Why All New Players Quit WoW | Asmongold Reacts

[@LemanRussVanquisher]

I remember doing exactly what this dude did back during BFA. Leveling my first ever WoW character was the most profoundly lonely and frustrating experience I've ever had in a game. I can still remember being in Northrend and realizing I might well have been the only character on the island, gave me the feeling of being alone in a theme park, it was almost eerie.

[@grassygnoll3345]

Was like this back in TBC. I was new but had friends playing. Joined their guild and leveled pretty much solo so once I maxed I made a point of starting alts and getting new players in the guild and making a fuss to get them help leveling and geared. This also meant the Guild got bigger, players came and went but many stayed or, if they came back, made a point of finding us. That and the fact we'd give players cover from gank squads around Tarren Mill

[@Grivehn]

To be frank, even if there would be many people leveling normally and not just dungeon spamming, Northrend and Outland are the oldest zones at this point, with clunky quests and lots of travel time between them. Do it if you want to be thematic or ... actually roleplay in an rpg of course, but since most wow players these days go for efficiency, they dont even touch those old zones.

[@Nemes_memes]

Yeah thats something I've noticed about MMO's. Such a large part of the game is spent running around alone doing throw-away quests so you can get to the point where you can actually play with your friends. Kinda defeats the point of a Massively Multiplayer if your first 60 hours in the game are spent almost entirely alone.

[@Freestyle80]

uh huh u say thats lonely and then refuse to find a guild and will play max level as solo as possible while complaining how bad pugs are you people are insane

[@Evija3000]

I had so many issues with getting into the game back in BfA as well I hadn't even considered this one, but it's so true :D Other issues included being thrown around expansions while levelling without having any idea what's happening with the story, having no in-game guidance on what to do after levelling up, having to get a bunch of addons to be able to do any group content (didn't even have built-in mouseover, which is essential for healing) and pugs always assuming you're an experienced player and judging you like one. My brother is the only reason I got through everything.

[@lauraviijii]

The hostility of the community also turns new players away so quickly. My friend started playing, played with us for 1 night and the next day decided to try some alone. She got to her first dungeon, got to one that was already going so that she was alone in the spawn, but the first boss was not killed yet. She said that she is new right from the get go, tried to catch up, ran the wrong way and got yelled at, asked for help and got kicked off with 0 responses. Never touched a dungeon after that.

[@Greatlicht]

yeah i experienced that way too often back in days doing leveling alt in dungeons...Those scumbags are disgusting and i decided to give ff14 a 2nd shot and finally got into that game and i was able to enjoy leveling and players in dungeons was amazing and very friendly....2nd reason i play ff14 because devs was constantly updating every 2-3 months unlike blizzard that do update or patch once every 6 months to possible 1 year. ff14 still keep me playing the game even after 2 years since 2021 july that started with asmongold!

[@Nzothf12]

Its realy sad how toxic some people can be

[@shillnar]

Dungeon finder is a part of this problem aswell. its just easier to kick someone and in a few seconds there is a warm body to replace old one, chances the new guy already played wow few years, so hes doing well. If you are forced to find a group, get together, spend time traveling, then you passively make old players help new ones, because is much more efficient to teach someone already in the dungeon, then to go out and look for someone else. This is how games die. You make them easier, to appeal wider audience, hence it gets less rewarding, you fly through content, making it not memorabe, just time consuming, which makes you to try speed trough more, just to get to the promised "fun late game", which is leading to experience tediousnes more than fun. And guess what, when you stand at the end of the game, there is nothing to strife for. so you quit. this is why CLASSIC is played more and more, its why people make it even harder. THE JOURNEY is fun and rewarding.

[@thomasschopflin6317]

I still love WoW, but I hate its pugging experience. Unless you play with friends/guildies, it's either no communication at all in (lvling) dungeons if you're lucky OR a level of toxicity that completely puts a tender soul like myself off playing the game.

[@adamsmith6285]

@@shillnar Not really the dungeon finder is exactly the same in FF. It's 100% a player issue

[@virtualatheist]

So refreshing to see expert gamers who haven't forgotten that everybody has to start somewhere.

[@herocomplex9420]

I don't know about all of that, all I can say is that trying to come back recently (before DF) I had a good time leveling up, even pub raiding could have gone worse than it actually did. The problem was when I hit the limit of that. I could not find a guild, I could not find anyone that would allow me into mythic with them. I wasn't interested in paying to be carried. I know the game I played for many years starting in what is now known as classic. No one would even give me the time of day. After about 2 months of that I just realized there is a big club, I wasn't in it, I was never going to be in it. I'm never returning. My sole exposure to the game now is watching asmon...

[@jerome6519]

its unfortunate that this isnt the mainstream tho among those that are public figures i tried playing WoW i only enjoyed it for about a week when i was playing with my friend in a set party i tried it out solo with some strangers and it was the absolute worst online gaming experience ive ever had in all of my 21 years of gaming (im 24 for context) the people were horrible unhelpful to new players, and treated me like i should already know everything and should have had the necessary mods already installed meanwhile my FF14 experience was the exact opposite and ive been playing it religiously almost everyday for the past 4 years. World of Warcraft is a fun game no doubt but unless you have friends already playing, in my opionion the community makes it unplayable and an absolute drag for beginners

[@MorfsPrower]

You know in Warframe everyone helps the new people. Lots of lifelines and help if you simply ask. I go back to Earth missions every few months to see if anyone is there starting out, so I can give a few tips.

[@86Corvus]

Classic wow was superior because you either had what it takes to level and play your class or you were left in the barrens at lvl 20.

