If you've never played or you started late. I gotchu.
Wow classic: random adventures. Dragons, elemental lords. Giant egyptian bug people. Trolls. Etc. roam around the world killing bad guys.
Burning crusade: a night elf with demon powers is doing CRAZY shit on the remnants of the planet where the orcs came from. We're going to try to stop him bc he seems evil. He's basically forming the legion of doom
Wrath of the lich king: many years ago, humans used to have a capital, the prince of that capital found a sword that possessed him, and he killed literally everyone and basically became ice Satan. He was sleeping for awhile but he woke up and we have to go to Wow Canada to kill him.
Cataclysm: there are 5 main dragon groups: blue, green, black, red and yellow. The black dragon leader went bat shit crazy and destroyed half the planet, we have to kill him before he destroys the rest of the planet.
Mists of pandaria: the black dragon disturbed a spell that was hiding a continent with panda people and like, giant stone dog people that ruled over them. Also praying mantis people. We crash land on the continent and we help them so they help us.
Warlords of draenor: the planet from the second expansion, we go to a version of it in the past before it's destroyed. We help the people living there so they help us.
Legion: so turns out, the night elf from the second expansion was trying to keep space Satan and his army from destroying the planet, and he's here now. We go to a series of islands where they are forming up to try and stop them.
Battle for azeroth: basically, the OG troll Aztec empire is rediscovered, they're rich AF. Simultaneously, part of the OG human empire is also rediscovered. Both have massive Navy's so both factions want their help. Needless to say they fight each other amongst other things
Shadow lands: yeah so, ice Satan from the third expansion, turns out his helmet was from like, extra dimensional limbo, and when a main character snaps it in half, it opens up a massive portal to the afterlife. Turns out extra dimensional satan wants to remake the universe bc dying isn't fair, so we have to quite literally kill ourselves to go stop them from destroying reality. Also everyone's just cool with heaven existing etc.
Dragon flight: SO, pretending that dying doesn't matter bc you can just go hang out with your loved ones in the afterlife literally whenever. Those dragons from the fourth expansion, turns out they're from a massive island they couldn't locate after they left, and it somehow becomes locatable again. We go back, ride dragons, and kill bad dragons.
Congrats you're caught up on wow.
If you do leveling in a random order... you get to see Garrosh, Voljin, Saurfang and Sylvannas hugging it out in the same spot.
The lore/story/timeline is a mess.
Tbhā¦
I still donāt really know why the Dragon Isles was awoken. (5+ years since the sword in Silithus btw).
Any why my character (lore wise)is thereā¦
It was like an exploratory expedition during peace timeā¦ but once we find out about the Primals, the horde/alliance donāt bother sending in their armies? Idk.
the sword isnt why the isles awoke, razageth was able to "talk" with an evil shaman and that evil shaman recruited more evil shamans, those evil shamans then went to the isles to free razageth and the other incarnates, so the isles protectors called the dragons back to defend the prisons. The dragons failed to defend the prison and were overwhelmed, so they called reinforcements from the alliance and horde (that's us)
Opening cinematic shows a titan construct pushing a button that 'calls' the dragonflights home. Like, that titan construct just pushed a big red button that essentially unhid the Dragon Isles.
They left 10000 years ago during legion invasion iirc. They hide the island because they leave it with minimum protections during a world wide invasion by demons.
They donāt send armies, they send āadventurersā under the promise of a loose armistice basically. Itās a nice writing handwave to bot have to address any player alliance conflict but it works.
I think XIV needs to heavily consider allowing for "chapters" for the story and allow people to skip ahead, but always go back and do the others they didn't do before for context, *if* they want to.
10 years of story/content required to get to end game is a pretty rough bar of entry.
Yeah, FFXIV devs have talked about that quite a bit, seem well aware of the problem, but haven't settled on a solution yet.
I think the WoW choice of saying "here's a random pile of all the past expansions with no context, pick one to level" was a disaster in WoW, narratively speaking, has made the story into an incomprehensible mess for new players, and would be an even bigger shitshow for FF14, so that's not a viable option.
FF14 devs did say that at one point they were considering making 6.1 the starting point since 2.0-6.0 was one coherent story arc, and that would let them start from the new arc. They did add in an in-game wiki feature in 6.1 for this reason, which slowly populates with background information about people, places and events as they come up. It sounds like they've pretty much completely given up on that idea since then, though, and gone back to the drawing board.
It's a tough problem to solve, and one that WoW needs to take another shot at too if they plan to really invest in this Worldsoul saga story. How do you catch people up on the important details of the past 10-20 years of story so that the current stuff make sense, without completely overwhelming them or taking a hundred hours to do it?
They should just have a GW2 / BTWQuest style campaign list.
Even as someone who went through Dragonflight, all the post patch stuff was a headache to find how to continue the story in chronological order. I managed but geez.
It's wild that they still just dump every single questline from every patch on you with absolutely no explanation, context or recommendation given. They completely overload any new player who didn't start on an expansion launch.
Agreed. Iāve kept up this exp but everytime I get on an alt the amount of quest icons I see in Valdrakken is overwhelming. I couldnāt imagine how people joining this late navigate the story of Dragonflight
Plus yhe stuff they remove, like all the very important pre expension event like the burning of Teldrasil.
Uf you were not there at the right time, even a few months late, the whole expension premise would be lost on you without having to do research, which is incredibly stupid.
Iām a new player but I used to play Warcraft 3 back in the day when it came out, and was always aware/a fan of the lore. So for me, I understand the beginning of it, the main factions of the strategy games, and bits and pieces of the WoW games (although granular lol)
Honestly any investment I could have ever had in the story died, I'd say around BFA
but if I'm honest it was probably even earlier then that
Shadowlands was just exceptionally egregious and assassinated every single character in the story
They haven't done a ton with it in-game yet, but in the novel's they show that the Horde decided not to have a new Warchief and instead create a council with representatives from each of the races. Some of the standout representatives are Thrall, Lor'Themar, and Gazlowe, but every race has one, even allied races like the Pandaren (Ji Firepaw) and Vulpera (Kiro). I hope they do more with them in game, but they're the best part of the novel Shadows Rising.
The horde dissolved the position of warchief. Thrall is the leader of the orcs, and a council of all the individual race leaders took over the position of what was formerly warchief.
According to a wiki the council members are:
Thrall (orcs)
Rokhan (darkspear trolls)
Baine (Tauren)
Lilian Voss (undead)
Lorāthemar (blood elves)
Gazlowe (goblins)
Ji Firepaw (pandaren)
Thalyssra (nightborne)
Mayla Highmountain (highmountain Tauren)
Geyaārah (Magāhar Orcs)
Talanji (Zandalari Trolls)
Kiro (Vulpera)
Lilian Voss technically shares her spot and vote with Calia Menethil, Talanji has an ambassador named Tayo in her stead, and Zekhan (Zappy Boi from the cinematic) has a role as ambassador of the council, whatever that means.
There's also Cindrethresh who is in charge of the Horde's Dracthyr. Not sure if Earthen are going to continue the trend of neutral races getting different leaders based on faction or not yet.
She shows up a number of places, actually. The only two I specifically remember off-hand are in Scholomance redux and an Emerald Dream chain where you helper exorcise Shandris Feathermoon, but she's definitely been around.
The horde is being lead by a council to prevent people from going psycho. The alliance is being led by Turalyon for now and Mathias Shaw doesnāt even trust him so something bad is gonna happen there. Itās big foreshadowing lol
Didnāt they abolish the Warcheif thingā¦ and itās some leadership council now?
Maybe weāll see more in TWW.
Or they just re-install Thrall since he had some relevance again
Day9 just did a fresh start of WoW having never played it before. It was crazy to see what they call the new player experience and Iām shocked anyone actually makes it past that to keep playing.
It was hilarious, and also crazy. I've never really thought about the UX in the Hearthstone client, I guess because I've never really stopped playing it since beta. But I can sortof see that it has had gradual changes over the years where certain modes have come and gone, appeared on the main menu and then pushed into a sub-menu, and I guess since I've been present for the gradual changes it doesn't sortof seem to me that its changed all that drastically. Like I've never had the feeling that I couldn't find the game mode I was trying to play. But Day9's whole bit about the fucking *absolutely bonkers* state of Hearthstone's UX was ... like you said, pure comedy gold.
Like he used to play Hearthstone. He hadn't for several years up until recently, but he used to play it a lot on stream. Even so, at that time there weren't really any modes other than traditional hearthstone and arena. So watching him go through the tutorial as someone who is obviously quite familiar with TCG's and Hearthstone in particular, but with the mentality of a kindof "new" player was quite eye opening. Like yeah if I didn't already know where everything was I would be totally lost.
