WoW Patch History: Patch 0.6 Beta 

Don’t joke about having to be logged in to get rested XP. That’s exactly how I played through my first 30 levels or so! I just presumed that the Zzz icon was only effective if I was in game. So on the nights I wasn’t playing I logged in and left my character sitting on a chair on lying in a bed, then I’d go and do my IRL stuff periodically running back to my PC to tap the keyboard and prevent from getting kicked. Blizzard weren’t going to scupper my chances for that juicy XP bonus. At some point there was a face meets palm moment when I forgot to return to my PC so got kicked and the next day I logged in and noticed that I’d received the same bonus as I was logged in. I suppose all the running up and down stairs to beat Blizzard’s game meant I at least got some exercise out of it. p.s Sorry to all those players who were stuck in a queue whilst I was playing the AFK game.

The start of that series I talked about a while ago. Hope it's interesting to you!

it was my 16 birthday. i went to the shop to buy a new pc controller, when i saw world of warcraft in the shelf..... i took it and went to the registry, suddenly a guy came over and said : beware, this game is highly addictive ! now, 13 years later, i know that he was right :) .......world of warcraft players NEVER quit, they only take breaks!!!........

A patch note of particular importance to me; "Players can no longer use ghost form as a means to travel to far off locations. Having a spirit healer resurrect you in a graveyard other than the one you appeared at when you died, will always teleport you back to that initial graveyard." I found that out the hard way when I started playing. I was just mining copper up the coast of Durotar, and noticed that the water in the minimap was a different shade of blue going north. So, I swam north. All the way to Azshara! After being murdered by giants, hippogryphs, and a few Naga, I eventually ran into Azuregos. He was neutral, and could be talked to! So I did. He rambled about treasure and how mortals were vermin, and the only conversation option was along the lines of "yeah, and what are you gonna do to stop us?". So, I politely clicked the X to close the dialogue box. He killed me anyway. I run back, res, and immediately die again. That's when I notice that I have a debuff that will kill me whenever I get "near" Azuregos, and learn that the game has an interesting definition of "near". I should probably mention at this point, before I was mining copper up the coast I was mining copper and farming linen cloth off the boars near Razor Hill. I had to pee really badly, so I hearthed back to town to avoid being murdered by vengeful respawning quillboar. Of course, the hearthstone cooldown being one hour at the time... well, that wasn't an option to solve my current predicament of being stuck in a zone 40 levels higher than me with no knowledge of where any towns were. But! I had an idea! What if I were to swim all the way back in ghost form, and speak to the Spirit Healer outside of Orgrimmar! I'd res there, and get back to mining in Durotar without having to corpse crawl through Azshara! So I swam, and swam, and swam back south. After probably five minutes the spirit healer was in sight! I ran up to her, asked her to res me, and she granted my wish! But the cheeky clown teleported me back to Azshara first. A passing Makrura promptly killed me.

