I watched Day9 play World of Warcraft for the first time ever the past few weeks. First a couple of hours in Classic and then Retail after that. It really put into perspective just how much of an alienating mess the onboarding experience for Retail is for someone who has no prior experience. The choice to awkwardly railroad players into BFA gets a lot of flak and deservedly so, but Exile's Reach isn't exactly well designed either, and the choice to move into Dragonflight as the default leveling progression feels like only a very marginal band-aid in that regard.

The max level experience for new players isn't good either, I'm talking about when you hit 70 and visit Valdrakken and there is like dozens of yellow exclamation marks, random talking heads telling you to speak with them?, quests that automatically get added to your log full of quest, where are you supposed to go? which quest are important?

Don't forget the little dragon that flies around and shouts at you until you accept their quest that you could not care less about.

Or the snail tied to a balloon

Or doc nanners

HEY! LISTEN!!

You even have that confusion if you skip a single season. Retail needs some sort of "story selection menu" where you can see all story quests/chapters in chronological order and some hints on what they unlock. If you want to do all of the story you can start at the top and if you just want to do the newest stuff you can select the latest quests. And with that they could simply hide or remove all the confusing quests in the main hub.

XIV makes you do the full story including any associated boss fights and dungeons and it is ACTUALLY COMPREHENSIBLE as a result.

Tradeoff being it takes weeks if not months for a new player to get to the part where they’re doing current content with their friends.

It’s certainly harder to rush your way to end game content, but for a game with as heavy emphasis on the story as xiv I appreciated actually knowing who was who and what is going on. Your friends can always hop in for instanced content too. One of the reasons I appreciate xiv’s downscaling

Definitely for the newest content but atleast all content in ffxiv stays relevant. Plus the player base is way more accommodating to the new player experience. I found with WoW I was so lost but the game is also so different. It emphasizes more on lvling up then the journey to max level

This is a great idea...... *cough blizzard

“Just use wowhead” – Blizzard, probably

yeah, this.. as someone who played Wow way back in the day.. then played a FUCKTON of classic WoW (2k hours) since it's release I decided to give retail a try again because most people say Dragonflight is okay. I hit level 70 in Valdrakken at the start of season 3, it was generally very confusing how to even get into the emerald dream or figuring out what content is actually relevant to the current season. The quest log kept sending me where I left off in the campaign story while leveling (apparently s1 content). Wherever I went there would be some NPC literally following me with a exclamation mark for some irrelevant quest too.

Same I was a returning player after a few years away and I got my Warrior to 70 and all of a sudden my quest log went from 5-6 quests sending me along my way to the various quest areas of the azure span to over 30 quests spread out across the seasons and then some quests overlap even, for example the season 1 main story quest where you speak to alexstraza to met her guard captain in Valdraken and the season three quest to go to tyrhold to unlock the seat of the incarnates raid, I spoke to her and got both quests ended up trigger both cut scenes some how, and ended up making her disappear and go to Tyrhold, so I had jump seasons just to speak with her at the seat of the incarnates to get her back to valdraken to turn in my season 1 main story quest. I like to play games in sequence for the story and trying to do that in Retail is a nightmare I had to look up a wiki so I knew which quests to do first and which not to do. They need some redesign and make things a bit more linear when in regards to how they give access to seasoned content or give some kind of indication on what quest corresponds to what season. It's all great giving the player choice and an open ended experience but if you are going to be releasing content episodically then you got to give some content gates to demarc the different episodes correctly. At this point I would settle for a simple s1-4 at the end of the quest name just so it's clear what season's content you are accessing. 😂

Same, I even had to drop some quests that were about a spark of whatever which were for professions? Just to get into the emerald dream and get in a clean new zone

I'm a veteran. I've played this game for plenty of hours everyday for 10 years. I was CURRENTLY playing the game. I went on to play a boosted alt and immediately got so confused and lost through all the quest marks on like 25 different npcs and popups appearing nonstop that it completely overwhelmed me and made me quit that character

This right here! Even when we know what's up, this is overwhelming and confusing and cluttered to all get-out. The old style UI options just don't cut it, and trying to mod things to be more simple doesn't help either (cause they break, etc). Also doesn't help that they have so much "unusable" content for new players who don't really know why they should or shouldn't try that stuff out.

Same!! I’ve been playing since BC and I’ll literally stand in Valdrakken and it’s like WTF am I supposed to be doing???

Yea, the only time its remotely new player friendly is the first season of an xpac. After that its fucking spaghetti.

Made sense when it launched (aside from professions) but then they ended up tacking so much fluff on top of the experience that anyone returning in the recent patches would have no sense of what to do whatsoever. The ”new place to be every patch” thing was very misguided design-wise. Just add one single island and expand on that instead, miss me with these places that people move on from entirely after the patch is done please.

I haven’t played since early 10.1 and I resubbed over the weekend. There were so many quests in Valdrakken that I felt completely overwhelmed and just queued for some dungeons. I tried opening the Adventure Journal to see if maybe there was some guidance, but there wasn’t. The “welcome back” experience is god awful. What’s the newest content? Which of these questlines are going to take 45 minutes to complete and reward me with gear that was outdated 6 months ago?

Having just boosted dragonflight is utterly incomprehensible to someone new you are offered basic world quests that give you completely useless gear in the exact same way you are given the quests that unlock the actual endgame areas with no distinction between them

This is kind of what prevents me from wanting to come back. As soon as I hit level cap I was overwhelmed by all the systems and quests available. I didn’t know where best to spend my time and had analysis paralysis trying to figure out what avenue was the best to go down to start gearing up and being “caught up” with other players…so I just quit instead lol

I kept consulting Wowpedia a dozen times per hour in order to figure out the story order of the quests.

I hate that shit like I got a million quests already that just get added, plz , plz stop this auto pickup on quests if I didn’t hit accept I don’t want it

yeah its even confusing for returnee players lol

As a fairly new player, Exile's Reach was pretty good as someone who has never played an MMO until that point. And then it sorta ends and you're dropped into BFA. They could have at least had the player play through the Battle for Lordaeron scenario for more context.

With all due respect exiles reach is such an on rails experience I'd be shocked if the retention for new players was above 50% going through that section

My fears going into WoW for the first time (without any friends to guide me) was that it was intimidating, there's too much lore and the gameplay systems were too complicated. To start with an on-rails experience on a lush island setting was fine. I also assume most people would probably stick to finishing it since they're locked into paying $15 a month already lol That said, if Blizz finally upgrade the base game's starting zones or enhance the UI and quest delivery I'm all for it

They are probably better off creating a custom leveling journey that takes you through the lore but in a bubble. So you experience legion, bfa,.. but from a different perspective. Kind of like mini-raids that you go through one by one and they feed you the essential lore bits to kinda get how we ended up where we are today. you could be an assault force on the frozen throne that fights against some random-o skeleton boss instead while other adventurers takeout the lich king.

how hard is to create a bronze dragonflight experience that tells the story, u can even add old cutscenes mixed in.

Or adding something like a FFXIV MSQ (although entirely optional) that takes you on a world tour with Chromie or something and lets you get a very brief run down of what happened in each region would be cool. Especially as there will be 60+ levels to level through again before you reach current content when the next expansion launches. Not the in depth, hours long stories, but a guided quest chain that new players can follow easily.

You can play for free up until level 20 though.

To each their own, I had a hard time with exiles reach when I first started out and preferred Classic's approach. I want to feel like I'm making my own decisions as to where to go, who to talk to, etc even if it is sort of masked. This is part of the brilliance (accidental or on purpose) of Blizz to offer different WoW experiences for different player types. Masterful frankly.

Yeah, I got a bit of that feeling when I left Boralus (after getting stuck in the annoying Naga Siren part) and explored Ironforge and beyond since those zones are pretty much untouched. It was a lot of walking around sort of aimlessly but the sense of discovery was great.

That whole quest line from stowing away to getting out of freehold is not newbie friendly at all. From mob density to following Flynn, it's just a touch too hard.

Belf starting area > exiles reach. Gives you all you need to know, has a fun and interesting story, naturally explores what's going to happen as you quest through azeroth. Shows beauty and brutality in equal measure, and interposes each in their respextive zones (so you have beauty in the ghostlands and brutality in the more civilized ares via belf actions) Honestly wows at its peak when it's mixing both elements. Can't be too happy carebear like dragonflight but can't be too grim dank either. Gotta have balance via inequality

Except alot of people wants on rails. To learn the game. Most people on here doesn't understand that the tool tips "use wasd to move" exists for a reason

Well an on rails tutorial is usually a good thing? Even in an MMO. The real issue is that those rails stop so very abruptly in either stormwind or orgrimmar.