[@Shartmouth-Mcpoo]

@@86Corvusso true

[@darkstarvssuperstar7099]

As a new player who started during Dragonflight the game felt so empty in terms of other players. I barely saw someone else and talking to the was even rarer. It never felt like an MMO to me. The dungeon system also felt dull where no one talked and just ran through it expecting you to get the job done and leave ASAP. Retail WoW feels soulless compared to when I tried out Classic. It was such a large difference it didn't feel like the same game. I saw more players, I talked to more of them, we quested together. I actually felt like I was exploring the world with like-minded adventurers.

[@BokHog]

Dragonflight doesn't really start until level 70. I didn't understand that upon my return but you get there it all made sense. That is where 98 % of the players are. Level 70 basically starts a whole new game.

[@LetsBringPeace]

yea the game shouldn't be lonely until you get to 70. It's bad design.@@BokHog

[@tomphaa]

Pretty much my experience in a lot of modern games, especially MMOs. People don't want to inherently be super social in their dungeon runs so unless there is a really good reason to do that they at most say "hi" and "bye" at the beginning and end of the run. I mean there are people who are more social but they are pretty few and far between.

[@hackermanack3393]

Go play Turtle WoW and or Ascension; both are better than crap retail

[@jacobnash9755]

Wow uses to not have that system and you would have to form teams. Because it was hard to form teams this pushed players to help and teach new players because it wasn't so easy to replace them. The huge downside was that you had to be ready when a group happened to be forming. Low pop meant skipping many dungeons due to being ready for the next one before finding a group.

[@daltooinewestwood6380]

This gold salesman is a genius, set up shop right in the opening cutscene

[@daltooinewestwood6380]

@@LilBleachThaGod “as soon as you done with new inmate orientation come see me”

[@DJSIN00969]

I miss the ASHRAN war I want to see a world player and a large-scale war

[@Nick-rs5if]

Seeing that Chinese salesman made me laugh my ass off! 😂

[@museluvr]

... and a report is incoming if I see it. Those types are annoying as f*.

[@rustyhowe3907]

@@Nick-rs5if Same same, they've gotten more crafty since I left the game.🤣

[@FPSGamer222]

Personally, the community is the biggest issue for me. In BFA I made it to Heroic Ny'lotha, but people just don't seem to help at all. Like I get it, you are experienced and you want dungeons, raids, and BGs to run smoothly, I do too, some empathy would go a long way. People don't give an absolute fuck that you are new.

[@ripple123]

join a guild? usually guilds are amazing for new players

[@alexunitedstand2210]

😊😅

[@alexunitedstand2210]

😊 😅 😊

[@alexunitedstand2210]

😊😊 😊 😊😊 😊

[@alexunitedstand2210]

​@@jamesblack2187 😊

[@M0DIDDLY]

With how janky the leveling continuity is, I can really see how new players are confused. I was a longtime player and I was confused. The Horde Warchief changes like 4 times while leveling. I remember running into the throne room and seeing Sylvanus, Garrosh, and Vol'jin all instanced as the Warchief at the same time.

[@majormom357]

I don’t know why that’s so funny

[@cedgalvi]

thats not possible cause thrall stopped being warchief before cataclysm

[@M0DIDDLY]

@@cedgalvi I edited it, I mistook Vol'jin for Thrall

[@shonitsharma9274]

With games like elden ring you would have to be stupid to play wow.

[@gethriel]

​@@shonitsharma9274 sure, wow is junk these days, but elden ring is a dumpster fire.

[@Heetmaot]

I really liked the old system aswell. Where you had to go to different zones for better or worse mobs. Liked the challenge of fighting mobs a few levels higher. And the fear when walking through zones with mobs with skulls as level

[@chainsawkarate]

I remember as a low level (maybe around 15) going into contested zones and even sneaking into some Horde zones as an alliance member. I had to travel quite a bit to do that but the exploration and the feeling it gave was awesome.

[@georgemonet8187]

I hated that. It felt beyond cheap. Level is such a meaningless concept already and all stats are artificial, meaningless, arbitrary and capricious. A level 20 undead and a level 60 undead are EXACTLY THE SAME MOB except one was given more artificial meaningless stats by the devs.

[@Strider1Wilco]

That's such a lame way to see things

[@mmmMindo]

@@georgemonet8187 if you think that way you can abstract: wow mobs = furry pic hidden in my folders

[@jgaa5045]

Yep! I would go to zones 2-3 levels higher than me.

[@dailynewss6209]

Yeah, that's why i go always with the community oriented servers like Black Whisper and etc...

[@EmilyAliceTempest]

What are community oriented servers?

[@TrueEnderFootage]

@@EmilyAliceTempest something a new player will never know about lol

[@briannereese]

Have any suggestions? I’m new and need to find some friends lol! Lol

[@chocololz123]

and how would a new player figure that out

[@DuvalRypr]

@@chocololz123they wouldn’t. I’m new to WoW and they literally don’t care about people like me lol. All they care about is parsing and whatever. The gatekeeping in this game is disgusting… honestly the worst I’ve ever experienced. I started with Dragonflight but after I hit 70 I was pretty much forced to quit because I would always get kicked for asking mechanics or what to do/where to do in dungeons (I played prot warrior). I couldn’t even get started in raids because nobody would even help me figure out how to even begin raiding. I went to classic cause I heard it was easier and might be able to figure the shit out by myself if the community was just as shitty as retail. And honestly it’s been way better. People are more willing to help and explain things. But of course we will see how things go when I hit 60.

[@LunaProtege]

In FFXIV, the "Chosen One" thing works a lot as a stop gap measure; you have abilities that few possess, and that makes you the only one who can handle certain problems "for a time". After a time, they find solutions to those problems that don't require you; and by Endwalker, basically anyone could be sent to fight the battles you're in, but you're the strongest, and most experienced. Once you're in "Patch Cycle Endwalker" content, the quest you go on isn't even one you started because anyone had to, you went because "well, I am an adventurer", and its by coincidence that it unravels into something with greater implications for more people as time goes on.

