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Despite Turning 19, World of Warcraft Is Surprisingly Accessible To New Players | MMORPG.com
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Despite Turning 19, World of Warcraft Is Surprisingly Accessible To New Players | MMORPG.com
Despite having almost two decades of lore in World of Warcraft, let alone the lore of the whole Warcraft Universe, Kazuma had a surprisingly easy time jumping back into the MMO nearly 20 years after they first tried it out.
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They've also pushed the game to try and keep people subbed 12 months a year, rather than letting them come and go and not get burned out.
At least they've fixed things for people that want to play alts.
More recent expansions (Shadowlands) completely overhauled the new player experience by adding a tutorial zones. They may have expanded on this as this is when i left WoW for good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/wownoob/comments/z390bd/new_player_confused_about_starting_zone_quest/
And back in the Legion pre-patch ( someone please correct me if i'm wrong), the old quest system was revamped and streamlined a bit, some quests were removed and new quest hubs were added. I remember this quite well because i was still trying to complete my 'all zone quests' meta-achievement on my horde main (also this was around the time when the achievement system was being overhauled as well)- and i remember the quest overhaul screwed up players progress with this achievement if they hadn't finished before the change.
Even before Legion, past pre-expansion patches were screwing around with the talent trees, streamlining stuff, ect, basically making stuff more 'player-friendly'; which at the time, kinda felt like a slap in the face of everyone playing as we'd spent years learning how to play our characters the best we could.
The game to me never felt like it was hard to learn; even in the days of Classic; punishing sometimes yes(due mostly to bugs), difficult? ...eeeeeehhhh... that depended on how reckless and impatient a player choose to be.
But the game difficulty was never cruel on purpose; and it rewarded patience and teamwork.
These days i think the only way people can/will actually get the full WoW experience it was meant to be is by playing on a Classic/Balanced private server, because Retail just gives the player too much for doing nothing.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
They have made the game more accessible until you get to anything remotely challenging. The game beyond LFR / Heroic dungeons is incredibly toxic,gatekeepy, and unwelcoming to the average player. This is not a great game for people who just want to dabble in it for a little while unless you have a guild. The gear is far less accessible, if anything. You can get to about normal mode raid gear level without much friction, but if you want to get anything beyond that you have to deal with a pretty unforgiving and toxic group of players.
So basically, Blizzard took all of the old content, made it trivially easy, and then said that you had to slog through it anyway. A game that goes out of its way to be as boring as possible is pointless to actually play.
I think people forget who exactly the lead developer is. Ion has always been an anti-hardcore person. He has publicly admitted multiple times that he's hated the idea of needing to clear previous raid tiers to make it to current, saying that it 'breeds' toxicity etc. Same guy trying to champion personal loot across the board at all tiers, not just the casual tier and even going further to make it untradeable if you didn't have an ilvl higher in that slot (to prevent pressuring people to give up loot, his words). This is a 'seasonal' guy, not someone trying to create lasting systems. So the only way things are going to change is if he's not steering the ship.
Mess with the best, Die like the rest
I think your hatred of WoW is showing here. He changed his mind about personal loot. Personal loot is only in heroic/ normal dungeon groups now. You roll even in RF and Master Looter is back for people who want to enable it. They also changed the way trading works with gear to make it more lenient. They also are creating lasting systems now. That started with Dragonflight. Dragon Riding is staying in the next expansion. I get it; you hate Blizzard. The least you could do is move your arguments out of 2021.
You obviously didn't read what I said. I said Ion's view on this stuff and his reasoning. WoW devs have walked back on a lot of design choices over the years but it doesn't change how people in charge thing. You're listing a 'lasting system' that just recently got added in this very expansion. Does that mean the mission table was a 'lasting system' that was in the game for 4 expansions and now is magically gone from Dragonflight? Also not likely the leadership of one individual does not mean I 'hate' an entire company or franchise (please point me to a negative comment I've said about wow classic for instance since I hate all of Blizzard, I did admittedly hate DI but I dont think I'm alone in that). The things I criticize about WoW are because of one Individual, Ion, who has put himself on the record for trying to do the changes that either have happened and stuck (seasonal gameplay, I'm sure some people remember the days when they had to clear previous raid tiers in order to work their way up) or tried to change and walked back on (master loot and titanforging, yeah because that was a feel good system that they wanted to change but got too much backlash for). But keep trying to tie a dislike for one person's leadership equaling the 'hatred' of an entire company.
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Pretty mucho this
And for once, Blizzard did it right with the level squish and making it possible to level in any previous expansion.
Which was also a huge boost for players leveling up ALT's, as it's way more fun now taking a different leveling path with each character.
It's a problem with many MMO's, when after many years and expansions that increased the level cap, that having the majority of your playerbase sit at say level 120. It's a really daunting aspect for a player looking at having to level 120 levels practically alone to catch up.
Most developers often go the easymode route by just heavily increasing the XP leveling curve and that is in my opinion the worst fix for this, as it just turns leveling even more of a chore (even though it goes faster), as you quickly outlevel content/quests all the time, with rewards and gear becoming meaningless and thus killing the fun of leveling a character very quickly.
This approach pretty much only benefits a minority that likes to powerlevel an ALT to use at endgame, not new players and players who enjoy normally leveling new ALT's.
That is why most MMO's fail over time to get and retain new players.
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This may be indicative of a wider issue, are all MMOs now moving to a modern end game that is turning so many of? Gameplay devised to keep you playing every month, never ending grind? To me this goes beyond hardcore, we used to put the time in to make sure we were good to group with our mates or look good in a quest won outfit etc, now it seems to me the game is more like an employer who has a list of tasks for you to do every day when you log in.
This is the psychological addiction that is the foundation of The Tamagotchi, you have to log in every day. Nothing is going to cause burn out more quickly than finding your game is like having a MMORPG baby. I wonder, do the studios feel forced to go along this route? If others are doing it and they don't, it would be the equivalent of being the only MMO that does not offer the most addictive drug to play you can. Long term though this must backfire and it does make me wonder if this is a reason, a good one, for our more casual players just to bail.
At release, WoW felt like a cool bar that you were going into for the first time. You were a little nervous because you didn't know anyone, but it would be weird to not at least talk to a few people. The past few years, I've levels many toon in WoW without saying anything other than "TY" at the end of LFG dungeon.
It's the social ties that keep people coming back. I don't remember C'Thun's strat, but I remember my first kill and the jokes we made.
They've completely catered to the most dedicated raiders while ignoring everyone else.
Yea I was going to say something similar. As someone who came in late to the wow train it's actually a total mess for new bros. Not many people are willing to teach and your left googling all the 3 letter crap they say when you ask a question. Wow imo is far from accessible unless you want to just dip a toe in. If you are new and want to play raids or end game good luck. Not saying you can't do it but it's gated pretty hard.
I don't get upset they need to make money but if they would dial it back a bit on profit and focus on how to make it mutually beneficial. They may end up making more money with more people playing.