent respec from Enhancement, he lost all weapon skill with two handed maces/axes, because they were a talent in the enhancement tree.
-Some green-quality lowbie shields could get a random enhancement with +Shadow Power, even though no shield-using class can benefit from Shadow Spell damage bonus.
-Hunters in TBC could macro their entire rotation into one button, and bind it to mouse scroll.
-Destruction Warlock rotation in TBC consisted of just spamming Shadow Bolt and nothing else.
-Southeast of Hammerfall in Arathi Highlands, there are rocks which are shaped like "LOL" http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/File:LOL_in_Highlands_mountain_side.jpg
-There is a level 40 Ogre quest giver in Dustwallow Marsh called Draz'Zilb. Try reading his name backwards.
-The Goblin auction houses in Booty Bay, Everlook and Gadgetzan were not linked.
-The word "Min-maxing" pretty much didn't exist during vanilla raiding. Also most people weren't using any rotation at all.
-Raiding Herbalists usually had a dreadful job of farming Potion/Flask mats before raids.
-Before it was fixed, Hunters and Warlocks would resurrect without their pets in Battlegrounds, so they had to resummon them each time they died. There was also no buff that reduced mana cost of your spells after you resurrected.
-The Horde starting cave in AV was a little bit north of where it is now, but Blizzard moved it down because Horde would get to Balinda faster than Alliance would get to Galv.
-The low level Rams/Wolves in Alterac Valley were added so lower level players who joined the battle would kill them to level and upgrade friendly troops with turn-in items.
-If you've never done Ogri'la dailies in Blade's Edge Mountains, there is a very awesome event called "Shartuul's Transporter", available once you reach Honored reputation. I would recommend doing it, as it is one of the most cool and challenging solo content in the game.
-One of the auctioneers in Undercity is named "Yarly", which is a joke on the "Orly" meme.
-An NPC in the Echo Isles event is called Zild'jian <Vol'jin's Wardrummer>. Zildjian is the biggest Cymbal producer company in the world.
-In Uldaman, there are some Dwarves at the start of the instance, and you can find "Gni'kiv Medallion" and "Staff of Tsol", when you read those two backwards, you get "Lost Vikings" which is one of the first Blizzard games.
-Haste rating didn't exist on gear at all.
-Wowhead didn't exist in early vanilla WoW, and most people didn't know about Thottbot, which made General/Trade chat much more active than today. Barrens chat...
-There were no built-in Raid Frames, so the only way to see it was to use CTMod addon.
-Most zones had only one graveyard. This was a bit problematic in big zones such as Barrens and STV.
-Some raid buffs such as Auras and Totems were only group wide.
-Some raid additions such as /raidwarning, the ability to mark mobs and Threat Meters(wait 3 sunders) were only available with specific addons, before Blizzard added them into the game themselves.
-There were no Guild Banks, so most guilds used low level characters to store everything the guild needed.
-If a level 60 Hunter tamed a level 20 pet, the pet would remain level 20 instead of jumping to 55.
-Grand Marshal/High Warlord gear had about MC level stats, so by AQ40/Naxx it was really outdated when compared to raid gear.
-Resilience didn't exist, so there was almost no difference between PvE and PvP gear.
-Paladin and Warlock mounts used to cost 150 mana to summon.
-Armor Penetration used to reduce enemy armour by static amount. So if you had 1500 ARP and your enemy had 2000 armour, you would attack him with just 500 armour. It was very OP against cloth and pretty weak against plate.
-Alchemists could create flasks only at an Alchemy Lab. There were only two in the game, one in Scholomance and the second one was in BWL. So they had to go there each time they wanted to create a flask.
-Engineering was by far the best profession for PvP. Stuff like Grenades and Mind Control Helmets were used much more often than today.
-At Vanilla release and in the following months, due to overcrowded servers, players very often experienced the infamous ’’loot lag’’. You would get stuck in the loot position from looting pretty much anything, even using gathering professions.
