This video has gotten a LOT of really positive feedback and engagement so far. Thank you, everyone! Glad to see I'm not alone in caring about the new players to the game.
I got 2 of my new friends into expansion and their experience leveling has been terrible for the most part. The dungeon queues are insane for almost 30 mins to get 1 because the player base is divided across different timelines, all of the dungeons should be pooled together . There are dungeon finder bugs when you queue as a group you pick your role but nothing happens the icon does not appear at the bottom of the screen. "Recruit a friend" has quests to receive badges and marks of honor but you can't progress the quests because its bugged. And the biggest most annoying thing we have faced is my friend made a purchase and it took a whole day to go through but he reached 60 before the order completed and he was locked out of all the dungeons except BFA dungeons unless a low level friend party sync and queue's with him which I did because I was leveling a new character but for some odd reason it works for every expansion except shadowlands (I checked online blizzard says the bug is fixed but as usual its not fixed) Why aren't all the timelines accessible to someone who is lvl 60 and does not have the latest expansion but only subbed this only means that they want you to buy the game or you cant play any old dungeons through RDF. Very disappointed with the experience overall if you are buying the game its going to be a shitty experience until you reach the new expansion. This game should not be charging a sub fee if all it offers is the latest expansion. The sub is to get access to all older expansions but clearly you get locked out of it when you hit 60. This is not the kind of service you expect paying a sub fee every month.
I'm a new player I've been having a lot of fun but I was mad when I played battle for Azeroth And hit the dragonflight quest line. All my friends told me to leave azeroth and come join Dragonflight. This led me to watch a 3 hour video on wow Lore too understand what's going on.
I think the problem is return of investment. The only way how this issue could be solved if they redesign the old zones in a way that they became relevant for high level players as well. And with a big change like that maybe there would be enough additional resource to redesign the leveling experience as well. But after seeing the problems with Cataclysm, probably they wont be brave enough to do this.
the thing is can you really tell those expansion stories in that small a bubble? you'd get like a bite size sampler if anything, i cannot say that's really BETTER than how it is now.
@@UltimateGamerCC I think you could very easily tell those stories in more bite sized ways. I mean think about it. 90% of the time you are leveling you are doing filler content. You are running around and killing things for rando npcs or gathering things that have basically no effect on the the greater story. You could easily cut out all the filler content and have dedicated quests that is specifically the major plot points of each expansion and you can tune the xp gain to have it finish right at the current expansion content. Hell you could even argue that this might be a better way of telling the story because it would be more focused and have less pacing issues.
I think this is probably the most common sense solution I've heard to date. That being said it is a pretty challenging solution. I think that using the cut scenes of the prior expansions to ensure that the player gets the "meat and potatoes" story line of said expansions as they journey to level 60 could be a way to ensure that the key parts of thos expansions are not lost. Again it would be challenging but I think that it would ensure that the new player understands why the game is where it is at in its current expansion.
I'd rather have some more organic introduction to the game. I mean, why would Khadgar (a rather important person in this universe) spend his time giving free tours to random "adventurers" around Azeroth lol? He ain't got better things to do, he bored, too much free time or maybe he just lost a bet?
Idk if Im the only one on this but I love the intro questlines for each race. It gave me reason to create other characters and learn the lore of these races inside ally or horde. I would really like a race quest revamp and a guild revamp too so it would give ppl even more reason to stay playing (like renown for guilds maybe) and harder content out in the world that either need profession itens to boost you or the need to play with other ppl to overcome those challanges
Then maybe to expand on this idea. Maybe instead of khadgar you have your race leader do that. And alongside the expansions. They could explain the lore of your race. Maybe with the help of chromie taking you through time to witness events. For example let's say that a new player made an Orc Hunter right? So you'd have Thrall and Chromie go through the quest line with you instead of expansion order. Chronological order. As a new "champion of the horde" it is important you know your history as a sort of final test before you join the warfront as an elite soldier for the horde. Or some sort of lore explanation like that. So thrall and Chromie take you to ancient draenor where you see the beginnings of the orcs. You see the arrival of the draenei, the arrival of the legion and the drinking of mannoroths blood by grommash hellscream. You see the major events of first war, the major second war, the rise of thrall as war chief, the major events of the third war. Then thrall takes you through all the expansions where you do some stuff there. Then after that your level 60 and can go do dragonflight content.
@@the_grim_gamer3039 That's actually a great ideia ngl. I would love to play an adventure like that and it would be a major improvement to new player experience
My friend returned to the world of Azeroth after a long time. He wanted to play the Kul Tiras race and I was really surprised how much a "new player" has to go through to get access to these races... Definitely character leveling needs a change.
Yeah, I've been thinking the same for over 2 years. I started playing with my GF, she was new to WoW, all she wanted was to play the nightborne or Void E races, but ofc she couldn't lol, that really disappointed her, and the same happend to a friend of mine that wanted to create an Highmountain Tauren/ Black Iron dwarf.
Don't even get me started about the races thing lol. I spent a month with a friend unlocking the nightborne because we could only play for like an hour or so a day and it was just sooo much stuff to do, at times we thought about just playing another race because of the hassle.
"The Story of Azeroth" sounds like a great way to improve the game. Take the new player through some of the most important moments in the WoW timeline and then drop them into the newest expansion. It would allow them to level throughout the whole world, but gets rid of the old questlines. I tried to play WoW a year or so go and it was just confusing after Exile's Reach. I wanted to explore the world, but it wasn't relevant anymore--of course neither was Shadowlands.
For the old world feeling empty, I've been saying forever they need to add things like copper randomly to new recipes or different stats or something. Make current use for old matts. Will make the world more used randomly and will make lvling your lower level skills more profitable.
@@MrkraZzzand that is blizzards fault for implementing that system I hate ffxiv now, but I like how they made all the zones feel full of people, cus there’s content in all zones, resources in all zones (resources that you’ll need for max level recipes), events/crafting stuff that are strictly in previous zones etc. I love wow alot cus of the pvp (new player here), and won’t leave anytime soon, but I can see how it suck’s for people that love pve lol
This is something most MMORPGs go through as they age. Old content is abandoned, the new player/leveling experience is gutted, everything is converted to catering to the veteran crowd who don't want to go through the process of leveling their 45th alt. Even without boosts, leveling is turned into a race to get to max level, then you end up with a large population of players trying to do end game content who have absolutely no idea how to actually play, because there was no time for them to really learn their class or game mechanics. I hate it. My favorite part of MMORPGs is the leveling experience, I always get quickly bored and burned out when I hit the end game, because at that point all you have to do is the same stuff over and over every day. I like the challenge of taking a new character through the world, finding and doing things I didn't do on a previous character, actually have some sense of danger, that you could mess up and die if you get in over your head. That's largely removed from most games.
That's actually an amazing idea, specifically for new players. There are a TON of new players for DF and showing them the previous expansions and their stories in a fashion you mentioned, like being on a tour with Khadgar and/or Chromie would be an amazing idea. They learn the gist of Azeroth and the recent history and are then prepared for the current events of DF, or whatever future expac. Blizzard legitimately NEEDS to get on this.
Honestly the idea of having a sort of tour through the time lines is such a killer idea. Gives the new players a chance to see the full story of which ever expansion peaked their interest the most, gives old players something new to try out, and helps boost them through leveling alts a bit. All around it seems like it would be a win win idea
A custom levelling experience which takes you through key places, experience key story and defeat key enemies. It could he via the Lorewalkers and Chromie. Taliesin thought of something like this. Similar to how the 15th Anniversary worked with the World Breaker Mount and the boss rush raid thing a tailored levelling experience to fights like that. Could introduce the infinite dragons too as they interfere with you.
@@getbelkedon994 it’d just be like doing a massive starting zone but from 1-10 below cap. Maybe even make it 10-10 below cap and they still do exiles reach. Point is a tailored full story way to experience the past and get an idea of where you’re going instead of 1.5-2 zones of BfA then forcibly teleported out for the next expansion. Also declaring it as wrong is wrong in of itself. Nothing I said was factual nor presumptuous. You don’t agree that’s fine but the idea is not a wrong idea.
As someone that enjoys questing I still think that the level squish was a stupid idea, If you want to get to max level quickly use a boost. I find it really annoying that after playing a few hours in the lower level zones I am suddenly one shotting everything and apparently can't be killed (unless I fall off cliff, which I have done more times than I can remember.
Some kind of "Path of the Curator" thing (as Tali calls it) is honestly one of the best things that could possibly be added for new players. Honestly, even though I've been playing for a good long while now, I wasn't there for all the story and stuff of those earlier expacs and would love to go through that myself. Even though I am generally aware of the lore of previous expacs, being able to actually play through it would be so much better, since I never really get very far into any of the Chromie time stuff before I get bored of not being able to do the current content surrounded by other players instead of all the old stuff that just feels off with basically no one around. Not to mention the fact that afaik you don't really get to do the whole story of the expacs, just generally the base patch content. Being able to take a new character through a curated experience of all the lore and important story moments leading up to wherever the current content is would be so nice. Then your idea of having Chromie tell new players along the way that they could come to her to experience the full thing is great. As Blizz goes forward, I just hope they keep up the good momentum with Dragonflight with regards to base/fundamental systems (like the Path of the Curator would be) and away from the borrowed power. The part where I do agree on a fundamental level, but disagree on the implementation is your idea of the extra dungeon challenges. I do definitely agree that new players (and let's be honest, many current players too) need to get a good understanding of mechanics and how interrupts, swirlies, buffs, debuffs, and other things like that work, but as shown by how awful some of the dungeons post-Legion are to do with lower level characters even disregarding the wack tuning of many of the numbers, it may be a better idea to include some of that in the Path of the Curator thing instead. It could even be implemented as simply as while going through the path, it has you queue up for a dungeon, but there is an AI or two in there with you and the other players also doing that dungeon for the first time that can help fight with you and demonstrate the mechanics as the fights go along. After the person does that dungeon once like that, it could be left like normal dungeons are now, ideally with the numbers still fixed, though. Obviously, this would be pretty annoying for returning players, so options to skip things like that should definitely be made available. Oooh, those ideas about the Explorer's League and profession stuff sound like interesting concepts too. I really hope Blizz continues the recent trend of finally listening to players and adds some of this stuff in in upcoming patches/expacs.
I started in Legion, and I personally loved playing through every expansion, it really helped me understand the world and since leveling took a lot longer then, I got to experience so many different zones and it was truly great! I do wish however that if they brought this back, they added a mechanic to where you need to do the final raid of the expansion or something for a really cool bonus reward and a ton of xp or something cool like that!
@@getbelkedon994 It doesn't have to be the entire expansion worth, just a taste of each. Onyxia double-crossed Stormwind! Illidan is amassing an army in Outland! There's some creepy stuff going on in Northrend! Do you remember when Deathwing changed the face of the world? A previously unknown continent has been discovered! With talking pandas! Umm, there's a time travel portal that takes you to Draenor's past! Oh! Another previously unknown landmass, and now The Burning Legion is attacking again! Sylvanas is evil! The Horde and Alliance need reinforcements! Hey, what do you think happens after we die? Look, ANOTHER previously hidden continent! With DRAGONS!
For me the worst part of the experience as a new player were the dungeons. You're thrown into difficult dungeons that people have been running for years and you get kicked out in a couple minutes because you don't know the mechanics. Seeing how the kicks are so quick, I'm surprised that any players follow that route. In classic, we can learn our class and progress by stepping up dungeon content as we go. Would love that in retail.
I’m not unhappy that new players don’t do Cata; I find it lovely and quiet down in Vash’jir when levelling alts. I do think that Khadgar as a guide through old content would be tight!
@@Mr19awsome92 Vash'jir is one of my favorite zones. I do not get all the hate for it. I never had a problem targeting and knew to stay alert all around me up and down too. Just wish there was more content there. I main a hunter to and never understood the complaints of other hunters saying their pets pathing is weird underwater. My pets always just moved in a straight line. Maybe a zig zag sometime but nothing that is game breaking.
Same. Along with Bloodmyst Isle, Vash'jir became my favorite zone of all. These two zones just ignore everything Blizzard does for last decade. And it feels good. It's timeless and quiet. You can just enjoy the views.
Sometimes you just want to play old content and not new on wow, especially if your an old time player. Forcing us to play new expansions and skip all old content we intentionally restarted a new character to play would be a super disappointing experience. Best thing you can do is allow us to play old content and ignore new stuff, so lvl caps are great addition and not being forced to go into new areas would be a must.
Honestly, I think an "Azeroth Reborn" recycle would be good for the game. As you said, have them quest through main story beats while "hiding" side quests as trivial until you've cleared the area.
My friend sent me this video as he is trying to see what a new players thoughts are on the game (we’ve just gone through most of the leveling of Dragonflight) and honestly, your idea where the player gets a tour from Cadgar of the history of Azeroth and then you talk to Chromie to play through the expansion you find interesting is exactly the sort of thing I was talking to my friend about. The early game sucks if you don’t just use a level skip, and with all the expansions being abandoned like they are makes it hard to get invested in them, especially seeing as you’re just thrown into one of the starting cities and are told “hey, check out the board and do an expansion, they will be scaled to your level” is kinda underwhelming and probably very confusing if you play them out of order.
The idea with Khadgar taking you through the events is really good. Lost Ark kinda does this too, if you take a "boost" with goodies for fist-time clearing.