I played the beta from before this patch so I remember the really early, probably late alpha stuff, and then the changes with the 0.6 patch. Rested EXP was like this: well rested: 2x EXP rested: 1.5x EXP normal: 1x EXP fatigued: 0.5x EXP exhausted: 0.25x EXP You had to grind a lot to reach fatigued, but I'd still say it was less time to go from well rested to fatigued than the 8 hours it took to get back up to well rested. You had to be logged out or idling in an inn for 8 hours to get back to well rested from any other rested level, too, which is just a sign of how bad the system worked initially. The game world was way smaller before this patch, so no inns and hearthstones didn't matter, but obviously it was only about 1/3 of the actual vanilla 1-60 world. So adding rested was a good idea, and inns and hearthstones, even if it wasn't done right immediately. BTW, the skill point system was pretty good outside of boosting stats. You got 1 skill point per X amount of normal EXP, I think it was 350 or so, even if you were capped and not gaining levels. It was virtually impossible to run out of skill points for most players as you leveled up and was a pretty good system, just a little rough. When they said they added more weapon types, it wasn't any more than what the current classes can equip (actually, it was less). But more than the initial beta launch. Paladins still could never use daggers, for example. The old talent system was really weird since it worked with points you only got when you leveled up, you couldn't refund stuff, and there were a lot of abilities you just plain shouldn't take. For example, it was actually pretty bad to increase stats, because the costs kept going up, while there were a lot more powerful passives available at higher levels you could purchase with no prereqs. Stuff like Flurry for warriors, or I remember a crazy paladin talent that gave you immunity to disease debuffs. Tanking was also really weird back then. You literally just spammed the Taunt skill, which added threat, and had a few oddball abilities and defensive cooldowns as well. I forget which beta patch it was where they reworked it into the vanilla style of sunder armor for big threat and then spending rage on filler DPS abilities after stacking 5 sunders, but I know it wasn't in the initial beta. I don't think it was in 0.6 either. Oh yeah, the video briefly showed a couple paladin abilities that I want to talk about, because I sorta prefer how it worked compared to vanilla paladin: Holy Strike and Crusader Strike. These were just holy versions of Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor, but because paladins use mana, it was really easy to ramp up a full CS stack, and then your Holy Strike would hit pretty hard. It's not really that exciting, but I think it was a better core to build around paladins than their starting seals and judgements in vanilla. What kinda surprises me is it took so long for them to give mages polymorph. They had sleep in the initial beta, and it might have been 0.6 where they changed sleep to polymorph. That felt like it shoulda been their initial CC spell to me.

And a guy shows up at your house and slashes your tires... LOL

YES! Thank you! You are the FIRST to do it right! I actually searched for this kind of content around 2 years ago, and barely found anything! (well, anything worth watching that is) Hayven (RIP) did some alpha explorations, but mostly exploration, not really going in depth. In text format there is a bunch of stuff like this. I ate those articles up! Looking forward to ALL the patches in the future! AS DETAILED AS POSSIBLE, PLEASE! (4 hours long videos, I'd be up for that; but I get that it's neither lucrative nor feasible)

do a 1-60 exhausted only speedrun

World of Warcraft was the first game I played and it was thanks to my aunt getting it for a late bday gift wile she worked at Blizzard as a Accountant

(Vanilla) was the casual family friendly MMO at the time. That was a sentence that was just said.

I think the reason cloaks weren't visible is because they are quite difficult to animate, especially for tauren since they move more than any other piece of armor.

I'd be ok with 4 hours videos xD

Slowing down leveling in such a fashion today would come with some kind of potion you could buy for $3 to boosr back up to well rested. The horror.

civilian crafter lmao. did people actually play just to collect flowers?

I can understand what they were going for: creating the first MMO that melded traditional MMO elements with much more casual elements to bring in a larger/new demographic. It obviously worked brilliantly and we saw a cultural and gaming phenomenon. With that said, and as a former Star Wars Galaxies gamer, gosh I wish they had kept the rested system shown in this video. Vanilla WoW had just enough social elements to make communities strong, but SWG was on a completely different level when it came to community. One of the primary reasons SWG had such a strong community was because the game systems forced player interaction. In much the same way that elites and the opposing faction brought players together in WoW; in SWG players had to seek out entertainers (dancers/musicians) to cure their fatigue. They also had to seek out doctors to cure their debuffs and wounds. Forcing players to go to Inns (called the cantina in SWG) made them hubs for player interaction. You had to be there to make your character well enough to adventure again and you soon became a regular at a local cantina and learned individual dancer/entertainer's names. You would eventually befriend these people and use them as your exclusive dancer and paid them for their services. Same goes for your local doctor. Imagine if vanilla WoW had incorporated this rested system to force players to return to inns to become rested; players would spend a lot of time getting to know and talk to each other more while waiting for their rest bar. A living virtual world. This was the beauty of SWG, despite it being a very barren, sandbox world. Obviously, WoW is just a different kind of game. It is a game that took so many good notes from those that came before it, such as SWG and EQ - but it went a different path and opened itself up to a new, younger, casual crowd - which is the beauty of vanilla WoW, to me. The melding of the hardcore MMO gamers, with those that never played a video game before. The hardcore were rushing into Scholomance, UBRS, and MC - while the casual gamer was just reaching level 60. That casual player would walk around Orgrimmar or Ironforge and see a player in full tier 1 from MC raiding and be in complete awe. The casual gamer wondered how could he/she could become that epic as well - and thus their journey to become a raider began. SWG was always my game, and I love how MadSeason brings it up in his videos, vanilla WoW right there behind it on my list. I personally wish WoW had skewed more towards SWG or EQ instead of skewing towards becoming a single player, casual mount/pet/transmog/achievement collection game like current retail. This rested system is one way it could have skewed the other way. Just as MadSeason said in the video: what if 1-60 leveling was a 6 month process where you struggled in the world to reach level cap, only for the next stage of the game to open before you: raiding and endgame BGs? It's very possible (likely) the game that I wished WoW had become wouldn't have been the phenomenon it was in the world, with hardcore systems like that, but my gosh I'd still be playing today if it had. (See you guys in Classic this August)