[@thersandersm1363]

also EW explains a lot of the game systems and why they work the way they do. When you learn about about Azem and that you're basically a part of their soul, you understand why you're the warrior of light and why you're always ready to help or simply go exploring, because Azem was a person of action that didn't like to simply stand by.

[@ruily276]

@@masterpain7742 Ain't nobody going to read a whole library to understand the whole storyline.

[@christopherliang5192]

@@masterpain7742 MSQ can be played all the way to Endwalker in as little as a month, like Sakagucci did, and apparently is about 120 hours give or take. The 300 is because people have found other things in the game that are enjoyable enough to derail them from the MSQ. It means the game has depth that is worth playing and exploring. WoW has depth, but the game doesn't invite you to find it, it just funnels to the Endgame content so that the old players still have people to play with; designed for alt leveling rather than experiencing the whole game. You don't even get a chance to look at the "old" world that isn't the new expansion, and you're already at max level in the most boring way possible. You seem to just be rage-baiting for attention though, so I'll leave this here.

[@christopherliang5192]

TBF there are two canons for who the WoL actually is, but it is honestly irrelevant to because a new player wouldn't know unless they looked it up. One canon, is that the WoL is exactly the hero from FF14 1.0 who unlocked the echo prior to ARR, and was teleported into the future 5 years after the Calamity and would explain why he's so "powerful" in everyone's eyes; because he literally is the hero everybody was reminiscing about. The other more mainstream canon, is what most players will see, which is a random adventurer arriving in a starting city by coach who becomes the "Chosen one", and later reveals you're not actually all that special aside from skill and fast learning ability; and that there are plenty of people better than or equal to you; case in point job quests where you still need to learn and master skills from teachers.

[@prw56]

I just call it lazy writing, a catch-all explanation for why anything contrived happens in a story. Of course its handy to just say "you're the chosen one" to explain why a game character is so much stronger than everything else, or why they are able to do things that no one else can, but the more story a game has, the more of an issue that crutch can cause. Its not something that necessarily ruins a game or story, hell in the right context it's not even a detriment, but if there's a lot of story, its a often a big missed opportunity for creativity.

[@Celthor]

Back in 2004 when I started playing the social experience was so much different than it is now. I was thrilled to be in the world of Azeroth with other people from all over the country. My first character was a gnome warlock and I took every opportunity to stop and /wave at every other player I encountered along my journey, in the early levels. Those were the good ole days.

[@窃·格瓦拉]

@@filidhdeklend893 I agree with both of you.

[@bluemyst42]

I think it has a lot to do with servers. Back then your server was your world, you knew people and guilds had reputations. Now though, multiple servers are merged and the lines are blurred and everyone is just a blank face in the crowd. Teleport to instanced dungeon, tank clears as fast as possible, kill boss, everyone leaves. Theres no reason to talk to people anymore, no reason to remember people.

[@IcyNipz]

I have very fond memories of Diablo 2/WoW online back in early 2000's on dial up internet. Sucked ass loading it up but it was like no other game

[@vashe9]

Internet was a lot less toxic back in the day... we were between "geeks... that's all, more people, more assholes...

[@bigtabasco4660]

TL;DR below You have all identified issues. There are lots of symptoms that can be pointed out. But the root problem is the game design. Not that I would call Devs (or us) dumb-most of it looks good on paper. Blizzard (and we fans) were short-sighted in our view of making things better in game. These things I will say below are generalizations. So, if it wasn't YOUR experience, it doesn't matter. It had enough people experience it to ruin it for the rest. 1) "Hey! Let's make it easier to group!" Okay-turn raids from 40 to 25 or 10. That way, 40 people can figure out how to get noticed for their guild main raid/leet dood groups in order to squeeze it down to 25. The ones on the outs are disenfranchised and go looking for each other. The ones in the raid become "elitist jerks"-just like WoW's fearless leader. So we end up with parses, damage meters, etc., and all the toxicity that surrounds it. 2) "Make a LFG finder!" Okay-now the core player base doesn't have to be in a guild. They can now just log on and solo quests while waiting for groups. As the years go on, they get more and more isolated. (Because now you don't have to deal with those "jerks" in the guild-you find yourself not having to deal with ANYONE you don't like.) So people get nastier to each other, which causes even more division, etc. When you play with people you don't care about, you don't hold yourself to standards of decency and kindness. It becomes "screw this guy! that should be MY loot!"-usually with little reputation consequences. TL;DR- I am not here to offer solutions. My main point is that our problems stem from unforeseen issues in game design that have divided us. It led us to be more toxic and cynical about grouping or having the patience and time to work with each other and put in the effort to have HEALTHY relationships in a guild or otherwise. Making a game "easier" isn't always the best idea. (Case in point-look at all the folks flocking to "hardcore" Classic).

[@itsprobablynotbutter]

I was totally brand new to WoW and started a character from level 1 in Shadowlands. Not only lonely for what is supposed to be an MMO, but man is it a bit overwhelming. I accidentally started doing a quest line from the previous expansion at one point, and knowing my way around or how to find things felt impossible at times. I'm not new to MMOs or their general mechanics by a long shot, but WoW is daunting for the new player experience. I would stare at the maps and think "okay, how do I find anything other than a quest point?" I played through without doing a thing with crafting, nor does the game really care to show you anything about it. It seems like such a backburner thing, like they sat around and said "well, it's an RPG, it's gotta have crafting" and it was just thrown in there. Feels entirely insignificant. Once I hit level 60, I had no clue what to do or what I should be doing. I didn't feel any motivation at all to keep playing. I was doing the dungeon finder and as a Hunter/DPS, it was easy enough to just follow the lead of an experienced tank and not getting fussed at, at any point. But it felt.. empty? Like it wasn't the content I was supposed to be doing because there was no carrot on the stick, just the stick itself for me to swing around in a theme park of content that has no clear direction.

