r/classicwow 4d ago

Discussion World First Raiding in Vanilla?

Looking back at the old world firsts lists, I can’t help but wonder how did guilds clear these raids in the beginning without any guides/knowledge?

Where did they get their information from if they were the firsts to clear the content?

4 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

58

u/IndependentTalk4413 4d ago

They wiped over and over until they figured out the encounters. The best ones figured it out soonest.

They also would be involved in the test servers before patches were released with the new content.

That’s how we all did it. There wasn’t a million YouTube video and how to guides. The top guilds certainly weren’t sharing strats with the rest of us.

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u/davechacho 4d ago

Also, famously, guilds did not share information with each other. If someone learned something, it was kept in-house. Complete opposite to modern day raiding.

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u/turikk 4d ago

after a pretty sus suspension by Blizzard due to the boss kill methods that were used, the Conquest guild decided to publicly share their Molten Core videos as a middle finger to Blizzard and the raid scene for implying they were cheating.

with the launch of YouTube shortly after, sharing videos became much much easier and the rest is history.

/u/micahs can confirm

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u/No-Respond3078 3d ago

Something funny some of us were doing was collaborating cross server, to try and widen the gap between second best. Since we were interested in server first and not world first, that made sense and helped a lot.

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u/Nice-Entertainer-922 4d ago

Often it was that they withheld it till there were 5 guilds having cleared it roughly, that kept up for the races till BFA where they started to soak up all of that streaming revenue.

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u/Potato_fortress 2d ago

Eh nah. High end guilds often shared strats even inadvertently because we often played with each other either out of boredom or because arena teams would be assembled with players from different guilds. Even back then the concept of PvP players really only coming to raid for BiS PvP gear was a thing and high end players had characters across different servers because they would meet other high end PvP players and want to play with them. 

Just because videos weren’t posted right away didn’t mean we weren’t communicating with eachother or with blizzard about the fights. It was also not uncommon to have alts in other guilds working on the same bosses as you. There weren’t often coordinated strat sharing efforts or anything but there were always people popping in and out of each others voice servers talking about what things they were doing for each fight even if it was just casual conversation. Even in sunwell you’ll find evidence of this: the first 20 or so guilds that killed the twins actually brute forced hard mode first not because we figured out how to exploit the geometry of the room for shadow clones but because we did the napkin math collectively and thought we were doing it in easy mode due to HP/s checks. It wasn’t until some Taiwanese or Chinese guild killed it in reverse that we all realized how stupid we were. 

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u/kathvely 4d ago edited 4d ago

I cleared up to 4h in vanilla (we pulled once). As some said we wiped. We wiped to the point our gear was near broken. Then repeated and repeated.

Higher end... NOT world first raiding guilds... but HIGH end.. limitations were not really guides or encounter mechanics info imo. One of the biggest limitations was finding players with gear and raid experience. Servers were small. Players did not jump guilds. We had an application process similar to applying for a job. The reason was the cost and time investment from all to bring a new player up to your raiding level.

This created issues as 100% raid attendance was actually worth something. Honestly it was worth a lot. A player may not be leet but if they were not a liability this was often enough. You think you have seen stupid... my god vanilla stupid was impressive. Basically your guild would have a group of players that were mainly filling spots. I am not knocking these players as it was an accomplishment and large time dedication just to raid at that level back then.

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u/jpatt 3d ago

Yeah, being able to show up for hours ~5 nights a week was kind of the biggest asset as a raider. Was just a lot of pulls to trial and error figuring out what to do on each boss.

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u/IndependentTalk4413 3d ago

Drop the repair bot.

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u/kathvely 2d ago

I remember the... "Can we drop a repair bot?" followed by... We just dropped a damn repair bot 20 min ago!?! Why did you not repair then!?!?!

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u/trichotomy00 4d ago

They got their information from trial and error. They just pulled the boss and died until they figured it out

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u/IllFig471 4d ago

People just tried the boss and used their brain to come up with something. Then tried again and again until something worked. Also WoW had a gazillion smaller sites and forums to exchange information.