-In the Statistics tab of Achievements window, you can see a picture of Nozdormu in the background, if you look carefully.
-Before Blood Elves were added to the game, Alliance outnumbered Horde on most realms. Ha.
-The longest Arena season was Season 8, which lasted 37 weeks, and the shortest were seasons 4 and 5. Most players consider S2 to be the best (except ret paladins
) and S5 the worst season (see below why).-When Death Knights were added in WotLK they were extremely overpowered. They had a talent (Shadow of Death) which turned them into a ghoul when they died, and that worked in Arena too. Oh, and five words: Glyph of Death and Decay.
-There were no Paid Character Transfers, so if you wanted to play on another server, you had to reroll, no matter how geared your characters were.
-You had to run on foot till Level 40, because there were no mounts at level 20. And they were also much more expensive.
-Trolls had the weakest Racials for most of Vanilla and TBC. There was even a famous joke “I’m regenerating 5 Health per second, and there is nothing you can do about it!”
-The most popular Horde race/class combination was Undead Rogue. I’m sure Alliance Warlocks/Priests remember them well…
-Warlock and Paladin epic mounts weren’t trainable, they required you to complete a long (and epic) questline, which sadly got removed.
-Before WotLK was released, Dalaran was just a huge purple dome in Alterac Mountains.
-Former Paladin talent “Illumination” used to return 100% of the mana cost if it was a critical heal.
-Paladins had no Divine Plea, so once you ran out of mana, you had almost no ways to get it back.
-Potions could be used multiple times in a single boss fight, bringing lots of potions to the raid was a must.
-Windfury Totem applied a Windfury Weapon effect on the weapons of players affected by the totem, instead of giving a flat haste increase.
-Some Shaman totems were merged together in one totem, such as Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totem.
-Shamans had “Windwall Totem” spell, which reduced ranged damage taken.
-Players were always dismounted when entering water.
-Dwarf Stone Form racial made the player immune to poison/disease/bleed effects for 8 seconds, but was nerfed because of DK’s.
-Players needed to stand next to a Lexicon of Power to apply a glyph.
-Druids weren’t able to use Polearms.
-Dalaran Arena’s size was increased by 25% in patch 3.2
-Orgrimmar arena (Ring of Valor) was supposed to be like Gurubashi Arena, where you can fight players of your own faction, though this was never implemented.
-When Ring of Valor was released in WotLK, it was very buggy and Blizzard had to disable it for some time. It also was a bit different: there were flame walls which dealt fire damage (DK’s could Death Grip + Chains of Ice you into the flames), and you didn’t start on an elevator, but behind a wall.
-Almost all CC effects (except stuns) had a chance to randomly break on players.
-Here is the Vanilla login screen
-In TBC, the “final boss” of the expansion (Illidan/Black Temple) was released in the first content patch (both SSC and TK were available on release, but were very buggy).
-Cloak of Shadows was a Subtlety talent early in TBC, and had a 2 minute cooldown.
-Battlegrounds did not award experience at all.
-Each World Tree (in Feralas/Ashenvale/Duskwood/Hinterlands) had a big green Dragon boss guarding the portal.
-Anachronos was located outside of Caverns of Time, and was attackable, but could not be killed.
-Since Cataclysm was in development before WotLK was released, that means that Blizzard is probably developing the next expansion right now.
-Many zones had a different level range, for example Eastern Plaguelands was level 53-60 but now it is 40-45.
-Talent trees before Cataclysm were a bit bigger and players had 71 points to spend in it.
-On the old Blizzard website, there was a page which listed mobs that killed the most players. For most of Vanilla, the top two spots were held by Defias Pillager and Vaelastrasz the Corrupt.
-Everyone who played through Westfall in Vanilla remembers Defias Pillagers. Their Fireballs literally hit for 20-30% of your health, and pulling more than one of them was almost always a certain death.