Honestly, I think this is where FF14 has a major advantage: Its MSQ. You are required to play through the entire main story, and you have to go through the dungeons and trials to progress. And there's a utterly token xp gain for the quests in the Patch Content, minimizing the overleveling problem WoW suffered for years with. I'd argue WoW would greatly benefit from this, but it would require a massive overhaul to the questing, dungeon and raid system. This could be an opportunity to update the Old Worlds (I'm looking at you, Blood Elves and Draenei zones), and better integrate Allied Races as well. Determine if a zone storyline holds up still (Ghostlands, sure maybe; Silverpine Forest, yes). Weave an MSQ to include those, while making the obnoxious side quest (Fetch/Kill X of Y) optional (most are corequisite quests to progress the zones). •While FF has a single MSQ, WoW could easily support several across Kalimdor and EK, and take faction or even race into consideration. •Mandate dungeons. Do the Silverpine chain as Horde? You're going into Shadowfang Keep. Do the Gilneas chain as Worgen? You're going into SFK. FF's slowly making all MSQ dungeons solo friendly with AI support; the dungeon in Exile's Reach has this as well, so just adapt all subsequent dungeons. An AI team could be the player's alts, too, which could mitigate MSQ replay issues. •(Alter Timewalking so all MSQ dungeons are available if unlocked and scale down higher level players with bonus rewards [player housing items?] if players are running the dungeon for the first time to encourage foster friendly multiplayer play) •Disable xp gains once an xpac level target's been reached (like 80 in LK), but keep a small but notable power progression as the player finishes the relevant story which should build to the next expac. Suramar comes to mind. •(MoP: Finish Siege of Orgrimmar, the quest chain deals with the aftermath, with cinematics featuring Garrosh's trial to properly set up WoD, for example) •With AI support and proper player scaling, this could help make older raids more relevant (the amount of trash mobs really needs to be scaled down though), though given how well LFR is... x.x This idea certainly has some shortcomings, particularly given an MSQ weaving through 9 xpacs and most of their dungeons and raids - even if all the fat's trimmed - that might be a long ask. But that's what buying a WoW Token and purchasing a skip from Chromie's for right?
This is a big reason why I couldn't get into wow. Exiles reach? I loved every second of it. After it though, I just got lost. In both story but where to go, I knew going in it didn't have a main story and that wasn't the drive. I knew that going in, the real game is the endgame and only for the combat so I held my expectations to not expect any story But getting drips of a story through the equivalent of side quests made it iffy for me. For one, didn't know which I had to do or not had to do as my mates gave me multiple different answers when I asked. Also, I got confused where to go and what to do for said quests. I think I'm doing the side quest chain in BfA equivalent to a main story? But I have no idea and honestly I keep thinking to stop thinking of it as such It's just, tricky for me to focus on what to do and get invested in the world. Combat can only sell the game to me so much, I want a drive. A story of some kind to learn the world, the people and to know why I'm doing what I am.
What do you mean, right now? It has for over a decade. There's still systems on top of systems on top of systems running under the hood that you'd know nothing about unless you played at the time they were implemented, not to mention the complete cluster of a story.
@York Hunt I do. Phasing, sharding, random gear upgrades, legacy loot, War Mode, not to mention Artifact, Azerite and Anima power that new players would only interact with tangentially before they are complete discarded. There are many more examples like these, and next to none of them are explained in the game. The same goes for current content, incidentally, where almost none of the Dragonflight unlocks, lock-outs and limitations are explained to you. Think what you will of Final Fantasy XIV, but that game explains just about EVERYTHING to you the first time you encounter it and also comes with a designated tutorial mode for the basics of group play.
@York Hunt Ah, I see. So that's how we're playing this game. You see, friend, I wasn't just pointing these things out that you so nonchalantly brushed aside to shill for my new forever game, but to offer some perspective by someone who's spent the better part of two decades on Azeroth. I didn't just try the game in Shadowlands or Warlords briefly and hated it, no. I've been there since a few months after original EU launch, when I was but a wee babby, barely old enough to play this PG 12 game.
@York Hunt New players would definitely still encounter Azerite armor and the Heart of Azeroth. As a first-time player, you are FORCED to go through Exile's Reach and then on to BfA. Unless Blizzard recently changed that, that problem still persists. You could fix the majority of these problems by either adding a more in-depth tutorial or more of those little blurbs that pop up when you open a new screen.
@York Hunt Also, how the hell are the technical aspects of phasing, sharding and War Mode self-explanatory? All three work differently, and often at the same time.
@York Hunt How do you get a first-time player who just picked up jewelcrafting as his very first profession to understand that the majority of his profession is now dead in the water thanks to sockets only being added to items by chance instead of being designed with them from the get-go? This game has had so many design inconsistencies over the years that were just heaped on top of each other along with the aforementioned systems that the game resembles a medieval town built upon ruins more than the carefully planned-out and resplendent city it could be if Blizzard bothered.
Wow I think you are on to something Nix! Having a new player going through curated "moments" across all WoW expansions to reach max level could be fun idea.
@Get Belked on You have information overload today. What new person to wow is going to know which expansion to play let alone what the expansion is about Going through specific events to introduce them to the lore of the game they are looking to play is nothing but positive. Throwing them directly into to end game zones is going to be overwhelming as well so something needs to be put in place to introduce systems and mechanics.
I have something in mind for the timewalking experience as well since I'm not really enjoying doing the same quests over and over again. And to offer a bit of variety to the system we could have us players select an expansion to level through and either choose the regular questing experience (that exists today) or a new one that offers a new quest chain to see what the expansion was actually like. So it could work like a more linear progress like exiles reach with quests that focuses more on the story of the expansion. So for example WotLK with a quest line to seek out yogg saron, or killing the lich king. And at the end of each questline there would be some kind of mini ish version of a raid like Icecrown citadel and it could work as the dungeon in exiles reach works with npc raid group. And of course it wouldn't be very hard to do the raid and wouldn't be very long but focusing on the most important fights which would also bring new players into the raid perspective of the game.
I think that the bottom line is: blizzard doesn't care about the leveling experience with how quickly you get to 60 nowadays, I don't know why they haven't removed the leveling process completely yet. There are other ways to teach new players how to play their class. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of leveling progression. I love to level alts and explore the game. Blizzard just has completely ruined that and made it Currentzone of Warcraft instead of World of Warcraft.
Honestly, I would update many things with the leveling. For example: when you start a new character (with the old starting zones), you're introduced to a cutscene, explaining the lore and story around the race. Let's use Humans for example. When you start a Human, it explains lore and details that happened in *Cataclysm.* These events happened 10-12 years ago, meaning the cutscenes are extremely outdated. I believe that the early questlines need updated as well, such as Westfall. In the Westfall story, it focuses on the Defias Brotherhood, who've been defuncted since Cataclysm. Minor things like that break immersion very quickly, and I do believe a new, fresh storyline for new players will boost the morale of the early game.
As a new player myself, I couldn't agree more with everything you said. Especially with the lore and story telling. It's a little ridiculous that for someone who's never played WoW, to be bombarded with the overload of different quests from the different expansions that are set in different timelines and expect to know WTF is going on or who is who or why there's 2-3 different warchiefs in Orgrimar at 1 point and trying to figure out which timeline you're in. Yeah, there's UA-cam vids for lore recap but Blizzard has the resources to make this a more seamless experience. You shouldn't have to rely on an outside source to tell your story properly. Now with that said, I've thoroughly enjoyed my new leveling experience and the story telling of Zandalar quest line as a Horde player. This coming from someone that hates 'tab targeting' combat systems. But if it wasn't for that awesome experience that I had, I don't think I'd continue playing. But as said, I loved it and I wanted to know more about the lore and story. Scouring UA-cam and Reddit forums though to see what's the best way to go about it or being told to read the books/comics just isn't the way to go.
I think that a world tour quest line is a great idea, but I don't think it should get you to level 60. Really it should just get you to level 30 when you get your flying mount. That will make your questing experience much more enjoyable (assuming they remove pathfinder flying from old zones) and give the characters a solid base for their talents and rotation.
As a new player, I felt very lonely and bored during my 1-20 journey. The questing is barren with no player interaction, and if you do happen to see someone they completely ignore you. The whole “pick your expansion” thing was confusing and I was bored with the BFA questing as soon as I got to Kul Tiras. As a newb I had no idea of the story/what’s going on, but they call me a hero? okay…I then decided to journey to the Legion expansion. The content itself was engaging, but the “mmo” aspect feels completely absent. I’m basically playing a single-player campaign. Nobody talks in dungeon groups either, just clear and leave. I managed to get to lvl 20 but now I’m not sure I want to subscribe and attempt to “catch up” to current content. And the option to “boost to lvl 70” doesn’t seem appealing either. I’m really disappointed with how new players are handled. I feel like an outcast that is way behind, nobody talks or bothers to help newbs like me, and there isn’t much incentive to stick around when I don’t feel welcomed. I’m sure there are many others who feel the same as me that tried to get into WoW. My experience with FFXIV was the complete opposite, the story is progressive, players were extremely helpful and talkative, dungeons always began with greetings all around. People were willing to answer questions and explain boss mechanics. They don’t get mad when the group wipes cuz a newb didn’t know a mechanic. They explain what to do and try again. Overall has a way better “mmo” experience. No one is racing to end-game, everyone just enjoys the experience. I really wanted to enjoy the lvling experience in WoW but sadly it’s hard at its current state. Basically my options are to subscribe and force myself to lvl to current content, or fork over extra $$ to get instant access to Dragonflight and miss all the experience of playing the game along the way. Any suggestions as to what to do? I’m either resubbing to FFXIV, pushing thru WoW, or play a private server? I heard Turtle WoW is popular but it’s Vanilla and I do prefer the updated graphics and gameplay of Retail….
I think the problem is that most people dont have the time to level that many alts. Especially if you are brand new to the game and dont have heirlooms yet and dont know what to do when.
As a new player to WoW, I fully agree that the biggest problem in the game I’ve found is the early game content. I hate that everything prior to the newest expansion feels useless and empty. It sucks ad a new player to have an entire world that is new to me that I want to explore with tons of cool zones, dungeons, etc and all of it is completely empty. It makes it so that 90% of the game is empty and doesn’t matter. The game shouldn’t just be focused on endgame content, that’s not fun for me as a new player who still wants to enjoy and experience things besides endgame content of the newest expansion. My solutions might be simplistic and dumb because I don’t have as much experience playing the game for years. With that said I think a few things that would make early game content more fun for me and for veteran players would be: 1. Make questing non linear. Make it so that questing requires genuine exploration and thought and effort. It shouldn’t be as simple as checking the map where to go, doing a chore, and done. Make some quests actually difficult or intended for groups or make the player have to figure out where to go. Make it so we have the freedom to tackle quests in an order we want too. 2. Give players a reason to revisit old content. Maybe make rotariins where every month a different expansion will get an influx of new world bosses that give great gear, encouraging players to go back and spend some time there going after them, so lower level players are still there to quest and higher level characters are there for gear and fighting world bosses. 3. Make leveling slower. Most veteran players might hate this, but as a new player I hate that I’m rushed through this process so fast. I want getting to max level to feel like an accomplishment. I want to enjoy the journey getting there. I don’t want it to be done so quickly that I’m forced out of zones or continents before I finish what it has to offer. 4. This might also be controversial, but have a few different types of servers. Like maybe have some that are raid servers, pvp servers, questing and exploration servers, etc. Make it so that if all a player cares about is end game raising there are servers where that is the focus. And other servers for people who want to spend time exploring the world and questing etc. That way they can go to servers with people who want to experience aspects of the game they want to as well. That way it increases the likelihood you find players interested in the same aspects of the game as you, maybe in a questing/exploration server you will be more likely to find players out in the world looking to group up to quest as opposed to blazing through but to get to the end game content. Maybe for the questing servers make the leveling process much slower with alternating quests available in each place depending on the time you are there, giving you even more reasons to go back.
I love your ideas concerning professions and the curated quest line. Even as just a new player starting in TBC Classic, I still feel like I missed a lot of the Vanilla story and context, even after I completed leveling to 60 in the Azeroth. Certainly there was a lot to learn and it was pretty easy to get easy to overwhelmed by the amount of content even just with TBC and Vanilla available. I can imagine how much more disjointed it could be in retail with 9ish expansions. Thank you for sharing and hopefully Blizzard sees this and considers some of these ideas!
The old zones should be reworked as the same level of dragonflight zones, this can be done in like patches, I do agree that professions could’ve been more useful in lower levels for it takes along time to level professions up so it could be nice to be useful early game.
I think a major major positive about your special dungeon idea is that it could be an opportunity for more advanced learning about playing the game. The intro island is a great fun introduction to ease you into your class and the world but it only goes so far. I absolutely love the idea of having a challenge-like dungeon for levelling players and I think it should also be taken as an opportunity to teach new players these mechanics. Having one week with CC and maybe interrupts being key to surviving would be a good way to teach new players these mechanics but also marrying the concept of that challenge/learning with higher rewards IE: greater incentive. Again like a lot of what was said and self-admitting that this is a more complex problem, I still think that philosophy is sound and a good foundation to make *something* akin to these ideas and I think the game would gain a lot from it. (Also I would love to see some sort of Healer and Tank 101s. Idk how to implement that but it'd be great to also get maybe a role-focused quest line with rewards that gives you a low-down of the role.)
Agreed with this. Not only for new players, but I just hit level 60 while in Draenor chromie time. I hit it doing the literal last quest of a zone which I wanted to complete for an achv and the game literally yanked me out of the quest and straight to org to start Dragonflight. Like what the hell game let me at least finish what I'm doing
TBH My main suggestion would be for Blizz to make Exiles Reach a sort of Chromie/ Norzdormu zone for players to be briefed by each expansion and main events in WoW but through the early leveling experience so it flows naturally for new players picking exiles reach or choosing to run the ol fashion exploration way. Exiles reach could have mini zones that symbolize each expansion on that mini island.
I like the Khadgar tour idea...problem is I can't think of an execution that would allow new players to get what's going on in just 5 or so levels. Exile's reach = 1-10 Classic = 11-17 BC = 18-25 WTOLK = 26-33 MOP = 34-40 WOD = 41-48 Legion = 49-55 BFA = 56-63 SL = 64-70 DF = Exclusively endgame
1 hour of gameplay per expansion (8-9 hour campaing) is enough, maybe less in some like TBC and classic as they... don't have much to tell. Just spread the levels evenly to match that cadence
For me, i just dont know what to do. Exile reach is straight forward. Go to quest, do quest. But when ur done with that, there is suddenly a ton of quests everywhere. And idk which ones to do.
The Explorers League idea is brilliant, combine that with a rebalancing of XP between dungeons and open world questing and I bet the old zones were a lot less empty. I would also like to see Blizz cut out many of the chore quests out of the main story questlines. Or combine cut down versions of those into todo lists. Instead of kill 12 of X, next quest kill 8 of Y and next quest gather 20 of whatever, just combine those to "kill 2 of these, 2 of those and get me a sample of that" in one quest.
