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As we continue to head towards a new era for World of Warcraft, with The War Within’s release starting off The World Soul Saga, there are still some issues facing new players who want to try World of Warcraft. It’s fair to say that Classic World of Warcraft has kept its charm over the years, however, the introduction new players get to Retail World of Warcraft isn’t quite as straightforward. Issues such as previous expansions and too many confusing choices for new players to make are a regular challenge. So, just how can we tackle such problems for new players in Retail World of Warcraft? Let’s find out.
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How do you think the new player experience could be improved? 🤔
Good quality, didn't knew it was a small channel. Very nice
lol, its not to hard. People don't want to START playing an MMORPG thats 239847239847239847 year old
as a new player i can confirm that retail is not hard at all, if anything classic is hell compared to retail. (started in dragonflight)
I think confusing 'hard' with 'complexity' is the problem. Retail WoW is very complex, whereas Vanilla WoW was simple; anyone could learn it and jump right in. Currently, in retail, you have Chromie Time, which is a horrible system and is very confusing. Bottom line: WoW needs a full reboot back to Vanilla or at least to Wrath. The devs need to explain a path forward if they did a full reboot, and they need to reset the lore as well; it's so broken and disjointed.
Classic was way harder difficulty wise just less complex
Retail isn't too hard, but its a headache and a half to get into, just to play the game you need a million addons, the Lore is awful, the leveling experience makes you feel like you jumped onto a moving path and zipped to the end. I fully agree with Asmon that if you're a new player its better to play Classic, and I hate that, because while I love classic, I played its , I would like the new game to be good, but its shite
Some good points here, but also some I disagree with, mainly I don't consider the starting aspect to be overwhelming, compared to most MMO's and any RPG tbh the choices you make in the start is very simple; race and class. I also believe that if it's your first ever character you're forced into Exile's Reach and only ever get to pick between the two after that. One of the reasons I believe they wish to push you into Battle for Azeroth (I believe once again that if it is your first ever character you have to do BFA) is because as a starting leveling zone it's not only mostly straightforward, it's also pretty removed from past stories since you're exploring new lands AND new characters. Also BFA most def has some of the best zones, characters and just art in general. Like yes we all have bfa trauma, but those starting zones are breathtakingly beautiful with some really fun storylines that are quite simple to follow along with. Take the Zuldazar story:
– You help break out some guys from the other faction, here you get much more out of it if you do know Jaina and the rest but it still works. After all Talanji and Zul are new characters
– You meet up with this new nation and get thoroughly introduced to their philosophy and city
– You meet the king, advisor who will turn evil, meet their loas
– And then shenanigans ensue dealing with all the aspects you've been introduced to.
Where it all fails is that you don't actually get to complete the storyline and is basically forced out of there once you reach level 61 and forced into Dragonflight which leaves you with no clue what is going. And a minor complaint is also that you don't get to experience any of the pre-expansion fight for the world tree + lordaeron which are kinda crucial. Once the first time players are done with Exile's Reach they should have been rewarded with some sort of cinematic showcasing what happened, they already got the amazing videos and work done for it after all, use your resources WoW.
I also consider Exile's Reach on a technical level too be FAR superior than any of the race starting zones in showcasing modern wow and the general gameplay you will experience from BFA and newer expansions. Though in terms of flavor and getting to know valuable lore, and key characters the starting zones are fantastic
That being said WoW is for sure going to switch to Dragonflight being your new levelling zone when War Within comes out. And also the issue still stands with that new players don't get to experience anything of the world before this, including the classic storyline, being stuck with the Cataclysm one. I started playing first in Legion, and being a lore and story nerd wanted to experience every zone and create lots of characters with the different races, which led to me making like 50 alts so I got to go through every zone (well most of them). WoW should have implemented a way to experience the main story of every zone both pre and post Cata, but alas they did not.
For gameplay stuff I don't have that much thoughts, mainly just that I think that there are TOO MANY BUTTONS, and UI from said buttons that destroy my immersion personally.
And also lategame is a mess for new players if they don't have friends to help them find guilds, etc etc.
It's literally enough to read if I want to know something 😀
Retail isn't too hard. It's ugly cartoonish trash. 90% of you play super zoomed out so your character is the size of an ant with a horrificly ugly UI. Retail wow is for smooth brain crayon eaters.
Retail isn't hard… it's just confusing because so much to do (and most of the things u can just skip), too many FOMO events to keep up with, numerous specs to remember and learn differing what content are you playing (and like every big patch you're forced to change the spec you learned to play), no catch up mechanism for profession talents, campaign quests are mess'd up and clutched so that you really cant know which one to do first, list goes on and on. Classic in other hand, simple talents to learn and not so hard to master, no over complex rotations, almost 0 FOMO events, and not too many dungeon or raid difficulties to keep up with (depending which version of classic you are playing), leveling is part of the journey (least in Vanilla -classic), better community.
Imo, no; Retail is not hard per se, rather its overwhelming that keeps most of new players away.
This game was made for old players, they rely on old players to bring and keep new players. They don’t care so much about newbies but to keep the 15 dollar a month players paying. Those players cry if game isn’t annoying complicated and would cry if they created an easy class for new players.