-Vaelastrasz the Corrupt is the boss that rightfully earned the title “Guild Breaker”. He was only the second boss in Blackwing Lair, but he was pretty much harder than Nefarian. Guilds coming from Molten Core spent many, many nights on him and Razorgore…
-On July 6, 2010 Blizzard announced that they will implement the Real ID system on their forums. Very soon after that, a QQ storm of biblical proportions happened on the forums. It was by far the biggest outcry in the history of WoW, there was a thread with more than 2000 pages. 3 days later, Blizzard decided to cancel it. “Thou shalt not speaketh about Real ID”.
-Most Raids in Vanilla and TBC required players to complete extensive attunement quest chains. Here is a funny interactive video about the Horde Onyxia attunement quest chain. (Click on the annotations)
-There is a High Elf mob named “Adon” who stands at the Ghostlands portal in Eastern Plaguelands. He serves no purpose at all, Blizzard just added him to indicate that the content behind him will come in an “addon”.
-According to Blizzard, Kul Tiras may be available in a future patch in Cataclysm.
-Argent Tournament event in Icecrown was originally supposed to be in Crystalsong Forest, but they decided to put it in Icecrown instead because of lag from Dalaran.
-Dwarf Stoneform Racial used to reduce movement speed.
-Blizzard had to bulk up Blood Elf male models in TBC alpha, because they were even slimmer than today (hard to imagine that).
-Rogues were probably the most popular class in Vanilla, but now they are second to last, only behind Warlocks.
-Night Elf Hunters were by far the most hated race/class combination. If there was one in your pug group (and especially named after Legolas), the chance for that group to succeed was very small.
-There is a Toyota commercial featuring World of Warcraft. You can see it here
-WotLK had a Zombie Infestation event shortly before release. It was largely inspired by ZG Corrupted Blood incident. Although it caused a very big outcry, many of us will remember it as one of the most fun events in the game. Braaaaaaains!
-It was not possible to transfer a character from a PvE server to a PvP server. Blizzard said many times that they won’t make it possible, but they eventually caved in.
-Players in China are playing a heavily edited version of the game. Due to censorship, anything related with Death had to be removed. So Death Knights are called “Fade Knights”, with abilities such as Fade Coil, Fade and Decay, Spirit World Strike (Death Strike) etc.
-Here is how Lord Marrowgar looks in China http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/christoki/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNDI3NzUzNg==/?ref=
-There was a character progression system called Path of the Titans, planned to be released with Cataclysm, but was cancelled. It was supposed to be heavily linked with Archaeology and was very big and complicated. You can read about it here http://www.wowwiki.com/Path_of_the_Titans
-When Race Change feature was released, many Horde players rushed to change to Undead. Few days later, Blizzard announced a major nerf to Will of the Forsaken, which left many players heartbroken. Nice timing!
-In Season 5, some Engineering items such as Rocket Boots and Gnomish Lightning Generator were usable in arena. At one point, over 70% of the highest rated players had Engineering as their profession.
-In original Naxxramas in Vanilla, there was a door in Spider Wing which could be moused over to see the name “Doodad_Nox_door_spider02”, and Blizzard never bothered to fix it.
-On US forums, there was a Community Manager called Caydiem. In one thread about Rogues, she said that “she had seen BWL many times, was in a pro raiding guild and that Rogues were fine". Some days later, someone actually found what her in-game character was. It turned out she had not seen BWL at all, and was using Silent Fang as her main-hand weapon. For months after that, even mentioning Silent Fang earned yourself a ban.
-The only Flight Path in Silithus was at the camp close to the entrance from Un’Goro. And also all mobs in Silithus didn’t drop any loot at all.
-There is a mob in Twilight Highlands called ’’Mia the Rose“. Her name is a reference to Mia Rose, a pornographic actress who was an avid WoW player.
-Low level Night Elf players had to run through Wetlands, Loch Modan and Dun Morogh to reach Ironforge. Without a mount.