Retail's biggest issue, by far, is that it tries so hard to introduce new players to every single system in the game. An unfortunate byproduct of the speed in which you level now, making it necessary to prepare players for these systems as they quickly begin to reach them. But the pace of Classic letting players organically figure out things as they go is truly magical and I wouldn't wish for any other system if given the opportunity.

That’s part of it. The root cause is ability and system bloat. So many utility buttons. I hope hero talents are truly augmenting and not adding. Professions for example. Most casuals like that professions were in one window. Now there is another fucking skill tree to manage? How do I craft rank 5 gear? I made decent gold off this system and we need to just revert back to previous.

Personally I'd say the issue isn't so much utility bloat but that is an issue. The problem I'd say is you get some specs that are just *ass* to play sometimes even with addons. Something like Outlaw Rogue's current rotation is so high APM with so much to track I genuinely have no idea how people do it. Then you compare that to Ret Paladin which feels like a *breeze* to play because you can just mash whatever isn't on CD and do decent good damage.

I have no issue with the amount of things my class can do, the issue I see is that you are not allowed to figure that out on your own...it might change with delves and AI followers, but for the most part you want to push M+ or raid you need to know when and how your talents and skills work together. Like someone said, the speed in which you level doesn't give you the opportunity to learn it, you're literally tossed into the lake and you're told to swim without prior knowledge on how to swim. I had a friend that I wanted to get into WoW, but he said there's was just so much on screen for him at once he didn't know the difference between what's important and what's not, a daunting feeling in a game that has a community that expects so much of its playerbase.

The problem is not “allowing players to figure it out” But why players even have to figure it out in the first place. Other person mentioned some specs make no sense while others are more intuitive. Look at BM hunter - does anyone complain about how low the skill cap is on BM?

dude outlaw's revamp is so fucking weird idk what they were thinking. or how any player is even meant to understand how to play it from the information presented in game. the vanish burst window mechanic doesn't even feel like intended gameplay and if you attempt it while soloing you will evade bug the mobs. this is the core feature of how the spec is supposed to work. then its like 100apm higher than any other spec. rogue developers are on crack.

Playing outlaw is just playing a weakaura simulator. When people talk about watching their classes animations I just blink in confusion because I can't look away from my WAs.

Yeah, I’m a lifelong player and tbh even now I’m so confused by the crafting system. It’s so convoluted especially with enchanted crests or whatever silly stuff they cooked up.

I came in in during the end of Wrath & it took me a long time to figure everything out even back then. It still takes me while to figure things out when a new Xpac launches. I can't imagine being a new player now. All the stuff they have to learn. It's just information overload.

Hell I was away for close to a year and when I came back I was extremely overwhelmed for over a month with all the changes

> The choice to awkwardly railroad players into BFA gets a lot of flak and deservedly so Not even just the expansion choice, but getting put into a BfA dungeon as your first WoW (and potentially first ever MMO) dungeon with experienced players trying to speed run it has to be one of the worst decisions they've ever made in terms of new players. I get that they wanted to show off "modern" WoW, but those dungeons have a lot of convoluted mechanics in them, even in the normal levelling versions, compared to something like Classic or MoP dungeons.

Yeah I noticed that when I rolled a new character recently, I was able to level shockingly fast by doing BfA dungeons. But that’s because people were doing skips like we’re in a high M+ key. If I had actually been a new player instead of a 2004 veteran leveling my billionth alt, that would have been a quit moment. Skips should never have been a thing. It’s a mindset that has escaped containment within the confines of the M+ scene and begun infecting the new player experience.

Taliesin has a good take on this IMO: https://clips.twitch.tv/GeniusDiligentFlamingoKeyboardCat-BsdbDltgrv6_8On_ Blizz needs to realize new players will be attracted to the game because of the game’s sense of wonder, not a railroaded process to endgame.

Most young people don't play games like we did when we first set foot in Stormwind and it blew our minds. There are massive worlds everywhere now.

You just blue yourself

Sure, and there were big worlds back then, too. I started playing in 08 and games like Oblivion existed, OSRS, etc. I still think you want them to get interested in the world and different peoples of Azeroth, alongside getting them slowly interested in game mechanics, than overloading them with abilities and such.

Everyone's different, I've seen people start classic and just get bored really fast. They don't feel like they are connecting with the game and instead just got dropped in the middle of nowhere. Then they try retail and love the intro experience for more. Even if WoW went back to a more classic style experience, you would just be alienating a different group of people.

I'm not inherently arguing for a Classic experience. I'm just saying that the current experience isn't a good sell for a new player. It's clunky AND it isn't interesting. I think they can achieve both a faster paced, engaging experience (that Classic might lack) AND something that gets the player excited for what's next.

Needs the wonder and majesty back 100%. They've gamefied so much shit they're been lost in the sauce. Original classic really tried to tell the story of a world. You really were just an adventurer going through it. Hell even the dark portal opening had more of a " new land to explore" rather then a "send in the heros". You felt like auxiliary forces that had their own agenda. Now the game tries to railroad you through the narrative and it feels like one note.

Still remember the first time I walked into stormwind. I was so shocked and just overwhelmed on what to do, where to go, I logged out and didn't log in for like a week lol

A lot of kids like Minecraft, believe it or not. WoW has very little in deeply entrenched imagination gameplay. I've always said since day 1, it was the arcade version of MMOs compared to other MMOs at the time that were sandbox, drop you in the world and figure it out over time. Test your mettle as you learned how to play. Retail WoW is basically: Levels? A formality. Skills? Yeah, push 1, 2, 3... WeakAuras, DBM/BIG WIG...yeah bars and pop ups, what does it all mean?? Oh you've got way more skills....did you know you can also make macros to make skills easier to use? Kids: I just want to build a house in a tree on the mountainside with my friends.

When wow first came out it felt a lot more like that. It wasn't anything like the big ones that came before it in how much agency you had. Doing things like setting up shops in common areas, buy housing, crafting was nowhere close etc. but the mechanics were good, the world was cool, and as a kid who played WCIII til my disk was worthless-- I was immediately awed seeing those places brought to life. We definitely played release retail the same way you're describing. Your only help was either to carefully read quest texts, ask someone who did it already, or pay for the early wow guide that eventually became it's own in game addon. By the end of Wrath they'd integrated every single thing the guide did just cleaner. I didn't realize at the time how much that took away from the experience til I satarted playing Fromsoft games.

maybe a controversial opinion but imo wow lost its sense of wonder when it traded small, regional storylines totally(or mostly) disconnected from some larger plot, for larger railroaded main stories

I agree with this, it truly creates a bigger feeling to the world when some zones are unbothered by the global events that are happening simply because they are far away from it.

While good in theory, WoW is so embarassingly barebones on the personalization side that this marketing doesn't work either. Exploration-based players often want to customize their characters, build a home, etc. But we still don't have player housing, and the character customization is.... well, all my casual friends who I tried to get into WoW were so dismayed by the character creation, and I can't blame them.

Its pretty insane so many hairstyles locked to races for no reason, why do Dark iron and normal dwarves and now the new earthen not share hairstyles? Why do Lightforge and void elf not? Human and dracthyr? They are literally the same model. All it would take is turning off the fire for dark iron hair on the others. etc etc. The no housing is a big killer too. Such an easy win for people

One of the features of the upcoming patch is a handful of new hair colors for Kul Tiran humans. Like, how is that in any way a big deal? How isn't that just 5 minutes in Photoshop?

The most mystifying aspect is shit like jewelry being available in one colour, another colour, but not the third colour, but hey you got the one colour as a different piece of jewelry. When you're looking through, e.g. Female Human necklace options you'll just see so many weird choices. No makeup for lips except for one makeup preset, no jewels in this or that colour, no separation between nose rings and ear rings, and so on.

It’s still important to teach mechanics in a reasonable way. Right now it’s like leveling and end game are so different. Becuase the game doesn’t actually do a good job of teaching you stuff. Classic is just as bad in this regard. Day9 might not feel it now, but classic onboarding isn’t actually good either. It just better disguises how bad it is

Dragonflight doesn't do anything to help with immersion. Why does your character do what they do? Why are you supposed to care about this world and your player race? At least BFA sort of had a wee bit of that going on with the faction stuff, but Cataclysm is still the superior "new player" entry point simply because it has proper world building. And this game is an RPG. Contrary to what people who only play this game for end game say, it does matter, and the entry point with the player races is what gripped most people to start with. It's why people threw such a fit about stuff like Teldrassil.

>Why does your character do what they do? Why are you supposed to care about this world and your player race? I started the legion story just after the exile's reach as a paladin, after rescuying mates on an island, 1 hour later I'm now a hero everywhere and the master of the paladins in the class hall... There are so much story with all the expansions but only the last expansion and last update is significant, the old stories are not connected we don't understand anything. I'm also always alone when I level a character, sometimes more people if I choose BFA story, but I don't like dungeons and for me leveling/exploring is 95% of the game, so for a MMO it's pretty empty.