I think classic leveling instead of BFA should be base.
I've been raiding at mythic level back in Legion, managed to kill Kil'Jaeden on Mythic to which I think was the hardest fight I've ever done. And comparing that to Classic, I'd rather play Mythic Legion raids to Gnomeregan or BWL on Classic. The skill gap beetwen players is too high, the amount of people required is too big and lets say if someone mistakes a mechanic on Classic everyone is dead and thats minus world buffs, 5g repair gold, a 5min walk back, and a 5 min rebuff with an insane of gold spend on consumables. It's not hard perse but it's annoying, time wasting and frustrating.
I believe new players dont get to choose the starter zone, they just go to exiles reach (first char only), also in the war within new players will be forced to play the DF campaign instead of the current BFA campaign
Retail wow is fine but seems very disjointed. It's not one solid game, it seems more like 10 games loosely joined by world. There are a ton of zones and stories that new players won't even know about. They need to decide what's important. Blizz seems to only care about the latest expansion. That's not only shown by how quickly they try to get new players there but also by making all the old zones/mechanics/systems completely irrelevant. And that's fine. If that's what they want. But they make new players engage with the old irrelevant content while making their way to the latest expansion.
What they should do, is either force new players through the whole story like FF14 does, or let the new players start fresh in the new expansion. Like all of the previous expansions happened in the past that their toon wasn't there for. So the get placed in that area. If they are going to treat the latest expansion as the main game, treat it like the main game. They would either have to re-do level scaling or cater new zones to ALL levels of players and not just max level content. It's just sad that all the old zones get neglected and forgotten about
One big difference between classic and retail is that it's super easy to create alts and level them in retail.
But leveling in retail is too fast to learn to play the class properly. And by the time you get to the end game lets say M+.
You're overwhelmed because you're supposed to go fast in M+ (well in retail you get kicked even from normal dungeons if you don't blast trough it).
In retail there is also way more pressure to perform. When in classic it's more acceptable to be more chill.
I think it is actually worse than 3: Modern(Retail), Classic Era, WOTLK Classic, SoD, Hardcore (Normal and SF) 🙂 That is 5 choices….that is crazy for new players.
It’s not that it’s too hard. We just don’t see the point in a sunk cost. As well as gatekeeping so hard that you have an easier time getting into fort knocks instead of getting into heroic or mythic content. We also see that for example the raid for example is balanced around world first and 10% of the population of player. Those 10% just shit on the other 90%. I say to offset this by nerfing bosses based on difficulty tier by 5% over and over again until 40-50% of the population of that tier can complete it. Example if 1000 people play mythic raid 500 should be able to complete it with relative ease while the other 500 will struggle and claw there way through it. Newer players have seen the issues of the past for those like myself that have taken the time to look it up. I don’t know about all you older people but I don’t want a raid to take 6hrs from assembly to completion or just disbanding after 3 attempts and 3hrs wasted. We just want to get the shit done without memorizing a ton of useless info that will be irrelevant when the next raid drops.
diffficulty isn't what we're talking about – when you open the game you have a certain sense of patience or suspension of fun in order to learn to "play/interface" with the game.
which means finding leveling fun/educational, jumping over into group content and while interfacing with others, learning what things are important for that game mode.
without any incentives – getting to endgame AND becoming on par with the community costs so much patience and handling the drawbacks of the community not "tolerating" players who don't know things. it's just not worth the effort. not to mention because of the amount of content you COULD do while leveling, you never have a sense of "I'm on track / I am playing the game as designed".
Retail is hard in that theres too much going on / too much info thrown at u at a faster pace. Makes it worse that almost everyone has addons that are deemed necessary so if ur like me and hates using addons to play for u (telling u when to press a button bleghh) than it will be hard to keep up. Also with having macros for pvp just makes keybinds a nightmare!
Classic is technically the same but because the progression and combat is actually at a much slower pace, u have more time to read and think and it is simple enough
I'll never tire of saying this: NEW player experience should start with a brief introductory phase (Exile Reach, to be constantly updated) and then straight into the latest expansion.
Older content should be only used for alt leveling with an enhanced time-walking experience.
Retail is only challenging when your doing high end mythic keys and raids, either then that you can slap your head on the keyboard and get stupidly powerful without any effort
Its not the content its the community. The community is super toxic. Do you know how easy Heroic raiding is? But somehow every single person who starts a raid wants AOTC linked… like what kind of loser does that? When I start Heroic raids, I always make sure to bring in new people to make sure Im doing the right thing and actually helping people progress and have fun.
New accounts do not have the choice of which zone to start in – they all start in Exile's Reach. It's only once you have a high level character that you're given the choice.
I'm no genius, but I assume it has to do with the need of add-ons
It's the reason why I don't touch the game
I played a few years ago until lvl 10 or so
Excess of options in character creation wasn't an issue, the opposite was. Why can't I be a tank gnome? Or a Warlock tauren? Or whatever they're called
Let me be a stealthy orc if I want to. Give me a pop-up that says "you'll have to travel to find masters of your craft" to warn me that I won't have 40 quests waiting for me in Ogrimar and I have to go to the bone zone to learn to be extra sneaky. Just let me be what I want