I really do like the idea of having a quest campaign that tours you through all the timelines/expansions, and the weekly rotating low level dungs with wacky challenges, but a lot of your video shows that you seem to misunderstand the major issues here. Most of the proposals you make end with "and it could give you a lot of XP" "it would level you up fast" etc. You made a good point about being able to do a low leveled version of dragonflight, but we don't need fast leveling, we need more varied and enjoyable content to level through. If you only add the fast leveling campaigns and dungys, that would just leave the players who want to quest and level up 'organically' in the dust, not to mention people that will walk away as soon as they get freedom, they'd miss the fast pass and be stuck in a game that wasn't made for his powerlevel
The 1st char quest that take you through all the previous expansions sounds awesome, they can make it a much better experience than what new players get atm.
The rest of the zones of Azeroth drastically need to be more interesting for leveling players. I was leveling my mage and wanted some nostalgia and level through Northrend, but the questing was so slow and spamming dungeons was way more rewarding. A ding per dungeon and good items. I would love to see dungeons being buffed up. That you have to level through the world to get gear and more talents before you can just do any dungeon. I still remember that I joined a UBRS group in WotLK and I was drastically weaker than the rest if the group but I helped out with a lot of CC so that was cool. It was a real dungeon crawl but I'll never forget that run. Challenge us, the player
I am definitely a fan of the idea of a proper leveling campaign. Something timeless and world spanning that really shows off some of the coolest looking zones. I also really like the idea of expanding avenues of play that serve as routes to level. Things like pet battles, and professions should also be lucrative ways to level. Just to sort of encourage exploring those forms of play. In DFs leveling, it really feels like you can level however you want. It should feel the same way 1-60. They could add a bunch of thematic, but simple world quests around the whole world to add in some dynamic play. Events in other games have done a good job of funneling players in large zones to the same area.
Another issue with leveling with quests is scaling. If you’re leveling through low level Cata zones you’re going to get terrible gear and get destroyed unless you get some dungeon gear or hop over to a more “traditionally higher level” zone like Shadowlands or BFA. I was trying to get an alt up through Tirisfal but by level 14 I was taking so much damage from everything because my gear was white quality with like 1-3 green items. Not sure the solution but it does suck having to abandon a questline because normal mobs are destroying you and you can’t get decent gear from the quests. Maybe have some kind of baseline gear you can get in a level bracket?
Here's an idea. Month long events for leveling in a specific expansion, with lets say bonus rewards cosmetics and bonus XP like 10-20%. So one month would be Burning Crusade era and you get X amount of extra xp from quests and dungeons, and better scaling loot.
bad idea... no one wants to do BC... no one wants to be encourged to go somwhere they don't wanna be cause it'll be faster and even with it in place some expansions would STILL be faster than BC if BC had a 40% XP boost
They should make an entire sub expansion for new players that is basically a linear tour of each expansion in order. Basically an extension to the tutorial island Maybe just have Chromie narrate a super general story of each expansion on their own phased Zones. Each resembles 1st Zone of each expansion so new players get a taste of what each expansion means and holds for them. Draenor could even just be the intro up to the garrison. Legion is just up to pick up your artifact. (Just skip ShadowLands. No player needs to suffer that ever again) It's some work, yeah, but it makes it so new players get hooked to the game and makes them go back to those expansion and see more content. And helps them understand what is going on in the current expansion.
They could do what Star Wars the Old Republic did in a later expansion. It reworked it's quests seperating the Story of the game from the side quests, making the Storyline quests of each area give a huge amount of XP while all the sidequests were there as just extra stuff to do, minor xp, with some minor rewards for crafting, side gear, etc. You could tell the difference between the two by the quest indicator on NPCs. For example they could make the "!" in WoW be yellow for the main story and some other color for side quests. That way new players could zoom through the streamlined story of each expansion while skipping the fat. With 70 levels it's hard to fit it all in though.
First off, on the professions thing. Nixxiom, are you aware that, with the recent ilvl changes, enchanting and other professions that add enchants to certain items like scribe for shoulders ect is impossible to do now? All enchanting is capped at ilvl 50 for items pre WoD, and a lvl 10 player can obtain item lvl 59 epics. This makes the whole profession 100% worthless. BFA enchants cap out at 140 ilvl, with lvl 50 players having ilvl of around 180+. This has been an ongoing problem for the twink community since the change and blizzard has NO intention to fix it. Do you *really* think, they are going to even attempt to make the early game any good? Next, for the overall concept, like I commented on another of your videos, this would require them to PAY a team of devs to work on revamping the leveling system, which they simply can not afford, being a small indie company. They have most of their resources put into union busting efforts and ensuring Bobby Kotick gets his 12 100k bonus checks. They can't afford to hire on a team of like 6-12 people that could work on making the leveling actually FUN. It takes millions to do all the union busting they are doing and hire such expensive union busting teams like the one Amazon uses to keep their slaves in order. No mater how many times you bring it up, bitch about it in videos, they are NEVER, *N E V E R* going to make leveling at low levels fun in any way, shape or form. I genuinely don't understand why you don't get that yet.
yeah, even if discussing ideas is fun for me in videos like these coz i dont usually do this, i must admit, the real life perspective of the industry just as you stated answer much more and speak much louder...very true, i also dont think they will ever realistically gonna do a good early game
I came back to WoW for Wrath of the Lich King Classic...until I reached the point where I could do dungeons but there were no people to help. So I went into the modern WoW, and it's drastically different. One thing that bugs me is the game's professions window defaults to what seems to be the latest type introduced available. So while I want to work on my classic Mining and Engineering the UI always forces me to see the Kul Tiras versions when I open up the window instead. Why couldn't it just be the type you had on last?
I definitely like the idea of leveling characters through professions - like where you mentioned mining herbing for leveling, but also w/crafting things too!! Not everyone wants to go through the stories and "Champion" experiences I'm sure, and as someone who has played since TBC and when I want to make and level a new alt, I'm not interested in all of that anymore, but I absolutely enjoy farming materials and working on professions - that could ABSOLUTELY be a way to make Archeology come back in full force and be relevant again!!!! 😄
They should just do what they did in thaldrasus at the end, a super quick segment of each area briefly explaing the story for every 10 levels, like 1-10 exiles reach 10 -20 vanilla story 20-30 bc and so on.
A short version of all expansions, where you reach 60 at the end would be really nice for new players. even i might do it once again just to see all of it again ( as long as it takes maybe 4-6 hours and you are done )
4-6 hours? Thats almost the avg time to go 50-60....id expect it to be more like 12-24 hours, especially if its aimed at new players to WoW. Not to mention the vast amount of content/Lore from all 9 expantions, I can only imagine it would take some time to tell.
i was thinking this exact same thing earlier this week. this is long overdue. i want to show people my favorite video game but it is so inaccessible to new players. I tried to get my girlfriend into WoW and once she finished exiles reach it was just like "....what do now?" and i tried to explain the idea of timewalking to different time zones mid story in an expansion where she wont even finish before being max level. story is nonexistent when approached this way. Most current players dont care about story but the new player needs that hook to get into the game. anyways that is my two cents
I think Stormwind/Orgrimmar and their respective zones need a visual revamp too, like what they did with Arathi in BfA. I feel like going from the stunning, high-res Exile’s Reach to Stormwind’s 2004 graphics might be a bit jarring haha
I'm new to the game, 10 days in and have barely played, i quickly realized that I could get a lvl per random dungeon spam but it was overwhelming, some of the dungeons I keep dying to thin air with no explanation, people won't ress or even pay attention to chat or explain nothing, really boring. Open world is ultra empty, I've seen like 2 people running around. The only reason I kind of force my self to login is because the price point i had to paid to get in, hoping the game actually have a decent endgame @_@
This would be an amazing idea for a guild to do for an annual Recruiting event. Have guild members all over the world giving newbie’s “quests” to do to go find other guild members, NPCs, etc. sort of like a scavenger hunt, but for leveling.
Yea i'd really welcome some kind of fix of the old stuff for new players. I brought 4 of my friends to WoW with the DF expansion and leveled with them. Everyone at different times and it was a sore to somehow make the leveling process seem to be fun by guiding them at the right pace and showing them the cool stuff. Explaining everyone the jump from nothing to a free Talanji who why and what is going on kinda is awkward without saying "ye the devs were lazy here" or "They dont expect new players to be able to free her yourself" which would also then leave to spot open of why we go there in the first place ( to free Saurfang? ) I suggest they make a small story Quest that guides the players through all the mayjor events of the expansions and make some character like Chromie, Kadghar, Thall, Silvanas, Garrosh or Tirion first introduce themself and and taking them more or less by the hand or kick them into the cold water of battle and intrigue to make their personalities known and after each chapter make a dungeon or scenario where u fight a Lich king, Illidan, Yogg or even recycle old scenarios like the bombing of Menethil. There would be even something in for max lvl players to join those scenarios/dungeons by giving them a chance to obtain the mount of each of those baddies or other time walking stuff.
Another perk that could be added, especially for alt leveling, could be the game recognizing quest chains you haven't completed offering more experience than quests you have run through previously.
experienced classic player who recently started levelling in retail (i do not own dragonflight as of yet) i have absolutely no clue what i should be doing, im level 29 currently and i’m doing the same, god awful BFA dungeons on repeat because i have no direction in the world, where am i supposed to go? what quests should i do and what zone should i be in? how TF do i get out of the bfa stuff and be able to do some other content? i have no idea how to change this, why is it player interactions are so few and far between thag when you see a player, or even in a dungeon group, you talk to them, they say nothing the whole instance, and leave? it almost feels like you were playing with an NPC the whole time. it sucks because i’m actually enjoying playing retail, the updated visuals, the smoothness, the mechanics, it feels great to play, but all the aforementioned stuff just have me scratching my head and thinking am i just supposed to spam bfa dungeons to level 60? and then what?
Goblin tours. One of the neutral goblin factions take new players (Both Hoard and Alliance) to each of the expansions for a tour. This would happen after Exiles Reach as the 'Heroes' need some down time after all that happened there (Remember they were basically recruits so they are not use to all this stuff) so they book a Tour from one of the goblin factions looking to profit for said down time. The goblins however are using a Time device 'Borrowed' from Chromie (don't ask how they got it, it involved an exploding sheep, jumper cables, and a tub of butter) and are using this to cut costs on their tours by showing the heroes some of the most exciting locations through history, only they have no idea how it works and its just goes all sideways and drops them into some of the outskirts of the major events that have happened through the years and have to fight/figure out a way to move on to their own time (of course getting slapped into a small portion of each expansion, should be about 10 or 20 minutes per jump) until they get to their own time. When that happens Chomie will show up to take her device and offer the players a ride to the current expansion where they would have to complete a quick side quest (Getting an item or something to fix all their blundering through time) before offering to dump them into a time period (Expansion) of the players choice.
I think some zones of Azeroth (maybe 4-5 on each continent) should remain timeless and/or gated (at least during the leveling experience) so players can level up those zones until they are able to jump into the latest content. That way, leveling would always feel like an introduction to WoW, and the storyline wouldn't be as confusing, you're just training so you can help in whatever the newest campaign may be.
Early game is NOT boring at all. As a brand new player who just came in around dec 15, i can say i def enjoy playing bfa and not being able to just skip to flying, avoid questing, aka skip how the game used to be played almost. It would just be lame honesty without going through the tutorial island, then going to zuldazar. Im not almost done with dragon isles so i can say i also enjoy that, i love going to the old dlc areas and questing there, learning that lore. I think new player content is good. Its not too much, its not bottle feeding either. The story can be hard to track as you can bounce anywhere but with some time and attention it hsnt been that bad. And ive clocked some serious hours in as im off work alot thru december. But im loving it! Almost to raid ilvl so im grinding
OK Hear me out, long quest chain tour is a great idea, the icing on the cake would be leveling instances of the major raids that scale to be completed solo or in a group of any size. This way the quest chain could actually take a similar amount of time but tell the ENTIRE story and have the play take part in some of the more important moments in the game. What good is the WOTLK story if you dont actually stop Arthus yourself?
newish player here: currently levelling a few different characters through both exiles reach/BFA and the old racial starting areas (to find what I like playing as) and i can tell you right now that the older maps just feel dead which in turn makes the game feel/seem unpopulated
I played a little bit of Legion when it came out and left. I really started playing at the end of Shadowlands. I think some of the biggest problems are the elitist community and dead content. They go hand in hand. I hate the fact that there is so much potential content to enjoy and rather than revamp it and give us reasons to go back they ignore it. Old content is all but dead. Blizzard could really step-up WoW and be the gold standard again in the MMO scene if they took an expansion cycle or 2 to fix old content and systems, give us a reason to visit them, tidy up the lore (if that's possible now) and really expand on the RPG elements of the game. They have so many great things I've noticed (glyphs, professions, class diversity and utility (some classes have teles, some have levitate Etc.), different character customization options to unlock in game. places to see, systems that have much potential Etc. Etc.) They create a cool system that can really push individuality and fun and they do a bit a leave it behind. The other side is the community. The community is terrible and can really kill the game (quite literally as well) for new players. It's so toxic to anyone outside who they think a player should be. We are laughed at if we don't know something, if there an obvious new player that wants to learn how to play a role or class or anything really, that queues in a dungeon and we wipe once, people make fun of them and leave etc. Because of how toxic the community is, if Blizzard tried to take a cycle to really fix the old systems, content, lore etc. the community would lose their minds. The old players really don't care about new players. They just care about themselves and when we point it out, they just tell us "That's how it is" instead of calling people out when they act like this. There's so much content I as a new player would really like to enjoy and see, the lore is weird at times, but I really like a lot of it, and there are so many zones to visit and new things to see. Why are we skipping the old content immediately to jump into newer? I'm a young Night Elf, why am I starting on a ship and immediately trying to pick an expansion I know nothing about to start and being called a hero of Azeroth 5 minutes after starting and I don't even know who these people are. Bring the old content in line with the new and make it accessible and fruitful for everyone. It's an MMORPG I should be growing my character with other people, if I'd like to get on a ship and start fast, sure. If I don't then I should be able to play from the beginning, but it should be updated to modern standards. Remember how you felt when it first came out? Why can't we have that? ATM I'm having fun, but I am overwhelmed and confused a lot. I just want to make friends and rpg. At present I don't have friends because wow players are asshats and I'm forced to into content in a timeline I know nothing about. Fix those 2 things and WoW would be in an incredible state. Sorry it's so long. Probably won't get read but worth a shot, I guess.