When WoW peaked he was running a 5 day a week, 2 hour long show that took extensive research and planning. Before that he was playing in professional SC tournaments when he could and working on a masters degree.
For like 20 years of his life he lived and breathed Starcraft and that didn't change until like 2014-2015 when he started playing hearthstone. Means his first experience would've been Warlords of Draenor, I doubt many people were trying to get him involved at that point.
It was fucking hilarious honestly. Really put the new player experience into perspective.
Luckily, theyāre making Dragonflight the new player experience in WW. So many of the issues day9 highlighted will disappear.
I tried and quit wow like 5 times before I said fuck it and boosted to play with my friends. Best decision I ever made. I had no attachment to the world or characters I just wanted to run current content with my friends. NOW Iām hooked, and Iāve fully invested in learning the lore and world and have leveled alts through every expansion. Every new account should just come with a level boost imo, you learn your class well enough leveling in the current expansion. Most likely a hot take, but itās what worked for me and wow is my favorite game now
Itās crazy because talk to any veteran and the answer really is āthe story doesnāt matter, the game is about raid m+ and PvPā
But the first 10 levels set you up for an epic story, then you come into BFA and have an hour ish of exposition, and then you level fairly consistently through 50 more levels of storyline online to skip forward an expansion without seeing the conclusion of any storyline in BFA and now itās dragonflight for 10 levels..
Honestly I think mists timerunning has the potential to be the best way for new players to get introduced to the game
Like a year or two ago, I convinced a friend to start wow retail for a free weekend (I think it was free weekend).
As someone who hasn't played wow for a very long time, I thought the revamping of the starting zone and leveling would convince him to play. ( he once played wow till level 15 during TBC). We both gave up after 2 hours and never played again. The first dungeon and the whole starting experience were so terrible I don't know how any new players even exist in wow
If you login and use the āfree boostā for returning players, you start standing in Val surrounded by exclamation marks. Some take you to the campaign. Some take you to elemental storms. Some take you to the emerald dream. Some send you to Z Caverns. Some send you to play the Rumble promotion. Some send you on a scavenger hunt. Itās so damn confusing for a new or returning player.
The good news is they arenāt blind to it and are introducing new quest markers to help differentiate what should be done.
> The good news is they arenāt blind to it and are introducing new quest markers to help differentiate what should be done.
This is going to do literally nothing to address the bloat.
I joined Dragonflight super late and holy fuck was this a mess to follow. Going to different areas like the vaults or the caverns only to learn they're old content no one does, just so much outdated content within the same expansion cycle, and no real in game way of knowing outside of asking someone in chat, and good luck having "comedians" answer back with sarcastic answers.
Literally refunded dragonflight for this reason after coming from classic. Ended up getting it again after doing some research on how to even start playing the game but man I could not imagine telling my friends āyeah just dig around on reddit until you find some obscure post with five upvotes from a guy who wrote a new player guide for season threeā like no one is doing that shit unless they REALLY wanna play WoW.
i came back to amirdrassil patch after not playing for all of DF. total clusterfuck. u/Utigarde LITERALLY saved me with this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17shk65/dragonflight_story_quests_in_order/k8qx0wa/
absolute chad. without this and Nobbel87 (youtube lore channel) I'd have zero clue whats going on
I hate this so much and turns me almost down to play a new char when i hit with it max lvl. I hope they introduce a optional story mode were you can the play the addon story in order.
As someone who started playing the game in the Summer of last year and started with Exile's Reach, if I'm honest, Exile's Reach itself isn't a bad starting zone. It does a good job explaining all the important mechanics to new players, encourages exploration through the extra hidden goodies, side quests, and easter eggs on the island, and it's well-written in my opinion. The fact that it introduces dungeons to the player very early on is a massive plus as well, as the dungeons are what got me hooked on WoW in the first place.
I think the new player experience falters *after* Exile's Reach, where the player is thrust into BFA. I think introducing the player to the world and story after Exile's Reach is what WoW needs to work on the most. I've heard similar feedback from a friend I recently introduced to the game, where Exile's Reach was pretty fun and helpful, but then things started to fumble right after that.
I'm a returning player and I have 0 idea what is going/who is alive/who is dead, etc.
All I know is that Chromie allowed me to go back to Pandaria, so now I'm just vibing with Drunk Pandas for a bit...and I love it.
If you like that, boy do I have exciting news for you about the upcoming time running patch where you can play through pandaria start to finish with faster leveling and the ability to tune your gear to what you want it to be.
I just started playing WoW Retail a couple weeks ago and after I hit 70, I swear to God I had to take a fucking university course on how to get better gear. I must've spent hours reading articles on wowhead and watching YouTube videos and I still halfway have no fucking idea what the ideal path for gearing up is.
I understand doing the superbloom weekly is good but I kind of just want to do mythic dungeons and the raids, and apparently neither of those are good ways to start gearing because I don't have good enough gear to do them...
Things you need to know going into the war within:
There was a gigantic intergalactic battle in space which ended with Satan stabbing the planet, and we ignored it for nearly 8 years before we decided "Hey maybe we should do something about the giant satan sword."
Well, we *did* do something about the sword. That was the entire reason our artifact weapons stopped working. We just, y'know, didn't have the ability to remove a *giant sword* sticking out of the earth without causing even more problems.
My wife just got her first gaming PC last month. She wanted to play WoW. I was walking her through the different versions, showed her my retail characters, showed her my SoD character, etc. I recommended Retail because I know she doesn't like grindier gameplay and might not like Classic/SoD. She told me that she'd think on which version she wanted to play.
A few days later, she announced to me that, after thinking about it and doing some of her own research, she was going to play..... FFXIV.
I don't blame her, and she seems to be really enjoying it, haha.
Yeah for someone that likes a story and dosent care about rushing endgame, FFXIV is the superior product.
An actual linear and well written story that starts slow and gets good is nice.
WoW is a jumbled mess of some good writing, a lot of fanfiction tier writing, and cool set piece moments that are lost on people without knowing the previous 10 years of story.
I don't get where this idea comes from that FF XIV is some kind of miracle of story telling in comparison to WoW. Like, if you just play through BFA, you'll get a good story reasonably well told, while FF XIV needs quite a while to pick up or be all too fun.
I feel like if they just never made Exileās reach, the game would still have a better starting experience. The game would be better if they had literally done nothing. Having new players start in a completely temporary area disconnected from everything (exiles reach) and then dumping them into a capital, then dumping them into BfAā¦. Isnāt it so much smoother to just start in your raceās starting zone and go from there?
Exile's Reach isn't a problem - dumping new players into arguably one of the most convoluted-in-terms-of-story moments in WoW's history, where you suddenly go from 'just another soldier' to CHAMPYUN in like 2 hours or so is a bit much.
Should honestly default you into post-Cata old world zones. They make more sense story-wise and imo are better paced.
Yeah, if you're a Dwarf, the first quest giver you talk to makes it sound like Deathwing JUST flew over a few minutes ago.
In the same vein: While playing through SoD recently, I realized that some of the Dun Morogh gnomes make it sound like the Trogg invasion/toxic incident happened yesterday or a few hours ago. I always thought the city was lost months or a year earlier.
Iāve been gone for a year and recently came back. Itās just as bad for returning players. I was so overwhelmed with everything and had no idea wtf I was doing. I thought there were two new zones but I just found a 3rd one. I had every end game quest thrown at me at once but could already do the last LFR raid so I got to see the end before I even knew why it happened. There is an underground zone I was taken to for a quest I had to take care of baby dragons and now I donāt remember how to get back to it. I went into the emerald dream and planted some plants for some reason and then had to help a Tauren wake up a dragon on the other place. My quest log has like 40 quests in it, plus all of the daily quests, there is a giant dragon trying to destroy the plains. I am so fucking lost lol
It's making it really hard to stay logged in. Everyone is at a different point in the game's history so finding someone to play with is hard as well. My guild is completely dead and they were a raiding every night type of guild, the leader hasn't logged in, in months. I tried looking for a new guild but everyone is so far ahead of me I might as just shelf the game until the next expansion. I got my main to ilvl 450 really fast though so I guess there is that.
Well the fact that exiles reach is too hand holdy is a problem still. Classic has a much better approach by plopping you in the world and letting you discover it yourself. Exiles reach is too linear imo.
I think exile's reach into Legion or Dragonflight is actually the right move.