This is truly going to be an absolutely epic series. Thank you for the amazing effort you put into your videos. I'm no fan of click bait or the even worse cringe bait that seems to dominate the WoW RU-vid community so for me it really is refreshing to have such a clear, concise and pragmatic channel to get my WoW fix from.

Funny you mentioned EverQuest a couple times, because as someone who actually played that back in the day I can't help but chuckle a bit at some of these comments about how crazy hardcore WoW would've been without hearthstones or travel guide guards. You wanna talk about *hardcore*, try Project 1999 sometime. EQ had no direction at all, no way to teleport to safety unless you were a spellcasting class and only 2 classes got any form of world teleportation, no mounts EVER and NO movement speed buffs except a buff only 3 classes ever got that increased speed by 30% for half an hour (and bards who could go sonic fast but you could only gain the buff if you were parties with them and nearby)... and that's on top of the aforementioned extreme death penalties, extreme difficulty of mobs in general (good luck beating anything at-level solo above level 5 if you're not a pet class or masterfully kiting), extremely slow health/mana regeneration with no food/drink regen like in WoW (spirit would have been an AMAZING stat in that game), extreme faction issues where depending on your race/class/deity/what you've been killing certain NPC's or entire towns would kill you on sight, very few quests that were good for EXP and the grand majority of worthwhile ones being massive epic world-travelling questlines to get something like a decent upgrade for your 30-ish level paladin or whatever.... It was absolutely insane. Even beta WoW was extremely comfortable and casual in comparison, before any of these changes. ....But that's okay. In fact, it's wonderful. EQ has its place in history and it can be fun to go back and touch upon it again, but honestly WoW provided such a more fun, better-paced, less-punishing, balanced experience that I definitely would say I overall enjoyed it more. Now if only it stayed in that sweet spot of ease vs. challenge between vanilla and the end of Wrath and didn't go way too far off the deep end of shallowness... oh well, I guess that's what Classic's for.

Hail Ainz!

Old skill and rested system could have been improved and be great.

I think being a Master Crafter would have been amazing. To be a non combatant and provide potions, armors, weapons etc to those who needed it would have been fun.

patch heirlooms = THE END OF LOW LEVEL BGS

The extra resting states were intended to discourage excessive (unhealthy) play times.

This version of the game could be great as an official game/expansion. A realistic sandbox Classic experience.

Lmao! That was the most uninspired and monotoned “Woooow!” I’ve ever heard. AND I FUCKING LOVE IT ❤️

Wow devs back then: "we don't want you putting points in things without having information about what the effect will be." Wow devs now: "good luck not going bankrupt finding out what your best azerite trait combos are! btw have you remembered to buy your [blizzcon e-ticket]/[dreadwake mount]/[rastakhan's rumble presale pack]?"

tbh, if you made 20 min episodes that totaled 4 hrs long, I'd watch it.

The rested system was never put in place with the whole different states of exp, the way it worked is fairly much like right now, but they'd mention that rested was ''normal exp'' and exhausted was ''.5x exp'' but they only changed it so .5 = normal and normal = rested 2x bonus. They renamed it and people were like WOW THIS IS SO COOl, but it was = in time spent leveling.