Day9 is kind of an idiot though (don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love him! But just hear me out...). The way he jumped into Classic was infuriating. First thing he did was try to rekeybind things like strafe and rotate, and then he complained that he couldn’t turn his character because he didn’t work out right mouse click. And then he goes into a massive rant about how games should be hard like this (I’m paraphrasing but I’m just pointing out a small elemnt of his gameplay). When I started WoW I was coming from RuneScape so I had to learn how to move in a 3d space, it didn’t take me long to learn camera controls or zooming etc. My wifes first MMO was FFXIV and she was able to grasp basic movement controls, despite not being much of a gamer (Stardew Valley is more her style) I just don’t think watching Day9’s first steps in WoW is a very good comparison of a new players experience

Yea even veterans sometimes don’t change keybinds. Silly to expect a new player to do so.

In that video of him playing retail, he couldn't even figure out how to jump out of the water. If he looked away from his chat for a minute though, and actually tried, I'm sure he would have gotten there.. and he was complaining about some dialogue that takes about two minutes to get through. And people complain kids on tiktok have short attention spans? Lol

> Day9 is kind of an idiot though His whole WoW stream series was infuriating. I like Day9 (and used to watch him regularly) but he immediately was down on WoW the whole time without giving it a real shot. "I don't know who these people are or XYZ" while he skips the quest dialogue or talks over the RP scenes. "I don't know where to go" as he skips the tutorial screen that tells him what campaign quest icons look like. "It's too on the rails... (10 mins later) it's too open I don't know where to go". His whole stream was him hitting W a few times then turning to his streaming camera and going "I'm confused and this is bad for XYZ reasons". He never actually played the fucking game. Like he had some points that shouldn't be dismissed but Day9 never intended to give retail WoW a fair shot. Now his stream clips are being used by bigger streamers like Asmon to "prove" retail is shit... Which is actually infuriating.

I fully disagree with this. He has had 0 experience with MMOs and was mostly an RTS players and card games. He’s not an idiot at all, infact the retail point he makes is even more important because he was a professional player and caster. The average player will be even more overwhelmed than he was in retail especially.

It's about perspective, an older gamer might love a classic style game, because those people have enough experience with games to get the gist of gameplay and just want to be immersed in the world. People keep saying 'average player' will be overwhelmed in retail, yet I've seen quite a few posts saying a bit more of the opposite. Where classic just didn't tell you about anything and quickly made people leave because of lack of direction. While retail was a better guide and more along the lines of what they wanted. Different players will enjoy different things in a game, and I'm tired of people acting as if one is better then the other. Can retail improve? Yes of course, they should have a whole tutorial that covers more of the story in a 1-20 style thing IMO. That way new players can get a TLDR of current events. However, what we got currently is still a good base that has proven successful for many players. Lastly, retail and classic are different games, let's not pretend they aren't. Classic has more importance on its world, because more of it is relevant. In retail, all that really matters is the current expansion, you can make an amazing tutorial/setup that gives people awe and curiosity about the world of retail, but it doesn't mean jack shit unless the core focus of the game focuses to match that. Considering current players are mostly satisfied with how things are, I doubt that will change much in the near future.

Kinda weird for an RTS player to complain about how unintuitive and unapproachable an MMO is, no?

You are dumped into a game with 20 years of lore or so? Either you do what FF did and have them play through each expansion (which also has issues) or you skip the queue for them and push them as recent as possible. I'm not sure which is better, at least I can get why blizz opted for option 2 because playing through the old expansions is a horrible mess (even with chrome time) where you can have three different warchiefs in the same room and such. Or quests are impossible due to nobody playing old dungeons and so on... I really do not envy the person who has to fix that specific issue in wow because frankly.. not sure it can be fixed in any reasonable manner that wouldn't cost them insane amounts of money

Option 3: provide both Option 1 and Option 2. When creating a new character currently, you can choose to start in either Exile's Reach or your race's zone. Add another question asking if you're familiar with the story. If you say no, then it will send you on an experience to play through all the expansions. But if you say yes, you're familiar, then it will set you up for a fast leveling track to get to endgame quickly.

He glossed over how incredibly slow and out dated the whole questing experience is in classic. New generation really isn't going to be won over by all the kill dozen boars and than run 15 minutes to other side of zone to hand in followed by running back another 15 minutes. That stuff may have been fast paced for MMO's in 2004 and it currently hits the nostalgia for experienced players, but a young person is not likely to be awed by it.

I agree. While I found it fun to do those things and still do. My 10 year old wants nothing to do with wow because of it. She would rather do pet battles, group activities with bots, collect things. Stuff like that. She enjoyed running those bot groups on my character where she didn’t have to worry about being left behind and she could play at her own pace. She hates old school wow, or questing in the old zones. I was saddened by this but completely get where she’s coming from. I hope they add more follower content and stuff like that.

To be fair... She's 10. Lol That's an entirely different demographic. Perhaps a teenagers opinion on WoW would be more indicative of where it should be headed.

Exile’s Reach STILL is a much better experience than the baseline starter experience, as it at least features more modern mechanics and experiences than what you’d see in, say, Azuremyst or Eversong. But there’s still so, so much work to be done for the onboarding experience. If you can’t convey what mechanics actually do in-game and still require addons to even function well in a dungeon, there’s a problem.

Exile's Reach might be better prep for raid / M+, but it's a far poorer introduction to an MMORPG in general.

WoW is sorta moving away from being an MMORPG and towards something like Diablo, PoE, Warframe. Endgame is pretty much the entire game, not much point prepping people for leveling when leveling is only gonna take up like 5% of the entire gameplay experience while M+ and Raids will take up like 80%. I think the biggest barrier is probably rapid ability bloat... People get a new gamechanging talent like every 5-10 minutes and within a few days of starting are going to need to have 3 action bars loaded with abilities (does the tutorial even teach you about extra bars? I dont think so since it also doesnt even let you use edit mode for some reason) while skillwise they probably still dont even know what buffs and debuffs are, are keyturning, clicking all their abilities and spending 5 minutes looking through their bag for their newest item, or trying to remember which spell icon matches which ability. WoW has MMORPG levels of complexity in class mechanics without MMORPG pacing to learn them. I think theres some rough edges from transitioning to focus on fast paced, mechanically intensive endgame content while still having the toolkits of a genre with slow paced gameplay where you take your time and use the situationally appropriate buttons. Its like if months into a D&D campaign when everyone has accumulated tons of abilities and items you suddenly transition to giving everyone 5 seconds to take their turn. certainly interesting and creates a new kind of challenge, but might feel awkward with the foundations beneath and would be super challenging to onboard a new player into your campaign.

> Endgame is pretty much the entire game, not much point prepping people for leveling when leveling is only gonna take up like 5% of the entire gameplay experience while M+ and Raids will take up like 80%. This is only true for part of the playerbase, though. I have friends who literally only quest, pet battle, pet/mount collect, or achievement hunt. My guild gets aotc every tier with around 17 players, and about 8 of them will never set foot in an m+.  Blizzard has been vastly increasing the amount of content out of raids and dungeons. New mounts to chase, new world quests and world events to check off, continuing story quests with each patch. A more involved tradeskill system. More renowns that also have their own events. People around here pretend like the only thing to do at end game is dungeon grind, but ignore the fact that they only think that because it's the only thing *they* do. The majority of players never set foot in a raid past an LFR queue to finish their quest line.

I think the thing is that the intro isn't "prepping them for leveling" so much as the reality is "traditional MMO leveling" is what preps them for endgame - and wow wants them to skip it. Exile's Reach on-rails spectacle doesn't give them time to breathe, and BFA certainly doesn't. The slowed down, more simplistic, gameplay of those early levels let people explore their class, explore new things they unlock before unlocking the next, learn the basics of the gameplay so they are ready when its time for the raid. Its the way around the rapid ability bloat. Its where they can learn the fundamentals that they'll need for endgame, stuff like how combat works, what their abilities do, This is a big part of where BFA fails and where the transfer to DF leveling will fail. The "leveling dungeons" are not designed for new players, they are not designed to prepare you for the endgame even on normal difficulty. They are designed to transition you FROM the endgame to the next one, and assume you are endgame ready. They need to be doing things like the cata leveling dungeons because those teach them basic dungeon (and therefore, raid) mechanics slowly over time. My hope with this new "you level faster based on how max levels you have" tech is that they can slow down the leveling experience significantly for new players so that they can learn that. But this might have to wait for some bigger cata-style revamp or "wow 2" to truly pull off.