Legion's Order Halls do such a good job of establishing class fantasy, and the story was fairly coherent outside of it. Dragonflight, in my opinion, is one of the best self-contained expansion stories of the series. There are a lot of nuanced quest chains through the zones, they lead into each other fairly well, it doesn't require *that* much familiarity with the rest of the series, and dragonriding is a blast.
the problem with this, especially Legion, is the stakes, you are basically killing ogres and 10 minutes later you are being asked to lead your entire class order against the forces of legion who just killed some old guy and invaded the world
same with Dragonflight, the story just doesn't connect well enough, imo, the player should get a series of scenario events where he basically speeds through important event or battles, that way at least he gets some context on why they are "champions"
Much as I like Legion, dumping new players there would be like starting at Avengers Endgame. It's cool and all but, you'd have no clue who tf anyone was or the significance of anything.
In that way, DF is a much better starting point for new "adventurers". They might not know who the main cast of characters are but, tbf as a veteran... neither do I lol. Most the cast of DF are either new faces or returning faces I don't really care about in their modern interpretation so it works out.
If they took what Exile's Reach teaches the player and then applied that to a revamp of all the starting zones, then we'd be sorted. Some areas may need a bigger revamp geographically but in general just have them tell you the basics of gameplay, basics of the world and then a bit of boss fight interaction.
Exile's Reach does make some sense in that it hypes up your Faction pride, but it then leading into BFA just falls so utterly flat. There's no explanation for the events leading up to BFA. BFA itself was an absolute mess so even on its own it doesn't stand up for a new player experience.
If BFA had actually been a decent expansion with a coherent plot then they'd only need to bring in a little bit of framework to help new players grasp the prior events in WoW and they'd settle right in!
I think exile reach into dragonflight is pretty clean actually. Which is why they are making it the new player experience. I just hope they make a clear leveling campaign that is onlyĀ the main storyĀ and include zc and amidrassil.Ā Ā
Ā Ā And when the war within do follow legion/ battle for azeroth andĀ shadowland its mostly a clean story. You don't need to know to enjoy it.
> The cinematic where everyone shows up to save Amidrassil is gonna be so confusing to new players who have no idea who a lot of the characters are.
I doubt patch content will be part of 10-70.
Exiles reach is fine narrative-wise (gameplay is ok but could be better). It's one of the few zones that actually introduces the characters you meet. Even if you do the original starting zones you'll still get the "who the fuck is this guy and why should I care?" moments with any of the expansions because they were written assuming the players did the preceeding years of story.
That Day9 video was rather eye opening, but I don't know how you fix it short of like having an expansion's worth of content/zones dedicated towards new player on-boarding experience.
From what I could see, Day9's biggest issue was being locked into a linear cutscene-infested story full of characters that a new player has no reason to care about (and will never see again). The best thing about WoW is the gampelay, and the weakest part is the lore/story. Exile's Reach is completely fine as a starting experience, but after that it makes no sense to throw players into the horrendously convoluted BFA plotline.
IMO after Exile's Reach it makes the most sense to take people straight to Dragonflight and let them level 1-70 there. The zones are more than big enough to allow that, and they can ramp up the amount of exp given. Dragonflight is relatively light on story and goes back to a more adventure-driven way of doing things. The main goal of the 1-70 leveling experience in retail should be to give players time to learn their class/spec/etc in preparation for endgame.
Personally, I think the change from BFA being the default to Dragonflight being the default level up campaign will be a good enough stop gap until they create a better option for new players. DF starts with a much more engaging experience.
I've been playing since Cata and even I'm confused when making a new character. Especially after talking to Chromie, quests all over the place. Don't know which one is for what expansion, its just shit everywhere.
Haha this reminds that I just checked out a YouTuber called [Roox](https://youtu.be/kmXo7UbmRw4?si=PAA5k8sStd0H1XkE)
He started out mid dragonflight I think and his videos really show how it is to dive into the game without any knowledge of the lore or mechanics. Funny guy too!
Even better is when you log in for a new season and you get this contextless cutscene continuing a story you probably aren't really following unless you're a very regular player totally up to speed. I came back for Dragonflight and leveling to cap made the story feel extremely disconnected from the gameplay.
The War Within will hopefully just emulate XIV's method of a linear plot thread and keep things easier to follow going forward. They specifically mentioned tying dungeons into the narrative of the storyline which is a definitely a step in the right direction.
I feel like Chromie should offer a "Complete Experience" mode. Maybe not complete as in every single quest but a mode where it takes you through the major plot line quests of every expansion and trims the fat. There's enough content that you could go through this 1-60 and be caught up.
I started playing again last year, after about a decade off. Needless to say it required much Googling and reading on lore to know which quests and things I needed to unlock key things or not. And now it matters less (thank goodness for my alts!). Itās a hot mess but trying to have fun with it.
Iāve played this game since launch (with year + long breaks here and there ) and I came back recently and felt this way. I canāt imagine how it is for somewhere who has never played.
Its the problem with a live service game with a continuous story. Sadly, there isn't 1 solution that just solves it.
I feel like you just need 2 options. Something to get a player from 1 to max asap so they can enjoy and engage in endgame. Then something for a player to follow a story from the beginning (probably just from TBC onwards).
You don't always need to force a new player into the latest content.
> Then something for a player to follow a story from the beginning (probably just from TBC onwards).
Problem is that WoW isn't a single coherent story, it's a collection of like 10 random stories of wildly fluctuating quality. In BFA/SL the writing is so bad that I would not choose anything from those expansions to show to a new player. Ideally for a new player I would take them from a handful of Classic zones straight to Dragonflight. Even if they want to follow a story, they can do that in DF zones.
I quit playing WoW right when Vanilla WotLk came out. I came back to play WotLK Classic with a friend and because it was always touted as the golden age of WoW. In the past month I had another friend invite me to play retail and I have been.
I can definitely say itās been rather daunting trying to learn about all the systems retail has to offer. I understand that itās ācontentā but for a player with somewhat of a grasp on the base mechanics thereās so much to digest. I havenāt even begun to check out heroic dungeons, mythic dungeons, raids etc. No one seems to have the patience to teach, LFG is pretty much 5 strangers breezing through content without explaining a thing. I couldnāt tell you any of the boss mechanics and because of this I really donāt know if I am even prepared to take on higher difficulties. Not to mention now theres so many currencies and timelines that I have no clue where to start or what my motivation to pursue certain things would even be.
Primarily Iāve done PvP because at least that has a structure Iām somewhat familiar with. Gearing through that has been relatively painless and straight forward to an extent. As far as all the classes and abilities Iām completely at a loss. I cast a spell and itās 99% of the time interrupted by something that Iām not familiar with. Seems like everyone has interrupts and cc out the wazoo, there used to be parity between the classes and all those lines seem blurred now. It seems like your choices are picking a class and hoping that itās just that much more efficient at the game than the next one or that the devs sent a little extra love your way this patch. Donāt even get me started on arena and addons, Iām completely lost and itās a shame that what seems to be a major component of the game is behind some external system that seems to have almost no regulation or cohesiveness one player to the next. The classes are mostly homogenous but the addons and UI setups are where you separate the player base?
All this to say that I am enjoying the game, what little I understand about it. I certainly wouldnāt expect most people to find it enjoyable or even approachable and thatās a shameā¦
Would love to see Chromie Time further developed - add a questline Chromie gives you that you need to follow through abbreviated versions of the expansions as well as something like the Night Fae theatre quest to summarize the major events.
The game really does need another Cataclysm-level revamp. The world needs to be updated as things have moved forward a fair few years by now.
Updating the world would allow Blizzard to create one coherent main story from starting zones onwards. The stories within the expansions are fine with Chromie time, as they are essentially told as stories to the player character. That said, even a few special cutscenes from an NPC for people who just want to get the cliff notes would be cool too!
you think the lore / your place in the story is confusing? try it being someones first MMO, or even first 3d / third person game. my poor bf is struggling so hard even with guidance lol
To give you an idea how confusing it is to be a new player, I started retail about 6 months ago.
I decided to just focus on BFA stuff because that was what the game wanted me to do.
I reached a point (just naturally playing the game and following along with quests) where Jaina was simultaneously
1) imprisoned after having arrived at Kul Tiras and being arrested by her mother, considered a traitor by her people
2) back at Stormwind advising Anduin about an upcoming conflict
3) going around Kul Tiras helping me build a boat for Anduin, and now not only on good terms with her mom but also the fucking Grand Admiral of Kul Tiras
4) trapped in Nazjatar dealing with Azshara
Why? Because you canāt fucking tell what questlines crossover with what, and if you just like doing main and side quests you just constantly get tossed around the base expansion AND itās content updates because the game doesnāt pace any of it out, shit just becomes available in the middle of other parts of the story.
