Nov 15 We ordered vanilla not vanilla with sprinkles 1. Sharding/Phasing was not a part of the classic experience. The launch surge and often times overwhleming population fighting over quest mobs and loot was impactful on a human level which brought people together to make parties so they weren't fighting or made people bitter rivals. And that ten minutes you spent competing with people to loot that bucket before it despawned for another few minutes was intense. 2. Loot trading was not a part of the classic experience. Ninja looting was a real thing, a crime you could commit which united the community up in arms against you, blacklisting you. That's a feature for modern WoW, not genuine classic. This is a recreation. Not a remaster. Not reforged. We ordered vanilla, not vanilla with sprinkles on it with modern hand holding baby coddling streamlined bogus. That's more suited to your modern WoW playerbase, not the millions waiting patiently for the game they knew and loved over a decade ago. I don't want to sound like an entitled brat, but when you advertise a product, don't change it behind the scenes. Please Blizzard, don't add these things. They kill aspects of what made classic wow such a special phenomenon that rallied people to make private servers in its honor. I'll go play one if this isn't authentic, because those unofficial servers would be more authentic.Rhystael95 Nov 15
 ":"  -  Any time a step ends in a ":" instead of a "." means that the next step is part of the current step you are on.  This generally means the next step should be done while working on the current step.  This means every "start working on" or "continue working on" will end in a ":".  But this is used with other occasions as well, so keep this in mind.
I consider myself a purist in that I would prefer classic to be released as close as possible to the original. Where that is on the spectrum of patch content will be up to blizz. I'm also not vane enough to believe that any single state of the game is the "Ideal" location we should be aiming for. There is common ground that we can agree on, and I would welcome more than a few changes as long as they are made in the spirit of keeping classic on the vanilla rails.
Even though a modern server architecture is used, Classic servers won't have the same features that current World of Warcraft does. There won't be cross-realm servers or Looking For Raid and Dungeon Finder automatic party matchmaking. There are still a lot of questions about how the team will tackle it. This endeavor is being undertaken by an entirely separate team at Blizzard from the one working on World of Warcraft and its next expansion.[2]
^{Even though a modern server architecture is used, Classic servers won't have the same features that current World of Warcraft does. There won't be cross-realm servers or Looking For Raid and Dungeon Finder automatic party matchmaking. There are still a lot of questions about how the team will tackle it. This endeavor is being undertaken by an entirely separate team at Blizzard from the one working on World of Warcraft and its next expansion.[2]}
The vanilla WoW Horde leveling guide you see on this site was originally made back in 2006 by Joana (AKA Mancow, or FuriousPaul).  The guides have been tweaked many times over the years to make things "faster".  The leveling guides were made because of all the messages I got from people asking me how I was able to level up so quickly on new realms.  I was first to level 60 on 7 different realms (3 with Mancow and 4 with Joana), even winning Blizzard's "First to Level 50" contest they held back in 2006.

Nov 15 You Absolutely Cannot Have Sharding This will not work well with a classic experience. Myself and the vast majority of my friends plan on coming back for classic. None of them want sharding. I know I don't speak for everyone but this mechanic will completely ruin the experience. Just voicing my opinion as I am incredibly excited about this project.Wurmknight82 Nov 15

The most important thing you should note is that there are no official beta keys. Blizzard opens the gates to their betas by granting access to your account — not sending you a beta key. If you’re in the beta, you’ll be able to download and play the WoW Classic client from your Battle.net launcher. If not, you aren’t in the beta. It’s easy to be tricked into thinking you’ll get a beta key from an email that looks like it’s from an official Blizzard address, but don’t believe their lies — they’re all fake.

The leveling guides on my site are essentially speed leveling guides.  My leveling guides are the same guides I use myself to speedrun to 60 on new servers to get 60 server first.  I list many occasions where I tell the player to "die on purpose" to go faster.  I tell the player to skip certain quests, because some quests are just not worth the time/XP.  I list tricks and shortcuts to go faster so you can reach level 60 much quicker.  I am still constantly going through them over and over again perfecting the guides to make them faster and easier to follow.  For the most part, the guide can be followed without the need from other player's help, as the whole guide was made from a solo run anyways.  Although I do list quests that can optionally be done if you have a group.
I now have a Patreon Page where you guys can support me while I work on Vanilla WoW leveling guides every day.  I appreciate all of you who support me on there, it means a lot to me right now.  Doing this full time is taxing on my financial situation.  My goal is to make the best Vanilla WoW leveling guides on the web and the donations keep me going at it healthfully.  There is also cool rewards you get in return for donating.  Thanks!
^{And once you had been performing so 10-12 hours a day for weeks on end the thought of that time you’d already sunk into it made it rather difficult to stop. Combine this with the fact that missing a single day could put you back a full week of progress and you’ve got some pretty bad mojo going on.It may be argued that the Vanilla PvP honor rating system attested a lot of the negative perceptions about the MMO scene and video game addiction generally at the time. IMO it would be an error to reinstate it.}
Our initial runs exposed a few (expected) issues: the game sometimes crashed, didn’t recognize our modern video cards, and was incompatible with our current login system. That first pass also couldn’t support any of our modern security and anti-cheating capabilities. Clearly we had a lot of work to do to make WoW Classic live up to the Blizzard standard of quality, and deliver the experience players want.