-Before Blizzard ended the Beta test in 2004, they summoned a very large amounts of demons and other big mobs just for fun. Here is how that looked like http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/End_of_beta_event
-During the Cataclysm beta Blizzard added a mob(s) called ’’Epicus Maximus“, flying above The Maelstrom . You can read about it here http://www.wowwiki.com/Epicus_Maximus
-The Battle for Gilneas battleground was supposed to be a 40vs40 BG in the City of Gilneas, but Blizzard decided to make it smaller and 10vs10.
-The Wrathgate questline in Dragonblight had a Battle for The Undercity quest in it’s quest chain, but it got removed in Cataclysm because of phasing issues.
-Rogue energy used to regenerate 20 every 2 seconds.
-The most nerfed boss in the game is Magtheridon, with Yogg-Saron being behind him. After all the changes, Magtheridon was pretty much 2x easier than he was at TBC release.
-Leveling 1-60 was much, much slower than today. Since most people were new to this game, it took about 2 months to reach 60 for most people.
-In Molten Core, behind the boss called Golemagg the Incinerator, there was a furnace that dealt a lot of damage (around 3-4k per second) when you get close to it. MC raiding guilds used to trick new players, telling them they will see Ragnaros when they look into it. Next thing that happens, 15 people are instantly dead.
-In 2008, Blizzard announced a console game called ’’ World of Warcraft: The Molten Core’’ as the April Fools joke. You can read more about it here http://www.wowpedia.org/World_of_War...he_Molten_Core
-Also the 2008 April Fools was the ’’Bard“ class for WotLK. It was so cool, that some people actually believed in it! http://www.wowpedia.org/Bard_(hero_class)
-But probably the best April Fools was the 2004 Ogre race joke. http://www.wowpedia.org/Ogre_(April_Fools)
-You had to be within about 10 yards of the player to inspect him. When people in Epic gear stood in a Capital city, there would be dozens of people around inspecting him.
-There was a thing called ’’walljumping“. You could jump on walls and slowly climb to reach stuff that isn’t supposed to be reached (before flying mounts), but it was removed unfortunately.
-There is an axe called Arcanite Reaper. This weapon was infamous during Vanilla because of it’s 3.8 weapon speed, which made it extremely powerful in the hands of Warriors and Enhancement Shamans. Arcanite Reaper Hooooooo!
-Thottbot was the site that people used before wowhead.
-Some Hunters used to roll on most weapons that dropped in instances, using an excuse ’’HUNTER WEAPON!“ This later became a popular joke, with people leaving ’’HUNTER WEAPON!“ comments on Thottbot even on weapons that Hunters couldn’t use. (And sometimes even on items that were not weapons at all).
-Hunters had an epic quest line to obtain an epic Staff and Bow. To complete this quest you needed to kill 4 strong demons, all by yourself (no pets, and no heals or the demon will despawn). It was made so the Hunters who complete it were ’’skilled“ and knew how to kite.
-Being a level 60 Dwarf Priest often meant instant raid spot because of Fear Ward, no matter what your gear was.
-Some Warlocks used to dismiss their pets once they get Living Bomb debuff on Baron Geddon in Molten Core, and resummon them in a crowded place. Here is how it looks like
-Warrior tanks in Vanilla (when they were the only tanks) usually didn’t even spec fully into Protection, most of them were Fury.
-You couldn’t see the talents of another players by inspecting them, so many healers were healing in a DPS spec, to avoid respec bills.
-You couldn’t have both Horde and Alliance characters on a PvP server.
-Before the Spellpower revamp at WotLK release, some items had Spell Damage bonus on specific schools, for example + Fire Spell Damage or Nature Spell Damage.
-Before BWL was released, Blizzard released some screenshots from the instance, showing a raid fighting Chromaggus in the room of Vaelastrasz the Corrupt. When some guilds got to Chromaggus and started wiping on him, they thought that the only way to defeat him was to ’’kite him to vael’s room“. Later, some guilds as a joke started suggesting that tactic for any boss they had difficulties with, even if that boss wasn’t in Blackwing Lair. That became a very popular joke that people were using even in TBC.
