Whiskey Brigade

Vanilla days of World of Warcraft, I recall these happening quite often, and in some ways wish they would find there way back into the game, but here are 6 videos that changed game mechanics, enjoy!

This was the earliest major example of a pet-related bug. In this specific case, Baron Geddonapplied his Living Bomb to Biny’s pet… and Biny promptly dismissed it, only to resummon it later (with the debuff still active) in the middle of the Ironforge Auction House. Though they fixed this, pet-related bugs did make their way back into the game a little later in vanilla…

One of the most famous incidents in MMO history, pets became long-distance carriers for Hakkar’sCorrupted Blood ability. Originally, this ability would jump to nearby targets, though it was intended to be contained within Zul’Gurub. If Hunters dismissed their pets quickly enough when it was initially applied, they could resummon them inside cities with devastating results.

This event also spawned real-world epidemiology research studies, as discussed in the Wikipedia entry.

Leashing is a common rule in the open world today, but at one time even the biggest world bosses could be kited to heavy population centers. Kazzak takes the cake, though — he would heal himself with every target he killed with a shadowbolt. In a busy hub like Stormwind, this effectively meant an unkillable world boss… but this was awesome!

Indalamar is one of the most recognized and most infamous names in Warrior history, spawning two items named after him (Ramaladni’s Blade and Ramaladni’s Icy Grasp — spell the name backward). In this pre-release movie he mows through high-level outdoor mobs with amazing efficiency and next-to-zero downtime. He spawned the golden rule of, “if you find something cool and make a video, it will probably be nerfed.” (I have unfortunately admitted to knowing this rule now, so I’d like to retroactively apologize for the movies Lore and I made in Wrath beta)

To be fair to Indalamar, there were some more damning class imbalances for Warriors and Paladins that would come during the live Vanilla years…

AND….

Ouch. Both of the above are examples of stacking buffs that were not properly restricted. Though the one-shot from the Warrior was an instance-related bug, the Reckoning Bomb was a product of intended game mechanics.