Once we had our starting point, we began taking stock of what we had in the source code and what we could make available, which included restoring the original development database from archival backups. After stitching various key pieces together, we had a locally rebuilt version of Patch 1.12 running internally. The team could create characters and do basic questing and leveling—and dying, which we did many times. For testing purposes. Obviously.

The first—and among the most important—decision we had to make was which version of the game to focus on. As many of you have noted, the classic period was two years long and full of changes. Core features like Battlegrounds were introduced in patches after WoW’s original launch, and class design similarly changed over time. After careful consideration, we decided on Patch 1.12: Drums of War as our foundation, because it represents the most complete version of the classic experience.

Our initial runs exposed a few (expected) issues: the game sometimes crashed, didn’t recognize our modern video cards, and was incompatible with our current login system. That first pass also couldn’t support any of our modern security and anti-cheating capabilities. Clearly we had a lot of work to do to make WoW Classic live up to the Blizzard standard of quality, and deliver the experience players want.

I started playing with WoW Classic like a couple months. I would not call my self old school or a vanilla participant but damn much when I began playing WoW Classic has been alot more entertaining than it is now. I didn’t really care about this particular WoW Classic release until yesterday. I am actually hyped to play with this. We see more staff work in the world and participant connections. Folks rarely up set to do anything at the world that is open and seldom speak to each other. Ive gone multiple days where il try to begin convos with players and its literally like trying to start a conversation using a NPC.
Nov 15 Spell Mechanic Questions and Hopes on Items I am not necessarily looking for any discourse that would lead to an answer, but hopefully this would gain enough traction that Blizzard might see it, and offer some insight to intended function come summer 2019. I know there is a current wall of text somewhere regarding questions on almost every item with a spell damage effect and whether or not they will be granted coefficients from character gear grand spell damage. I noticed one in particular that was left out and wanted to reiterate my personal favorites. Shard of the Fallen Star: Originally benefited in part or completely 1:1 ratio from spell damage and was capable of critting. It was nerfed in patch 2.0 which is after classic wow content. In the spirit of keeping things as they were, do you think Blizzard will keep this mechanic or change it to a post nerf state which although is not classic wow maybe seen as a balanced fix. Weapon List: Hand of Ragnaros, Netzerek the Blood Drinker, Corrupted Ashbringer, Shadowstrike - all received 2:1 coefficent originally in classic. I believe they were a little too strong but did not receive any nerf to my knowledge. Do you think these will remain as it was or be changed to satisfy the hopes for balance?Tunnelboy6 Nov 15
Nov 15 We ordered vanilla not vanilla with sprinkles 1. Sharding/Phasing was not a part of the classic experience. The launch surge and often times overwhleming population fighting over quest mobs and loot was impactful on a human level which brought people together to make parties so they weren't fighting or made people bitter rivals. And that ten minutes you spent competing with people to loot that bucket before it despawned for another few minutes was intense. 2. Loot trading was not a part of the classic experience. Ninja looting was a real thing, a crime you could commit which united the community up in arms against you, blacklisting you. That's a feature for modern WoW, not genuine classic. This is a recreation. Not a remaster. Not reforged. We ordered vanilla, not vanilla with sprinkles on it with modern hand holding baby coddling streamlined bogus. That's more suited to your modern WoW playerbase, not the millions waiting patiently for the game they knew and loved over a decade ago. I don't want to sound like an entitled brat, but when you advertise a product, don't change it behind the scenes. Please Blizzard, don't add these things. They kill aspects of what made classic wow such a special phenomenon that rallied people to make private servers in its honor. I'll go play one if this isn't authentic, because those unofficial servers would be more authentic.Rhystael95 Nov 15