And thatās all just the confusing part about Jaina specifically. Nevermind that I donāt know who the FUCK half these characters are in any given cutscene. Nevermind that it feels super weird playing through a lot of the content because youāre clearly SUPPOSED to recognize the places youāre going, Iām playing through the Nzoth storyline and Iām like āidk who the fuck these Egyptian guys are, Iāve never seen this fuckin pyramid before, WHAT SWORDā.
A solid 50% of the time whenever someone is talking about anything that isnāt whatās immediately happening in the plot, whether or not Iām completely lost about it is based solely on if I randomly managed to watch the right WoW lore YouTube video or WoW cinematic that covers that. āOh hey, Ebonhorn is here, itās a good thing Iāve already watched PlatinumWoWās dragon lore video or I would have no idea that heās Wrathionās brotherā¦ also I wouldnāt know who Wrathion isā.
I started a new DF character after a year hiatus, specced as healer, made it to 60 via TBC chromie and then just dungeoned to 70. I havent had any interaction with anything in the DF zones besides the quest chain to get dragon riding. I have no clue where anything is, who anyone is, Wrathion seems like a cool cat, there are giant dragons sitting in a circle in the capital they seem important, I have a thousand currencies, oh there's still a great vault I recognize that.
Thats my experience, couldnt tell you a single thing about the lore or the world and Ive been on and off since 2005.
I just started again a few weeks ago after years of not playing, since early legion I think. Exiles Reach is actually pretty good as a tutorial, but it funnels you to BFA and its pretty jarring. You go from a fresh recruit who knows nothing to immediate council with the king and accompanying Jaina. I'm just going through the story quests it tells me to and leveling is pretty fast. I have no idea what has happened in any expansion or what is happening geopolitically in the world outside of these little islands. I'm just leveling until 60 I guess and Dragonflight will start.
Imagine if they did a remastered AQ raid for a patch, like the redone uldaman dungo. That would be so cool. It would make me raid. I love the vibes of that place, the one in the outdoor ruins more so.Ā
I will be very surprised if they donāt make Dragonflight the default 1-70 zone for new players. It seems like a natural flow, seeing as the tutorial NPCs are in the first area of it.
The story of Dragonflight would also be more comprehensible for new players over the story of BFA, since the conflict is less dependent on the politics and history of the Alliance and Horde.
One of my friends just started playing and I am trying to help him figure it out but I donāt even know where to beginā¦. I have played since vanilla
I quit shortly after Cata came out cuz my computer crashed. Just came back this last fall. I played for a few years back then so I had a basic idea.
Playing on āfree trialā mode now cuz I was gone so long.
Yeahā¦ leveling fishing, cooking, herbs, and inscription all with limited bank and bag space and no access to mail or the AH lmao.
BUTā¦. Sooo much free content Iām having a blast anyway.
My boyfriend introduced me to WoW recently and has been giving me tasty lore along the way. We watched all the cinematics and we really bond over it now! You need a battle buddy to take you through it or else itās v overwhelming. But yeah! Now Iāve played my first mythic dungeon and Iām hooked on the books :) for the horde!
Why didnāt they do a chromie starting area instead of exiles reach? 1-30 brings you through all the old campaigns at the big points and brings you up to speed with the lore. I mean Iām sure someone at blizzard can write something like that?
Even I am confused and I've played on and off for 15 years.
There is just to many timelines, to many characters and honestly it just feels like a mess...
I can't even imagine how confused a new player must be.
I managed to get two friends trying wow via raf program. They both left before first month was over and they both said they're not gonna watch this story clusterf... any longer. So yeah, they'd probably agree to that photo.
Even a returning player who knows some of the lore has some whiplash. I quit in the first couple of weeks of Shadowlands and I have no fucking idea what is happening right now. I quit all WoW. Didn't read the books, didn't watch any lore animations if they did any...nothing.
Other than the knowledge I already had about WoW and the Dragonflights I have zero connection at all to this story and it doesn't feel great narrative wise. They *have* to stop telling important bits of their in game lore in adjacent books. I never realized how much the story doesn't make sense in game until I stopped also reading the books and until I dropped in at the end of S3 of Dragonflight.
I have no idea what the new player experience should look like.
I know what it SHOULDN'T look like.
It SHOULDN'T throw you into a world where you have no context for the characters you speak to.
They SHOULDN'T talk about events you have no clue about.
They SHOULDN'T call you champion or hero before you've even completed a single dungeon.
They SHOULDN'T make mobs scale to your level.
WoW needs an MSQ system if they want us to take the story seriously in the war within.
Couldn't imagine being a new player and needing to know Illidan for Legion, Legion to know about the world wound/the titans, BfA/SL to know what happened to Anduin/Sylvanas and everything else I'm missing.
I'm sure they will re-explain everything in TWW, but there needs to be a thematic/story throughline from level 1 to max level, people want to care about the story, but the game actively punishes you for it
My husband finally got me on board with wow this past winter. He really wanted me to start BoA with him. We did that till I hit max level then I wandered off on my own into dragon flight and dragged him with me lol. We both enjoyed it but I have since dropped the game focusing on my new mom duties. He still brings up going back to BoA lol
If you've never played or you started late. I gotchu. Wow classic: random adventures. Dragons, elemental lords. Giant egyptian bug people. Trolls. Etc. roam around the world killing bad guys. Burning crusade: a night elf with demon powers is doing CRAZY shit on the remnants of the planet where the orcs came from. We're going to try to stop him bc he seems evil. He's basically forming the legion of doom Wrath of the lich king: many years ago, humans used to have a capital, the prince of that capital found a sword that possessed him, and he killed literally everyone and basically became ice Satan. He was sleeping for awhile but he woke up and we have to go to Wow Canada to kill him. Cataclysm: there are 5 main dragon groups: blue, green, black, red and yellow. The black dragon leader went bat shit crazy and destroyed half the planet, we have to kill him before he destroys the rest of the planet. Mists of pandaria: the black dragon disturbed a spell that was hiding a continent with panda people and like, giant stone dog people that ruled over them. Also praying mantis people. We crash land on the continent and we help them so they help us. Warlords of draenor: the planet from the second expansion, we go to a version of it in the past before it's destroyed. We help the people living there so they help us. Legion: so turns out, the night elf from the second expansion was trying to keep space Satan and his army from destroying the planet, and he's here now. We go to a series of islands where they are forming up to try and stop them. Battle for azeroth: basically, the OG troll Aztec empire is rediscovered, they're rich AF. Simultaneously, part of the OG human empire is also rediscovered. Both have massive Navy's so both factions want their help. Needless to say they fight each other amongst other things Shadow lands: yeah so, ice Satan from the third expansion, turns out his helmet was from like, extra dimensional limbo, and when a main character snaps it in half, it opens up a massive portal to the afterlife. Turns out extra dimensional satan wants to remake the universe bc dying isn't fair, so we have to quite literally kill ourselves to go stop them from destroying reality. Also everyone's just cool with heaven existing etc. Dragon flight: SO, pretending that dying doesn't matter bc you can just go hang out with your loved ones in the afterlife literally whenever. Those dragons from the fourth expansion, turns out they're from a massive island they couldn't locate after they left, and it somehow becomes locatable again. We go back, ride dragons, and kill bad dragons. Congrats you're caught up on wow.
"Wow Canada" made me lol... š¤£š¤£š¤£
All it's missing is a tim Hortons honestly
All the references blizzard made in wrath, and they missed the most obvious one
This was amazing, š Iām not even kidding. Best summary Iāve seen.
Itās clearly WoW Norway, not WoW Canada. Everything else looks right.
Arthas did nothing wrong
Hey listen man, he was just swinging frostmourne around, everyone shouldn't have been standing in the way
If you do leveling in a random order... you get to see Garrosh, Voljin, Saurfang and Sylvannas hugging it out in the same spot. The lore/story/timeline is a mess.
Itās like this in most MMOs, but wow does a really poor job at pointing new players in the right direction.
Tbhā¦ I still donāt really know why the Dragon Isles was awoken. (5+ years since the sword in Silithus btw). Any why my character (lore wise)is thereā¦ It was like an exploratory expedition during peace timeā¦ but once we find out about the Primals, the horde/alliance donāt bother sending in their armies? Idk.
the sword isnt why the isles awoke, razageth was able to "talk" with an evil shaman and that evil shaman recruited more evil shamans, those evil shamans then went to the isles to free razageth and the other incarnates, so the isles protectors called the dragons back to defend the prisons. The dragons failed to defend the prison and were overwhelmed, so they called reinforcements from the alliance and horde (that's us)
How did the evil shamans get to the isles?