I think the only way to really fix it would be to redo the entire world cataclysm style. That’s would probably take a lot of dev time though. Maybe a king main storyline and even class story quests like in ffxiv
4:32 That was my first Idea too when i think about how leveling could be better 4 new players. A condenst questchain through all expansions that narrowed down all Stuff that happens, maybe a szenario Bossfight at the end where you dould teach them how to respond to Bossmechanics for later on. Kadgahr and Chromie would be the perfect choice as guidens. and at the time you're done, you hit the level to join the new expansion
I initially quit the game cause I was so bored running for long times being so slow. When I finally hit level 10 the Mount speed was so underwhelming that I quit. But I’m playing every day now leveling like 6 characters at the same time
Basically the new player is tasked in stopping a bad guy form altering events in the past. Khadgar takes the new player through all the previous expansions in scenario type quests exploring the different old expansions and telling the stories of each. Maybe its a chrono dragon gone crazy that is causing the alterations in time. Each scenario would give the player 5+ level boots and you get a custom set of armor reflecting each of the expansions.
My gf wanted to get into wow with this new expansion but as she is an old school mmo player (like ragnarok online) she wanted to lvl from 1 to 70 no boost and no dungeons. She started in legion and like 1 hour in she asked me "what should i pick it says nothing" . She was talking about artefacts relics that you can equip on your artefact weapon but that system does not work anymore.. Relics are Trash Quest Rewards that you can choose.
exiles reach is an idiotic idea, to trade multitude of cozy slow burn starting zones for a crackmonkey speedleveleing single scenario full of bullshit nonsense the devs mistake for "humor" such as flying on baloons and enlarging wild boar.
Got a friend to just start WoW fist time two weeks ago. He went to command board and it suggested Legion. He has enjoyed the leveling in Legion all the way to 50. With no Chromie Time they are now starting Shadowlands. So far they hate the maw. The hardest issue has been mein Chromie Time having to turn it off to help him. Then also asking if they are in WM or not. If you group what ever mode the leader is should force a temp sync automatically.
I think they need to make something kind of like Exile's Reach, that summarizes an expansion. By the end of it it gives you enough xp to get to the next. So Exile's reach is 1-10, Classic is 10-20, BC is 20-30, etc.
Totally agree with your new player experience idea! Having a summary of events so far would be amazing for new players and having them introduced to the Chromie system make s a lot of sense. Each expansion could give you like 10 levels and you'd get caught up by the time you reach current. The only issue I see is that this experience would have to be updated every single expansion so it may be complicated.
I would also like to see an update to “Timewalking” by having Chromie scale down players to a specific expacs level and Ilvl then put you into that expac to progress through just like you were playing that expac. This progress can be saved per character and toggled on and off whenever you want so you can enter the main timeline continent as an op character or go in as a timewalker. Timewalking for a specific expac can happen for 1 month total rotating. When Timewalking is enabled and you enter the Specific Timewalking Expac, you are scaled down and restricted to that expacs content only. You can’t bring any gold, gear or items with you, as you have entered another timeline. You enter the Timewalking with green gear at a few levels under that expacs capped level and need to quest to level and get gear. Main timeline gear, item and stats and timewalking gear, items and stats separated Only that expacs professions are enabled and the auctionhouse is separated from the main timeline game. Everything you do in timewalking should reward timewalking currency Timewalking rewards should be vastly expanded to include decent item rewards (gear, mats, gold) in the main timeline or even buy time saving coins to lock your timewalking gear to bring to the next timewalking event. Gear looted in timewalking counts towards tmog in the main timeline Tied into this, there should be new stat next to ilvl which is called “knowledge” This knowledge is a number adding all of the world bosses, dungeons and raids together which you have completed as current expac content. Having 3 color coded numbers showing the individual boss completions Bronze = normal Silver = heroic Gold = mythic Number = how many bosses downed These numbers and colors can be accumulated through current expac content but also through the time walking content.
I played the game from 03-16, and then am just returning now. I find it hard to use my old characters even though they have hundreds of days played because I have no idea about the rotations and such so I've been working on a pair of new characters and it is confusing on what I should be doing. Also having to do content I've definitely done on my old characters is really weird.
i left in WOTLK, im a new player , basically, how i select that ? in 4:51 and in 5:48 was me yesterday, im lost, in the past , leveling was progressing trough zones, but now the zone is getting my lv? so i can lv to 60 just in dorotan?, but im leveling way faster spamming dungeons
Not gonna lie, I am a brand new player and I have no idea the track I should take. Where do I go? What lands do I travel to to level? These things arent explained at all for brand new players and its VERY frustrating. Literally, never played before and I am lost as to where to go. Im at level 20 and just keep going to different parts of the maps and picking up quests.
In lost ark they have this when you boost a character for the first time, you go to a timeless place where you experience all the story so far till the start of the endgame story areas in short where you go through some text, images, voice lines and narration, cinematics and also play some major events as well as try some spells you earn along the levelling path till that point. I had an idea about having the levelling experience be similar to that and when you brought up the idea about an NPC like Khadgar taking you through the starting of each expansion in a chronological order to get some context added to the idea I had so we can have it in a similar way but instead of going through just blasted lands or something you get specific existing key story quests, not the boring kill and collect ones, alongside narration from Khadgar about why we got here and how it happened especially when transitioning between zones and expansions and the XP you get while doing the levelling experience is enough to roughly get you to level 60. And during that levelling experience you get to do some key dungeons that tie into the story alongside the cinematics of the stuff that happened, and these dungeons can be done with players or be like in exiles reach when NPCs accompany you to clear them instead. For the raids that have context you can just skip to specific fights like killing the Lich King for example where you either witness or participate in the fight and it can be done with NPCs dressed in appropriate gear, similar to how the Illidan quest, where you get to experience his fight from his PoV fighting the NPC raid. The technology to do that is present in the game as it has been done before like in Illidan's quest and also the Thaldraszus questline where the NPC can be Chromie or any time dragon instead of Khadgar or even it can be multiple main NPCs who had big roles in the expansion or zone you are experiencing.
Even me who put wow down for a few years got SUPER overwhelmed by the amount of quests I had and the amount I'd need to do to catch up in the other expansions... it got so to the point I had quests I needed groups of people but almost no one was going into these areas so I had to drop said quests and move on
As someone who's play style has constantly evolved - started in wotlk clueless using swords leveling a warlock to raiding mythic shadow lands to now casually enjoying endgame content - I would love a cohesive beginning to now quest you could do every new alt - constantly refreshing your memory on the events and tying in with the current storyline if you've been afk for months. I just leveled an evoker and it would've been awesome to get a history lesson and show the easiest way to get around everywhere. I spend so much time just trying to get to old content because the portal isn't easy to find/doesn't exist for no reason other than the world is huuuuge.
Definitely needs to change something. I came back after not playing since Legion and was forced to go do a chromie timewalk mission, and when I hit 60, then abruptly told I needed to leave to go to the Dragon Isles after I finished the beginning of the story of Shadowlands... lol
I think that instead of going from 10 to 60 in a couple of hours, everyone has to play the levelling story from the current expansion at least once (like the story of the 4 zones in Shadowlands) which would start at lvl 10 or later and would take you to max level. And after you get the achievement for finishing the story once, every new character has the option of levelling at the current expansion or levelling in any other expansion and just play the max level content (like the covenants in Shadowlands).
With the fact that you can't get a fully unlocked legendary weapon anymore at your class order hall, i would like to see a revamp of that system. Where you can go to your class order hall right after completing the starting zone. And use that class order hall as that faction where you used the explorers league for.
I feel like there needs to be 2 different kinds of levelling modes: -levelling mode that is meant for fast XP gains, don't care about the story and you just want to reach endgame as fast as possible (perfect for experienced players who just want to level alts up) -levelling mode that seeks to immerse the player the in the game's world and history (great for newer players or those who might want to play through previous stories/zones)
Around a year or two ago I started playing WoW so I could play with my GF and I did exactly what you described and didn't use any leveling boosts and just decided that I wanted to explore the world doing quests and clearing areas. The issue was by the time I got to the point where the game sent me to my first expansion I was already bored and there wasn't really anything difficult about it. It was just one long endless grind where I would simply repeat the same combo of attacks over and over again with no incentive to try out different mechanics - like professions and whatnot. Of course the world also felt completely dead like you said, but on top of that I don't feel like the game did a great job telling me where to go for major story beats.
one of my biggest critiques of the low game is that the XP for losing a battleground despite the time invested is close to nothing. Discourages me from queueing pvp on alts. I queued for some on my dk recently only into the 60s so I would have enough for some max level honor gear.
Another suggestion is, death knights, demon hunters and now the evokers start at a higher level, but giving the the option to start in exiles reach from level 1 could be enjoyable as well. I mainly say this because let's be honest, the dk starting area aged like milk compared to the rest of the game
Yeah it fucking stinks like my ass after 30 days of eating trash with no shower. Pretty fucking brutally horrible experience man, I thought they had done something about it after i saw the new dk starting mini lore for the newer races...but no...for older races the same thing, the same restrictions, terrible terrible
3:40 exactly thats what Lost Ark does, good idea. You either skip to max level or you replay the biggest events of the game and it gives you a whole bunch of nice stuff for going through the story recap.
What i think would be the best, is if after doing exiles reach you would go to your class trainer, and do a series of quests that teaches you how to play your class, and would show you your place in tge world (for example a rogue could get a quest chain of infiltratiot and espianage, and a mage to do stuff with laylines and elementals, or even just helping out in the world) and these quests should make you lvl 60, as it is already really fast to lvl to 60, and even in a normal pace (questing in draenor) , can be done in an afternoon. So it would be kinda like the legion quests, but merged with what nixxium said. But in the end it would take tons of effort for blizard to make it, and it wouldnt really be justifiable as most people would never interact with these quests, or only do it for 1 class. But if we dont want to add in new stuf, bfa is defenetly the best expansion to throw a new player into, its clear and lineral but has a bit of exploration, it is designed for not having flying, and even if it doesnt make too much sense in the lore if you just end it after doing only the 8.0 stuff, and never the 8.1-8.3, that is true for every other expansion, and while it would kinda make sense for them to do cataclysm tonget familiar with the dragons, i wouldnt wish for anyone to lvl through cata (even if the low lvl zones are some if the best wow has to offer)
I honestly wouldn't mind an extremely fast leveling process for first characters, they do hand out boosts anyway. In my opinion low level isn't even part of main game anymore except for niche things like twinking. Chromie time already phased away all interaction with low levels.
I jumped into wow for the first time and i dungeon spammed to level 60 so far didn't even look towards the open world but i feel like my armor is a bit under leveled.
Hello there, new player here that actually joined during Dragonflight! I got convinced by a friend to try wow out and I was curious enough to give it a shot. And I can confirm everything that was said. It is very frustrating for me to be forced to do Grinding just to get to some actually good stuff. I enjoy the Battle system and interaction with other people, that's why I played a lot of dungeons, however it gets very repetitive very fast even if you have all dungeons in rotation, especially with the bigger dungeons that drag out very long. For me the Game is just a grind but I am motivated to keep on grinding because for example I would love to go to some raids. Plus I have a friend to keep me kompany wich helps a lot.
7:06 no stop, don't even think about it Nixxiom. Dungeons are already too hard, especially for new players. People need to learn basics on deadmines. I'm a returning player from MoP/WoD (10 years of pvp on a private realm) and had the new player experience on 3 different characters and it's terrible and very inconsistent. First I chose the classic zone...turns out I don't have fly paths or map exploration done on that toon. Leveled only with quests in BFA and it was fine. Then I made a DH and went through legion quests, many rewards and drops assume you will have a legendary and get no new weapon upgrades making you fall behind. Also quests markers and objectives are more convoluted than BFA. The third character got boosted to 50 from an old boost...it was thrown into shadowlands and the story was fine until I outleveled the zone...and campaign doesn't reward me so I'm forced to do the last 3-4 levels with dungeon grind...and since it's a booster character with starter gear...the dungeons scale way too high making it feel legit like a Mythic 10-15 by the amount of damage you receive. Our groups were dieing 20-30 times and needed a low level to carry us as they scale better... BFA dungeons have interrupt mechanics that some classes get on level 30 as they are not class base with the new talents..but can join on 10 and new players can't keep up. Paired with a high level undergeared healer..makes the dungeon impossible. I'm am a veteran and I refuse to dungeon while leveling..
This video has gotten a LOT of really positive feedback and engagement so far. Thank you, everyone! Glad to see I'm not alone in caring about the new players to the game.
Tutorial island but with lore?
I really hope blizzard sees this. Seems they’re working towards the right path and I think this could be a great part of it.
I got 2 of my new friends into expansion and their experience leveling has been terrible for the most part. The dungeon queues are insane for almost 30 mins to get 1 because the player base is divided across different timelines, all of the dungeons should be pooled together . There are dungeon finder bugs when you queue as a group you pick your role but nothing happens the icon does not appear at the bottom of the screen. "Recruit a friend" has quests to receive badges and marks of honor but you can't progress the quests because its bugged. And the biggest most annoying thing we have faced is my friend made a purchase and it took a whole day to go through but he reached 60 before the order completed and he was locked out of all the dungeons except BFA dungeons unless a low level friend party sync and queue's with him which I did because I was leveling a new character but for some odd reason it works for every expansion except shadowlands (I checked online blizzard says the bug is fixed but as usual its not fixed) Why aren't all the timelines accessible to someone who is lvl 60 and does not have the latest expansion but only subbed this only means that they want you to buy the game or you cant play any old dungeons through RDF. Very disappointed with the experience overall if you are buying the game its going to be a shitty experience until you reach the new expansion.
This game should not be charging a sub fee if all it offers is the latest expansion. The sub is to get access to all older expansions but clearly you get locked out of it when you hit 60. This is not the kind of service you expect paying a sub fee every month.
I'm a new player I've been having a lot of fun but I was mad when I played battle for Azeroth And hit the dragonflight quest line. All my friends told me to leave azeroth and come join Dragonflight. This led me to watch a 3 hour video on wow Lore too understand what's going on.
