-Orc racial Blood Fury only increased melee attack power by 25%, and when the effect expired, you lost 25% of your AP for 45 seconds. Also reduced healing by 50%. Overall it was useless for Orc Warlocks and resto/elemental Shamans.
-All Polearms were called Spears.
-You could swap armor and weapons during combat(now its only weapons).
-You didn't lose durability when dying, but you lost more durability during combat.
-Hunters gained 2 attack power per 1 point of agility.
-Hunters couldn't lay traps in combat. It was changed in TBC so you can do it, but with 2 second cast time.
-A good one: Survival talent tree for Hunters had a different name - "Outdoormanship"
-The paladin spell Holy Wrath was once named "Judgment"
-There was no countdown on duels.
-PvP trinkets were class specific, for example, Warrior trinket broke only stuns or warlock only snares(don't remember exactly).
-Healing spells had 30 yard range and classes had talents to increase its range.
-Barkskin increased your cast time and slowed melee speed.
-Enslave demon buff was dispellable, so the enslaved demon would attack the Warlock.
-Druids couldn't shapeshift to break Polymorph.
-Channeled spells (such as arcane missiles) couldn't be interrupted.
-Upon release, boats(and zeppelins?) were very unstable and buggy, so they disabled them for a short time until they fixed it. They added an NPC called Captain Placeholder which teleported players for some money. He was so popular, that players made a lament for him.
-Thrown weapons had charges, like todays ammo.
-In the patch that introduced TBC talents in Vanilla, it also introduced paladin/horde - shaman/alliance gear. Since there were no horde paladins and alliance shamans yet, those drops were just wasted.
-Night Elf guards in Darnassus and some other settlements are always female. Blood Elf guards are always male.
-WotLK in China was relased in August 2010, which is nearly 2 years later than it's release in Europe/NA.
-There is no WoW in Japan at all.
-Sylvanas in WoW had 3-4 different voice actors.
-Draenei were announced as a playable race 6-7 months after TBC was announced.
-Chris Metzen is the voice actor of Ragnaros/Nefarian/Thrall/Rexxar/Varian Wrynn/Deathbringer Saurfang/Algalon, and many more.
-Azjol-nerub was supposed to be a raid instance/zone instead of ToC, but left behind as blizzard realized that it was too big, so they put all of what they have done in OK/AN instances(it really is big). They also said in a recent interview that their biggest disappointment about WotLK is not making AN a zone.
-The longest instance corpse run was Crossroads-Razorfen Downs, because there was only one graveyard in Barrens. The longest non-instance corpse run was probably in Blade's edge mountains before they fixed graveyards there.
-Bind on pickup was called "Bind on Acquire".
-Everyone could see Spirit Healers, including people who are alive.
-There is a Spirit Healer west of Crossroads that is named "Koiter". He is a memorial to Michael Koiter, a Blizzard artist that died during the development of WoW.
-Battleground groups weren't formed automatically upon joining the BG, so it was "INV PLZ" spamfest during the first minutes.
-A Death Knight could Death Grip someone while standing on the Booty Bay boat, and that person would be sent flying across the continent, ending up below Alterac Mountains. Here is the video of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aatKE0FF2m4
-Hunters would usually go out of mana after 3 shots, so they were mostly auto shooting in PvP. However in PvE, you could FD+drink/swap gear.
-Unfortunately, Moonkins would just go out of mana after 3 spells. They were mostly brought there for the /dance.
-Paladin blessings lasted 5 minutes. So by the time you buffed 40 raid members, the first ones you buffed would have 2-3 minutes left on their blessings. So they were essentially just rebuffing the raid all the time.
-Warlock Death Coil had 10 minute cooldown, and didn't cause any horror effect.
-All mobs in the heavy-silithid areas in Silithus were elite. Also many other mobs in the game had elite status removed.
-Warlocks were able to summon people into battlegrounds, including people who are higher/lower level than the level bracket.
-The longest ever unkilled boss in WoW is Ouro the Sandworm(86 days after the first Twin Emperors kill), with C'thun and Onyxia just behind him. This is because he was very bugged at AQ release, and he is an optional boss.
-If warlocks cast Detect Invisibility in Ruins of Lordaeron or Raven Hill in Duskwood, they can see invisible level 50ish mobs, which can only be seen with this method. They were added so Aliiance Warlocks had a quick way to farm shards while in Stormwind.
-In alpha, there was a "profession" called "Survival Skills". It was used for making campfires (which can now be made with cooking) and torches.
-Those torches were used for scouting. Back than, the graphic engine was a bit different. Darker areas, such as Duskwood, were really "dark" and you couldn't see anything past 20-30 yards in front of you. Torches were used to increase visibility in those darker areas. Many NPC's in Duskwood still hold torches in their hands.
-Cataclysm was in development before WotLK was released.
-If you lower the music settings in settings, and increase ambient sounds to max, you can go to Undercity throne room, and hear the dialogue between Arthas and his father before he killed him.
-In the tunnel before Undercity throne room, you can see rose petals that people threw on Arthas before he killed his father. You can also see blood on the floor as Terenas' bloodied crown fell.