I really like the idea of characters getting fatigued and getting penalties to exp. gain. Sort of balances the playing field for everyone so the NEETs and others that can afford to spend 16 hours a day, 7 days a week on a video game don't rocket ahead of those of us that play for a couple hours after work. Being the first to reach 60 on a server or complete a high-level dungeon or raid before anyone else is a really neat goal that is only realistically achievable by those that literally do not stop playing after the moment a server launches. Kind of sucks for everyone else.

TRIBUNALXHUNTER WAS MY FAVORITE. I leveled a hunter from vanillla until cata.

The rested xp was like that actually to make the game more casual. Hardcore players who grinded for hours wouldn't be able to get that far ahead of more casuals players who only played once in a while.

Love your videos, can't wait for classic.

Did somebody say: "Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker" ?!

If MadSeason put on a singing voice he would be Mac DeMarco, change my mind.

Yeah I just watched your more recent video where you argue the resting mechanic is very casual friendly, and future you is completely correct. No one would have leveled all the way with a ÷4 panelty. Some of your playtime your charecter would be rested and actually recieve a bonus. And hardcore player that would want to speed power-level a single charecters are the ones that would have been hurt the most. And blizzard famously declared that removing the panelty changed nothing mathematically, and exp to level would just have been lower overall to compensate.

I'll tell you how the fatigue part of the rested system was received. People howled that they were being penalized for playing a lot. (Technically, they were right.) The forum was something else about that system I'll tell you what. Obviously Blizzard backed down.

The rested system wasn't "removed", it was just re-named, pretty much. We now level in the slowest speed, and rested bonus today = normal, basically..

Do it with the patch 6.1 best patch evar

that sneaky ainz ooal gown reference

15:38 This was because they felt cloaks would cover the armor too much. Just one of the many interesting facts I learned from the WoW Diary by John Staats.

On cloaks: it was difficult at the time (and still is, to a degree) to animate loose fabric. It's the same principle as animating hair. When you have something that needs to blow in the wind, bounce around, move with the character, and fall back into place in a way that looks correct...yeah, that's a project. The cloaks in the game weren't even well-animated, but I guarantee they were more difficult than any of the other armor pieces. Lag is another consideration. Think of how much lag you got when more than forty people were all throwing spell effects in a small area. Now imagine that but with cloaks blowing realistically in the wind produced from all the fireballs. Think your 2004 PC could handle it? It's common for game developers to leave out things that are too difficult to put in. Even Skyrim didn't have cloaks.

Look, I’m not saying I want you to lose your voice, but if you could stop cutting the videos early that would be great. I very much enjoy the ramblings and the information.

What is the voice clip at the end of your videos? It sounds like the Malfurion voice actor, or maybe deckard caine... Sometimes I think it is Leonard Nimoy! Regardless great vid! You're my fav wow video creator!

Fun Fact: Everquest didn't have visible cloaks. Even to this day.

You are so knowledgeable!! It’s incredible how much wow knowledge you posses. I appreciate you so much!!

SirBlackness...I like it!

your voice is amezing

They just did the reverse, though. Instead of calling it ”reduced”- and ”normal xp rate” they called it ”normal” and ”increased”. Smartysmartsmart! Iirc they even laughed about it in some interview later, that what got them massive feedback backlash instead turned positive when they presented it as a bonus and not as a punishment.

Sledgehammer to a brad nail. Lol

OK, OK i used Windows ; ME at the time and it wasn't good by any chance, but there was a pirated copy going around on torrent sites which was FANTASTIC! it was much better than 98, and while i have some really funny screenshots of the OS commiting suicide it wasn't that bad!! lol.

"What, you want a divorce WHY?" X'D Great video as always!

I'm pretty sure blind didn't use to be a 10 second stun, but rather more like fear; it had a chance to break whenever taking damage.

Except cloaks... and rings... and necks... and trinkets...