I think the problem is return of investment. The only way how this issue could be solved if they redesign the old zones in a way that they became relevant for high level players as well. And with a big change like that maybe there would be enough additional resource to redesign the leveling experience as well. But after seeing the problems with Cataclysm, probably they wont be brave enough to do this.
A long quest chain via the main stories from lvl 10-60 using main events from all expansions would be frigging amazing!
the thing is can you really tell those expansion stories in that small a bubble? you'd get like a bite size sampler if anything, i cannot say that's really BETTER than how it is now.
Yea, how could it be long when 0-60 can be done in one short night.
@@UltimateGamerCC I think you could very easily tell those stories in more bite sized ways. I mean think about it. 90% of the time you are leveling you are doing filler content. You are running around and killing things for rando npcs or gathering things that have basically no effect on the the greater story. You could easily cut out all the filler content and have dedicated quests that is specifically the major plot points of each expansion and you can tune the xp gain to have it finish right at the current expansion content. Hell you could even argue that this might be a better way of telling the story because it would be more focused and have less pacing issues.
I think this is probably the most common sense solution I've heard to date. That being said it is a pretty challenging solution. I think that using the cut scenes of the prior expansions to ensure that the player gets the "meat and potatoes" story line of said expansions as they journey to level 60 could be a way to ensure that the key parts of thos expansions are not lost. Again it would be challenging but I think that it would ensure that the new player understands why the game is where it is at in its current expansion.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
I really like the idea of Khadgar/Chromie showing you different zones and storylines that visit past expansions for new players
yeah like pandaria scenarios but call em "story chapters" for the expansions leveling up or something
Maybe 10 levels per expansion would be awesome
And each one starts with the cinematic of the expansion your about to play.
agreed!
I'd rather have some more organic introduction to the game. I mean, why would Khadgar (a rather important person in this universe) spend his time giving free tours to random "adventurers" around Azeroth lol? He ain't got better things to do, he bored, too much free time or maybe he just lost a bet?
Idk if Im the only one on this but I love the intro questlines for each race. It gave me reason to create other characters and learn the lore of these races inside ally or horde. I would really like a race quest revamp and a guild revamp too so it would give ppl even more reason to stay playing (like renown for guilds maybe) and harder content out in the world that either need profession itens to boost you or the need to play with other ppl to overcome those challanges
yes but I'm afraid we are not the majority my friend :)
Then maybe to expand on this idea. Maybe instead of khadgar you have your race leader do that. And alongside the expansions. They could explain the lore of your race. Maybe with the help of chromie taking you through time to witness events.
For example let's say that a new player made an Orc Hunter right? So you'd have Thrall and Chromie go through the quest line with you instead of expansion order. Chronological order. As a new "champion of the horde" it is important you know your history as a sort of final test before you join the warfront as an elite soldier for the horde. Or some sort of lore explanation like that. So thrall and Chromie take you to ancient draenor where you see the beginnings of the orcs. You see the arrival of the draenei, the arrival of the legion and the drinking of mannoroths blood by grommash hellscream. You see the major events of first war, the major second war, the rise of thrall as war chief, the major events of the third war. Then thrall takes you through all the expansions where you do some stuff there. Then after that your level 60 and can go do dragonflight content.
@@the_grim_gamer3039 That's actually a great ideia ngl. I would love to play an adventure like that and it would be a major improvement to new player experience
My friend returned to the world of Azeroth after a long time. He wanted to play the Kul Tiras race and I was really surprised how much a "new player" has to go through to get access to these races... Definitely character leveling needs a change.
Yeah, I've been thinking the same for over 2 years. I started playing with my GF, she was new to WoW, all she wanted was to play the nightborne or Void E races, but ofc she couldn't lol, that really disappointed her, and the same happend to a friend of mine that wanted to create an Highmountain Tauren/ Black Iron dwarf.
Don't even get me started about the races thing lol. I spent a month with a friend unlocking the nightborne because we could only play for like an hour or so a day and it was just sooo much stuff to do, at times we thought about just playing another race because of the hassle.
@@Formerspaceglider I feel you
Well duuh imagine you have to play the game to unlock exclusives
@Boo Was this recent? You don't need to be exalted anymore with anyone. Not even close.
"The Story of Azeroth" sounds like a great way to improve the game. Take the new player through some of the most important moments in the WoW timeline and then drop them into the newest expansion. It would allow them to level throughout the whole world, but gets rid of the old questlines. I tried to play WoW a year or so go and it was just confusing after Exile's Reach. I wanted to explore the world, but it wasn't relevant anymore--of course neither was Shadowlands.
Like the timewalking which for some reason is locked off until level 50😢
For the old world feeling empty, I've been saying forever they need to add things like copper randomly to new recipes or different stats or something. Make current use for old matts. Will make the world more used randomly and will make lvling your lower level skills more profitable.
This would make the game feel like a real world.
The world is empty because Chromie time is not in the same phase as max level players.
@@MrkraZzzand that is blizzards fault for implementing that system
I hate ffxiv now, but I like how they made all the zones feel full of people, cus there’s content in all zones, resources in all zones (resources that you’ll need for max level recipes), events/crafting stuff that are strictly in previous zones etc.
I love wow alot cus of the pvp (new player here), and won’t leave anytime soon, but I can see how it suck’s for people that love pve lol
Yes yes yes! Everything should be relevant, stop phasing things out- keep it all and expand on it!
This is something most MMORPGs go through as they age. Old content is abandoned, the new player/leveling experience is gutted, everything is converted to catering to the veteran crowd who don't want to go through the process of leveling their 45th alt. Even without boosts, leveling is turned into a race to get to max level, then you end up with a large population of players trying to do end game content who have absolutely no idea how to actually play, because there was no time for them to really learn their class or game mechanics.
I hate it. My favorite part of MMORPGs is the leveling experience, I always get quickly bored and burned out when I hit the end game, because at that point all you have to do is the same stuff over and over every day. I like the challenge of taking a new character through the world, finding and doing things I didn't do on a previous character, actually have some sense of danger, that you could mess up and die if you get in over your head. That's largely removed from most games.
That's actually an amazing idea, specifically for new players. There are a TON of new players for DF and showing them the previous expansions and their stories in a fashion you mentioned, like being on a tour with Khadgar and/or Chromie would be an amazing idea. They learn the gist of Azeroth and the recent history and are then prepared for the current events of DF, or whatever future expac.
Blizzard legitimately NEEDS to get on this.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
@@getbelkedon994 i doubt theyd be interested in the most recent story then as well. sounds like they are more gameplay focused?
Honestly the idea of having a sort of tour through the time lines is such a killer idea. Gives the new players a chance to see the full story of which ever expansion peaked their interest the most, gives old players something new to try out, and helps boost them through leveling alts a bit. All around it seems like it would be a win win idea
A custom levelling experience which takes you through key places, experience key story and defeat key enemies. It could he via the Lorewalkers and Chromie. Taliesin thought of something like this. Similar to how the 15th Anniversary worked with the World Breaker Mount and the boss rush raid thing a tailored levelling experience to fights like that. Could introduce the infinite dragons too as they interfere with you.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
@@getbelkedon994 it’d just be like doing a massive starting zone but from 1-10 below cap.
Maybe even make it 10-10 below cap and they still do exiles reach. Point is a tailored full story way to experience the past and get an idea of where you’re going instead of 1.5-2 zones of BfA then forcibly teleported out for the next expansion.
Also declaring it as wrong is wrong in of itself. Nothing I said was factual nor presumptuous. You don’t agree that’s fine but the idea is not a wrong idea.
@@Scottistic I think he's a bot lol. I see him replying the same thing in everyone's comment
As someone that enjoys questing I still think that the level squish was a stupid idea, If you want to get to max level quickly use a boost. I find it really annoying that after playing a few hours in the lower level zones I am suddenly one shotting everything and apparently can't be killed (unless I fall off cliff, which I have done more times than I can remember.
Some kind of "Path of the Curator" thing (as Tali calls it) is honestly one of the best things that could possibly be added for new players. Honestly, even though I've been playing for a good long while now, I wasn't there for all the story and stuff of those earlier expacs and would love to go through that myself. Even though I am generally aware of the lore of previous expacs, being able to actually play through it would be so much better, since I never really get very far into any of the Chromie time stuff before I get bored of not being able to do the current content surrounded by other players instead of all the old stuff that just feels off with basically no one around. Not to mention the fact that afaik you don't really get to do the whole story of the expacs, just generally the base patch content. Being able to take a new character through a curated experience of all the lore and important story moments leading up to wherever the current content is would be so nice. Then your idea of having Chromie tell new players along the way that they could come to her to experience the full thing is great. As Blizz goes forward, I just hope they keep up the good momentum with Dragonflight with regards to base/fundamental systems (like the Path of the Curator would be) and away from the borrowed power.
The part where I do agree on a fundamental level, but disagree on the implementation is your idea of the extra dungeon challenges. I do definitely agree that new players (and let's be honest, many current players too) need to get a good understanding of mechanics and how interrupts, swirlies, buffs, debuffs, and other things like that work, but as shown by how awful some of the dungeons post-Legion are to do with lower level characters even disregarding the wack tuning of many of the numbers, it may be a better idea to include some of that in the Path of the Curator thing instead. It could even be implemented as simply as while going through the path, it has you queue up for a dungeon, but there is an AI or two in there with you and the other players also doing that dungeon for the first time that can help fight with you and demonstrate the mechanics as the fights go along. After the person does that dungeon once like that, it could be left like normal dungeons are now, ideally with the numbers still fixed, though.
Obviously, this would be pretty annoying for returning players, so options to skip things like that should definitely be made available.
Oooh, those ideas about the Explorer's League and profession stuff sound like interesting concepts too. I really hope Blizz continues the recent trend of finally listening to players and adds some of this stuff in in upcoming patches/expacs.
I started in Legion, and I personally loved playing through every expansion, it really helped me understand the world and since leveling took a lot longer then, I got to experience so many different zones and it was truly great! I do wish however that if they brought this back, they added a mechanic to where you need to do the final raid of the expansion or something for a really cool bonus reward and a ton of xp or something cool like that!
I do like the idea of a Big Questline, Where Khadgar shows you the events that happened through the world, ending with Chromie, It sounds great to me!
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
@@getbelkedon994 It doesn't have to be the entire expansion worth, just a taste of each. Onyxia double-crossed Stormwind! Illidan is amassing an army in Outland! There's some creepy stuff going on in Northrend! Do you remember when Deathwing changed the face of the world? A previously unknown continent has been discovered! With talking pandas! Umm, there's a time travel portal that takes you to Draenor's past! Oh! Another previously unknown landmass, and now The Burning Legion is attacking again! Sylvanas is evil! The Horde and Alliance need reinforcements! Hey, what do you think happens after we die? Look, ANOTHER previously hidden continent! With DRAGONS!
For me the worst part of the experience as a new player were the dungeons. You're thrown into difficult dungeons that people have been running for years and you get kicked out in a couple minutes because you don't know the mechanics. Seeing how the kicks are so quick, I'm surprised that any players follow that route. In classic, we can learn our class and progress by stepping up dungeon content as we go. Would love that in retail.
Blizz changed that with BFA.
Before you were able to do the classic, bc, wrath… dungeons with the finder.
they could give you an AI team for dungeons so that you can learn from them in that way.
I’m not unhappy that new players don’t do Cata; I find it lovely and quiet down in Vash’jir when levelling alts.
I do think that Khadgar as a guide through old content would be tight!
you WANT to do underwater content? you okay there?
@@Mr19awsome92 Vash'jir is one of my favorite zones. I do not get all the hate for it. I never had a problem targeting and knew to stay alert all around me up and down too. Just wish there was more content there. I main a hunter to and never understood the complaints of other hunters saying their pets pathing is weird underwater. My pets always just moved in a straight line. Maybe a zig zag sometime but nothing that is game breaking.
Same.
Along with Bloodmyst Isle, Vash'jir became my favorite zone of all.
These two zones just ignore everything Blizzard does for last decade. And it feels good.
It's timeless and quiet. You can just enjoy the views.
@@Mr19awsome92 Vashjir was amazing. really good and well made.
Sometimes you just want to play old content and not new on wow, especially if your an old time player. Forcing us to play new expansions and skip all old content we intentionally restarted a new character to play would be a super disappointing experience. Best thing you can do is allow us to play old content and ignore new stuff, so lvl caps are great addition and not being forced to go into new areas would be a must.
Honestly, I think an "Azeroth Reborn" recycle would be good for the game. As you said, have them quest through main story beats while "hiding" side quests as trivial until you've cleared the area.
My friend sent me this video as he is trying to see what a new players thoughts are on the game (we’ve just gone through most of the leveling of Dragonflight) and honestly, your idea where the player gets a tour from Cadgar of the history of Azeroth and then you talk to Chromie to play through the expansion you find interesting is exactly the sort of thing I was talking to my friend about. The early game sucks if you don’t just use a level skip, and with all the expansions being abandoned like they are makes it hard to get invested in them, especially seeing as you’re just thrown into one of the starting cities and are told “hey, check out the board and do an expansion, they will be scaled to your level” is kinda underwhelming and probably very confusing if you play them out of order.
The idea with Khadgar taking you through the events is really good.
Lost Ark kinda does this too, if you take a "boost" with goodies for fist-time clearing.
Honestly, I think this is where FF14 has a major advantage: Its MSQ. You are required to play through the entire main story, and you have to go through the dungeons and trials to progress. And there's a utterly token xp gain for the quests in the Patch Content, minimizing the overleveling problem WoW suffered for years with.
I'd argue WoW would greatly benefit from this, but it would require a massive overhaul to the questing, dungeon and raid system.
This could be an opportunity to update the Old Worlds (I'm looking at you, Blood Elves and Draenei zones), and better integrate Allied Races as well.
Determine if a zone storyline holds up still (Ghostlands, sure maybe; Silverpine Forest, yes). Weave an MSQ to include those, while making the obnoxious side quest (Fetch/Kill X of Y) optional (most are corequisite quests to progress the zones).
•While FF has a single MSQ, WoW could easily support several across Kalimdor and EK, and take faction or even race into consideration.