[@dennerrubio8237]

So, I was the "new player" who quit in 3months playing, I played in Shadowlands patch, leveling was very fun, I put 3~4 characters in max level, the map design/exploration is perfect, the big issue is the endgame, I don't have enough time to invest in raids, I liked mythics but the community was very toxic in M+, I really tried to make everything right but never was enough, there's no room to any mistake, the last thing I want to experience after a long day of work is going home and having to deal with people being toxic with me, the goal with playing games is to relax.

[@veppy4952]

I see your point, but doing content designed around not failing and doing something in a specific time window generally isn't something to be "relaxed" about lol neither is raiding. There are normal and heroic dungeons that are very easy though. But theres plenty of stuff you can do to "relax" with, pet battles, farming mounts, transmog, leveling alts.

[@reviewthereviewer7034]

Literally this. People are just entitled as shit. No time to play. Don't care about mistakes. It's a hyper competitive game mode, m+ . Try harder or fuck off

[@tapiir]

The key here is to join a guild that suits your playstyle.

[@Valvad0ss]

@@veppy4952 lmaoooo you are proving his point weirdo

[@burlesco-lx2wo]

@@veppy4952 yeah but the thing is she is actually trying that "hard and punishing content" and to learn that content you will definitely make mistakes but the community in wow is so unforgiving and toxic that you end up not trying the content and you stop enjoying the game, thats what its wow nowdays

[@Structureel]

I remember leveling in Vanilla and I was absolutely clueless. Not until level 55 did I finally meet someone who told me that tanking on a paladin with a horrible mix of prot and holy talents was not such a good idea. In fact, tanking on a paladin was a terrible idea to begin with. Point is, we learned to play the game and our classes over the course of months! It felt as if I was in Duskwood for several weeks before venturing on. And the community in the game was still pretty good, so once you found your way into a decent guild, there was help around whenever you needed it. Endgame wasn't the goal, leveling was the game.

[@christophersmith8848]

If Tanking on a Paladin is wrong, I don't wanna be right... Also it's apparently the way to go in Wrath, so, at least there's that

[@cyriell]

What christopher said low-med tier game should be instictive a paladin which when people hear about that in a game sense its a bulky dude with probably some healing behind it aka ideal for tanking, then it should tank not deal dmg or be a support, until people know what theyre doing then the game/meta can do whatever the fuck they want with the class

[@MPshadowfiend117]

I could never get into this game, mainly due to the treatment by other players and difficulty in progressing. I also hate how the game looks. Like all of the design gives me a headache.

[@albandrejaj]

God damn I remember traveling to a new place and it was a greattt experience.

[@nogitsune4452]

One of the benefits of FFXIV's storytelling I found was that everyone is expected to experience it themselves. Wherever you are in the main storyline, that is what's relevant. WoW moves on without you, Guild Wars 2 moves on without you, I thought I'd like seeing the game worlds move on and change and evolve, but it makes me feel so incredibly disassociated and even alienated if I'm not there to experience it myself.

[@serraramayfield9230]

Someone I knew spent time in WoW for over 10 years and in the final 2-3 years of his life, he quit playing. There was no sense of community left. They died having put time and energy into a game that didn't respect them anymore, and never allowed them in the late 2010s to form meaningful friendships.

[@Alpha_Synergy]

I had that exact feeling when I went to try playing Destiny 2. I could tell there was a ton of story there, with plenty of engaging characters and content; but firstly, most of the really good stuff was pay walled, at prices that far exceed being reasonable for just one game; and second, I felt completely lost in the story until I watched a nearly 3 hour video on the lore of the Destiny franchise. The biggest example of this is they start by introducing the idea that this one character is dead and no one wants to take their place, but barely a few hours later I'm in a mainline mission in one of the open worlds and the dead character's voice pops up as if they never died. I can understand that sort of thing in the more scripted content or the legacy stuff, but not for the stuff a new player is meant to run into during normal gameplay.

[@johnynoway9127]

​@@serraramayfield9230im imagining the person just dying on the gamer chair as their character dies too

[@serraramayfield9230]

@@johnynoway9127 he quit more than 2 years before his death

[@Leafycoke]

You’re also the chosen one in Guild Wars 2 but at least you developed into “The Commander” character relatively early.

[@DarKSeing]

I'm a new player in WoW, and i'm not even lvl 20 and started to feel how bad leveling is... Scailing is the biggest problem for me, feels like old content isn't relevant and all they want you to do is buy the latest expansion... it doesn't feels like an adventure

[@OunasAnousFan]

Yeah. Definitely agree with that. I eventually swapped over to turtle wow. Been pretty good so far.

[@roguebogey]

As a returning player who started back in Cata, it's just so overwhelming coming back after all these years and not knowing anything about the recent story or anything. It's just too much to take in at once.

[@toros7983]

Not knowing about the last 2 expansions story and continuing in this fresher landscape with Dragonflight is probably a good thing, especially if you started in cata. You left dragons and now you've come back to them. I myself have not picked up WoW again yet and nothing besides the old talent tree return would draw me in unless something fresh or gritty was added to the story. Also I'm not keen on how friendly all the leaders are with each other, feels like every cutscene should end with a a F.R.I.E.N.D.S credits.

[@adamking5563]

The old talent trees are back.

[@Gravewhisper]

I think the huge difference between how WoW and FF14 handle you being the chosen one is in how the other characters interact with you. In WoW, you might Travel with Jaina or Thrall and you meet all of these heroes, but THEY are the heroes! You are the champion whose name they can't remember and you get to stand in the background of the cutscenes where they do the talking. In FF14, they don't voice act a lot of interactions between you and the main characters, so they can call you by your name. You're not just their chosen champion, you are also their close personal friend. And that is the biggest difference. You are arguably much more of a chosen one in FF14 than you ever were in WoW, but you are also much more connected to the story on a personal level. In WoW it's rare for other characters to even acknowledge all the times you personally helped them before, where in FF14, cutscenes will change if you do side content, because everyone remembers what you did for them and with them. And honestly, I don't see why this couldn't work in WoW.