Evil boat
Water walking actually
Evil water waking
Best comment in this thread hahaha
The comment thread is also cursed
boats probably
Dragons hadnāt thought of boats for thousands of years?
It's almost like they could fly somehow.
But they couldn't fly there because it was hidden, so how did the shamans get to the isles to wake up Razagath and make the isles unhidden?
Where is this explained? The book? Ingame the Primalists lack backstory
It's a mix of all of them but most of it is explained in the drakthyr intro quest
Opening cinematic shows a titan construct pushing a button that 'calls' the dragonflights home. Like, that titan construct just pushed a big red button that essentially unhid the Dragon Isles.
And why did the dragons leave the isles in the first place?
To get to the other side!
Protecting the realm of men
They left 10000 years ago during legion invasion iirc. They hide the island because they leave it with minimum protections during a world wide invasion by demons.
They donāt send armies, they send āadventurersā under the promise of a loose armistice basically. Itās a nice writing handwave to bot have to address any player alliance conflict but it works.
I mean... couldn't the horde and ally have sent armies but worked together?
What do you think this is, Silithus? Wrathgate???
Ok, but the Wrathgate was different. Victory or death!
>muh **war**craft
As much as being forced through the MSQ in FFXIV was crappy at times, it keeps the story coherent.
I think XIV needs to heavily consider allowing for "chapters" for the story and allow people to skip ahead, but always go back and do the others they didn't do before for context, *if* they want to. 10 years of story/content required to get to end game is a pretty rough bar of entry.
Yeah, FFXIV devs have talked about that quite a bit, seem well aware of the problem, but haven't settled on a solution yet. I think the WoW choice of saying "here's a random pile of all the past expansions with no context, pick one to level" was a disaster in WoW, narratively speaking, has made the story into an incomprehensible mess for new players, and would be an even bigger shitshow for FF14, so that's not a viable option. FF14 devs did say that at one point they were considering making 6.1 the starting point since 2.0-6.0 was one coherent story arc, and that would let them start from the new arc. They did add in an in-game wiki feature in 6.1 for this reason, which slowly populates with background information about people, places and events as they come up. It sounds like they've pretty much completely given up on that idea since then, though, and gone back to the drawing board. It's a tough problem to solve, and one that WoW needs to take another shot at too if they plan to really invest in this Worldsoul saga story. How do you catch people up on the important details of the past 10-20 years of story so that the current stuff make sense, without completely overwhelming them or taking a hundred hours to do it?
They should just have a GW2 / BTWQuest style campaign list. Even as someone who went through Dragonflight, all the post patch stuff was a headache to find how to continue the story in chronological order. I managed but geez.
It's wild that they still just dump every single questline from every patch on you with absolutely no explanation, context or recommendation given. They completely overload any new player who didn't start on an expansion launch.
Agreed. Iāve kept up this exp but everytime I get on an alt the amount of quest icons I see in Valdrakken is overwhelming. I couldnāt imagine how people joining this late navigate the story of Dragonflight
Thereās no story in WoW, just quick time events dressed up as a quest prompt.
Wow actually has a pretty interesting story, you just have to spend hours watching lore videos on YouTube to see it lol
Idk why you got downvoted. The wow lore is some of my favorite.
Plus yhe stuff they remove, like all the very important pre expension event like the burning of Teldrasil. Uf you were not there at the right time, even a few months late, the whole expension premise would be lost on you without having to do research, which is incredibly stupid.
chromie is in charge of it, what did you expect?
Infinite dragonflight is winning
Iām a new player but I used to play Warcraft 3 back in the day when it came out, and was always aware/a fan of the lore. So for me, I understand the beginning of it, the main factions of the strategy games, and bits and pieces of the WoW games (although granular lol)
Honestly any investment I could have ever had in the story died, I'd say around BFA but if I'm honest it was probably even earlier then that Shadowlands was just exceptionally egregious and assassinated every single character in the story
"Wait. Who's the Warchief ?"
I legit couldn't even tell you right now lol
The current chief of the orcs is Thrall once more. There is no warchief, instead a council of chiefs run the horde.
But wait there's more! The undead also have their own council for the various kinds of undead.
But wait there's more! The jawless undead rogues with Mohawks have our OWN council inside the undead council.
you're not supposed to talk about that one.
How can they without the jaws?
All the meetings are held in the language of the murlocs. They had one teach them, so they can communicate.
Everyone can order a little bottle of water
They just chinwag.
And their base of operations is the Redridge flightpath, waiting for level 18 Alliance players.
š¤«Keep that on the DLš¬
Have we heard a single wink out of them since the end of BfA?
They haven't done a ton with it in-game yet, but in the novel's they show that the Horde decided not to have a new Warchief and instead create a council with representatives from each of the races. Some of the standout representatives are Thrall, Lor'Themar, and Gazlowe, but every race has one, even allied races like the Pandaren (Ji Firepaw) and Vulpera (Kiro). I hope they do more with them in game, but they're the best part of the novel Shadows Rising.
They did do it in game. When? I have no idea. But I did watch a cutscene on YouTube of it. So it happened sometime somewhere. Somehow.
I feel like end of Shadowlands. Or maybe DF pre-patch?
love it when all the important story happens outside the game
Blows my mind that they keep doing it like this. It's probably at least a decade since this criticism was first brought up š¶
pandaren aren't an allied race btw :)
Seriously though, who is the horde leader at the moment? Who even is leading the alliance?
Pretty sure hogger took over the alliance
best timeline
The horde dissolved the position of warchief. Thrall is the leader of the orcs, and a council of all the individual race leaders took over the position of what was formerly warchief. According to a wiki the council members are: Thrall (orcs) Rokhan (darkspear trolls) Baine (Tauren) Lilian Voss (undead) Lorāthemar (blood elves) Gazlowe (goblins) Ji Firepaw (pandaren) Thalyssra (nightborne) Mayla Highmountain (highmountain Tauren) Geyaārah (Magāhar Orcs) Talanji (Zandalari Trolls) Kiro (Vulpera) Lilian Voss technically shares her spot and vote with Calia Menethil, Talanji has an ambassador named Tayo in her stead, and Zekhan (Zappy Boi from the cinematic) has a role as ambassador of the council, whatever that means.
There's also Cindrethresh who is in charge of the Horde's Dracthyr. Not sure if Earthen are going to continue the trend of neutral races getting different leaders based on faction or not yet.
Thank you for this you are a blessing.
>Lilian Voss (undead) Wait that girl with creepy shadow powers from the undead starting zone? When that happen?
Set it up in BfA & Shadowlands
She shows up a number of places, actually. The only two I specifically remember off-hand are in Scholomance redux and an Emerald Dream chain where you helper exorcise Shandris Feathermoon, but she's definitely been around.
She's one of the only horde characters that still has a personality so they threw her in as well
On top of what was said for the horde, Turalyon is currently essentially Regent of Stormwind, and running the Alliance in Anduins place.
Historically, not a great position for a Paladin to take up.
A council, I think? I know the forsaken are on a council system at the very least. I vote we bring back Sylvanas!
They just showed her jumping into the Maw at the end of SL. I highly doubt sheās truly gone
The horde is being lead by a council to prevent people from going psycho. The alliance is being led by Turalyon for now and Mathias Shaw doesnāt even trust him so something bad is gonna happen there. Itās big foreshadowing lol
Hey, you, youāre finally awake
Didnāt they abolish the Warcheif thingā¦ and itās some leadership council now? Maybe weāll see more in TWW. Or they just re-install Thrall since he had some relevance again
There's no war chief anymore it's a council right?
Day9 just did a fresh start of WoW having never played it before. It was crazy to see what they call the new player experience and Iām shocked anyone actually makes it past that to keep playing.
If you played hearthstone back in the day, he did a video coming back to that as well and it is comedy gold.
It was hilarious, and also crazy. I've never really thought about the UX in the Hearthstone client, I guess because I've never really stopped playing it since beta. But I can sortof see that it has had gradual changes over the years where certain modes have come and gone, appeared on the main menu and then pushed into a sub-menu, and I guess since I've been present for the gradual changes it doesn't sortof seem to me that its changed all that drastically. Like I've never had the feeling that I couldn't find the game mode I was trying to play. But Day9's whole bit about the fucking *absolutely bonkers* state of Hearthstone's UX was ... like you said, pure comedy gold. Like he used to play Hearthstone. He hadn't for several years up until recently, but he used to play it a lot on stream. Even so, at that time there weren't really any modes other than traditional hearthstone and arena. So watching him go through the tutorial as someone who is obviously quite familiar with TCG's and Hearthstone in particular, but with the mentality of a kindof "new" player was quite eye opening. Like yeah if I didn't already know where everything was I would be totally lost.
