I’m watching the War for Vanilla Servers and the blog posts about these “legacy” servers with interest. One of the fascinating things to me is that there doesn’t seem to be a standard for what Vanilla is.
For me, all MMO experiences are shadows of my first online experience Star Wars Galaxies. The changes there are precisely dated. Released June 26, 2003. April 27, 2005, the Combat Upgrade. November 1, 2005 The New Game Experience. Both brought devastating changes to the game, from which the game and its players never recovered.
World of Warcraft was released November 23, 2004. The first expansion, The Burning Crusade wasn’t released until January 16, 2007. The expansion was well received. I can’t recall anyone ever saying anything negative about it, with the small exception of some who regret the addition of player flight to the game.
Is the Vanilla era from launch to the date of the Burning Crusade? It seems to be the case.
From Vanilla Gaming.org What is VanillaGaming?
VanillaGaming is a 2009 founded World of Warcraft private server project and the oldest still existing classic server. With almost 5 years of experience we can offer you the feeling of the original World of Warcraft as it was back in the days of Patch 1.12. With the same main developer over all those years we have a huge knowledge about how to script (and sometimes even show so with new Wings 😛 )
From Vanilla WOW Wiki
WoW patch news
World of Warcraft version — Final “vanilla” patch (1.12.1)
- Patch 1.12.1 – Drums of War
- Cross-Realm Battlegrounds
- New API Changes
- New World PvP Objectives
- New API Changes
- Full patch notes: 1.1.0 (1.1.1 • 1.1.2) – 1.2.0 (1.2.1 • 1.2.2 • 1.2.3 • 1.2.4) – 1.3.0 (1.3.1 • 1.3.2) – 1.4.0 (1.4.1 • 1.4.2) – 1.5.0 (1.5.1) – 1.6.0 (1.6.1) – 1.7.0 (1.7.1) – 1.8.0 (1.8.1 • 1.8.2 • 1.8.3 • 1.8.4) – 1.9.0 (1.9.1 • 1.9.2 • 1.9.3 • 1.9.4) – 1.10.0 (1.10.1 • 1.10.2) – 1.11.0 (1.11.1 • 1.11.2) – 1.12.0 (1.12.1 • 1.12.2)