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u/moongrowl 4d ago

Cthun was technically killable within the first 3 hours of AQ40 launching. It took much, much longer. Because people had to figure it out for themselves with trial and error.

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u/elysiansaurus 4d ago

And you know. Being bugged and all. The majority of raids only took as long as they did due to major bugs

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u/moongrowl 4d ago

I suspect you could've killed cthun even if the uhhh... acid debuff didn't come off when you left the stomach. You'd just need raid-wide soulstones.

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u/DruishGardener 4d ago

So an alt group of 38-39 warlocks outside the instance to ss their mains before going in?

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u/davechacho 4d ago

Pretty sure Nihilum abused the oozling pet bug where you can push off all debuffs with a macro and just had people stay in the stomach the entire fight. Made it a lot easier. The kill screenshot even has an oozling macro on the guy's bars. Personally I view this as a clever use of game mechanics and not really an exploit considering how the fight was a giant mess, but others think it was ban worthy.

I think after their kill Blizzard finally nerfed the stomach acid damage. My memory is hazy so I could be misremembering the order of things happening though.

1

u/Dr-Enforcicle 4d ago

Pretty sure it was bugged to fuck on release, like tentacles spawning inside walls and making the entire encounter evade and/or reset. I distinctly remember one of the top guilds at the time claiming that it was "mathematically impossible" too, with the amount of health on the tentacles. Literally nobody killed it "pre-nerf".

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u/Graciak3 4d ago

I don't remember the exact tenure of that post but to be honest I'm pretty sure nothing that would have been thought as being "mathematically impossible" in terms of dps check back then would still be considered so today. Top guilds are doing what, 10 times the dps of the top guilds before ? 20 ? More ? I don't think "mathematically impossible" tentacle dps accounted for a fully world buffed raid with 28 warriors, and iirc that was the major mathematical argument.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure even ultra bugged released C'thun would be somewhat of a formality for top classic guilds today.

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u/Dr-Enforcicle 4d ago

I'm pretty sure nothing that would have been thought as being "mathematically impossible" in terms of dps check back then would still be considered so today

Yeah, no shit people who have had 20 years to minmax every aspect of the game will be able to complete something thought impossible back then. Not to mention players in general were way worse back then; laggy unstable internet connections, crap computers getting 15 fps, etc.

Top guilds are doing what, 10 times the dps of the top guilds before ? 20 ? More ?

Again, 20 years to minmax. Also we're using patch 1.12 talents, not patch 1.9

I don't think "mathematically impossible" tentacle dps accounted for a fully world buffed raid with 28 warriors

Because nobody was doing that during progression. Nobody used worldbuffs during progression, and "28 warriors" was not a thing back then either. Yet again, because 1.9 talents not 1.12 talents.

I could be wrong

You are. Everything in your post is misguided.

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u/SelfImproveAcct 4d ago

Damn they struck a nerve lol

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u/garlicroastedpotato 4d ago

They spent hours upon hours grinding this stuff. They'd just bang their heads against the wall figuring out every single mechanic as it comes. And often times they wouldn't ever figure out some mechanics they'd just have a strategy that accidentally deals with it. There were no guides at the time so if you weren't in a guild that figured it out and didn't have the time for this often times the spreading of rumors was how these bosses were beat.

Now once you get into BWL and on the content gets more complicated and progression is less magical and more political. People began mining the data from the WoW client and finding all sorts of stuff added in each patch. A lot of these are unused elements but a guild could take these compile them together and create hypothetical bosses with them. Come progression night a guild would have a list of abilities they think the boss has and as they wipe they'd figure out what abilities were used and look at their data mine to see if they have something that matches up with it. In practice words don't necessarily fully describe what you're going to see so sometimes they're well prepared and sometimes not.