[@atsorach1801]

Because in wow you are not the choosen one, you are one champion of many others. Like in real wars we had many heroism acts that a lot of people were in, but just some major names are remembered by the history. In ffxiv you are the choosen one because that is how it is. One big example in Ice crown Tirion call all the players champions. In ffxiv when you do something with other players you are the choosen one and they are merely your adventurer friends (the exception is shadowbringers in two situations the other players are called champions because are summoned from other dimesions. But wow have indeed a problem with some characters acting like you are just a new piece of shit forgetting that you helped save the world in the past expasion

[@xsoultillerx]

absolutely agree. hell, guild wars 1 & 2 does it like FF14 as well albeit to a lesser scale in the former's case and while your allies & comrades refer to you by your rank in cutscenes (as you're their leader/commander/boss) they do mention you by your character's name in letters. the only times it gets weird is the interactions with aurene because while you're practically a surrogate parent to her she still refers to you as her "champion".

[@chuckbass7276]

I've never played with anyone that really cared about the story in my 10 years of playing. FF has more people invested in it it seems. To most it doesnt matter.

[@chiekokurokumo]

There are a few things... #1 - FF14 makes you do the MSQ unless you pay extra for boosts, so anyone who is open to enjoying a story will feel invested in the journey from nobody-ness to greatness. #2 - You don't start FF14 as a special chosen one. There are others with the echo and the Scions are capable. Even going into raids or dungeons, NPCs tells you to gather friends to raid with. But over time, you are able to learn how special the WoL is. #3 - As mentioned before, your character is literally in the scenes interacting and emotion with the other NPCs. #4 - By the end, the steady increase in power scaling and the growth of skills and abilities over time makes ur L90 class feel pretty good. So, you do feel achievement over time. I tried OSRS, SWOTOR, LOTRO, EE, GW2, and WOW. GW2 I have enjoyed so far. I dropped out of WOW after reaching a prison cell in BFA. For me, I enjoy story and I had this feeling like I had entered some narrative midway. It was hard to care. I also don't feel attached to the character model that represents me in game. But I hope to spend a bit more time in the free trial and see whether it gets better.

[@Gravewhisper]

@@chiekokurokumo sadly, the free trial of WoW is an absolute joke. You get to level until lvl 20, wich is nothing since by that time you will only be about a third of the way through BfA and really haven't experienced any of what players do at max level.

[@mirthenemrys]

As a person who was played WoW on and off since The Burning Crusades that part about feeling weaker hits me the most. This was a sad side effect of when they squished not just the levels, but also all the expansions. Where no matter where you went the mobs would be the same level as you(with some exceptions). Playing before those major changes you would start out killing mobs your level or close to it... ding you leveled... those mobs stayed what they were before. So say you hit level 10 while killing some level 9 mobs. Those mobs are still level 9 and you are now more powerful in comparison to those mobs you were just killing. This is when things left you feeling more powerful as you leveled. Yes, you could skip around back then, and move into new zones when you were around the correct level, leaving you close to or a bit below the level of what you were killing if you wanted to keep things more challenging. However for other players, especially newer ones, they could keep questing with side quests and such and start to out level things. Then they could move into the next zone and still feel powerful and gaining more so with each level. Of course all that went away once you no longer had to progress via the original release timeline. This of course was needed due to just how long WoW has been running and how many expansions have come along. For a new player to start at level 1, and do 'vanilla' 1-60(58 to hit outland), and then for 10 levels each after that in each of the expansions which is at 9 total now, and would have led to having to level from 1 to 140 most likely if not for the level squish... yeah that would be insane for new players to face today. However, that lost feeling of being more powerful as you leveled is something i wish could/would be addressed. We went from players being able to set their own leveling difficulty pace, to being set to a very strict single difficulty pace. Some players(new and old) are just fine with this new pace, others find it to be too difficult or just off putting as its rather counterintuitive to gain levels but be less powerful as that happens.

[@ekscalybur]

This. Level scaling has never been anything but a net negative to anything it's been added to. The heirlooms existence proves this, because if your gear doesn't level with you, as you level up you get WEAKER. What happens when you level your alts with heirlooms? You never take them off, the gear you get as you level doesn't compare to the heirlooms except in some rare specific cases and even then after a few levels, you drop that gear and replace it with..... the heirloom you tossed into your bag. All this for what? You can choose what order you do zones? Zones you already know so well you can complete them blindfolded? The new player doesn't care what order they are done in. This 'freedom' also kills another part that new players struggle with, the games narrative becomes a convoluted disjointed mess. WoW 2 was needed 10 years ago.

[@JeffCaplan313]

Kinda feels like real life. We used to use mobility as a way of finding new challenges when we outgrew our environment, but now with the NWO and culture creep, everything is the same.

[@paulw5039]

Level scaling is the exact reason I will never return to WoW, or for that matter any MMO with level scaling. Some of the most exciting and rewarding MMO experiences for me were when I finally levelled up enough to be able to survive in an area or beat a mob that previously spanked me.

[@JayTor2112]

The level scaling can be turned off once you level a character to 60 if BFA, if I remeber correctly.

[@pleiades0000]

Level Scaling alone pushed me away from Diablo IV, hate this bullshit.

[@Kendomendo]

I started leveling up a tank in s2. I mainly played M+ with random groups. Within 2 id´s i experienced 3 times that other people in the group get insulted hardly because they made a mistake. Yesterday while running another ones key, i didnt went the "perfect" route and made a mistake (i knew the strat i just made a mistake) at one boss and got insulted so badly that it literally stole all my motivation to play the game. Some People expect everyone to play so perfectly like if their life was on the line its so frustrating. I know its not the majority and that there are kind people and maybe its because of me but that really ruins the experience for me. I guess ill go back to single player games.

