Back to Vanilla

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Since Blizzard announced World of Warcraft Classic back in november, I’ve been having an itch for running around in Stranglethorn Vale for hours while getting relentlessly ganked by high levels.  I’ve longed for some of the old, now replaced, music in the zones (ie. the music in pre-Cataclysm Barrens). Also, I’ve never really been a fan of the world itself, after the Cataclysm. There was just something about old Barrens. Right now on the live servers, you breeze through content until you hit Legion and Blizzard somehow managed to make almost 15 years of content completely irrelevant.

I feel the game was harder back in Vanilla and I never had more fun with a game, than I did back then. I know that nostalgia is a big part of this and since my old guild mates (and me) have grown up, it will never really be the same, even when World of Warcraft Classic releases (at some point).

To get my fill of Vanilla right now I found a private server running on the World of Warcraft 1.12.1 client (which I conveniently enough had lying around from when I played around with a Mangos local server years ago) , where I could play to my hearts desire. At first I tried playing around with the standard interface, but ended out missing some features. Luckily World of Warcraft has always been very customisable, so after looking around at different source for Vanilla addons, I ended up with an interface looking like this:

I’m not in any way calling myself an expert in creating user interfaces for World of Warcraft (in Live I run a pretty standard ElvUI setup), but I really like this look and it suits my needs (for now, I’m only level 6 after all). Here is a list of the addons that I’ve used:

  • !OmniCC – Cooldown count for everything (I found this one here, as the version I found on github didn’t work properly for Vanilla)
  • !Questie – The vanilla quest helper
  • AddOnOrganizer – Makes it possible to enable and disable addons on the fly
  • AdvancedTradeSkillWindow – Changes the tradeskill windows for a better overview and new functionality
  • Atlas – Contains Atlas, AtlasLoot and AtlasQuest which are invaluable addons when doing instances and raids
  • BetterAlign – Creates a temporary grid on the screen and makes it easier to align a custom interface perfectly
  • BetterCharacterStats – Improves the character window, with a much better and more detailed stats
  • BigWigs – A bossmod addon, that helps in instances
  • BlizzMo – Makes it possible to move and resize blizzard windows
  • Bongos – Custom actionbars, that are easily moved, resized etc.
  • Cartographer – A world map replacement addon
  • Cartographer_Herbalism – Herbalism module for Cartographer
  • Cartographer_Minimap_Coords – A module for Cartographer that adds coordinates to the minimap
  • Cartographer_Mining – Mining module for Cartographer
  • Cartographer_Treasure – Treasure module for Cartographer
  • ChatSuey – A collection of small chat enhancement addons
  • ClassicSnowFall – Changes keybindings so they activate at the key press instead of the key release
  • cooline – Gives a cooldown bar you can move around the screen
  • EQCompare – An equipment compare addon, that gives you comparison tooltips between what you hover over and what you’re wearing
  • EQL3 – Extended Quest Log 3, with an improved quest tracker
  • LunaUnitFrames – Unit frame replacement
  • MBB – MinimapButtonBag, cleans up the minimap and adds all addon buttons into a clickable menu that folds out
  • MikScrollingBattleText – Scrolling combat text
  • oCB – Player and target castbar addon
  • OneBag – A one window bag
  • OneBank – A one window bank
  • Postal – Improves the mail interface
  • ShaguPlates – Changes the nameplates
  • TinyTip – Contains TinyTip, TinyTipExtras and TinyTipOptions, which greatly improves the tooltips
  • VanillaGraphicBoost – Improves the graphics in Vanilla by automating these console commands
  • VCB – Changes the buff frame
  • XLoot – Contains XLoot, XLootGroup, XLootMaster and XLootMonitor that improves the loot windows and rolling for items

The final touch is that I’ve changed all the fonts to Ubuntu Regular by changing all 5 files in the Fonts folder in the World of Warcraft folder to a .ttf version of Ubuntu Regular.

I might change the UI around at some point when I level or change class and then I might update the blog again. There is also the chance that I wont.