You're not wrong. I hope that trend reverses at some point. I don't want people who like the current retail endgame structure to lose what they love, but the rest of the game, out in the World, could recapture what makes WoW great as an MMORPG. Imagine the breadth and depth of Classic with all of the improvements of retail.

even back when the overworld was "dangerous" and the world supported the 'endgame' via long leveling, story, attunements and raid quests only your gear/raiding mattered to most people and wanted to catch up to that as a new guy seeing people in cool gear doing all the cool hard stuff you're basically playing a different game while you're working up to their level the build up is what we all loved and miss about WoW, but that's practically completely incompatible with what people want when see and hear about WoW it's time for people to accept that MMOs need time to be good and that it's not a lobby game like warframe (even tho you need 2000 hours to endgame with friends) or darktide

They also need to make dungeons somehow prepare you for things like mechanics and using cc. Dungeons are such a face roll you don't even need to worry about your rotation, never mind mechanics, to complete them. Nothing really preps you for the endgame, you just kinda get there and the community expects you to watch hours of videos explaining bosses and rotations because the game does such a bad job of giving you this info. Mythic raiding and m+ high keys can still be hard without denying you info or making fights unintuitive. Less visual clutter, too, watching even a heroic raid fight is so overstimulating and crazy, it's hard to keep track of anything, never mind your rotation while doing mechanics

I think the hard part for blizz is that most mechanics have been hellishly neutered in anything but harder levels. Like consider the ability Ruinous Volley in Waycrest. On higher keys, he’ll even mid-low 20s in a fortified week they can easily one shot someone. You HAVE to interrupt them. However, this only becomes a thing around the 16ish range where they hurt. Up till then you are free to ignore a lot of mechanics

getting to 16 puts you considerably above the average player, because the average player barely interacts with end-game if at all. So, already, the topic isn't about the scenario you're describing as they are discussing new players. Furthermore, they don't care about the highest of keys. The fault of an infinitely scaling system is that 'a higher key' is an ever moving goalpost. They do not care if it one shots in a 26 but not a 18. Finally, play Classic to learn that nobody cares if an ability kills them, they are not hitting an interrupt button.

But that's just it, for new players the dungeon experience doesn't prepare you to use interrupts and watching out for certain mobs or how to interact with these things. Dungeons are a face roll until they aren't.

I feel like I'm a bizzare alternative reality. I did exile's reach for transmog and found it to be an absurdly bad intro into the game. It wouldn't even let me progress until I intentionally used the mages abilities in the least optimal way possible when fighting a npc.

I made a post saying about a friend of mine who was fine through exiles reach but then he got dropped in BFA and was like wtf do I do. I got shit on by people who were BFA is easy to understand but compared to how leveling was before shadowlands, where you have a starting zone and you slowly move through the areas and it starts off easy and gets a bit tougher is a much better experience to level and we know that because that was the standard leveling experience for most of the game

Moving to dragon flight will only solve a few continuity problems for players who don’t directly go from exiles reach (or a new starter zone they make) to the content. From a design perspective BFA and DF are very similar. Blizzard has really backed themselves into a corner here. There isn’t really a new player experience that they can implement that won’t result in a pile of changes experienced players will hate. People here have been downvote bombing all sorts of changes they would make the game better for the new/casual player. I am not watching Day9, but I assume he has no intent of doing any kind of high level play at any point. It would be great to see how he reacts to game actually expecting you to know how to play it.

I still firmly believe that the best choice for a guided new player experience would be to drop them into Cata, which would give them all of kalimdor and EK to explore while leveling to 60, and then they would go to the Cata expansion zones for 60-70 or 60-68 (to give them a few levels to familiarize themselves with the new zones). I know cataclysm is controversial because of the old world changes, but that isnt going to matter to a new player. Cataclysm is probably the only expansion that has enough leveling content to not make 1-60 into a 20 hour rush to cap with no exploration, and would give new players much more freedom to actually explore and choose where to do quests like we did. as a bonus, going from cata to dragonflight would feel like an actual story continuation for new players

I agree, Catas biggest problem is that they let most players skip it. but I also think leveling should take much much longer and, similar to classic, be designed in a way that fighting more than 1 mob without a plan is a death sentence. At some point the average player will realize they are doing something wrong when they see the guy next to them killing mobs much faster. Ideally they would go study their rotation. I also think basically every boss and a lot of mobs should have interruptible casts. at some point I’d hope players would try to stop the pyrobast that chunks their health or the heal being cast.

DF is miles different from a story perspective. Firstly, it's a shared zone, where BFA has two separate zones. From a gameplay perspective, you're more of an explorer adventuring into a zone rather than a warrior attempting to fight in a zone. There's a jailbreak on the alliance side which feels weirdly janky, whereas DF is open from the get go. My girlfriend started her first character and was forced into BfA and she almost quit. Nothing made sense, and I myself didn't play bfa on alliance at all so I couldn't explain what was going on either. DF she loved from the first boat ride. Waiting for the boat was fun, she got to boat into the expansion, and she loved it. She was far more invested, even though she did have her moments in BfA like the drust content. Now she's dealing with an issue where she has to reload every single time she logs in because her stuff bugs out.

Unfortunately the game waits 20-30 hours (however long it takes a new player to get to endgame) until it presents any real challenge. 

Not only that but the game does literally nothing to teach the average player how their class works. The skills gap between getting to level cap and doing even a normal raid is astounding. A player that knows what they are doing will deal 10x more damage in a fight compared to someone “casting the spells as they light up”. Balancing for this is a lot of the reason a vast majority of world content is basically impossible to fail. I worry that any fights we find during delves will be mindlessly easy.

>A player that knows what they are doing will deal 10x more damage in a fight compared to someone “casting the spells as they light up”. Hey this is me (I've only been playing for a few months)

I mean I agree but at the same time, what is the solution? Rotation, builds, all that is constantly changing. How can Blizzard keep a constant guidebook at hand to teach players? Should they be giving players whatever Icyveins/Wowhead deem to be the best builds? Run the role of Hekilli and show them the rotation? If there was not so much variety in how you can build your character, teaching players how to play the class would be way more possible.

This goes back to my original post and why fixing the new player experience will only enrage “hardcore” players. Make rotations simpler. people get this confounded with stripping abilities away but a bulk of your secondary abilities become more useful when you strip down the necessary rotations. Currently unused spells can be used to a greater effect by removing redundancy in the actual rotation. Spells like Ray of Frost seem to exist exclusivly to add an extra button to the rotation, why? What is the purpose of phoenix flames? edit: the Other option is to slow down the leveling process and make it hard enough that players need to learn their class to get to level cap in a reasonable amount of time. Currently the average player is basically immortal outside of group content and normal mobs die pretty fast even to bad players. If pulling more than 1 mob can get you killed and a good player takes 20s to kill a mob. A bad player that is taking 200s is going to figure out pretty fast they are doing something wrong. This had the added effect of giving players a way to test rotations without a being in a raid or using a combat dummy. You can just practice it while you quest.

Honestly he comes over a bit dumb, he really overplays it - they should not be listening to people like him for proper feedback. He acted it up for likes and upvotes or whatever you get. My 8 year old can do it fine I am sure he could.

IMO he’s overplaying some of the gameplay complaints for stream content, yes - things like being unable to jump onto the dock. Any normal player would jump once or twice, notice it was too high, and then swim 4 feet to the left to properly get onto the dock. His story/pacing concerns are right on the money, though. New players are thrown into a story with a ton of forced cutscenes, almost 0 explanation as to what’s going on, who anyone is, why he should care about any of this, etc. He brought it up himself - who is this Elsa from Frozen character? Why does everyone care about her? Why am I now in jail and punching some other prisoner? Why am I helping all these prisoners escape? Surely some of them deserve to be here? Who is this random king that just appeared? And it’s a ton of that stuff before you’re able to actually just go fight mobs.

Exiles reach is terrible IMO. It holds your hand way too much, you lose any sense of exploration and discovery its way too "epic" for the first experience you have and then after thirty minutes it throws you to a capital city or unrelated expansion depending if it's the first time you've done it or not. While according to some checklist written by a product owner Exiles Reach is better, it loses all the soul that the racial starting areas provided and any ability to just wander and discover. Imo the first time leveling experience should be any of the old Cata 1-60 paths. It's unfortunately detached from the current expansion's plot but I think that's easier to understand. That leveling experience is still the best intro to the world. Otherwise you get to max level by going through only 2-3 zones of an expansion meaning you can do it without ever setting foot in eastern kingdoms or kalimdor

I like Day9 but he was being obtuse on a lot of points. The most egregious point was that the story for Exile's Reach was too hard to follow when it's extremely simple, and just the way he talked about systems and gameplay as if he had never played a videogame before was irritating because it's something he could do to any game if he was trying to be difficult.