-It was(is?) possible to reach an early and unfinished version of Zul Gurub when jumping from Karazhan. Here is the video for it
-Here is an interesting video showing exploration of some unreleased zones
-If you cast a water walking buff on you (such as Path of Frost), and jump from a high distance into the water, you will suffer fall damage and die.
-In 2007 Jeff Kaplan said in an interview that Blizzard had "actually done a lot of work on the Emerald Dream but we scrapped what we had for bigger, grander plans.“
-Shamans had a totem called Sentry Totem, which was considered by many players to be the least used spell in the game. It was actually a well known spell, though mostly because of it’s uselessness. Cataclysm left many Shamans heartbroken, because Sentry Totem was removed.
-Before Hunter pets were normalized, all pets had different stats and attack speed. There was a rare cat mob in Badlands called Broken Tooth which could be tamed by Hunters. He was considered the ultimate Hunter pet, because he had a 1.0 attack speed (before buffs), which made him a true nightmare for casters.
-If you died from jumping off Bloodvenom Post in Felwood, you would appear at the closest graveyard in Darkshore. Although that graveyard is pretty close to your corpse, the only way to reach it was to go all the way through Darkshore, Ashenvale and Felwood, which means you are going to run for about 20 minutes, making it the longest corpse run in the game.
-Hunter Marksmanship talent tree had a different name – “Ranged Combat”, probably because Survival was the melee tree.
-Before it was fixed in early TBC, Engineers could use Gnomish Universal Remote to control Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula and easily kill players.
-Shaman ability Stormstrike could be stacked multiple times on one target, which was used to get one of the highest critical hits in Vanilla. Here is a video of it
-Warlock spell Ritual of Summoning didn’t create a Meeting Stone-like portal, it was used to summon individual players. Warlocks sometimes had to farm 30+ Soul Shards to summon the whole raid.
-At release, there were no additional skill bars, you had just the main skill bar and you had to flip pages. You had to use an addon to have more bars, before Blizzard added it.
-In Stratholme, there is a raid instance portal behind Baron Rivendare’s building. It was probably meant to be an entrance to Naxxramas early in the game development, but it was never implemented.
-If you kill a boss called Stonespine in Stratholme, there is a chance that he will drop a cloak that is white and looks longer than your average cloak or cape.
-Sylvanas Windrunner in Vanilla and TBC used a Night Elf model instead of the one she has now.
-Warrior spells Retaliation/Shield Wall/Recklessness used to share cooldowns, and it was a 30 minute cooldown.
-Hunters who have 31 point Beast Mastery talent are able to tame Chromaggus in Blackwing Lair.
-There was a legendary weapon called Andonisus, Reaper of Souls which could be acquired only during the fight with a boss called Atiesh in Stratholme, though it was usable for only 5 minutes to help with that particular bossfight.
-You can see Azeroth in some areas of Black Temple.
-Like Honorable kills, there were Dishonorable kills, which were gained by killing civilian NPC’s, and they could reduce player’s rank all the way to zero.
-Shaman Reincarnation spell used to cause Resurrection Sickness early in Vanilla.
-Paladin Judgement spell worked a bit different. Each Seal had a different effect when unleashed, and casting Judgement also consumed the seal. For example, Seal of the Crusader used to increase Holy damage taken, and Seal of Command (which was the most used seal) dealt Holy damage, and that damage was 3x higher if the target was stunned.
-Notorious movie director Uwe Boll once attempted to apply for job of director for the Warcraft movie, to which Blizzard CEO Paul Sams replied "We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you."
-All Taunt abilities had only 5 yard range.
-In lore, Teldrassil is supposed to look like this, but in game it had to be made as a Baobab because of game engine limitations.
Props to Palidan on MMO Champion for this
And further props to Thorë who re-posted this onto the bizzard forums.
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