[@NuchiAsaki]

There are plenty of games that aren't like that. FFXIV actually punishes players who do that.

[@codysellers4151]

It’s why I stopped being a tank back when I played, got tired of being berated over a game. lol

[@AkamoriArt]

I was tanking a random dungeon once, flawlessly, I might add, and was kicked for looting a trash mob.

[@williamrussell83]

Exactly what happened to me as well. I know what you mean.

[@toneylol]

I liked M+ and also quit the game because I couldn't be arsed with people having a meltdown when you lost

[@dimdavid897]

I left the game because I couldn't stand the aggressiveness of the people who made raids, insults, threats and even death wishes, nobody did anything to show me where I was failing so I simply gave up and went to another mmo that was more friendly with new people

[@abiecherry]

Get a guild ?

[@derpzone7425]

WoW is the worst case of any MMO with that. literally nothing but elitists flaming you for everything, its the same reason i finally quit havent touched it since BFA.

[@golvmoppski]

@@derpzone7425 every mmo got toxic people, its not just a wow thing...seen it everywhere

[@h.benali8304]

Welcome to gaming, every game on this planet is ridden with toxic people. League, CSGO, Valorant, WoW. They're all the same

[@cynicalgothbrit2352]

@@abiecherry I find it hard to justify getting a guild when in 2 months my sub runs out and I don't want to play anymore... There just needs to be better mechanisms in the game that encourage positive random encounters GW2 is able to do that FFXIV is apparently able to do that from what I've heard so why can't wow?

[@NutTheft]

Asmon's absolutely right. I was considering playing the current WoW expansion again after my last experience being Burning Crusade / Classic Wow, but when I started looking into it, it felt like I'd need to invest months of studying just to understand what's going on. And considering that everything seems convoluted and that every mechanic builds on another one, it would feel like I'd be the odd duck out for not having the stuff already.

[@raptorxrise5386]

I can definetly see how thats the case. I started playing wow recently but that only worked well thanks to the fact that i am playing wiht friend who have played the game for a while and can help me with stuff i dont understand. That way wow is a lot of fun but sadly that isnt an option for a lot of people.

[@urdrenn]

same! wanted to try dragonflight aswell, but not being there from the start missing everything, got me doubting as I would have to catch up on so much new systems, etc it demotivated me.

[@ahkira1041]

@@urdrenn same here

[@mikeparker7631]

Brand new gear in the new expansions easily outpaces what you spent the entire last expansion acquiring. The new expansion sucks though...the new flight mechanic is so convoluted and difficult...and you HAVE to use it to get anywhere.

[@raptorxrise5386]

@@mikeparker7631 Lol. Dragonflying is hard? You either dont have all the glyphs in which case i would agree or its just a skill issue. Once you get all the glyphs its so nice that going back to old flying feels horrible.

[@sumoslamer180]

Abilities do automatically go into your bar, but if you do the 'Exile's reach' start then they won't and you will get a tutorial pop-up that tells you to click on the book icon - notice the gold lines around the abilities which indicate the ability isn't slotted in, and here, a fancy little animation to show you how to drag the ability to your action bar. I'm assuming he has tutorials off and that's why he didn't see that.

[@jesusflower8519]

came down here looking for someone else who knew what they were talking about tyvm

[@xandermichael836]

This guy lacks any genuine knowledge of the game, he's worse than a new player. I started playing MMOs of this starting at the end of BFA. I had no clue what I was doing, and exiles reach was amazing was an awesome tutorial.

[@ohbother1801]

Yeah, I noticed this pretty early. I remember coming back to play dragonflight for a week or two before I would get bored of it. The tutorial spam is real. It was extremely annoying for a returning player. So yeah, this guy definitely forgot to turn tutorials back on.

[@messybuttons7525]

Ya . Doing a new player play through with tutorials off kind of defeats the purpose.

[@michaela1528]

I’m a new player and abilities have never automatically went into my bar

[@ZorroVulpes]

I don't understand why people think Chris Metzen can fix this. You can have the most beautifully crafted story of all time and it won't fix all the gameplay flaws.

[@minorantagonist7090]

The remark at the end I really relate to. When I was solo leveling as a new player when MoP was out, I got to level 80 and I really wanted to do icecrown citadel because I'd been reading the quests and they were all directing me there. I was lucky enough to find some level 90s in my guild who were willing to do it for kicks and I thought it was really cool, but young me might not have stayed with WoW if that hadn't happened.

[@disadadi8958]

14:00 this did NOT happen with previous leveling system that had no scaling. You got above the level of the enemies in that zone, it got easy, you finished it, and you moved on to a harder zone. It was brilliant and worked well, modern system is very bad in comparison. That fixed the issue talked about at 17:20 too. Previously you were the same level as everyone else questing in the same zone, and could do the same quests and keep going the same intended track or sequence of zones that fits your level. STV -> cape -> plaguelands etc. Now people around you can be vastly different level with different tracks they want to quest through that wasn't possible previously. Also world pvp while leveling has been ripped away entirely. I remember fighting hordes every once in a while during my time leveling up, but now the chances are that they are significantly higher or lower level than I am while in the same zone, if I ever happen to see anyone in the first place...

[@matheuswagner5198]

It didn't worked well, let alone it was brilliant. Before scaling you always ended up outleveling the zone you're in before finishing the quests, so you either continued on the same zone until you finish the quests which was inefficient and at some point the quests and mobs would simply stop giving you any XP, or you left the zone unfinished and went somewhere else, which felt bad. I started playing the game in Legion, before scaling was introduced to leveling, so this is what I've experienced as a new player on the pre-scaling leveling, and I had problems with that. The second issue was that the leveling was way too linear and formulaic, the order of zones and expansions you used to went through was mostly the same, so in the end, it got pretty repetitive. Nowadays you have way more freedom to level wherever you want. Now, I'm not saying the scaling is a perfect system that made leveling much better and superior, many of the reasons are listed and talked in the video already, which I agree with most, is just that people have this false idea that the leveling in retail was so much better before scaling and how everything was fun and you had real progression. It wasn't as good people made it to be. The main problems with leveling weren't solved with scaling, scaling helped with some like making leveling less repetitive by giving freedom of choice of which zone and expansion you choose (which by the way is kinda killed by forcing new players to go through BfA, but anyway...), but also created many others.