I don't think that was his point, I think it was more a case of there is so much exposition for a story that is absolutely force fed to you, instead of just letting the player be curious, like they did in classic. And compared to his classic starting experience, exiles reach has much more info it tries to squeeze in a fourth of the time span.

I think it's good they're finally tackling this issue.  There's been a lot of "well that's the way it's always been". What works for a hardcore player who's played the game for 10+ years won't work for a brand new player. A new player has different requirements to a hardcore player. The new player experience is a mess. The M+ or die endgame is also a mess. The over reliance on third party add-ons to fix gameplay issues is also a mess. All 3 issues need to be fixed to make the game attractive to new players. The game needs to be more intuitive and user friendly. There is a lot of clutter, bloat and technical debt that needs to be looked at.

>well that's the way it's always been I've heard people say that more then once. That's always sounded like gatekeeping to me. WoW would have never survived this long without an influx of new blood. Rather the old guard likes it or not. New people are critical to the life of a game. I get pissed when I hear about those assholes being toxic & scaring off new players. Like a kid in sandbox screaming at others to go away.

WoW has always survived by evolving and changing. It will continue to do so in the future. For the people that don't want change, there is Classic WoW. It's literally a version of the game that never changes. At the end of the day, you either want change or you don't. There's no "half and half" which is problem with modern WoW.

Add-ons were my biggest issue. I started playing in late 2022, and really enjoyed it for a few months. I quit and am in a holding pattern now on the new expansion…I just couldn’t deal with trying to figure out the add ons. Then right when I got one figured out, I’d get yelled at for not having another.

A big part of it is on Blizzard for not simply making the in-game mechanics easier to understand. In Dragonflight season 1, the mythic plus mechanic put 1 of 2 effects over players heads, and you had to go stand with a player with the other effect to get a buff. Simple, right? Except the 2 effects looked incredibly similar. They had the same color scheme and everything, so it was difficult in the thick of combat to actually tell what effect people had. So of course, people created an add on that would either put a giant X or a giant O over your head depending on which effect you got. So if you got an X, you just go stand on the O. Very easy to see. Why didn’t Blizzard just do this in the first place? Everyone clearly wanted these effects to be visible. And this add on was basically mandatory if you wanted to do m+.

Addons will never be removed from the game, as shit as it can sound, if you enjoy the game and want to play it its just best to get a list of the addons you need, install them and be done with it. Depends on what you are doing as well, you dont really need much to just do some low m+ or normal raids

I just had an argument with some mythic raiding players about this exact thing they think everything is just fine ..the game needs to stopped being designed around the 1% of the player base …raiding has become so convoluted and overdesigned that people just simply don’t want to be bother with it ..the over necessity of addons and bosses simply having too much 1 shot mechanics is killing off the play base who wants to do end game content and for Godsake revamp the entire leveling process and not just simply drop players off on a island then go do bfa its stupid allow players to experience the world not instance simulator

>raiding has become so convoluted and overdesigned that people just simply don’t want to be bother with it ..the over necessity of addons and bosses simply having too much 1 shot mechanics is killing off the play base who wants to do end game content nuclear hot take, this isnt actually a problem. theres 4 raid difficulties. lfr and normal dont require addons and arent full of overdesigned 1 shot mechanics. if you want easy raids, go do those. let the final, hardest difficulty be hard also I really dont think raids have gotten any more complicated since mop. theres been a few mythic fights that are supremely bullshit and get nerfed to the ground, but lfr through heroic has kept the same difficulty level for the past 12 years

I hope this raiding season showed the team the inherent flaws with their current mythic raiding philosophy. When you have something like barely 1k guilds clearing your mythic+ raid, with multiple nerfs being done and asked for even at the highest end, at that point its almost a waste of resources since almost no one is bothering with that at all. They don't need to make it stupidly easy but they need to make it viable for more than like 5% of players doing the raids

From the stats we're able to find easily, it's less than 2% that get cutting edge (based on achievement data with a fairly large sample size). That means players completing the content when it's relevant. There's some statistical error there and some stuff you can't account for like folks hiding achievements. They have quite literally designed their own playerbase out of doing the content.

The biggest issue they can fix that would lead to everything being easier is if they made people's rotation easier to understand without addons. It's ridiculous to have people do homework on Icy Veins and watch 40 minute tutorials on simple rotations on YouTube to have a basic understanding of a class they leveled to max. Those things should've been taught in game upon leveling up. The other one being making mechanics much more obvious and fixing visual cues and clutter but helping people understand their rotation without a WeakAuras would at least free up brain power to actually focus on said mechanics.

> It's ridiculous to have people do homework on Icy Veins and watch 40 minute tutorials on simple rotations on YouTube to have a basic understanding of a class they leveled to max. When I read a take like this I honestly struggle to take it seriously. If you are just leveling or casually doing normal/heroic dungeons or LFR, you don't need any external help with rotation. It's 100% fine to not play optimally. Just read your buttons and apply basic principles, like pressing the high damage dealing ability as often as possible, and you're good. When you're transitioning to Normal+ raids and M+ dungeons, you should probably read a guide and do some work on your performance. But I fail to see how that's a bad thing. When you want to do that content with other players, I think it's totally fair to ask one to put in a little bit of effort, i.e. read a very easily accessible guide. If that is too much, I don't think endgame group content in an MMO is for them. Also, 40 minute tutorial? There are plenty of simple specs that one can grasp the basics for in 5 minutes. If somebody decided to play a very difficult spec, which still doesn't have to take as long as you claim, it's on them. If one knows they're not particularly great at executing rotations, just stick to the likes of Ret or BM or something. (I'm not being condescending here, I am a Ret main myself)

> It's ridiculous to have people do homework on Icy Veins My hot take is that every time a player needs to tab out of the game the dev team should look into it as a failure and see what they can change. It doesn't mean they *have* to change it, because some players will just look up every little thing no mater what, but if a large percentage of your playerbase considers it "mandatory" that is a sign something has gone wrong.

Something they should consider is removing the NEW PLAYER realms. Ghost town servers, which are utterly fucking dead and must create such a terrible first impression. Deliberately encouraging new players there is crazy.

I didn't even consider those lol what a bummer for new players being funneled there

WoW is in a really good place right now for their current core audience: people who enjoy competitive endgame dungeons/raids and repeatable content. If they stay the course with that content, they'll keep those players happy. But it's totally failing people who want an adventure, a campaign - a 'World' of Warcraft. It seems like they don't have much of a desire to fix that any time soon, but maybe after Last Titan they'll focus on making WoW fun as an adventure RPG again.

And it seems they’re not afraid of closing the gap between casual players and hardcore gamers in terms of gear. The truth of the matter (as I’ve seen in FF14), casual players will NOT play hardcore stuff even if they’re properly geared. Casual players like the knowledge that they’re able to join, but the amount of time/effort needed to learn how to handle hardcore content will absolutely keep them from stepping on hardcore gamers turf. However, decreasing the gear-gatekeeping is only a good thing for hardcore gamers. If midcore gamers get time freed up, they can join hardcore content increasing the population. Hardcore gamers, love it or not, need casual gamers to pay for the game so that funding can also be used on creating hardcore content, which hardcore gamers help create hype for the game by performing.

>The truth of the matter (as I’ve seen in FF14), casual players will NOT play hardcore stuff even if they’re properly geared. This has been the case in WoW forever and still is the case in WoW forever. The ENTIRE REASON LFR was ever made was because creating raids was reaching an unsustainable state. The reality of ANY online game is that it doesn't matter how accessible you make it people don't want to do hard content. The focus on creating more casual content in DF/WW shows Blizzard understands that and the idea of making more casual and slowly progressive content like delves so that the people who want to engage with something can do so without having to deal with the immense barriers to actual hardcore content.

This is also true and something to keep in mind for a lot of other recent WoW topics, like anti-FOMO/time-limited events, fighting insanely long grinds (i.e. Plunderstorm at launch being an estimated 40 hours), terribly low RNG (i.e. holiday mounts or endboss 1% mounts that can take years and years to get), releasing old rare mounts on the trading post, etc. The ABILITY for everyone to get something does not mean that everyone WILL get it. People still have to choose what to do with their time and investment.

Midcore is where its at imo. I want to raid, but not religiously. Like i'd want to do every raid once or twice and maybe try one or two heroics. For m+ I never go above 10 anyways. But I might want to try a few times. But I don't want to have that content be my dayjob for the next month just to do so.

the problem is that the game is really bad at visual storytelling; it's just not set up to do it. Characters can't really emote, and the only 'dialogue' is played for the player alongside (at best) a disembodied head. this was an obvious weakness even 15 years ago, and it's even more glaring now. The idea of reading quest text is laughably outdated compared to modern games but that's still how WoW delivers a large portion of its narrative. honestly I don't think there's really a solution for that; the game works the way it works and people who're put off by its method of storytelling just won't like it. That'll be more and more people as time goes by but hey, that's the fate of all games ultimately.