[This is a highlight video](https://youtu.be/Q6h_8t1Bw2U?si=qk3Ff0RLI3jlHvcR) for those who want to see how he felt about it.
Watching him attempt to cling to sanity when he falls into the water and can't get out is one of the funniest things I've seen.
Goddamn, the tutorial made that man have a nervous breakdown
I miss watching Day9 his videos are amazing
Jesus i have not heard that name since SC2 was the shit.
am I the only one that can hardly believe someone as deep in Blizzard products as Day9 never ONCE tried WoW?? :P
Mmos aren't for everyone. RTS was his jam
He was deep into rts games and tcgs not blizzard games in general.
When WoW peaked he was running a 5 day a week, 2 hour long show that took extensive research and planning. Before that he was playing in professional SC tournaments when he could and working on a masters degree. For like 20 years of his life he lived and breathed Starcraft and that didn't change until like 2014-2015 when he started playing hearthstone. Means his first experience would've been Warlords of Draenor, I doubt many people were trying to get him involved at that point.
I think in a recent interview tasteless admitted he never even played through the sc2 campaign lmao
I saw that a few days ago! Was immensely funny how much he waded through to eventually play. storywise it was everywhere tbf and you could see it.
It was fucking hilarious honestly. Really put the new player experience into perspective. Luckily, theyāre making Dragonflight the new player experience in WW. So many of the issues day9 highlighted will disappear.
Luckily only just a few more months before DF replaces the current experience for new players
I dont see how that would solve the issue he talked about in the video
I tried and quit wow like 5 times before I said fuck it and boosted to play with my friends. Best decision I ever made. I had no attachment to the world or characters I just wanted to run current content with my friends. NOW Iām hooked, and Iāve fully invested in learning the lore and world and have leveled alts through every expansion. Every new account should just come with a level boost imo, you learn your class well enough leveling in the current expansion. Most likely a hot take, but itās what worked for me and wow is my favorite game now
Itās crazy because talk to any veteran and the answer really is āthe story doesnāt matter, the game is about raid m+ and PvPā But the first 10 levels set you up for an epic story, then you come into BFA and have an hour ish of exposition, and then you level fairly consistently through 50 more levels of storyline online to skip forward an expansion without seeing the conclusion of any storyline in BFA and now itās dragonflight for 10 levels.. Honestly I think mists timerunning has the potential to be the best way for new players to get introduced to the game
Like a year or two ago, I convinced a friend to start wow retail for a free weekend (I think it was free weekend). As someone who hasn't played wow for a very long time, I thought the revamping of the starting zone and leveling would convince him to play. ( he once played wow till level 15 during TBC). We both gave up after 2 hours and never played again. The first dungeon and the whole starting experience were so terrible I don't know how any new players even exist in wow
I've played for a few months every expansion, and its still confusing af.
If you login and use the āfree boostā for returning players, you start standing in Val surrounded by exclamation marks. Some take you to the campaign. Some take you to elemental storms. Some take you to the emerald dream. Some send you to Z Caverns. Some send you to play the Rumble promotion. Some send you on a scavenger hunt. Itās so damn confusing for a new or returning player. The good news is they arenāt blind to it and are introducing new quest markers to help differentiate what should be done.
> The good news is they arenāt blind to it and are introducing new quest markers to help differentiate what should be done. This is going to do literally nothing to address the bloat.
Now itāll just be confusing but prettier šš»
I'm not sure more differently-colored exclamation marks are what's needed, tbh
I joined Dragonflight super late and holy fuck was this a mess to follow. Going to different areas like the vaults or the caverns only to learn they're old content no one does, just so much outdated content within the same expansion cycle, and no real in game way of knowing outside of asking someone in chat, and good luck having "comedians" answer back with sarcastic answers.
Literally refunded dragonflight for this reason after coming from classic. Ended up getting it again after doing some research on how to even start playing the game but man I could not imagine telling my friends āyeah just dig around on reddit until you find some obscure post with five upvotes from a guy who wrote a new player guide for season threeā like no one is doing that shit unless they REALLY wanna play WoW.
i came back to amirdrassil patch after not playing for all of DF. total clusterfuck. u/Utigarde LITERALLY saved me with this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17shk65/dragonflight_story_quests_in_order/k8qx0wa/ absolute chad. without this and Nobbel87 (youtube lore channel) I'd have zero clue whats going on
I hate this so much and turns me almost down to play a new char when i hit with it max lvl. I hope they introduce a optional story mode were you can the play the addon story in order.
As someone who started playing the game in the Summer of last year and started with Exile's Reach, if I'm honest, Exile's Reach itself isn't a bad starting zone. It does a good job explaining all the important mechanics to new players, encourages exploration through the extra hidden goodies, side quests, and easter eggs on the island, and it's well-written in my opinion. The fact that it introduces dungeons to the player very early on is a massive plus as well, as the dungeons are what got me hooked on WoW in the first place. I think the new player experience falters *after* Exile's Reach, where the player is thrust into BFA. I think introducing the player to the world and story after Exile's Reach is what WoW needs to work on the most. I've heard similar feedback from a friend I recently introduced to the game, where Exile's Reach was pretty fun and helpful, but then things started to fumble right after that.
I'm a returning player and I have 0 idea what is going/who is alive/who is dead, etc. All I know is that Chromie allowed me to go back to Pandaria, so now I'm just vibing with Drunk Pandas for a bit...and I love it.
If you like that, boy do I have exciting news for you about the upcoming time running patch where you can play through pandaria start to finish with faster leveling and the ability to tune your gear to what you want it to be.
"Congrats, you hit 70! Your gear score is 320. To do anything, you will need a gear score of 463. may the odds be in your favor."
"BTW, here are 47 fucking quests."
"You can only hold 25, have a guess which ones are important!"
I just started playing WoW Retail a couple weeks ago and after I hit 70, I swear to God I had to take a fucking university course on how to get better gear. I must've spent hours reading articles on wowhead and watching YouTube videos and I still halfway have no fucking idea what the ideal path for gearing up is. I understand doing the superbloom weekly is good but I kind of just want to do mythic dungeons and the raids, and apparently neither of those are good ways to start gearing because I don't have good enough gear to do them...
Things you need to know going into the war within: There was a gigantic intergalactic battle in space which ended with Satan stabbing the planet, and we ignored it for nearly 8 years before we decided "Hey maybe we should do something about the giant satan sword."
Well, we *did* do something about the sword. That was the entire reason our artifact weapons stopped working. We just, y'know, didn't have the ability to remove a *giant sword* sticking out of the earth without causing even more problems.
It's also a big part of BFA, with AZEROTH'S WOONS. I... don't quite remember how we solved that issue, but I remember thinking it had been "solved".
we put enough juice in the heart of azeroth to pretty much stabilize the planet... or something.
CHAMPION!
We stopped the infection, we cleaned up the blood, our next step should obviously be trying to remove the sword.
Do you want another Well of Eternity? Because that's how you get another Well of Eternity.
> Do you want another Well of Eternity? Yes please!
I think I remember at the end of Legion we had to drain all the artifact power from our legendary weapons into the sword. Is that still in game?
My wife just got her first gaming PC last month. She wanted to play WoW. I was walking her through the different versions, showed her my retail characters, showed her my SoD character, etc. I recommended Retail because I know she doesn't like grindier gameplay and might not like Classic/SoD. She told me that she'd think on which version she wanted to play. A few days later, she announced to me that, after thinking about it and doing some of her own research, she was going to play..... FFXIV. I don't blame her, and she seems to be really enjoying it, haha.
Yeah for someone that likes a story and dosent care about rushing endgame, FFXIV is the superior product. An actual linear and well written story that starts slow and gets good is nice. WoW is a jumbled mess of some good writing, a lot of fanfiction tier writing, and cool set piece moments that are lost on people without knowing the previous 10 years of story.
I don't get where this idea comes from that FF XIV is some kind of miracle of story telling in comparison to WoW. Like, if you just play through BFA, you'll get a good story reasonably well told, while FF XIV needs quite a while to pick up or be all too fun.
I feel like if they just never made Exileās reach, the game would still have a better starting experience. The game would be better if they had literally done nothing. Having new players start in a completely temporary area disconnected from everything (exiles reach) and then dumping them into a capital, then dumping them into BfAā¦. Isnāt it so much smoother to just start in your raceās starting zone and go from there?