-You can also increase ambient/lower music settings in Raven Hill catacombs and Karazhan crypts. I won't reveal what you will hear
-Moonkin Starfall wasn't canceled when switching to animal forms. They could do travel form+starfall. It also broke stealth in 30 yard radius, and also did RNG 3 second stun.
-The most overpowered class ever in WoW was Retribution Paladin during the first 24 hours of Patch 3.01 (the one with WotLK talents at level 70). Divine Storm dealt holy damage, and they could do bubble + avenging wrath, with bubble not reducing damage by 50%. Best 24 hours in my life.
-Flight paths were not connected, so you needed to pick the next stop each time you land.
-A questgiver in Borean Tundra has a name "Gorge the Corpsegrinder", which is a tribute to George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, the singer of Cannibal Corpse.
-World of Warcraft was announced in September 2001, and was in development for about a year before that announcement, which means WoW has been in development for 10 years.
-Death Knights and some other classes were planned to be released with original WoW, but they were saved for later.
-In planning stages of WotLK development, they had 3 options for a hero class: Necromancer, Runemaster and Death Knight. In the end, they "combined" all three into one, giving DK's Necromancer niches such as diseases and corpse exploding, and Runemaster niches, their rune resource system. Which is why we will never (99,94%) see those two classes in game.
-Nefarian class calls also has a Death Knight call. Why Blizzard returned to an oldschool instance in WotLK is unknown.
-During the first few months of TBC, there was always a pile of skeletons below Aldor Elevator. Players often called it "elevator boss" and even wrote tactics for defeating it. Here is one tactic for the crack boss in SSC
http://i30.tinypic.com/ajuve1.jpg
-Mind Numbing poison and Curse of Tongues reduced cast speed by 60%.
-If a player under the effect of Curse of Tongues types something in chat, they will speak in [Demonic] language.
-There is a huge smiley face below Karazhan.
-On TBC release, Karazhan gear was weaker than gear from heroic dungeons, and they had to completely reitemize almost all drops.
-Heroic dungeons on TBC release were so hard that many players considered heroic SL/SH and Arcatraz to be impossible to do even in Karazhan gear. They were later nerfed but players still avoided those dungeons like a plague.
-Wintergrasp was supposed to have aerial combat, which was removed. You can see it on your WotLK CD box.
-Onyxia has a "Deep Breath" ability. In vanilla WoW, players didn't know what triggered Deep Breaths(it was just random), which led to many theories and speculations. You can see some here
http://www.wowwiki.com/Why_does_Onyx...Deep_Breath%3F
-There were many jokes like that, for example: "LOOT THE HOUNDS", "kite to vael's room", "furnace behind Golemagg", and many more.
-Here are the old talent trees
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie...y_select_id=12 Make sure to check out Survival Hunter tree.
-Blizzard was balancing raids around classes having restricted roles. Only Warriors could tank, priest was by far the best healer, druids were there to innervate the priests, shamans were used mostly as out of combat ressers, and paladins were usually busy rebuffing the raid with 5 minute blessings. Druids, Paladins, and Warlocks(early, before they were buffed their damage was horrible) had no viable dps specs at all.
-Hybrid classes usually dealt about 50% less damage than pure classes. "What is this Feral Druid doing here? Tell him to spec resto and innervate the priests!"
-Not directly related to the game, but shortly after TBC was released, and caused massive shaman nerfs, the shaman community had a massive outcry on the forums. The CM called Tseric had a job to moderate the forums, and after going insane from all the whining, he started to ban ANYONE who posted on the shaman forums(no matter what you posted). He was fired from Blizzard shortly after that.
-Next to Horde Inn in Dalaran, there is a sewer with an NPC at the bottom of it. It is only reachable by engineers using Wormhole Generator.
-If you enter the house north of Goldshire at 7:40 am, you will see 5 children forming a pentagram. You can hear banshee screams, creepy music, and the C'thun sound file saying "You will die".
-In Duskwood, at Beggar's Haunt tower, there is a twisted path behind leading to an area called "Knight's Hollow", it has an unmarked grave with two statues, the same ones found at Dark Portal.
-The wandering tauren female in STV called Samantha Swifthoof currently has no use, but earlier she taught Plainsrunning skill for Tauren.
-Tauren is an anagram for "Nature".
-The area west of Dun Morogh called "Newman's Landing", is used as an area where Alliance characters are dropped upon creation, before the intro video starts. If you stand at a certain spot you will notice level 1 characters appearing for a brief instant before they disappear.
-In the area west of Tirisfal Glades, you can see four large spikes rising from the ground, with each one being taller than the previous one. This is probably the result of a bored developer.
-If you swim east of Tirisfal Glades, you will find an abandoned tower. That area in lore is called "Northeron" but in game it was never implemented.
-If you swim from Tanaris to south of Silithus, you will find a Tauren building with a cave next to it.
-Shade of Aran in Karazhan has a special quote if someone in the raid is wearing Atiesh, saying "Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??"