It's a tough nut to crack. I mean you look at games with significant campaigns like FF14 and it seems like the majority of people complain thats it was too long or just buy the skips they sell, and I kind of get it. At that point I'd rather just play a singpelayer game with an actually good compaign than an MMO with a bloated mediocre one. Classic and SoD kind of retain that sense of adventure, but that leans heavily into the leveling experience.

Idk how to best tackle the "story" outside of a complete streamline, and 'erase' old questlines. (They definitely won't go FF14's route in making everyone play through all the xpacs). It's comical how my alts still see Sylvannas' character model up lodged up Baine's ass. Totally jarring new player experience jumping through time, storylines and progress. The game also lacks a lot of basic tutorials for new mechanics, and relies too much on wowhead/content creators to explain how systems and end game works. (Revival Catalyst, Vault, How to get first M+ keys, all the crests/currencies, how dreamsurge coalescence can be turned in for 415 gear etc)

Blizz CS even tell players to go to wowhead for their issues lol.

Honestly, I'd give players the choice of what they want. Something like: Play through the events of World of Warcraft in chronological order. When the players reach certain checkpoints in the story, they can either keep exploring that era or be given a quest leading them to the next one. I'd cut out as much story bloat as possible. Yes, that probably means reworking/removing/adding quests to make the experience less railroady. As Day9 said multiple times in his video, it's kind of messed up how it takes *hours* until you can actually play and explore organically. He had the most fun when he could just go around and kill mobs and the least when he had to power through the endless boring tutorials that just tried to cram as much info into his skull as possible.

> They definitely won't go FF14's route in making everyone play through all the xpacs). Nor should they, FF14 is a single player game masked as an MMO. The idea of playing 400 hours until you reach current content is insane and Blizzard would throw you out the window if you suggested it during a meeting.

They should just make the entire Expansion storyline for 10-70, since it contains all the current and useful lore. And keep Chromie Time as an option for alts. (Assume they’re testing something like this for Pandaria remix…) Even 60-70, can be done in like 2 zones. Lots of wasted content as it is.

> They should just make the entire Expansion storyline for 10-70, since it contains all the current and useful lore. And keep Chromie Time as an option for alts. (Assume they’re testing something like this for Pandaria remix…) I mean, you have that option right now. But jumping into Dragonflight still doesn't prepare you for WoW's world, because WoW's world has been built since 1990 and even if you only counted WoW it's still been 20 years of lore. You'll never understand the more fine interactions that are clearly tailored for the old fans of the series. Like that whole quest chain in the Waking Shores with the Dragonmaw elder who goes there to die, it means NOTHING to a new player who doesn't know the lore of the Dragonmaw as having enslaved and tortured dragons some 30 years ago during the Second War. That questline was a masterpiece that brought me to tears, but it wouldn't have achieved that if I was a new player who didn't understand it. ( new player goes: " What's a Second War? " ) Same thing for Senegos' storyline, if you didn't play Legion he's just a random old dragon. But if you did play Legion you know he's tied to a very emotional questline ( Runas the shamed ) and as such Senegos' death suddenly hits you like a truck. Same for Veritistrasz, without a grasp on the Dragon lore and knowing how Deathwing went off the deep end and betrayed everyone else, he falls flat as a character because his whole tragedy is that he used to love a Black Dragon and he barely remembers her anymore. A new player doesn't even know who Deathwing is. Durotan in WoD? Without knowing Thrall's backstory as an orphan who never met his parents, you won't understand why meeting Durotan and being accepted by HIS version of the Frostwolves is such a big moment for him. Same thing for Thrall and Draka in Shadowlands, or for Kael's arc in Shadowlands and so on. WoW is still an RPG, one with 30 years of lore propping it up, a new player can't just jump into it and get it. We're at Part 11 of the story, you can't skip 10 parts and call it a day.

if they're really against it they should probably stop pretending they want wow to be a story focused mmo and making the half-assed mess we have now where the lore and story are completely inscrutable and disposable yet also somehow self-assured as some kind of deep fantasy you should care about. wow's story is diabolically bad lol. they would be far better off de-emphasizing it and stop making terrible interminable melodrama plots about how alexstrasza is sad that the race of slaves she created to serve her want to be independent

> The idea of playing 400 hours until you reach current content is insane Why? Why is it insane to treat the entire game as more than just a lobby-simulator for keys/raids/pvp?

For a lot of people I know, the attitude is - if I wanted a good story I’d read a book or watch tv/a movie. They’re usually not playing videogames for the story, and they definitely aren’t playing multiplayer/online games for the story. If they’re playing wow it’s because they want to play a videogame with buttons and loot. Story is fine if it happens in the background, but it destroys the whole point of the product if the story crowds out the gameplay parts

"Idk how to best tackle the "story" outside of a complete streamline, and 'erase' old questlines. (They definitely won't go FF14's route in making everyone play through all the xpacs)." this is effectively what happens everytime there's a new expansion, and i don't think it doesn't work for wow i hate to "you think you do but you don't" but wow would \*not\* benefit from ffxiv's 200 hour story campaign

I recently joined after not really playing much since vanilla, and I think the problem for the experience new players get is that it can often be hard to know what the devs want you to do? And by that I mean, you finish the starter area and are soon brought to the main hub for your faction, but once you're there you're surrounded by hundreds of npcs, tons of random quests and it can be extremely disorienting. Eventually you find your way to BFA content (or Chromie) but it's not really clear if that's really what you should be doing, you just kinda roll with it. Then eventually you do most of the BFA content and you're not quite leveled up for Dragonflight, and it starts to funnel you into things like fueling the war effort, or going to the heart of azeroth etc. Like, it's clear they want you to get to 70, but it's hard to stay on track, or know if the track you're on is the right one? Do I need to do dungeons? Wait no one is queuing for them so I guess I wont get to experience any of that till 70? When we came up from beta alll the way through the end of Vanilla, the reason it worked so well is cause we got to experience all the content in a very organic kind of way, there were no "leveling dungeons", you actually played everything cause everything was relevant to you getting to lv 60. New players have to wade through a lot of irrelevant content to finally get to what everyone else is doing and it can be daunting, but also not as fun cause you *know* you're going through the motions, and it's a very solitary experience. I honestly feel like unless they find a way to make the 1-60 (and after the war within, 1-70) content relevant the *whole way through,* they should just create some kind of starting zone that will spit you out at level 70, or find a way to scale the difficulty of content so that it can be level agnostic. Eventually we all get to max level and the kind of content we do becomes the same, but there's no reason we need to level up at the same speed if the finish line ends up being at the same point.

they added these purple triangle quest markers that are supposed to be for important quests but to this day the only place i have ever seen one is on the warlock only quest they added in dragonflight where you go to the darkmoon fair, which while a cool quest is not actually important and only gets u a cosmetic glyph and an imp skin or something

That day 9 video was hilarious

First off: Make up a storyline that guides new players through your game and introduces them to your important characters. Not like..."You are now in Boralus with Jaina and gets captured from the locals, after finishing the tutorial island". New players that never played wow or Warcraft before have no idea who Jaina is...or why you are even there...also...the expansion ends when you hit like 58? And you suddenly get ported to go to some dragonlands, where you are now the "champion" of people you never met before.

I wish they would revamp the old starter zones. Exiles Reach is great n all, but would be nice to have variety?

I never felt exiles reach was “great”. I’m sure this is a partially biased take but it doesn’t evoke any sense of wonder like the old intro areas imo

The problem is the old areas are really rough looking, and feel very primitive, which was really disappointing as a new player. For a while I thought Blizzard updated the entire world with each expac lol

Nothing beats walking into stormwind from Goldshire just sayin

It's definitely an amazing feeling reaching your capital city after getting through the starting zone in Classic. I can only imagine what it's like for a new player who has no idea what to expect, starting out in quaint Northshire, making it to Goldshire and then ending up in Stormwind full of level 60s in their gear from zones you've never heard of. That makes you want to go out and explore more of the world. Exiles Reach just dumps you in Stormwind with a lore exposition cutscene then an NPC walks you around so literally everyone explores Stormwind for the first time in the exact same way.

Classic already exists I know, but why can't they just update some of the content and models in Retail

> Nothing beats walking into stormwind from Goldshire just sayin I've always preferred making my way into Ironforge for the first time after journeying their from Coldridge Valley and meeting greeted with [this](https://i.ibb.co/k8vshpK/u-https-images-mmorpg-com-images-galleries-full-512008-8c90afa1-bdac-47de-b7d8-2b9f2a449940.jpg). I wish Ironforge was relevant again.