•Mandate dungeons. Do the Silverpine chain as Horde? You're going into Shadowfang Keep.
Do the Gilneas chain as Worgen? You're going into SFK. FF's slowly making all MSQ dungeons solo friendly with AI support; the dungeon in Exile's Reach has this as well, so just adapt all subsequent dungeons. An AI team could be the player's alts, too, which could mitigate MSQ replay issues.
•(Alter Timewalking so all MSQ dungeons are available if unlocked and scale down higher level players with bonus rewards [player housing items?] if players are running the dungeon for the first time to encourage foster friendly multiplayer play)
•Disable xp gains once an xpac level target's been reached (like 80 in LK), but keep a small but notable power progression as the player finishes the relevant story which should build to the next expac. Suramar comes to mind.
•(MoP: Finish Siege of Orgrimmar, the quest chain deals with the aftermath, with cinematics featuring Garrosh's trial to properly set up WoD, for example)
•With AI support and proper player scaling, this could help make older raids more relevant (the amount of trash mobs really needs to be scaled down though), though given how well LFR is... x.x
This idea certainly has some shortcomings, particularly given an MSQ weaving through 9 xpacs and most of their dungeons and raids - even if all the fat's trimmed - that might be a long ask. But that's what buying a WoW Token and purchasing a skip from Chromie's for right?
This is a big reason why I couldn't get into wow. Exiles reach? I loved every second of it. After it though, I just got lost. In both story but where to go, I knew going in it didn't have a main story and that wasn't the drive. I knew that going in, the real game is the endgame and only for the combat so I held my expectations to not expect any story
But getting drips of a story through the equivalent of side quests made it iffy for me. For one, didn't know which I had to do or not had to do as my mates gave me multiple different answers when I asked. Also, I got confused where to go and what to do for said quests. I think I'm doing the side quest chain in BfA equivalent to a main story? But I have no idea and honestly I keep thinking to stop thinking of it as such
It's just, tricky for me to focus on what to do and get invested in the world. Combat can only sell the game to me so much, I want a drive. A story of some kind to learn the world, the people and to know why I'm doing what I am.
What do you mean, right now? It has for over a decade. There's still systems on top of systems on top of systems running under the hood that you'd know nothing about unless you played at the time they were implemented, not to mention the complete cluster of a story.
@York Hunt I do.
Phasing, sharding, random gear upgrades, legacy loot, War Mode, not to mention Artifact, Azerite and Anima power that new players would only interact with tangentially before they are complete discarded.
There are many more examples like these, and next to none of them are explained in the game. The same goes for current content, incidentally, where almost none of the Dragonflight unlocks, lock-outs and limitations are explained to you.
Think what you will of Final Fantasy XIV, but that game explains just about EVERYTHING to you the first time you encounter it and also comes with a designated tutorial mode for the basics of group play.
@York Hunt Ah, I see. So that's how we're playing this game.
You see, friend, I wasn't just pointing these things out that you so nonchalantly brushed aside to shill for my new forever game, but to offer some perspective by someone who's spent the better part of two decades on Azeroth.
I didn't just try the game in Shadowlands or Warlords briefly and hated it, no. I've been there since a few months after original EU launch, when I was but a wee babby, barely old enough to play this PG 12 game.
@York Hunt New players would definitely still encounter Azerite armor and the Heart of Azeroth. As a first-time player, you are FORCED to go through Exile's Reach and then on to BfA. Unless Blizzard recently changed that, that problem still persists. You could fix the majority of these problems by either adding a more in-depth tutorial or more of those little blurbs that pop up when you open a new screen.
@York Hunt Also, how the hell are the technical aspects of phasing, sharding and War Mode self-explanatory? All three work differently, and often at the same time.
@York Hunt How do you get a first-time player who just picked up jewelcrafting as his very first profession to understand that the majority of his profession is now dead in the water thanks to sockets only being added to items by chance instead of being designed with them from the get-go?
This game has had so many design inconsistencies over the years that were just heaped on top of each other along with the aforementioned systems that the game resembles a medieval town built upon ruins more than the carefully planned-out and resplendent city it could be if Blizzard bothered.
Wow I think you are on to something Nix! Having a new player going through curated "moments" across all WoW expansions to reach max level could be fun idea.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
@Get Belked on You have information overload today. What new person to wow is going to know which expansion to play let alone what the expansion is about
Going through specific events to introduce them to the lore of the game they are looking to play is nothing but positive.
Throwing them directly into to end game zones is going to be overwhelming as well so something needs to be put in place to introduce systems and mechanics.
I have something in mind for the timewalking experience as well since I'm not really enjoying doing the same quests over and over again. And to offer a bit of variety to the system we could have us players select an expansion to level through and either choose the regular questing experience (that exists today) or a new one that offers a new quest chain to see what the expansion was actually like. So it could work like a more linear progress like exiles reach with quests that focuses more on the story of the expansion. So for example WotLK with a quest line to seek out yogg saron, or killing the lich king. And at the end of each questline there would be some kind of mini ish version of a raid like Icecrown citadel and it could work as the dungeon in exiles reach works with npc raid group. And of course it wouldn't be very hard to do the raid and wouldn't be very long but focusing on the most important fights which would also bring new players into the raid perspective of the game.
I think that the bottom line is: blizzard doesn't care about the leveling experience with how quickly you get to 60 nowadays, I don't know why they haven't removed the leveling process completely yet. There are other ways to teach new players how to play their class.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of leveling progression. I love to level alts and explore the game. Blizzard just has completely ruined that and made it Currentzone of Warcraft instead of World of Warcraft.
Honestly, I would update many things with the leveling. For example: when you start a new character (with the old starting zones), you're introduced to a cutscene, explaining the lore and story around the race. Let's use Humans for example. When you start a Human, it explains lore and details that happened in *Cataclysm.* These events happened 10-12 years ago, meaning the cutscenes are extremely outdated. I believe that the early questlines need updated as well, such as Westfall. In the Westfall story, it focuses on the Defias Brotherhood, who've been defuncted since Cataclysm. Minor things like that break immersion very quickly, and I do believe a new, fresh storyline for new players will boost the morale of the early game.
As a new player myself, I couldn't agree more with everything you said. Especially with the lore and story telling. It's a little ridiculous that for someone who's never played WoW, to be bombarded with the overload of different quests from the different expansions that are set in different timelines and expect to know WTF is going on or who is who or why there's 2-3 different warchiefs in Orgrimar at 1 point and trying to figure out which timeline you're in. Yeah, there's UA-cam vids for lore recap but Blizzard has the resources to make this a more seamless experience. You shouldn't have to rely on an outside source to tell your story properly.
Now with that said, I've thoroughly enjoyed my new leveling experience and the story telling of Zandalar quest line as a Horde player. This coming from someone that hates 'tab targeting' combat systems. But if it wasn't for that awesome experience that I had, I don't think I'd continue playing. But as said, I loved it and I wanted to know more about the lore and story. Scouring UA-cam and Reddit forums though to see what's the best way to go about it or being told to read the books/comics just isn't the way to go.
I think that a world tour quest line is a great idea, but I don't think it should get you to level 60. Really it should just get you to level 30 when you get your flying mount. That will make your questing experience much more enjoyable (assuming they remove pathfinder flying from old zones) and give the characters a solid base for their talents and rotation.
As a new player, I felt very lonely and bored during my 1-20 journey. The questing is barren with no player interaction, and if you do happen to see someone they completely ignore you. The whole “pick your expansion” thing was confusing and I was bored with the BFA questing as soon as I got to Kul Tiras. As a newb I had no idea of the story/what’s going on, but they call me a hero? okay…I then decided to journey to the Legion expansion. The content itself was engaging, but the “mmo” aspect feels completely absent. I’m basically playing a single-player campaign. Nobody talks in dungeon groups either, just clear and leave. I managed to get to lvl 20 but now I’m not sure I want to subscribe and attempt to “catch up” to current content. And the option to “boost to lvl 70” doesn’t seem appealing either. I’m really disappointed with how new players are handled. I feel like an outcast that is way behind, nobody talks or bothers to help newbs like me, and there isn’t much incentive to stick around when I don’t feel welcomed. I’m sure there are many others who feel the same as me that tried to get into WoW. My experience with FFXIV was the complete opposite, the story is progressive, players were extremely helpful and talkative, dungeons always began with greetings all around. People were willing to answer questions and explain boss mechanics. They don’t get mad when the group wipes cuz a newb didn’t know a mechanic. They explain what to do and try again. Overall has a way better “mmo” experience. No one is racing to end-game, everyone just enjoys the experience. I really wanted to enjoy the lvling experience in WoW but sadly it’s hard at its current state. Basically my options are to subscribe and force myself to lvl to current content, or fork over extra $$ to get instant access to Dragonflight and miss all the experience of playing the game along the way. Any suggestions as to what to do? I’m either resubbing to FFXIV, pushing thru WoW, or play a private server? I heard Turtle WoW is popular but it’s Vanilla and I do prefer the updated graphics and gameplay of Retail….
I'm a returning player and I'm LOVING leveling ALTs. I pick an expansion for each ALT and have had a blast with each very different adventure
I think the problem is that most people dont have the time to level that many alts. Especially if you are brand new to the game and dont have heirlooms yet and dont know what to do when.
As a new player to WoW, I fully agree that the biggest problem in the game I’ve found is the early game content. I hate that everything prior to the newest expansion feels useless and empty. It sucks ad a new player to have an entire world that is new to me that I want to explore with tons of cool zones, dungeons, etc and all of it is completely empty. It makes it so that 90% of the game is empty and doesn’t matter. The game shouldn’t just be focused on endgame content, that’s not fun for me as a new player who still wants to enjoy and experience things besides endgame content of the newest expansion.
My solutions might be simplistic and dumb because I don’t have as much experience playing the game for years. With that said I think a few things that would make early game content more fun for me and for veteran players would be:
1. Make questing non linear. Make it so that questing requires genuine exploration and thought and effort. It shouldn’t be as simple as checking the map where to go, doing a chore, and done. Make some quests actually difficult or intended for groups or make the player have to figure out where to go. Make it so we have the freedom to tackle quests in an order we want too.
2. Give players a reason to revisit old content. Maybe make rotariins where every month a different expansion will get an influx of new world bosses that give great gear, encouraging players to go back and spend some time there going after them, so lower level players are still there to quest and higher level characters are there for gear and fighting world bosses.
3. Make leveling slower. Most veteran players might hate this, but as a new player I hate that I’m rushed through this process so fast. I want getting to max level to feel like an accomplishment. I want to enjoy the journey getting there. I don’t want it to be done so quickly that I’m forced out of zones or continents before I finish what it has to offer.
4. This might also be controversial, but have a few different types of servers. Like maybe have some that are raid servers, pvp servers, questing and exploration servers, etc. Make it so that if all a player cares about is end game raising there are servers where that is the focus. And other servers for people who want to spend time exploring the world and questing etc. That way they can go to servers with people who want to experience aspects of the game they want to as well. That way it increases the likelihood you find players interested in the same aspects of the game as you, maybe in a questing/exploration server you will be more likely to find players out in the world looking to group up to quest as opposed to blazing through but to get to the end game content. Maybe for the questing servers make the leveling process much slower with alternating quests available in each place depending on the time you are there, giving you even more reasons to go back.
I love your ideas concerning professions and the curated quest line. Even as just a new player starting in TBC Classic, I still feel like I missed a lot of the Vanilla story and context, even after I completed leveling to 60 in the Azeroth. Certainly there was a lot to learn and it was pretty easy to get easy to overwhelmed by the amount of content even just with TBC and Vanilla available. I can imagine how much more disjointed it could be in retail with 9ish expansions. Thank you for sharing and hopefully Blizzard sees this and considers some of these ideas!
The old zones should be reworked as the same level of dragonflight zones, this can be done in like patches, I do agree that professions could’ve been more useful in lower levels for it takes along time to level professions up so it could be nice to be useful early game.
I think a major major positive about your special dungeon idea is that it could be an opportunity for more advanced learning about playing the game. The intro island is a great fun introduction to ease you into your class and the world but it only goes so far.
I absolutely love the idea of having a challenge-like dungeon for levelling players and I think it should also be taken as an opportunity to teach new players these mechanics. Having one week with CC and maybe interrupts being key to surviving would be a good way to teach new players these mechanics but also marrying the concept of that challenge/learning with higher rewards IE: greater incentive.
Again like a lot of what was said and self-admitting that this is a more complex problem, I still think that philosophy is sound and a good foundation to make *something* akin to these ideas and I think the game would gain a lot from it. (Also I would love to see some sort of Healer and Tank 101s. Idk how to implement that but it'd be great to also get maybe a role-focused quest line with rewards that gives you a low-down of the role.)
Agreed with this. Not only for new players, but I just hit level 60 while in Draenor chromie time. I hit it doing the literal last quest of a zone which I wanted to complete for an achv and the game literally yanked me out of the quest and straight to org to start Dragonflight. Like what the hell game let me at least finish what I'm doing
TBH My main suggestion would be for Blizz to make Exiles Reach a sort of Chromie/ Norzdormu zone for players to be briefed by each expansion and main events in WoW but through the early leveling experience so it flows naturally for new players picking exiles reach or choosing to run the ol fashion exploration way. Exiles reach could have mini zones that symbolize each expansion on that mini island.
I like the Khadgar tour idea...problem is I can't think of an execution that would allow new players to get what's going on in just 5 or so levels.
Exile's reach = 1-10
Classic = 11-17
BC = 18-25
WTOLK = 26-33
MOP = 34-40
WOD = 41-48
Legion = 49-55
BFA = 56-63
SL = 64-70
DF = Exclusively endgame
1 hour of gameplay per expansion (8-9 hour campaing) is enough, maybe less in some like TBC and classic as they... don't have much to tell. Just spread the levels evenly to match that cadence
For me, i just dont know what to do. Exile reach is straight forward. Go to quest, do quest. But when ur done with that, there is suddenly a ton of quests everywhere. And idk which ones to do.
The Explorers League idea is brilliant, combine that with a rebalancing of XP between dungeons and open world questing and I bet the old zones were a lot less empty. I would also like to see Blizz cut out many of the chore quests out of the main story questlines. Or combine cut down versions of those into todo lists. Instead of kill 12 of X, next quest kill 8 of Y and next quest gather 20 of whatever, just combine those to "kill 2 of these, 2 of those and get me a sample of that" in one quest.