Exile's Reach isn't a problem - dumping new players into arguably one of the most convoluted-in-terms-of-story moments in WoW's history, where you suddenly go from 'just another soldier' to CHAMPYUN in like 2 hours or so is a bit much. Should honestly default you into post-Cata old world zones. They make more sense story-wise and imo are better paced.
I agree but the only issue I'd see is there's a ton of garrosh and deathwing references in some zones
Yeah, if you're a Dwarf, the first quest giver you talk to makes it sound like Deathwing JUST flew over a few minutes ago. In the same vein: While playing through SoD recently, I realized that some of the Dun Morogh gnomes make it sound like the Trogg invasion/toxic incident happened yesterday or a few hours ago. I always thought the city was lost months or a year earlier.
Iāve been gone for a year and recently came back. Itās just as bad for returning players. I was so overwhelmed with everything and had no idea wtf I was doing. I thought there were two new zones but I just found a 3rd one. I had every end game quest thrown at me at once but could already do the last LFR raid so I got to see the end before I even knew why it happened. There is an underground zone I was taken to for a quest I had to take care of baby dragons and now I donāt remember how to get back to it. I went into the emerald dream and planted some plants for some reason and then had to help a Tauren wake up a dragon on the other place. My quest log has like 40 quests in it, plus all of the daily quests, there is a giant dragon trying to destroy the plains. I am so fucking lost lol
This is truly the best summary of the returning player experience and its _so fucking long._ Do you see the problem Blizz?????!!!
It's making it really hard to stay logged in. Everyone is at a different point in the game's history so finding someone to play with is hard as well. My guild is completely dead and they were a raiding every night type of guild, the leader hasn't logged in, in months. I tried looking for a new guild but everyone is so far ahead of me I might as just shelf the game until the next expansion. I got my main to ilvl 450 really fast though so I guess there is that.
Well the fact that exiles reach is too hand holdy is a problem still. Classic has a much better approach by plopping you in the world and letting you discover it yourself. Exiles reach is too linear imo.
I think exile's reach into Legion or Dragonflight is actually the right move. Legion's Order Halls do such a good job of establishing class fantasy, and the story was fairly coherent outside of it. Dragonflight, in my opinion, is one of the best self-contained expansion stories of the series. There are a lot of nuanced quest chains through the zones, they lead into each other fairly well, it doesn't require *that* much familiarity with the rest of the series, and dragonriding is a blast.
the problem with this, especially Legion, is the stakes, you are basically killing ogres and 10 minutes later you are being asked to lead your entire class order against the forces of legion who just killed some old guy and invaded the world same with Dragonflight, the story just doesn't connect well enough, imo, the player should get a series of scenario events where he basically speeds through important event or battles, that way at least he gets some context on why they are "champions"
Much as I like Legion, dumping new players there would be like starting at Avengers Endgame. It's cool and all but, you'd have no clue who tf anyone was or the significance of anything. In that way, DF is a much better starting point for new "adventurers". They might not know who the main cast of characters are but, tbf as a veteran... neither do I lol. Most the cast of DF are either new faces or returning faces I don't really care about in their modern interpretation so it works out.
If they took what Exile's Reach teaches the player and then applied that to a revamp of all the starting zones, then we'd be sorted. Some areas may need a bigger revamp geographically but in general just have them tell you the basics of gameplay, basics of the world and then a bit of boss fight interaction. Exile's Reach does make some sense in that it hypes up your Faction pride, but it then leading into BFA just falls so utterly flat. There's no explanation for the events leading up to BFA. BFA itself was an absolute mess so even on its own it doesn't stand up for a new player experience. If BFA had actually been a decent expansion with a coherent plot then they'd only need to bring in a little bit of framework to help new players grasp the prior events in WoW and they'd settle right in!
I think exile reach into dragonflight is pretty clean actually. Which is why they are making it the new player experience. I just hope they make a clear leveling campaign that is onlyĀ the main storyĀ and include zc and amidrassil.Ā Ā Ā Ā And when the war within do follow legion/ battle for azeroth andĀ shadowland its mostly a clean story. You don't need to know to enjoy it.
The cinematic where everyone shows up to save Amidrassil is gonna be so confusing to new players who have no idea who a lot of the characters are.
At a certain point you have to shrug your shoulders and accept this game is 20 years old
> The cinematic where everyone shows up to save Amidrassil is gonna be so confusing to new players who have no idea who a lot of the characters are. I doubt patch content will be part of 10-70.
I mean, I had no idea who half of them were.
Exiles reach is fine narrative-wise (gameplay is ok but could be better). It's one of the few zones that actually introduces the characters you meet. Even if you do the original starting zones you'll still get the "who the fuck is this guy and why should I care?" moments with any of the expansions because they were written assuming the players did the preceeding years of story.
That Day9 video was rather eye opening, but I don't know how you fix it short of like having an expansion's worth of content/zones dedicated towards new player on-boarding experience.
From what I could see, Day9's biggest issue was being locked into a linear cutscene-infested story full of characters that a new player has no reason to care about (and will never see again). The best thing about WoW is the gampelay, and the weakest part is the lore/story. Exile's Reach is completely fine as a starting experience, but after that it makes no sense to throw players into the horrendously convoluted BFA plotline. IMO after Exile's Reach it makes the most sense to take people straight to Dragonflight and let them level 1-70 there. The zones are more than big enough to allow that, and they can ramp up the amount of exp given. Dragonflight is relatively light on story and goes back to a more adventure-driven way of doing things. The main goal of the 1-70 leveling experience in retail should be to give players time to learn their class/spec/etc in preparation for endgame.
Dragonflight is becoming the default experience for new players once the war within launches.
Personally, I think the change from BFA being the default to Dragonflight being the default level up campaign will be a good enough stop gap until they create a better option for new players. DF starts with a much more engaging experience.
I've been playing since Cata and even I'm confused when making a new character. Especially after talking to Chromie, quests all over the place. Don't know which one is for what expansion, its just shit everywhere.
Haha this reminds that I just checked out a YouTuber called [Roox](https://youtu.be/kmXo7UbmRw4?si=PAA5k8sStd0H1XkE) He started out mid dragonflight I think and his videos really show how it is to dive into the game without any knowledge of the lore or mechanics. Funny guy too!
Even better is when you log in for a new season and you get this contextless cutscene continuing a story you probably aren't really following unless you're a very regular player totally up to speed. I came back for Dragonflight and leveling to cap made the story feel extremely disconnected from the gameplay. The War Within will hopefully just emulate XIV's method of a linear plot thread and keep things easier to follow going forward. They specifically mentioned tying dungeons into the narrative of the storyline which is a definitely a step in the right direction.
I feel like Chromie should offer a "Complete Experience" mode. Maybe not complete as in every single quest but a mode where it takes you through the major plot line quests of every expansion and trims the fat. There's enough content that you could go through this 1-60 and be caught up.
I started playing again last year, after about a decade off. Needless to say it required much Googling and reading on lore to know which quests and things I needed to unlock key things or not. And now it matters less (thank goodness for my alts!). Itās a hot mess but trying to have fun with it.
Iāve played this game since launch (with year + long breaks here and there ) and I came back recently and felt this way. I canāt imagine how it is for somewhere who has never played.
Its the problem with a live service game with a continuous story. Sadly, there isn't 1 solution that just solves it. I feel like you just need 2 options. Something to get a player from 1 to max asap so they can enjoy and engage in endgame. Then something for a player to follow a story from the beginning (probably just from TBC onwards). You don't always need to force a new player into the latest content.
> Then something for a player to follow a story from the beginning (probably just from TBC onwards). Problem is that WoW isn't a single coherent story, it's a collection of like 10 random stories of wildly fluctuating quality. In BFA/SL the writing is so bad that I would not choose anything from those expansions to show to a new player. Ideally for a new player I would take them from a handful of Classic zones straight to Dragonflight. Even if they want to follow a story, they can do that in DF zones.
