Was Nostalrius better or worse than Vanilla?

[Lighthammer]

I didn't play much until Wrath so I'm very close to being a wrath baby, I made a big post about how I experienced Nostalrius from a wrathbaby's perspective here.

As I never really played during Vanilla, I'm wondering if Nostalrius did it better or worse? What could they have done different and what do you hope Blizzard does differently if they release a legacy server?

[Syphonize]

I don't think it's a very fair comparison, but personally I loved how Nostalrius increased the cap on the server. It made the server feel ridiculously alive. I used to play on a high pop server but even there, there were times when it would get quiet. Not on Nostalrius though!

Of course, there were some bugs that took a long while to fix, but that is to be expected.

[ShaqPack]

Gotta agree, it's tough to say which is better or worse but I do think Nost pretty much captured what made vanilla great, no doubt. Pugs did happen in vanilla, but on nost it was a pretty regular thing, and vanilla had epic battles of world pvp, but Nost just had so much more.

That being said, pretty much Nost had all the best things, from the cocky asshole elitists, to the players that were so goddamn awful that you had no idea how they got to 60, to the chinese gold farmers constantly coming up with new ways to advertise, to being bored in molten core and coming up with hilarious banter based off of that.

I will say the only things I'd personally like to see on legacy servers if they actually do happen is the increase in populations. None of the other servers will surpass Nost out there because they lack the balls or expertise to make their servers truly blizz like.

[Drain]

Overall better until your account gets hacked.

[melak]

No it was not, how the servers were setup was inferior, so was the spawn (maybe due to the fact that there were simply too many players online for an enjoyable questing experience). And also some retarded and annoying bugs that vanilla never had (On nost you had to relog most of the time when you equiped a new bag etc). Nost was good and awsome but not better than blizz vanilla.

[Lokrosh]

Was a bit more buggy than live servers, but the population... Always tons of people EVERYWHERE even in the most remote zones you would find other people. For me, that's what an MMO is all about so you could say it was better in that regard.

[Askental]

I think I liked Nostalrius itself better, but the novelty of vanilla made greater memories.

[alucard001]

The novelty of vanilla made greater memories.

This. Vanilla was far better. And by the way there were shittons of bugs and lag/delay problems in Nostalrius

[Norjak]

The novelty of vanilla made greater memories.

This. Vanilla was far better. And by the way there were shittons of bugs and lag/delay problems in Nostalrius

True - Nost was always trying to be exactly like retail vanilla in almost every way, and you can really only get 95% there if you do it perfectly. They tried, but there were still a lot of bugs (even if they were the best of any private server.) They also did some things differently, like fixing DM North tribute the way they did, or letting people have both factions on the same pvp account, or all the stuff with draw distance to reduce lag caused by excessive server pop, or many under-the-hood changes designed to allow so many players. Some things were open to interpretation by looking at old Thotbot databases, and they just got it wrong. They are not perfect, nor do I expect them to be - this was a passion project for them, and I can't thank them enough for all the work that was put in. I was able to experience a near-flawless vanilla 1-60 leveling experience on a high-pop server, something I dreamed about but never thought I'd ever see. The 1-60 experience is the heart of vanilla WoW and it is why so many players made the game so massively popular.

[Askental]

Yeah let's not forget we get to compare because we were the lucky few who played both. Nostalrius provided that original wow experience to thousands who were too young or just missed it at the time! In a somewhat unperfect way, sure, but pretty damn good. This is fucking awesome in itself!
And while it's not technically accurate, I am so glad we have the 1.12 patch from the beginning on private servers. A lot of people still complain about classes balance in 1.12 but it was such a joke at first, and during that really long time when not every class had their final talent trees... Some were completely overpowered and some were terrible. Vanilla sucked for a while too!
Nostalrius excessive population was interesting imo, sure it got laggy but the feeling when everyone gathered in one place for Azuregos or the Emerald event was very unique and the battles we had there were so intense, I wish we did that more. These moments are also unforgettable for me! Exaggerated vanilla pvp? Fuck yes!