[@ekscalybur]

@@matheuswagner5198 You NEVER played through a zone and outleveled it so much that you stopped getting any XP. So that part is just a lie. The only time that even becomes a possibility is when leveling with heirlooms, which is decidedly NOT a leveling issue.

[@TheMisterNebo]

Biggest issue is the feeling of missing out until you're level 70 because nothing matters until 70. If they can somehow reward levelling, so that people don't miss out - e.g. you may receive valor by doing low level dungeons, so you end up with 20K valor at level 70 if you take your time, then that would make for a much more fun levelling experience. Now, there's literally zero point in levelling - it's all about being 70 ASAP (pref in less than a day) and skipping everything less than a +2 so you can upgrade your gear.

[@thockyslush]

i think hardcore has shown us this sentiment is correct. feeling invested in leveling can be some of the literal most engaging and fun content WOW has to offer and almost every time we do it it’s a mad rush to max level where i’m simply annoyed some of the content is taking so long rather than enjoying it

[@haven6455]

idk I think at 70 nothing matters either since the gear is about to be irrelevant in a couple of weeks. i been leveling characters to farm old content for collectibles > gearing my character because why waste my time getting BIS if BIS is going to be worse to the new mythic dungeons. I've had wow for a very very long time, didnt play it much except in: WOTLK, Shadowlands, and now again i got membership 8 days ago for dragonflight. I don't remember in wrath but at least in Shadowlands my biggest issue is the expiration on your gear is relatively short. It'd be fine if it was comparable but no it's just irrelevant in comparison and your damage is significantly shot. Levels, transmog and collectables are forever, gear is only some months. I've played a lot of mmos and this is my biggest complaint.

[@NemisisRecords]

How would that affect new players though? They won't even know what any of that stuff means until they reach max.

[@siriusblack7714]

Thats a really good points. You are right they should let you earn things like valor as your lvl

[@ChinnuWoW]

Even if they reward you, the experience would be the same. It would still be just as boring.

[@MooCow8140-e1w]

Yeah but I missed the fact that you actually had to walk to each dungeon and then sit and teleport your buddies in. That really brought in some wholesomeness to running a dungeon and you had to actually have coordinated people with you.

[@georgemonet8187]

I don't miss that at all.

[@Ezbee.Alexander]

I had a similar experience. The second class I tried was a Mage. Levelling as a class which had such low survivability nearly made me leave the game completely. I met a few people who were nice and helped me level and do dungeons, and now I still play helping as many people as I can, since that's what made the game enjoyable as a newcomer and makes the game enjoyable for me now.

[@TheKonkkis]

Mage has one of the strongest if not the strongest survivability in the whole game.

[@sithwarrior]

​@@TheKonkkis not when you're learning the game or not playing the preferred spec of the season

[@DvanderPluijm]

You point out something that can be detrimental to a new player's experience as well: the chosen class. Some classes are, dare I say it, insanely easy to level with, either because they have pets that can hold aggro and help dps stuff down, or they have good survivability options like having a big hp pool and have self saves/self heals. For me, mage has also been an absolute pain to level. To be honest, though I'm a big druid fan, for me the most levelled class is warrior (either fury or arms), because it just 'rolls' through the whole levelling experience. So, of course I feel that new players should of course have all options available to them, but maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of indication of how a class would play and how difficult it might be for someone new to the game/genre to play it/understand it. Like 'hunter, recommended class for players new to the game' and then maybe even with a suggesiton of which spec to use lateron, and 'mage, difficult class for starting players'. Or, maybe even give people a chance to play with a class for a short time, like in a practice hall, before choosing. I think wholly new players would really benefit from something like that.

[@michaelbrewer2411]

Just finished getting my mage to 70 yesterday and was terrible game play. I basically spammed time walking as PVE leveling is so slow and im sitting and eating after every pull.

[@Drop007]

Mage has one of the easiest lvling lol skeel issue

[@mommabee5138]

The main issue I faced during games like these extremely fun with friends ton of time cruncher if you've got nothing to do story, character's and everything about the game is great.. - The community though, is what pushed me away, my first experience was going through a dungeon by myself after months of pushing myself to do it (thing's that require alot of focus and are 1 time no respawn stress me out extremely easily) So upon entering, I had did my best to understand the dungeon but the people I was going with randomly, were just rushing it, and if I fell behind Id get yelled asking if I was afk for trying to search for loot cause im a loot goblin interested in every shiny object an enemy drops because I wanna know what it is. The entire team threatened to report me, and instead kicked me calling me a bunch of vulgar names, telling me to uninstall, and many other things. after that, I entirely quit. it drained all fun, excitement, hell even motivation to pick up the game, cause why should I go through dungoens and raids if people gonna be so toxic towards new players lmao.

[@lordcrekit]

it's not always like this I see lots of groups that are great or helpful. But you never know what you're going to get.

[@alvaromneto]

It's almost always like this, WoW community is absolute trash and really the major reason the game has been in a slow decline for years now

[@ntquyminh]

@@lordcrekit Can you give an example of a great/helpful group that a newbie can join?