You know, I now want blizzard to do something of an "Extra Vanilla" Servers, where you could experience WoW with some of that cut content, like the survival profession, real darkness, Spirit providing bonus to on his chance effects, and even the exhaustion effect. Probs just me, but I do like the idea (as long as it's appropriately applied, instead of copy and pasted)

3:52 Windows ME was amazing for gaming. Everything else, I'm not sure...

Face reveal mate!!

Dude I absolutely love your dry humor.

imagine the vanilla devs see the game right now

I’m going to like this series! There was some interesting stuff in the pre release version of the game.

Love your vids, keep up the good work man

Who the hell cares about star wars?

I loved Everquest , then Wow came along ..and I cheated

*sees the name ainzooalgown* SASUGA, AINZ-SAMA!!!!!!

I absolutely love all of your videos and the nostalgia they have to offer!

Great video, I've played the "Christmas Alpha" (it's not hard to find) and it was very interesting (boring to anyone not interested in the history of the game). Ironforge was an interesting story, in the Alpha it seems bigger than Stormwind, then it was a placeholder hill in beta, before becoming the somewhat buggy city it was in the early launch. I never was able to bug through to Old Ironforge though. Back in December 2004 I was standing the IF auction house when the entire mountain "blinked" out of existence and I fell to my death. It was hilarious.

I just want to mention that the exp rates and gains were and are the same, except we're fatigued in the default state, while full rested was the "default" state when rested first came out.

Ah yes, this is where wow peaked

I tried windows ME, and it is pretty good if you use the right drivers

Let me guess, you talk about SW Galaxies in this video

As a hunter I miss scare beast the most! ! It was always hilarious being able to fear a feral druid. This poor cats could not catch a break all vanilla

Btw i couldn't realize that you were losing your voice. Thanks for the video!

This video was a lot of fun! It's really cool to see what the game was like before it launched. And as always - I love the humour you bring in to the videos. I'm super stoked for the rest of this series! Much love, MadSeason.

Yeah Everquest was the main MMO in 2004... i still prefered Dark Age of Camelot in 2002-2004

MadSeason, I love these episodes that show what it was like way back in the day. I started my paying 3 days after release and watching your vids brings back the memories! Keep up the great work!

I enjoyed the humor in this video. Your deadpan delivery helps :)

As always, you're the best to do this kind of series.

In previews from 2001, press noted blizzard having spells that allowed players to set a marker anywhere in the world that they could teleport too. The screenshots from that time also note a "Word of Recall" spell that was probably the spell in question

You need to read up on 'Heretic'. That came before 'Diablo'. If that game didn't exist then you wouldn't have games like this... I could even go further if I need too. I've been playing computer games since like the late 1980's... I played some weird games on computers 286 & 386... Also, I played Atari games too... So, if it weren't for those then we wouldn't have the games we have now... Just saying...

14:15 SASUGA AINZ-SAMA !!!!

That subtle glimpse of excitement in your voice 00:36

I remember watching World of Warcraft trailers from my original copy of WC3 and from the local pc game magazines CD's and that quality just brought those sweet memories. TBH in those times I only play FPS games, but when WC3 comeout and WoW too I just changed my perspective to play more strategy, RPG games. MMO's not much but only WoW, because of it's universe, which sadly nowdays it's sooo bad and doesn't have any soul left :(

As someone who got Grand Marshal, I WISH they had implemented forced rests. I didn't want to play that much, but I wanted those weapons so badly so I forced myself to. I loved having them but the grind was hellish. Forced "resting" for 8 hours each day would even the playing field and just make people more healthy, there is no down side, but people went crazy over it, and it didn't happen. Just so people understand, it was 2.5-2x XP when rested... the penalty only came after like 12 to 16 hours. If you NEED to play more than 12-16 hours a day there is a problem.

About hearthstones. When I first started playing, running back and forth was so ingrained in me that I didn’t get the point of having a hearthstone. I distinctly remember deleting the hearthstone and being pissed off at blizzard for putting one in my inventory each time I created a new character. Also, flight paths? Fuck that. I’m already tight on silver. I’m not paying the man! I spent so much time just running (with no mount, mind you!) between zones. Was I dumb? Yes Did I mind? Not at all!