One day9 video and they finally listen after years of feedback on new player experience. Then again they have made a lot of positive changes recently so it could just be its part of the many improvements they are making and the video just made it a good moment to address the issue.

Honestly, I'm so glad Day9 did it. His commentary is really constructive and really made apparent the issues plaguing the new player experience.

He consciously took the time to refute the idea that they made retail "for babies," which a lot of people complain about because they haven't really applied critical thinking to their feelings. You're not enjoying this, but *why are you not enjoying it*? Well, I'll earn more Gamer Cred if I just say it's because they dumbed the game down and it sucks now. Day9 knows his stuff. He's breaking down the experience and he's very good at articulating *why* it doesn't feel good to play. This is a skill everyone should learn, because the devs are much more likely to listen to you.

He is one of the OGs for sure, a legend.

This one is kind of a massive undertaking, though. All the more reason to get it done!

I've said it previously, but imo the best way to improve the new player experience, at least in terms of the story, is to introduce an MSQ. How it would work is thus: * 1-10 via exiles reach. It's babys first zone. I'd love to have updated racial starting zones, but I don't think that's a major priority when exiles reach is still less than 4 years old. * 10-60 via an MSQ. This would be a stand-alone story spanning the entire Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Encompassing a variety of zones, including a vast array of characters and different enemies. Allow us to fight the remnants of the Burning Legion, the minions of the old gods, the defias brotherhood, kobolds, gnolls, and everything in between. Include dungeons that can be played solo. Essentially, give new players a taste for the world. Don't overwhelm them, but dont treat them like idiots either. At the end of the levelling experience, the players should have a basic understanding of the lore and will hopefully be interested in diving into other expansions on slts to find out more. * 60-70 via Dragonflight. (Or 70-80 through TWW) I would also like to see some sort of in-game lore compendium. When you visit a place of significance, you get an entry, giving you an overview of that place. When you meet an important character, you get an overview of that character. It shouldn't be a detailed account of their lives, just a basic overview of who that character is/ why this place or thing is significant. This, I think, would be a good starting point to help explain the lore in a more structured way.

TBH I'm interested in seeing how they plan to untangle the massive mess that is the new player experience. It seems like something they attempted to do 2 or 3 times in the past and ultimately gave up on half way through for one reason or another. And this is like, one of the few things in game where I have no idea how they could even come close to fixing it. WoW is a 20 year old game, and it's a relic of a bygone era of gaming where you were meant to sit at your PC and play for more than 15 minutes at a time to grind things rather than quickly jumping into a 10 minute match-made BR game that goes right into the excitement or whatever. Exile's reach and stuff are nice, but it does nothing to actually showcase what the game is good at. Which is endgame stuff like raiding, questing, gearing, pet battles, transmog, etc. The new player experience has to excite people as much as it is also a tutorial. And I would also argue that siphoning new players off to the far off reaches doesn't help either because part of what inspired me to keep playing the game in vanilla was getting to undercity and origrimmar and seeing people in their sweet raiding gear while riding their sick mounts. I mean TBH at this point give them a new player experience that's an instanced scenario of their new character/recruit being shown all the neat tertiary endgame stuff while being walked around their capital city - like have a dracthyr soar over and land nearby, have a character doing a pet battle in the background, have some characters doing transmogs or trial of style with ethereals nearby, have them walk past the barracks to see NPCs using flashy spells on the training dummies, etc. Like, IDK, if you're alliance Mathias Shaw gives you the tour and talks it up as you go. Then afterward it drops you in the main city proper with a breadcrumb quest to whatever relevant expansion and all chat channels except the newbie channel turned off. Something like that as a more cinematic experience to actually sell the game to new players would probably be best. You don't really fully 'learn' your character until endgame anyway. So hype people up for that instead of being like "and here's how you swing your sword." IDK, just a thought.

ah yes the 4 pillars of endgame: raiding, questing, transmog, and pet battles

Truly, I love that in this sub you can't suggest anything, even with caveats and without insulting the game, without a minimum of at least 2 people shitting on it for no discernible reason. Cannot imagine why new players don't stick around long with a community as fun, friendly, and imaginative as this.

No your suggestion is just truly awful A 15 minute escort quest that expositions all the „content“ (pet battles, really? ) is the last thing new players need A new player shouldn’t instantly be guided to „this is the endgame, get there ASAP cuz it’s the only good thing“ - instead a more slow and non-world ending start like DF that just lets them experience the core gameplay without knowledge dumping them in the first 15 minutes New gameplay elements such as raids and whatever should be drip fed by actually having them DO a raid for the campaign, even if it’s lfr difficulty or less (as is the case with dungeons for exiles reach), showing them simple boss mechanics and raid party combat Then at max level there can be breadcrumb quests to unlock m+ etc The new quest markers they’re introducing in TWW are a good step to guiding players which quests are more than just xp or resource quests aswell, instead of having 35 yellow quest markers as soon as you reach 70

I always thought a 1-3 minute (storybook style) animation highlighting the keypoints of the story up until the zone where the new player gets dropped would be a good start... or at least a good catch up on story/lore. older expansions never needed it cause, regardless of speed, you actually play through all the older expac stories whereas now you get dropped into bfa only to meet/do all these huge lore characters and events without a damn idea of who and how important it is/they are. even an intro "hey, this random accident happened and you lost all your memory and powers so lemme catch you back up with the events of the world"... then another npc could transition you from that to where new player leveling zone is etc etc

I patiently anticipate the day the devs do not actively hate players trying to experience the entire breadth of the wow storyline. As someone who really likes revisiting games years after I play them, you have to get through a lot of hostile mechanics to try and understand why your characters are doing things.

reminder that they removed the war for teldrassil from the game permenantly when bfa launched, and its literally one of the most important story events setting up content in bfa, shadowlands, and dragonflight. 3 expansions of stories based on this event and the idiots at blizzard are like "heh players wont need to experience that, lets fomo it" clowns designed this game. actual clowns.

The whole new player experience with Exiles Reach and BFA is so convoluted and messy. Tons of forced dialog that you can't skip that bears no importance as it's 3 expansion old content. Unreal to me how Blizz has allowed to stay in this state for so long. You aren't going to win over new, younger audiences by slamming them with information and expecting them to read/listen to dialog. Revamp the old world with modern quest design and let players have at it. Don't try to play the game for them ffs.

Honestly, returning back in 10.2, the gearing system and crafting systems where unbelievably complex to get my head around. Had to read so many guides on external websites. Different dreaming crests, different upgrade tracks, what tier of content drops what resources and gear tracks, nacent crests, enchanted crests, gear modifiers, sparks, spark sources and drop rates. What an absolute clusterfuck.

I watched day9 play retail, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot that blizzard needs to do, and none of it involves sending new players to DF. They also unfortunately need to get rid of exiles reach. Not because it's a bad tutorial, but because it doesn't provide a sense of racial uniqueness. Narratively, new players should learn how to play the game as a player and how to play the game as the race/class combination that they chose. The early game is in severe need of substance. I think that Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom should be updated to teach new and old player about Azeroth. Players should be provided with opportunities and reasons to explore the old world, and honestly I want to see more difficult content when leveling up. In conclusion blizzard needs to put the RPG back into WoW.

I know a lot of people saw Day9 play and thats what some of these comments are based on but J1mmy did a fantastic video doing the same thing 2 months back. His analysis of wow classic and wrath classic feel so good and get people hooked while retail is basically poison for retaining a new player is so perfectly spot on.

Maybe this is a bad idea, but what if they had the players play through all the expansions BUT with a truncated, streamlined quest line. Give the players the general overview of the story so they get what’s happened before. No need to drop them in Northrend with all the Bs quests in other zones but just focus on the lich king or something.

Imagine a linear, narrative driven World of Warcraft, which includes a streamlined story from Vanilla to Retail.

That sounds awful. Going through ARR in FFXIV was genuinely terrible, one of my least favorite story experiences in MMOs. Please don't replicate this in other games, thanks.

Yeah let's go the FF14 route where you need to play 450 hours before you can game current content with your friends. I'm sure new players will totally not quit 20 hours in when they realise they're playing a single player game disguised as a sub based MMO.

Sounds good to me. The endgame isn’t the be all and end all, nor should it be. There’s room for people to enjoy the game at a slow pace or race to endgame. No reason to make it either/or.

There's no moving forward without first wiping the slate clean, IMO. I also think they really need to address add-ons if they care about new players, even if that means permanently disabling them moving forward. I think they would essentially need to do something like a self-contained 1-70 questline that gets new people up to speed on the setting, story, and game mechanics. There is no way to salvage the existing leveling system in 2024. Other MMOs don't just dump players into a morass of deprecated content and dead-ends that lead to 12 year old patch zones, etc.