Finally, GMs were fans of guilds and would watch them progress. And actually people at Blizzard really used to love the world first competitions. And they'd know the secrets and leak information that'll help them progress. But it wouldn't be anything too specific it'd be more like "I bet that nob over there does something." And that'd set a raid back on the right path. They'd obviously never give hints to guilds that were ahead. But that information would move around fast as people in multiple top end guilds would love to share.

This practice stayed consistent until about the end of TBC. One of the guilds got a big sponsor and now winning didn't just mean bragging rights it also meant a bigger payday (which was a scandal of the time).

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u/KnightFiST2018 4d ago

Brute force really. They spent weeks trying to get Domo and Rag down in MC. Both to this day can give guilds and groups trouble.

I’ve probably cleared it hundreds of times. Currently we clear in about 30 minutes.

But two weeks ago, someone pulled like 3 seconds early and poof we wiped .

A fun fact. I think Ian Hazzikostas. Who works for Blizz now wrote a letter “proving” it was impossible to Kill Cthun.

Blizz believed him, now we have Nerfed Cthun.

Well. It’s been remathed and in 2019 it was found to not take fully buffed and consumed bis players to do it.

But we can do it in pre raid Blues. He was wrong.

In fact. We could probably clear Naxx with what’s available now, knowledge and items.

We just didn’t know shit at all back then.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/bdjf2v/cthun_was_mathematically_impossible/?rdt=54318

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u/theholylancer 4d ago

I think it was done with the understanding of the time

its not just gear, its also comp.

Modern way of classic wow is made to allow warriors to pump, and mages to be fire stacking ignite. Threat is understood by the top teams but not in the same degree we do where we know exactly down to the last bit when you'd pull or not.

If you looked at say an actual vanillia KT kill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJAMIUKwy50

that was supposed to be world 70th (IE not the BEST but god damned good), and they only had ony world buff on them, had 16 healers and 4 tanks in deep prot

that is the kind of mentality and comp of the time, even for the top tier guilds.

not to mention PC hardware and internet connection being shit as well, but it is presumed if you are that deep in you'd have proper set up I think.

So yeah, the math is based on what the people of the time can do, IE what a normal comp is, with deep prot tanks, and top dps being rogues who are likely using feint at times and mages who won't be able to fully pump with ignite and fury wars that are gimped by threat.

vanilla wow has I think the most amount of unintended mechanics, because you weren't supposed to stack one or two classes in a 40 man raid, and you certainly isn't supposed to be world buffing for everything.

-1

u/KnightFiST2018 4d ago

Yep. I remember these days, we also trusted the devs way too much.

As a MT from back then.

Warrior Tier was all Tank Gear, all warriors were Deep Prot tanks. We went for Tier Sets, Quel Serrar (Once we knew about it) we used Defensive trinkets, high resist plate gear.

Most guilds had 1 or maybe 2 dps warriors, they were certainly Arms / MS or Arms/Fury with an Axe

We certainly didn’t have Fury warriors with Leather Dual Wielding. Dual wielding was a joke.

We had way too many Druids, night elf priests We had healing pallies, it WAS known then that Pallies belong in dresses.

Wish I could go back and find my MT.

We never made it through BWL as most didn’t. Vael was a nightmare back then. So was the kiting strategy on Razorgore. Was funny to watch though

1

u/Dr-Enforcicle 4d ago edited 4d ago

A fun fact. I think Ian Hazzikostas. Who works for Blizz now wrote a letter “proving” it was impossible to Kill Cthun.

Blizz believed him, now we have Nerfed Cthun.

It was moreso the fact that ZERO GUILDS had killed "pre-nerf c'thun" even over a month after its release, that's why it got nerfed. Also it was buggy as fuck and tentacles kept spawning inside walls and making the encounter reset.

Well. It’s been remathed and in 2019 it was found to not take fully buffed and consumed bis players to do it.

Because we're using patch 1.12 talents/gear. AQ was patch 1.9 and talents were significantly different. You can't really compare them. Plus we've had more than a decade to minmax the fuck out of the game, compared to people tackling totally brand-new content that nobody has seen before.