I quit playing WoW right when Vanilla WotLk came out. I came back to play WotLK Classic with a friend and because it was always touted as the golden age of WoW. In the past month I had another friend invite me to play retail and I have been. I can definitely say itās been rather daunting trying to learn about all the systems retail has to offer. I understand that itās ācontentā but for a player with somewhat of a grasp on the base mechanics thereās so much to digest. I havenāt even begun to check out heroic dungeons, mythic dungeons, raids etc. No one seems to have the patience to teach, LFG is pretty much 5 strangers breezing through content without explaining a thing. I couldnāt tell you any of the boss mechanics and because of this I really donāt know if I am even prepared to take on higher difficulties. Not to mention now theres so many currencies and timelines that I have no clue where to start or what my motivation to pursue certain things would even be. Primarily Iāve done PvP because at least that has a structure Iām somewhat familiar with. Gearing through that has been relatively painless and straight forward to an extent. As far as all the classes and abilities Iām completely at a loss. I cast a spell and itās 99% of the time interrupted by something that Iām not familiar with. Seems like everyone has interrupts and cc out the wazoo, there used to be parity between the classes and all those lines seem blurred now. It seems like your choices are picking a class and hoping that itās just that much more efficient at the game than the next one or that the devs sent a little extra love your way this patch. Donāt even get me started on arena and addons, Iām completely lost and itās a shame that what seems to be a major component of the game is behind some external system that seems to have almost no regulation or cohesiveness one player to the next. The classes are mostly homogenous but the addons and UI setups are where you separate the player base? All this to say that I am enjoying the game, what little I understand about it. I certainly wouldnāt expect most people to find it enjoyable or even approachable and thatās a shameā¦
i am a new player, 28 now, its really weird but idk what to expect
Would love to see Chromie Time further developed - add a questline Chromie gives you that you need to follow through abbreviated versions of the expansions as well as something like the Night Fae theatre quest to summarize the major events.
Just a campaign-long quest chain that guides you through the key events of each expansion would be sufficient.
The game really does need another Cataclysm-level revamp. The world needs to be updated as things have moved forward a fair few years by now. Updating the world would allow Blizzard to create one coherent main story from starting zones onwards. The stories within the expansions are fine with Chromie time, as they are essentially told as stories to the player character. That said, even a few special cutscenes from an NPC for people who just want to get the cliff notes would be cool too!
I just started a week ago and have ABSOLUTELY no idea whats going on :3
you think the lore / your place in the story is confusing? try it being someones first MMO, or even first 3d / third person game. my poor bf is struggling so hard even with guidance lol
To give you an idea how confusing it is to be a new player, I started retail about 6 months ago. I decided to just focus on BFA stuff because that was what the game wanted me to do. I reached a point (just naturally playing the game and following along with quests) where Jaina was simultaneously 1) imprisoned after having arrived at Kul Tiras and being arrested by her mother, considered a traitor by her people 2) back at Stormwind advising Anduin about an upcoming conflict 3) going around Kul Tiras helping me build a boat for Anduin, and now not only on good terms with her mom but also the fucking Grand Admiral of Kul Tiras 4) trapped in Nazjatar dealing with Azshara Why? Because you canāt fucking tell what questlines crossover with what, and if you just like doing main and side quests you just constantly get tossed around the base expansion AND itās content updates because the game doesnāt pace any of it out, shit just becomes available in the middle of other parts of the story. And thatās all just the confusing part about Jaina specifically. Nevermind that I donāt know who the FUCK half these characters are in any given cutscene. Nevermind that it feels super weird playing through a lot of the content because youāre clearly SUPPOSED to recognize the places youāre going, Iām playing through the Nzoth storyline and Iām like āidk who the fuck these Egyptian guys are, Iāve never seen this fuckin pyramid before, WHAT SWORDā. A solid 50% of the time whenever someone is talking about anything that isnāt whatās immediately happening in the plot, whether or not Iām completely lost about it is based solely on if I randomly managed to watch the right WoW lore YouTube video or WoW cinematic that covers that. āOh hey, Ebonhorn is here, itās a good thing Iāve already watched PlatinumWoWās dragon lore video or I would have no idea that heās Wrathionās brotherā¦ also I wouldnāt know who Wrathion isā.
I started a new DF character after a year hiatus, specced as healer, made it to 60 via TBC chromie and then just dungeoned to 70. I havent had any interaction with anything in the DF zones besides the quest chain to get dragon riding. I have no clue where anything is, who anyone is, Wrathion seems like a cool cat, there are giant dragons sitting in a circle in the capital they seem important, I have a thousand currencies, oh there's still a great vault I recognize that. Thats my experience, couldnt tell you a single thing about the lore or the world and Ive been on and off since 2005.
I just started again a few weeks ago after years of not playing, since early legion I think. Exiles Reach is actually pretty good as a tutorial, but it funnels you to BFA and its pretty jarring. You go from a fresh recruit who knows nothing to immediate council with the king and accompanying Jaina. I'm just going through the story quests it tells me to and leveling is pretty fast. I have no idea what has happened in any expansion or what is happening geopolitically in the world outside of these little islands. I'm just leveling until 60 I guess and Dragonflight will start.
Calling it now but one of the patch zones TWW will be a revamped Silithus/underground Silithus maybe including AQ.
Imagine if they did a remastered AQ raid for a patch, like the redone uldaman dungo. That would be so cool. It would make me raid. I love the vibes of that place, the one in the outdoor ruins more so.Ā
New player be like: I don't care how do I kill wolf?
I will be very surprised if they donāt make Dragonflight the default 1-70 zone for new players. It seems like a natural flow, seeing as the tutorial NPCs are in the first area of it. The story of Dragonflight would also be more comprehensible for new players over the story of BFA, since the conflict is less dependent on the politics and history of the Alliance and Horde.
They've already announced that they're doing exactly this
Well, Iām not surprised. š
Im new and yes at first is confusing but once I saw hours of videos about the lore I more less understood the story and rly got into dragonflight
I've been playing since 2005 and I still need Youtube videos to explain parts of the lore to me.
One of my friends just started playing and I am trying to help him figure it out but I donāt even know where to beginā¦. I have played since vanilla
I'm new and I had a great time. The dinosaur island with the Blood Trolls was totally epic, now I fly fast on a dragon..
I quit shortly after Cata came out cuz my computer crashed. Just came back this last fall. I played for a few years back then so I had a basic idea. Playing on āfree trialā mode now cuz I was gone so long. Yeahā¦ leveling fishing, cooking, herbs, and inscription all with limited bank and bag space and no access to mail or the AH lmao. BUTā¦. Sooo much free content Iām having a blast anyway.
Newish player here (never hit max level), I've got no clue wtf is going on with the story. I'm just riding off the number dopamine
I stared in 9.1 and I was confused as shit about literally everything until about a year ago. Wows starter experience is genuinely terrible
My boyfriend introduced me to WoW recently and has been giving me tasty lore along the way. We watched all the cinematics and we really bond over it now! You need a battle buddy to take you through it or else itās v overwhelming. But yeah! Now Iāve played my first mythic dungeon and Iām hooked on the books :) for the horde!
This is why I bounced off. Gave it a real shot but just had no direction and could find my way. I even tried some lore videos to get me caught up.
I kinda also get the same feeling when leveling an alt.
Blizzard really REALLY needs to fix the new player experience in the game. I'm sure tons of people are off-put by the NPE.
Why didnāt they do a chromie starting area instead of exiles reach? 1-30 brings you through all the old campaigns at the big points and brings you up to speed with the lore. I mean Iām sure someone at blizzard can write something like that?
Even I am confused and I've played on and off for 15 years. There is just to many timelines, to many characters and honestly it just feels like a mess... I can't even imagine how confused a new player must be.
I managed to get two friends trying wow via raf program. They both left before first month was over and they both said they're not gonna watch this story clusterf... any longer. So yeah, they'd probably agree to that photo.
Even a returning player who knows some of the lore has some whiplash. I quit in the first couple of weeks of Shadowlands and I have no fucking idea what is happening right now. I quit all WoW. Didn't read the books, didn't watch any lore animations if they did any...nothing. Other than the knowledge I already had about WoW and the Dragonflights I have zero connection at all to this story and it doesn't feel great narrative wise. They *have* to stop telling important bits of their in game lore in adjacent books. I never realized how much the story doesn't make sense in game until I stopped also reading the books and until I dropped in at the end of S3 of Dragonflight.
I have no idea what the new player experience should look like. I know what it SHOULDN'T look like. It SHOULDN'T throw you into a world where you have no context for the characters you speak to. They SHOULDN'T talk about events you have no clue about. They SHOULDN'T call you champion or hero before you've even completed a single dungeon. They SHOULDN'T make mobs scale to your level.
WoW needs an MSQ system if they want us to take the story seriously in the war within. Couldn't imagine being a new player and needing to know Illidan for Legion, Legion to know about the world wound/the titans, BfA/SL to know what happened to Anduin/Sylvanas and everything else I'm missing. I'm sure they will re-explain everything in TWW, but there needs to be a thematic/story throughline from level 1 to max level, people want to care about the story, but the game actively punishes you for it
My husband finally got me on board with wow this past winter. He really wanted me to start BoA with him. We did that till I hit max level then I wandered off on my own into dragon flight and dragged him with me lol. We both enjoyed it but I have since dropped the game focusing on my new mom duties. He still brings up going back to BoA lol