I really do like the idea of having a quest campaign that tours you through all the timelines/expansions, and the weekly rotating low level dungs with wacky challenges, but a lot of your video shows that you seem to misunderstand the major issues here. Most of the proposals you make end with "and it could give you a lot of XP" "it would level you up fast" etc. You made a good point about being able to do a low leveled version of dragonflight, but we don't need fast leveling, we need more varied and enjoyable content to level through. If you only add the fast leveling campaigns and dungys, that would just leave the players who want to quest and level up 'organically' in the dust, not to mention people that will walk away as soon as they get freedom, they'd miss the fast pass and be stuck in a game that wasn't made for his powerlevel
The 1st char quest that take you through all the previous expansions sounds awesome, they can make it a much better experience than what new players get atm.
The rest of the zones of Azeroth drastically need to be more interesting for leveling players.
I was leveling my mage and wanted some nostalgia and level through Northrend, but the questing was so slow and spamming dungeons was way more rewarding. A ding per dungeon and good items.
I would love to see dungeons being buffed up. That you have to level through the world to get gear and more talents before you can just do any dungeon. I still remember that I joined a UBRS group in WotLK and I was drastically weaker than the rest if the group but I helped out with a lot of CC so that was cool. It was a real dungeon crawl but I'll never forget that run. Challenge us, the player
I am definitely a fan of the idea of a proper leveling campaign. Something timeless and world spanning that really shows off some of the coolest looking zones.
I also really like the idea of expanding avenues of play that serve as routes to level. Things like pet battles, and professions should also be lucrative ways to level. Just to sort of encourage exploring those forms of play. In DFs leveling, it really feels like you can level however you want. It should feel the same way 1-60.
They could add a bunch of thematic, but simple world quests around the whole world to add in some dynamic play. Events in other games have done a good job of funneling players in large zones to the same area.
Another issue with leveling with quests is scaling. If you’re leveling through low level Cata zones you’re going to get terrible gear and get destroyed unless you get some dungeon gear or hop over to a more “traditionally higher level” zone like Shadowlands or BFA.
I was trying to get an alt up through Tirisfal but by level 14 I was taking so much damage from everything because my gear was white quality with like 1-3 green items.
Not sure the solution but it does suck having to abandon a questline because normal mobs are destroying you and you can’t get decent gear from the quests. Maybe have some kind of baseline gear you can get in a level bracket?
Here's an idea. Month long events for leveling in a specific expansion, with lets say bonus rewards cosmetics and bonus XP like 10-20%. So one month would be Burning Crusade era and you get X amount of extra xp from quests and dungeons, and better scaling loot.
That’s a great idea
bad idea... no one wants to do BC... no one wants to be encourged to go somwhere they don't wanna be cause it'll be faster
and even with it in place
some expansions would STILL be faster than BC if BC had a 40% XP boost
@@getbelkedon994 Giving people the incentive to go and do that content would work. Regardless if it’s for Tmog or maybe mount rewards. It would work
Best leveling experience from 1 - 60 would be mandatory solo torghast.
I love that idea of doing a massive questline going through all the expansions. I think that's something they should've done back in BfA.
And yes, after exile's reach you should be able to go to Dragonflight. Old content should be optional.
They should make an entire sub expansion for new players that is basically a linear tour of each expansion in order. Basically an extension to the tutorial island
Maybe just have Chromie narrate a super general story of each expansion on their own phased Zones. Each resembles 1st Zone of each expansion so new players get a taste of what each expansion means and holds for them. Draenor could even just be the intro up to the garrison. Legion is just up to pick up your artifact.
(Just skip ShadowLands. No player needs to suffer that ever again)
It's some work, yeah, but it makes it so new players get hooked to the game and makes them go back to those expansion and see more content.
And helps them understand what is going on in the current expansion.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
@@getbelkedon994 sorry for you friend
The problem is shadowlands is important to understand why ysera is back to the living world and why there is another elf tree
They could do what Star Wars the Old Republic did in a later expansion. It reworked it's quests seperating the Story of the game from the side quests, making the Storyline quests of each area give a huge amount of XP while all the sidequests were there as just extra stuff to do, minor xp, with some minor rewards for crafting, side gear, etc. You could tell the difference between the two by the quest indicator on NPCs. For example they could make the "!" in WoW be yellow for the main story and some other color for side quests. That way new players could zoom through the streamlined story of each expansion while skipping the fat. With 70 levels it's hard to fit it all in though.
First off, on the professions thing. Nixxiom, are you aware that, with the recent ilvl changes, enchanting and other professions that add enchants to certain items like scribe for shoulders ect is impossible to do now? All enchanting is capped at ilvl 50 for items pre WoD, and a lvl 10 player can obtain item lvl 59 epics. This makes the whole profession 100% worthless. BFA enchants cap out at 140 ilvl, with lvl 50 players having ilvl of around 180+. This has been an ongoing problem for the twink community since the change and blizzard has NO intention to fix it. Do you *really* think, they are going to even attempt to make the early game any good?
Next, for the overall concept, like I commented on another of your videos, this would require them to PAY a team of devs to work on revamping the leveling system, which they simply can not afford, being a small indie company. They have most of their resources put into union busting efforts and ensuring Bobby Kotick gets his 12 100k bonus checks. They can't afford to hire on a team of like 6-12 people that could work on making the leveling actually FUN. It takes millions to do all the union busting they are doing and hire such expensive union busting teams like the one Amazon uses to keep their slaves in order.
No mater how many times you bring it up, bitch about it in videos, they are NEVER, *N E V E R* going to make leveling at low levels fun in any way, shape or form. I genuinely don't understand why you don't get that yet.
yeah, even if discussing ideas is fun for me in videos like these coz i dont usually do this, i must admit, the real life perspective of the industry just as you stated answer much more and speak much louder...very true, i also dont think they will ever realistically gonna do a good early game
I came back to WoW for Wrath of the Lich King Classic...until I reached the point where I could do dungeons but there were no people to help. So I went into the modern WoW, and it's drastically different.
One thing that bugs me is the game's professions window defaults to what seems to be the latest type introduced available. So while I want to work on my classic Mining and Engineering the UI always forces me to see the Kul Tiras versions when I open up the window instead. Why couldn't it just be the type you had on last?
I definitely like the idea of leveling characters through professions - like where you mentioned mining herbing for leveling, but also w/crafting things too!! Not everyone wants to go through the stories and "Champion" experiences I'm sure, and as someone who has played since TBC and when I want to make and level a new alt, I'm not interested in all of that anymore, but I absolutely enjoy farming materials and working on professions - that could ABSOLUTELY be a way to make Archeology come back in full force and be relevant again!!!! 😄
Another crybaby. People like who doesn’t care about lores nor game itself just wanna jump through to endgame. Pathetic
They should just do what they did in thaldrasus at the end, a super quick segment of each area briefly explaing the story for every 10 levels, like 1-10 exiles reach 10 -20 vanilla story 20-30 bc and so on.
A short version of all expansions, where you reach 60 at the end would be really nice for new players. even i might do it once again just to see all of it again ( as long as it takes maybe 4-6 hours and you are done )
4-6 hours? Thats almost the avg time to go 50-60....id expect it to be more like 12-24 hours, especially if its aimed at new players to WoW. Not to mention the vast amount of content/Lore from all 9 expantions, I can only imagine it would take some time to tell.
Wrong
Information overload for new players.. i have friends i've introduced to the game
and they are FARRRR from interested in 10 years worth of story
i was thinking this exact same thing earlier this week. this is long overdue. i want to show people my favorite video game but it is so inaccessible to new players. I tried to get my girlfriend into WoW and once she finished exiles reach it was just like "....what do now?" and i tried to explain the idea of timewalking to different time zones mid story in an expansion where she wont even finish before being max level. story is nonexistent when approached this way. Most current players dont care about story but the new player needs that hook to get into the game. anyways that is my two cents
appreciated input lmao
I think Stormwind/Orgrimmar and their respective zones need a visual revamp too, like what they did with Arathi in BfA. I feel like going from the stunning, high-res Exile’s Reach to Stormwind’s 2004 graphics might be a bit jarring haha
Why? players don't spend time there... why tf should blizzard waste their time there
@@getbelkedon994 ??? I'm constantly in stormwind, what you talkin 'bout
I'm new to the game, 10 days in and have barely played, i quickly realized that I could get a lvl per random dungeon spam but it was overwhelming, some of the dungeons I keep dying to thin air with no explanation, people won't ress or even pay attention to chat or explain nothing, really boring.
Open world is ultra empty, I've seen like 2 people running around.
The only reason I kind of force my self to login is because the price point i had to paid to get in, hoping the game actually have a decent endgame @_@
This would be an amazing idea for a guild to do for an annual Recruiting event. Have guild members all over the world giving newbie’s “quests” to do to go find other guild members, NPCs, etc. sort of like a scavenger hunt, but for leveling.
Who's gonna volunteer for that?
Nixxiom opinion is wrong but that’s okay
Yea i'd really welcome some kind of fix of the old stuff for new players.
I brought 4 of my friends to WoW with the DF expansion and leveled with them. Everyone at different times and it was a sore to somehow make the leveling process seem to be fun by guiding them at the right pace and showing them the cool stuff. Explaining everyone the jump from nothing to a free Talanji who why and what is going on kinda is awkward without saying "ye the devs were lazy here" or "They dont expect new players to be able to free her yourself" which would also then leave to spot open of why we go there in the first place ( to free Saurfang? )
I suggest they make a small story Quest that guides the players through all the mayjor events of the expansions and make some character like Chromie, Kadghar, Thall, Silvanas, Garrosh or Tirion first introduce themself and and taking them more or less by the hand or kick them into the cold water of battle and intrigue to make their personalities known and after each chapter make a dungeon or scenario where u fight a Lich king, Illidan, Yogg or even recycle old scenarios like the bombing of Menethil.
There would be even something in for max lvl players to join those scenarios/dungeons by giving them a chance to obtain the mount of each of those baddies or other time walking stuff.
Another perk that could be added, especially for alt leveling, could be the game recognizing quest chains you haven't completed offering more experience than quests you have run through previously.
experienced classic player who recently started levelling in retail (i do not own dragonflight as of yet) i have absolutely no clue what i should be doing, im level 29 currently and i’m doing the same, god awful BFA dungeons on repeat because i have no direction in the world, where am i supposed to go? what quests should i do and what zone should i be in? how TF do i get out of the bfa stuff and be able to do some other content? i have no idea how to change this, why is it player interactions are so few and far between thag when you see a player, or even in a dungeon group, you talk to them, they say nothing the whole instance, and leave? it almost feels like you were playing with an NPC the whole time.
it sucks because i’m actually enjoying playing retail, the updated visuals, the smoothness, the mechanics, it feels great to play, but all the aforementioned stuff just have me scratching my head and thinking am i just supposed to spam bfa dungeons to level 60? and then what?
Goblin tours. One of the neutral goblin factions take new players (Both Hoard and Alliance) to each of the expansions for a tour. This would happen after Exiles Reach as the 'Heroes' need some down time after all that happened there (Remember they were basically recruits so they are not use to all this stuff) so they book a Tour from one of the goblin factions looking to profit for said down time. The goblins however are using a Time device 'Borrowed' from Chromie (don't ask how they got it, it involved an exploding sheep, jumper cables, and a tub of butter) and are using this to cut costs on their tours by showing the heroes some of the most exciting locations through history, only they have no idea how it works and its just goes all sideways and drops them into some of the outskirts of the major events that have happened through the years and have to fight/figure out a way to move on to their own time (of course getting slapped into a small portion of each expansion, should be about 10 or 20 minutes per jump) until they get to their own time. When that happens Chomie will show up to take her device and offer the players a ride to the current expansion where they would have to complete a quick side quest (Getting an item or something to fix all their blundering through time) before offering to dump them into a time period (Expansion) of the players choice.
I think some zones of Azeroth (maybe 4-5 on each continent) should remain timeless and/or gated (at least during the leveling experience) so players can level up those zones until they are able to jump into the latest content. That way, leveling would always feel like an introduction to WoW, and the storyline wouldn't be as confusing, you're just training so you can help in whatever the newest campaign may be.
Early game is NOT boring at all. As a brand new player who just came in around dec 15, i can say i def enjoy playing bfa and not being able to just skip to flying, avoid questing, aka skip how the game used to be played almost. It would just be lame honesty without going through the tutorial island, then going to zuldazar. Im not almost done with dragon isles so i can say i also enjoy that, i love going to the old dlc areas and questing there, learning that lore. I think new player content is good. Its not too much, its not bottle feeding either. The story can be hard to track as you can bounce anywhere but with some time and attention it hsnt been that bad. And ive clocked some serious hours in as im off work alot thru december. But im loving it! Almost to raid ilvl so im grinding
OK Hear me out, long quest chain tour is a great idea, the icing on the cake would be leveling instances of the major raids that scale to be completed solo or in a group of any size. This way the quest chain could actually take a similar amount of time but tell the ENTIRE story and have the play take part in some of the more important moments in the game. What good is the WOTLK story if you dont actually stop Arthus yourself?
newish player here: currently levelling a few different characters through both exiles reach/BFA and the old racial starting areas (to find what I like playing as) and i can tell you right now that the older maps just feel dead which in turn makes the game feel/seem unpopulated
I played a little bit of Legion when it came out and left. I really started playing at the end of Shadowlands. I think some of the biggest problems are the elitist community and dead content. They go hand in hand. I hate the fact that there is so much potential content to enjoy and rather than revamp it and give us reasons to go back they ignore it. Old content is all but dead. Blizzard could really step-up WoW and be the gold standard again in the MMO scene if they took an expansion cycle or 2 to fix old content and systems, give us a reason to visit them, tidy up the lore (if that's possible now) and really expand on the RPG elements of the game. They have so many great things I've noticed (glyphs, professions, class diversity and utility (some classes have teles, some have levitate Etc.), different character customization options to unlock in game. places to see, systems that have much potential Etc. Etc.) They create a cool system that can really push individuality and fun and they do a bit a leave it behind. The other side is the community. The community is terrible and can really kill the game (quite literally as well) for new players. It's so toxic to anyone outside who they think a player should be. We are laughed at if we don't know something, if there an obvious new player that wants to learn how to play a role or class or anything really, that queues in a dungeon and we wipe once, people make fun of them and leave etc. Because of how toxic the community is, if Blizzard tried to take a cycle to really fix the old systems, content, lore etc. the community would lose their minds. The old players really don't care about new players. They just care about themselves and when we point it out, they just tell us "That's how it is" instead of calling people out when they act like this. There's so much content I as a new player would really like to enjoy and see, the lore is weird at times, but I really like a lot of it, and there are so many zones to visit and new things to see. Why are we skipping the old content immediately to jump into newer? I'm a young Night Elf, why am I starting on a ship and immediately trying to pick an expansion I know nothing about to start and being called a hero of Azeroth 5 minutes after starting and I don't even know who these people are. Bring the old content in line with the new and make it accessible and fruitful for everyone. It's an MMORPG I should be growing my character with other people, if I'd like to get on a ship and start fast, sure. If I don't then I should be able to play from the beginning, but it should be updated to modern standards. Remember how you felt when it first came out? Why can't we have that? ATM I'm having fun, but I am overwhelmed and confused a lot. I just want to make friends and rpg. At present I don't have friends because wow players are asshats and I'm forced to into content in a timeline I know nothing about. Fix those 2 things and WoW would be in an incredible state. Sorry it's so long. Probably won't get read but worth a shot, I guess.