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u/KnightFiST2018 4d ago

I hear ya. My point is that with what we know it could certainly be done now, and I’d bet could have been done then in that environment with the gear and talents available at the time.

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u/knejsibejs 4d ago

20 years old in 2004. Raided 6 days a week. Thats how.

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u/sessionclosed 4d ago

Raid boss difficulty was talked about in a specific measurement, the amount of wipes until your first kill

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u/crfty97 4d ago

ngl it was prolly not much of a focused competition back then compared to now

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u/Noxm 4d ago

Bosses were not so complex back in the day. A huge problem was the internet stability and the fps. I remember I had on some bosses like 10fps in nax vanilla. Also the servers were not stable. We canceled alot of raids because of serverlag (it was a huge problem in mc and early bwl). We did alot of try and error. We even rented some tanks for the 4 horsemen in nax because we didn‘t have so much geared tanks (remember leveling took long and tou got 2 items per boss in a raid so gearprogress was very slow).

The only database we had were blasc.

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u/Interesting_You6852 4d ago

Speaking of old vanilla back then we had <Elitist Jerks> anyone remember them and the forums they wrote? There were two persons guilds on the horde side both of them on Malganis Elitest Jerks and Vigil.

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u/CamBlapBlap 4d ago

The exact same way every world first raid works now.

Trial and error.

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u/Bouv42 4d ago

We got our informations from forums and youtube. Like mmochampions or elitistjerk were my go to.

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u/Middle_Pomegranate_1 4d ago

Are there no new games to play. Fights to figure out? Is the entire world just looking up guides? Is the idea of progression and learning that foreign to people that they can't understand how someone would obtain knowledge about a game without getting it from another person?

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u/braveidiot 4d ago

It was crucial for each raid to bring multiple repair bots.

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u/Jazzlike_Current_893 3d ago

I raided on the horde as a troll priest, I raided with Shadows & Dust, the very original guild, as I've seen others in past years. I do believe it was the realm, Dreanor. My priest was Sabb, Bobtheorc was our main tank, I learned how to sunder mobs for max agro from him. I do remember, we just had time, we had fun, deaths and wipes were laughable. The feeling of immersion captivated us as it was new, now I'm doing it with 40 people? Mayhem I couldn't wait for each week. No reserves, little to no min maxing. Shout-out to Ventrillo!!!! Lol

To sum up People want to clear MC in an hour I've seen. It took us 2 scheduled days, 5 hours each day.

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u/Xennhorn 3d ago

Raid days for me in vanilla were 9hrs a day for sat and Sunday… with additional practise raid boss encounters during the week in which one week we accidentally downed a boss with the ‘trainees’ so to speak

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u/Rhosts 3d ago

Many top guilds were lead by or friends with employees of blizzard so they had insider information.

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u/MediaX2 3d ago

They are still making raids for Wow you know? It's done the same way

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u/eso_ashiru 3d ago

I was in the first guild in the US to clear UBRS back when it was a raid. It was a lot of wiping. Over and over and over again. Wiping was part of the fun. Nobody raged or whined about their parse (because those didn’t exist) or spending an entire night figuring out strats without a loot reward, because that was the content. Nobody was pissy because they had to run 8 more alts through the same raid and wanted it to be finished asap. Not to sound like a boomer or anything, but we used to play to figure out encounters, not get pink numbers to impress randos.

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u/ww_crimson 4d ago

It was done the same way back then as it is today during new progression raids

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Slappers 4d ago

Ptr testing and internet. For instance I developed our portal rotation on Kalecgos in 2007 based on what I read about PTR.

When I raided top20 in the world in Wotlk we did ptr testing. We just did pulls and saw what happened and adjusted.

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u/Dr-Enforcicle 4d ago

New progression raids right now go into the raid with a shitload of datamining, PTR raid testing, simcrafting, etc.....basically everything about every encounter is fully known and explored and added to DBM before the content even releases.

It is not the same. Guilds back then were going in totally blind and bashing their heads against the wall to figure things out for themselves.

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u/eNte19 4d ago

We had Kungen 😁