You know what I tested the most in the Open Beta ? Fishing Indeed. My FF online time was often spent fishing, so when most of my guild received our Beta keys, I spent it fishing. I was rather disappointed at the sheer simplicity, but loved hanging out in Bloodhoof Village as my lunch-break test with all those pleasant ambient sounds. Fishing, even on a level 10 char was open all the way to 300. So there I am, fishing in game, eating lunch IRL. I hit around 280 skill and pulled a green loot out of the pond. I squint and call over a colleague, who also played. I point at it. He says "Just RNG". Next cast, I pull another green out. Now he is ticked. Next cast, another. He says "I hope you will open a ticket." I did.

Great video. BTW, I played in this patch, and I'm 99% sure the level cap was 39. All the max level players just grinded Scarlet Monastery all day. Ever since then, whenever one of my characters hits 39, I pat myself on the back for hitting the true level cap.

It weird seeing how Blizzard tried to be so casual-friendly in the early development, not wanting people to have to research for hours, and an emphasis on Leveling, not raiding. I wonder if Furor, from the Fires of Heaven guild on Everquest, had any influence yet, or if his contribution didn't happen until later. I don't think a lot of people realize how much of a boost WoW got in subscriptions from people disappointed in new (at the time) changes in Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. Also, the box art for the first version of WoW implied you could play Demon Hunters, with an Illidan-looking chap and four other characters facing down a dragon.

I had a computer running Windows ME for a long time. It's crappiness was heavily exaggerated in popular culture, really it was very much like Windows 98 SE. Worked fine.

Blizzards old motto was "cool people doing cool stuff". I feel as if they didn't merge with another company and kept as many original developers and writers as possible our story might be a little more coherent. From vanilla to BFA (going into shadowlands) its been changed and reworked alot. Many of plot holes and quickly bandaged characters, but its hard to write a universe i guess

Yes I remember the 50% XP (don’t remember .25%)and I didn’t understand why it was happening back then but there was very limited explanation back in 2005! XD

is that an acoustic guitar playing the theme to Mike Tyson's Punchout???

If they scaled up the amount of gained exp with normal, rested and well-rested, i could actually see the benefits of the negative exp earning outside of the game, It would optimize EXP gains without the pressure the constantly be grinding for excessive amounts of hours, thus giving you time for other things... like eating, personal hygiene, socializing.... or just alts and other games.

This were the prime of my life. Since 2009, everything went downhil. I wish to lock my life in 2000s and stay here.

being fear immune and poly immune was nice for undead, I remember that it did suck for UD priests as being the only dispellers and getting shackled. I could be in tarren mill with 30 horde and I'd be the only priest. and I'm shackled

I don't know about the rest of you, but just about everyone I know who plays this game would be permanently in Exhausted status. :) I'm pretty casual, so I love the Rested system. It helps quite a bit.

8 hours to get rested. I think that might not have been put for the sole reason of slowing progress down. The 8 hours rest is the basic assumption in RPGs like DnD. It's kind of "realistic" And it also assures that somewhere over the course of 24 h the player got the chance to sleep enough xD

Asheron's Call was a game with no class system and people using completely separate characters made for crafting only. Usually 2 different characters for 6-8 different types of crafting.

Did you make your intro tune? If so what instrument is that? Sounds real cool

I remember there use to be a way to turn your WoW client into a single player game in the BC expansion. not sure if its still possible...

Man, I'll tell you. When I got the Frozen Throne special edition, and it came with a dvd with all the Wc3 cutscenes. It also had the first trailer for World of Warcraft, and I watched that over and over again I was so hype for the game. I was 10 at the time.

EverQuest!!!!!I remember when that was a comic book and PAPER RPG opposite D&D..

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Zkjs12c6xGE.html Very old video of me as a lvl 29 twink. I was super excited about getting a 1k crit lol. I wrecked everyone in pvp back then and I loved it.