I think the only way to really fix it would be to redo the entire world cataclysm style. That’s would probably take a lot of dev time though. Maybe a king main storyline and even class story quests like in ffxiv
4:32 That was my first Idea too when i think about how leveling could be better 4 new players. A condenst questchain through all expansions that narrowed down all Stuff that happens, maybe a szenario Bossfight at the end where you dould teach them how to respond to Bossmechanics for later on. Kadgahr and Chromie would be the perfect choice as guidens. and at the time you're done, you hit the level to join the new expansion
I initially quit the game cause I was so bored running for long times being so slow. When I finally hit level 10 the Mount speed was so underwhelming that I quit. But I’m playing every day now leveling like 6 characters at the same time
Basically the new player is tasked in stopping a bad guy form altering events in the past. Khadgar takes the new player through all the previous expansions in scenario type quests exploring the different old expansions and telling the stories of each. Maybe its a chrono dragon gone crazy that is causing the alterations in time. Each scenario would give the player 5+ level boots and you get a custom set of armor reflecting each of the expansions.
My gf wanted to get into wow with this new expansion but as she is an old school mmo player (like ragnarok online) she wanted to lvl from 1 to 70 no boost and no dungeons. She started in legion and like 1 hour in she asked me "what should i pick it says nothing" . She was talking about artefacts relics that you can equip on your artefact weapon but that system does not work anymore.. Relics are Trash Quest Rewards that you can choose.
exiles reach is an idiotic idea, to trade multitude of cozy slow burn starting zones for a crackmonkey speedleveleing single scenario full of bullshit nonsense the devs mistake for "humor" such as flying on baloons and enlarging wild boar.
Got a friend to just start WoW fist time two weeks ago. He went to command board and it suggested Legion. He has enjoyed the leveling in Legion all the way to 50. With no Chromie Time they are now starting Shadowlands. So far they hate the maw. The hardest issue has been mein Chromie Time having to turn it off to help him. Then also asking if they are in WM or not. If you group what ever mode the leader is should force a temp sync automatically.
I think they need to make something kind of like Exile's Reach, that summarizes an expansion. By the end of it it gives you enough xp to get to the next. So Exile's reach is 1-10, Classic is 10-20, BC is 20-30, etc.
Totally agree with your new player experience idea! Having a summary of events so far would be amazing for new players and having them introduced to the Chromie system make s a lot of sense. Each expansion could give you like 10 levels and you'd get caught up by the time you reach current. The only issue I see is that this experience would have to be updated every single expansion so it may be complicated.
I would also like to see an update to “Timewalking” by having Chromie scale down players to a specific expacs level and Ilvl then put you into that expac to progress through just like you were playing that expac. This progress can be saved per character and toggled on and off whenever you want so you can enter the main timeline continent as an op character or go in as a timewalker.
Timewalking for a specific expac can happen for 1 month total rotating.
When Timewalking is enabled and you enter the Specific Timewalking Expac, you are scaled down and restricted to that expacs content only.
You can’t bring any gold, gear or items with you, as you have entered another timeline.
You enter the Timewalking with green gear at a few levels under that expacs capped level and need to quest to level and get gear.
Main timeline gear, item and stats and timewalking gear, items and stats separated
Only that expacs professions are enabled and the auctionhouse is separated from the main timeline game.
Everything you do in timewalking should reward timewalking currency
Timewalking rewards should be vastly expanded to include decent item rewards (gear, mats, gold) in the main timeline or even buy time saving coins to lock your timewalking gear to bring to the next timewalking event.
Gear looted in timewalking counts towards tmog in the main timeline
Tied into this, there should be new stat next to ilvl which is called “knowledge”
This knowledge is a number adding all of the world bosses, dungeons and raids together which you have completed as current expac content.
Having 3 color coded numbers showing the individual boss completions
Bronze = normal
Silver = heroic
Gold = mythic
Number = how many bosses downed
These numbers and colors can be accumulated through current expac content but also through the time walking content.
I played the game from 03-16, and then am just returning now. I find it hard to use my old characters even though they have hundreds of days played because I have no idea about the rotations and such so I've been working on a pair of new characters and it is confusing on what I should be doing. Also having to do content I've definitely done on my old characters is really weird.
i left in WOTLK, im a new player , basically, how i select that ? in 4:51 and in 5:48 was me yesterday, im lost, in the past , leveling was progressing trough zones, but now the zone is getting my lv? so i can lv to 60 just in dorotan?, but im leveling way faster spamming dungeons
Not gonna lie, I am a brand new player and I have no idea the track I should take. Where do I go? What lands do I travel to to level? These things arent explained at all for brand new players and its VERY frustrating. Literally, never played before and I am lost as to where to go. Im at level 20 and just keep going to different parts of the maps and picking up quests.
In lost ark they have this when you boost a character for the first time, you go to a timeless place where you experience all the story so far till the start of the endgame story areas in short where you go through some text, images, voice lines and narration, cinematics and also play some major events as well as try some spells you earn along the levelling path till that point.
I had an idea about having the levelling experience be similar to that and when you brought up the idea about an NPC like Khadgar taking you through the starting of each expansion in a chronological order to get some context added to the idea I had so we can have it in a similar way but instead of going through just blasted lands or something you get specific existing key story quests, not the boring kill and collect ones, alongside narration from Khadgar about why we got here and how it happened especially when transitioning between zones and expansions and the XP you get while doing the levelling experience is enough to roughly get you to level 60.
And during that levelling experience you get to do some key dungeons that tie into the story alongside the cinematics of the stuff that happened, and these dungeons can be done with players or be like in exiles reach when NPCs accompany you to clear them instead. For the raids that have context you can just skip to specific fights like killing the Lich King for example where you either witness or participate in the fight and it can be done with NPCs dressed in appropriate gear, similar to how the Illidan quest, where you get to experience his fight from his PoV fighting the NPC raid.
The technology to do that is present in the game as it has been done before like in Illidan's quest and also the Thaldraszus questline where the NPC can be Chromie or any time dragon instead of Khadgar or even it can be multiple main NPCs who had big roles in the expansion or zone you are experiencing.
Even me who put wow down for a few years got SUPER overwhelmed by the amount of quests I had and the amount I'd need to do to catch up in the other expansions... it got so to the point I had quests I needed groups of people but almost no one was going into these areas so I had to drop said quests and move on
As someone who's play style has constantly evolved - started in wotlk clueless using swords leveling a warlock to raiding mythic shadow lands to now casually enjoying endgame content - I would love a cohesive beginning to now quest you could do every new alt - constantly refreshing your memory on the events and tying in with the current storyline if you've been afk for months. I just leveled an evoker and it would've been awesome to get a history lesson and show the easiest way to get around everywhere. I spend so much time just trying to get to old content because the portal isn't easy to find/doesn't exist for no reason other than the world is huuuuge.
Definitely needs to change something. I came back after not playing since Legion and was forced to go do a chromie timewalk mission, and when I hit 60, then abruptly told I needed to leave to go to the Dragon Isles after I finished the beginning of the story of Shadowlands... lol
I think that instead of going from 10 to 60 in a couple of hours, everyone has to play the levelling story from the current expansion at least once (like the story of the 4 zones in Shadowlands) which would start at lvl 10 or later and would take you to max level. And after you get the achievement for finishing the story once, every new character has the option of levelling at the current expansion or levelling in any other expansion and just play the max level content (like the covenants in Shadowlands).
With the fact that you can't get a fully unlocked legendary weapon anymore at your class order hall, i would like to see a revamp of that system. Where you can go to your class order hall right after completing the starting zone. And use that class order hall as that faction where you used the explorers league for.
I feel like there needs to be 2 different kinds of levelling modes:
-levelling mode that is meant for fast XP gains, don't care about the story and you just want to reach endgame as fast as possible (perfect for experienced players who just want to level alts up)
-levelling mode that seeks to immerse the player the in the game's world and history (great for newer players or those who might want to play through previous stories/zones)
Around a year or two ago I started playing WoW so I could play with my GF and I did exactly what you described and didn't use any leveling boosts and just decided that I wanted to explore the world doing quests and clearing areas. The issue was by the time I got to the point where the game sent me to my first expansion I was already bored and there wasn't really anything difficult about it. It was just one long endless grind where I would simply repeat the same combo of attacks over and over again with no incentive to try out different mechanics - like professions and whatnot. Of course the world also felt completely dead like you said, but on top of that I don't feel like the game did a great job telling me where to go for major story beats.
one of my biggest critiques of the low game is that the XP for losing a battleground despite the time invested is close to nothing. Discourages me from queueing pvp on alts. I queued for some on my dk recently only into the 60s so I would have enough for some max level honor gear.
Another suggestion is, death knights, demon hunters and now the evokers start at a higher level, but giving the the option to start in exiles reach from level 1 could be enjoyable as well.
I mainly say this because let's be honest, the dk starting area aged like milk compared to the rest of the game
Yeah it fucking stinks like my ass after 30 days of eating trash with no shower. Pretty fucking brutally horrible experience man, I thought they had done something about it after i saw the new dk starting mini lore for the newer races...but no...for older races the same thing, the same restrictions, terrible terrible
What the fuck kind of idea is this... holy shit you're a moron
A big questline involving different zones and a mandatory dungeon from each expansion would be an interesting idea and I think people would like it.
I’m glad I got to experience each xpac as it was current. Can’t imagine starting now and being so overwhelmed by the story and all the old content
3:40 exactly thats what Lost Ark does, good idea. You either skip to max level or you replay the biggest events of the game and it gives you a whole bunch of nice stuff for going through the story recap.
What i think would be the best, is if after doing exiles reach you would go to your class trainer, and do a series of quests that teaches you how to play your class, and would show you your place in tge world (for example a rogue could get a quest chain of infiltratiot and espianage, and a mage to do stuff with laylines and elementals, or even just helping out in the world) and these quests should make you lvl 60, as it is already really fast to lvl to 60, and even in a normal pace (questing in draenor) , can be done in an afternoon. So it would be kinda like the legion quests, but merged with what nixxium said.
But in the end it would take tons of effort for blizard to make it, and it wouldnt really be justifiable as most people would never interact with these quests, or only do it for 1 class.
But if we dont want to add in new stuf, bfa is defenetly the best expansion to throw a new player into, its clear and lineral but has a bit of exploration, it is designed for not having flying, and even if it doesnt make too much sense in the lore if you just end it after doing only the 8.0 stuff, and never the 8.1-8.3, that is true for every other expansion, and while it would kinda make sense for them to do cataclysm tonget familiar with the dragons, i wouldnt wish for anyone to lvl through cata (even if the low lvl zones are some if the best wow has to offer)
I honestly wouldn't mind an extremely fast leveling process for first characters, they do hand out boosts anyway.
In my opinion low level isn't even part of main game anymore except for niche things like twinking. Chromie time already phased away all interaction with low levels.
I jumped into wow for the first time and i dungeon spammed to level 60 so far didn't even look towards the open world but i feel like my armor is a bit under leveled.
Hello there, new player here that actually joined during Dragonflight!
I got convinced by a friend to try wow out and I was curious enough to give it a shot.
And I can confirm everything that was said. It is very frustrating for me to be forced to do Grinding just to get to some actually good stuff. I enjoy the Battle system and interaction with other people, that's why I played a lot of dungeons, however it gets very repetitive very fast even if you have all dungeons in rotation, especially with the bigger dungeons that drag out very long.
For me the Game is just a grind but I am motivated to keep on grinding because for example I would love to go to some raids.
Plus I have a friend to keep me kompany wich helps a lot.
7:06 no stop, don't even think about it Nixxiom. Dungeons are already too hard, especially for new players. People need to learn basics on deadmines. I'm a returning player from MoP/WoD (10 years of pvp on a private realm) and had the new player experience on 3 different characters and it's terrible and very inconsistent.
First I chose the classic zone...turns out I don't have fly paths or map exploration done on that toon. Leveled only with quests in BFA and it was fine.
Then I made a DH and went through legion quests, many rewards and drops assume you will have a legendary and get no new weapon upgrades making you fall behind. Also quests markers and objectives are more convoluted than BFA.
The third character got boosted to 50 from an old boost...it was thrown into shadowlands and the story was fine until I outleveled the zone...and campaign doesn't reward me so I'm forced to do the last 3-4 levels with dungeon grind...and since it's a booster character with starter gear...the dungeons scale way too high making it feel legit like a Mythic 10-15 by the amount of damage you receive. Our groups were dieing 20-30 times and needed a low level to carry us as they scale better...
BFA dungeons have interrupt mechanics that some classes get on level 30 as they are not class base with the new talents..but can join on 10 and new players can't keep up. Paired with a high level undergeared healer..makes the dungeon impossible. I'm am a veteran and I refuse to dungeon while leveling..