A lot of people are asking for 1.1 -> 1.12 progression.  This is fine with me, and I would gladly play it.  I understand that some people want to experience the game as it changed from release to the final vanilla patch.

But please make sure you know what 1.1 *was*.  I don't mean to say: "you don't want 1.1, you think you do, but you don't."  I'm just saying, educate yourselves if you're not aware of what 1.1 talent trees looked like.

As an example, a lot of people asking for non-vanilla changes have talked about class balance.  They say things like "druids could only heal," "protection paladins were useless," etc.  Those of us who played vanilla know that this wrong: feral/balance were viable and useful in some PvE situations, and were strong in PvP.  Protection was good in PvP (reckoning) and aoe farming, even if it wasn't often used to tank raids.

However, in 1.1, the conventional wisdom was that druids were useless outside of resto, and looking at the talent trees gives you a good idea why: https://web.archive.org/web/20041229222809/http://wowvault.ign.com:80/View.php?view=Talents.View.Beta&category_select_id=8&build=b6

Take a look.  Balance and feral were absolutely godawful trees before the druid class review.  I'm not going to summarize what's wrong with those trees, but think about the fact that innervate was the 31 point resto talent, and was considered very good, and it was later given to all druids at level 40 as a baseline spell.  That should tell you how much druids were buffed as vanilla was patched.

As far as paladins go, the 31 point protection paladin talent was Repentance.  The 31 point ret talent was...Blessing of Kings.  Really.

I'm not telling you that you're wrong for wanting to experience 1.1 -> 1.12, I'm just arguing that 1). the game got better as class reviews occurred, and 2). please make sure you know what you're asking for when you argue for starting at 1.1.

Thanks.