What will happen to my Valorstones in Midnight? Nothing, they’re gone!

Coming in hot from today’s Midnight news, Valorstones are no longer going to be a thing. Equipment upgrades will be done by crests only, though whether they increase crest upgrade costs to compensate for the loss — and how to handle the lower end Adventurer gear that doesn’t use crests at all — will likely be toyed around with a bit in the alpha, but this is pretty big news.

This got me thinking, and while Valorstones might be the newest item on Blizzard’s chopping block of game design as we move ahead, it’s certainly not the first concept they’ve removed over the years. I had come up with a small list of things that I remembered, but then I asked my guild for their suggestions as well, and, let me tell you, for some of you these are going to hit that nostalgia button, like that scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego eats Remy’s dish and is transported back to his childhood.

1. Remember Spirit? It used to be a primary stat, alongside Strength, Agility, and Intellect. It was the “healer” primary stat, basically determining the amount of health (but more importantly) mana generation per server tick. Was dealt a death blow in patch 7.0.3.
2. Hunters and hunter pets have quite a few things to talk about! For a time there was a dead zone, where hunters were “too close” to the target to shoot them with their bow — which used consumable arrows, by the way — but too far to be hit in melee. Part of being a hunter was learning to stay outside of this dead zone, using traps and such to keep just enough distance. Thankfully this was removed in patch 2.3. Hunter pets had their own range of designs that we can be thankful are gone: feeding and keeping your hunter pet happy was something that had to be done, or else your pet would run away; it also gave the pet a small bonus damage buff as well. This system? Gone in patch 4.0.1.
3. Gathering professions were brutal. You could try to farm up some ore and herbs, in hopes you could pay the auction house fee to sell them to level up to your new spell but bot farmers were tapping all of the nodes so you couldn’t mine or herb them. Or, if you could mine them, you had to take multiple attempts for each piece of ore you received. And you could also fail an attempt at mining or herb picking (or skinning) something, which was always a delight. These were changed in multiple patches, expansions apart.

I am absolutely sure there’s more out there that I am not thinking of right now, but let’s be honest: most of the things that get removed from the game are removed for a good reason. At the time they were added it seemed like a proper design decision, and now it no longer fits the needs of the game.