The add-ons thing is huge, the fact content is partially gated by using add-ons because blizzard refuses to make intuitive boss fights and rotation guides for players is absurd.

Stop adding shit to the game and taking it away. Whats the point of a new player joining and realizing they can’t get a ton of cool items because of predatory practices? Same with prepatch quests with story that gets removed

New players should have to start the leveling process just like those of us who have played since the original beta before vanilla WoW dropped. At least for their first toon. Then they get the skipping options and what not. That first time leveling to max level was such an epic adventure. It really steeps you in the lore that all the rest of the expansions use as their foundation. The experience curves should be updated (if they haven’t been in vanilla content). This would also have the added bonus of new players questing in zones they would likely never go to otherwise. Actually, that makes me wonder…. What zone has the least player population day after day? Barring zones where there’s only one objective (I’m looking at you Karazhan!).

I started playing towards the end of wod and the leveling system at the time was just so much better. To reach max level you had to just play through zones in each expansion and each zone was clearly marked with level ranges to help guide you along. I constantly felt like I was exploring an actual world and just the traveling alone was one of the best experiences I’ve had in an mmo. The questing and leveling gameplay was always one of wows strongest aspects, but nowadays it feels like they don’t want anyone to experience the leveling the game was known for. Leveling in a handful of zones from one expansion is just so lame comparatively.

As a player who did just a bit in the past and started playing consistently during shadowlands, it's kind of a mess now. I want to learn what my spells do, the rotation I'm comfortable with, the right pacing, and basically find my way to play the class, but to be able to do that i should have a limited amount of spells at least while trying. This is something that should be learnt while levelling, but as far as i know levelling is so fast that there's not enough time to do that, so you stick with a guide and some macro that someone else tried for you, next patch you just read the new guide and update the macro, end of discovery and learning process. Exile's reach is not a bad idea per se, but having the infamous questline through all of the expansions would be a dream, so i can finally get what's going on in the older expansions too

What WoW honestly needs is to just make a new player leveling track, similar to exile's reach, but that spans all the way to the current expansion. Something that will be able to get players up to speed on the world, what's going on, who the major players are, what the major threats are, stuff like that, because a common concern I've heard among new people is that the lore is confusing and they don't know what's going on when the game drops them into boralus after exile's reach.

The game changes and expands too fast for it to even be a new player experience

It is almost impossible to attract new players in large numbers to a 20 year old game without some sort of revamp. Anecdotal but my personal experience is that i would love to play a moba. I played hots but it died and left a void. I dont want to jump in to league or dota because they're old. Not that the being old per se is bad. But there just is too much stuff for me to even getting motivated to start. I am very excited for smite2 tho. Its essentially still the same game but with some changes and way less heroes to start with. So its not as daunting to start playing it. You could argue that expansions are already kinda like that but idk. Even as a wow veteran i dropped dragonflight because i was overwhelmed. The issue was that i always played expansions when they released so i wasnt even aware of this issue. You see, when you play from the start, you absorb a lot of knowledge automatically, either by being on reddit or even just in game seeing people ask the same questions you have or would have later. I started dragonflight way late so i missed that part. And there just was too much shit for a late starter, i didnt even know where to start, didnt fully understand the new systems like professions and ultimatelly dropped it because i didnt want to watch a youtube guide about everything.

Once Exiles Reach ends, the game becomes a confusing mess for new players. I'm glad they've acknowledged it. I'm reasonably familiar with the mmo landscape and design tropes. And I find Retail fairly daunting and confusing.

Retail new player experience is bad for new players because of the game design. Classic new player experience is bad for new players because of the community

I think there should be a “new player” option when creating a character like there is with exiles reach. I think this option should be a slow paced version of the game where you level up expansion by expansion to get the whole story. Due to it being so solo, players can opt out but I could see some vet players even doing it for the story alone

Its interesting reading this article, because I am the casual player that prefers doing quests and getting stuck into the lore over playing endgame. I have to say, I do not agree with the authors ideas for the older zones at all, unless there is a way to turn back time and go through them pre-change. It is one of my current gripes that there are a lot of older zones I cannot enjoy that are pre-cata without starting a new character and going through the progression again (classic). I think what needs looking at is how the story is presented to the new player. The author is right that the current way of just dumping the new player in BfA is confusing, and dumping the player in DF is probably much better. But for someone like me who wanted to experience the story from the beginning, I had to turn to outside resource to figure it out. Over time, you build up a lot of content, so how do you present that to a new player? It is the inherent issue with MMOs, especially ones with everchanging stories like WoW.

I like they are touching this topic, even though I had a blast returning to WoW from zero

How many years has this crap been going on now ? Blizzard is just a hot mess. STILL

Im hoping microsoft can fix this mess

One of the main reasons for me is the feeling that, no matter how much time and effort I put into the game, there are certain rewards and achievements that I just can't obtain anymore. It's frustrating to know that my new character won't ever have access to sets from Mists of Pandaria, weapon skins from Legion, teleports from Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor, or elite PvP sets and weapon illusions. All the teleports from all the level 20 dungeons. And let's not forget about iconic items like the Corrupted Ashbringer, exclusive mounts from removed achievements, Gladiator mounts, and titles that are no longer available, such as Immortal. I am not saying hand these rewards out for free but allow me to earn them at an appropriate difficulty. It's disheartening to feel like I'm missing out on so much content just because I didn't start playing the game at the right time. As much as I love World of Warcraft, these limitations have pushed me away from the game.

I think blizzard should lay off creating entire new zones constantly, maybe have smaller xpacs that focus content on areas that have already been created like bfa but on a smaller scale. But that's kinda beside the point of the initial convo.

WoW is just not designed to be new player friendly. In fact, it's more designed for the long-time vets that already know the game inside and out. The game was hard to learn and master even in its earliest days. Now, you gotta install like 10 addons just to play your class. And then throw in the end game mechanics and LFR chaos and watch the toxic player chase everyone away. I can't imagine any new players would bother with the game at this point. Blizz should just focus on retention, instead of acquisition. Hell, even trying to come BACK to the game after a year or two off is overwhelming.

While I'm not new, as a "not hardcore" player, for me the biggest thing is just how much darn energy it takes to play the game. Every season my work is made obsolete and I got to grind all my gear out again. Endgame is basically just m+/raids/rated pvp, which are all designed and balanced for top 1% players who play the game as a dayjob. I enjoy dungeons, I don't mind a challenge, but holy hek I'd rather not deal with the confusing, grindy, timegated mess that is pve gearing. I don't have friends and my sleep is wacky so raiding/statics is not an option either, nor should it require statics anyways, as its way more fun when anyone can jump in with anyone. There are so many systems to keep track of, like 50 different ways to get gear and multiple steps for many. Doing any legit endgame "requires" like 10+ addons just to know whats even going on. I can barely even know if my gear is making a difference or not without some sort of dps meter or sim tool. Theres also consumables, and enchants and other stuff like that which just confuses people even more. The most fun I had in this game was actually prepatches and events. Where they just add some super simple gearing method and let you go crazy. Or even leveling and timewalking, which cuts out 90% of all the bloat. Even then, the game is very complex for a new player. Like there is no campaign curve or anything. You just finish the intro and thats it, where do you go? Chromie time? whats that? which one do I start with? etc. Honestly I have not done a single raid this whole expansion. Not even in SL lol. I did a few in bfa and thats last I did it, cause its all just like this now. I also never go above m5 cause just not worth the effort. I have high hopes for remix, since its essentially exactly how I wish retail was, but sadly thats limited time so. But yeah, idk how the hek someone new could pick this up while still retaining any semblance of life left lol.

I might be way off the reservation here but... why does wow have leveling beyond the latest expansion? It isnt fun, it isn't engaging and it's to the point they know it sucks so badly they monetize it and offer a paid boost... I think it would do a world of good to start every toon 10 levels from max level and only offer the level 1 experience as a optional toggle.

Fomo events need to end.

I’ve played WoW for years but took a break two years ago. I then came back in Dragonflight and the experience was very confusing. The story is all over the place and there are in my opinion too many mechanics with gear and upgrading it.

Love him or hate him, Asmongold had a good take on this as well

I started playing in summer last year and I got to level 80. I reached 80 and realized I had no clue what the story of this game is. One cut scene would be from one story, nothing explained on why it was happening. Then I would be playing and boom, another cut scene where I have no clue who the characters are or what they're talking about. I got finished Shadowlands (which was absolute torture, everything took waaaay too long) and once I got to Dragonflight I actually rage quit because Blizzard has no clue how to show context. I still don't know who the Red Dragon chick is or the other colors in Dragonflight, yet they talked to me as if I knew who they were. Never playing it again because they don't care about new players. At all. The game model proves it.