[@WorldWalker128]

That was a problem I had even just playing back when the first Destiny game was new(ish). Since then I mostly play single player games. No one ever seems to want to take to the time to actually stop and LOOK at a place even if they're on the same level or LOWER than you. They just RUNRUNRUNRUN straight through it. I like to actually explore my environment a bit even if the game is essentially a railroad storyline. I'll look at the sky and general background. I'll stop and check out the flora and fauna. I want to be immersed in a world that I'm supposed to be role-playing in, not be a speed-runner. That just sucks a good chunk of the fun out of it and a lot of modern games aren't much fun to begin with.

[@diedfrombored5295]

You have to find a good group they aren't all like that, i've found so many solid groups that I end up becoming good friends with people and we ran dungeons for like 30 levels together. Some people are toxic to new players, the people that are toxic are NOT good at the game so don't put any stake into anything they say, they're probably 15 year olds that take themselves and the game too seriously. WoW has a learning curve, anyone who is good at the game is going to help new players, I always do but also keep in mind there are a LOT of people playing servers they aren't geographically supposed to be playing i've had a lot of illiterate people that either don't understand english while playing on an english server which makes them impossible to interact with, or with their broken english will be difficult to deal with.

[@khatdubell]

You can't underestimate the effect of ilvl here. A large part of why he feels weaker is because his gear hasn't changed and it scales badly the higher level he gets.

[@V2ULTRAKill]

The biggest thing causing this is the exp rate change for dragonflight Making leveling scale straight to 60 for df instead of keeping it to 50 and the shadowlands completely fucked the gear loop the current system was balanced around

[@MrHGravity]

I introduced someone who was really invested into getting into videogames, but by all rights was completely new to them. I obviously didn't start with wow, it took a long time to build up to it. But there is SO much you take for granted in just common game knowledge that you inherently apply into other games to get a jump start in understanding them. I was worried about this person knowing how the spells worked, where to go in the world, professions, dungeon running, etc. etc. What I SHOULD have been worried about was, "How do I move my...view thing?(camera)" and, "How can I hit that thing? (clicking on the target to select it)." Obviously this is about a new player to wow, not a new player to videogames. But what I really want to highlight is there is so much this individual wouldn't even think of that would be a hurdle to a new player if he's a decade old veteran. I can imagine even if you're listening to all the text, it's extremely disorienting going from exile's reach to orgrimmar and then BFA so god damn quickly. And running a dungeon for the first time? Forget about it, not only will you be completely lost, but then the sweatiest, whiniest players on the planet will throw a the biggest bitch fit of all time.

[@Salerias]

14:24 The difference is that you get stronger in the same zone with the old system. If I switch from Durotar to the Barrens is that at the start I have more trouble then when I am in that zone for an hour. I get stronger and when I switch the mobs are harder again. That is also the reason I can go back to a hard Elite quest when I am 10 level higher and I can kill the mobs easier. If the Elite mobs would scale with me I would make no difference or would be even harder

[@ripple123]

there should be some sort of newbie guilds that new players are automatically added to like in Eve Online filled with other newer players and more experienced players who don’t mind helping

[@lefourbefromage]

There is a feature where experienced player can join to help new players. I got a popup one day asking me if I would like to help and bam a new channel

[@saerman980]

The difficulties on both games are literally worlds apart though, yes, pun intended. I dont think WoW needs or deserves something like that.

[@thesupreme8062]

Thats a thing in turtle wow and its great

[@loatist]

Like every private server does this and it blows my mind Blizz doesn't have a counterpart in the main game.

[@Endoken]

While I think its not always useful the Novice Network in FFXIV is a good example of just pushing newer people and sprouts. Also the Mentor system for the 5% of people who actually want to help new people with the roulette system is pretty good.

[@gavingustave4652]

The "your mobs got tedious" bit I understand especially starting as a rogue and constantly dying 😂. However, I eventually understood my classes tools and I still didn't really kill things too fast

[@TheLewisScott]

I’ve levelled most classes over the past few years from 1, some through levelling and I remember I picked Rogue and Outlaw which for me is the coolest rogue fantasy was awful for so many levels cause it basically was a bunch of cc and then like 2 damaging abilities. Switched spec and it was way better but as a completely new player I would have just quit.

[@realmothbuterfli]

Rogue was BY FAR the worst levelling experience for me in wow (I did all classes) lower damage than a holy priest and about as tough as an old dusty cheeto, any random mob sneezing on me would take a tenth of my health bar. Fuck rogue. Awesome endgame though.

[@oscargallman4178]

@@debatinghealer it’s also because Combat spec is far superior to Outlaw spec! Outlaw made me hate rogue because there was no longer a fun sword spec to play.

[@Angelfyre.]

In Classic WoW as a 21 Blood Elf Wizard I was getting stomped in Deathholme and didn’t want to remain in the Ghostlands. As a new player I did a lot of exploration in Silvermoon and found the portal to Undercity completely by accident, I went to Tirisfal Glades and found it was 1-2 shotting everything I came across and found it a nice break of pace to the slow sluggish spell tanks of the Ghostlands. Eventually going into Silverpine Forest doing all the quests I came upon and now I’m in the Hillsbarad Foothills finding it to be similar to the Ghostlands but I’m several levels higher than before. Now I plan to go back to Deatholme and finish defeating the bosses there. Classic WoW just feels like it’s designed to make you feel more powerful with each level and not weaker. I haven’t played Retail to know for sure but I gotta say Classic is too addicting right now to try Retail which everyone complains about

[@timgibney5590]

Exactly. However, it got harder at the same time. Remember roaming into red rock mountains and getting jumped by a 3 party Orc 3 levels above you! You felt powerful but challenges kept coming where you needed to have gren not gray gear by level 18 and to gang up in parties. It forced you to be social

[@Crovaify]

Yeah, play classic as much as you can. Blizz gonna kill classic in 2024 with cata, so the time is short

[@nicholasellis4597]

Late comment, but Ghostlands is brutal for an early-game zone compared to most others. Enemy density is very high and there are lots of mobs that can easily gang up on you.

[@CLASSiv04]

New player checking in: I got stuck outside the gate in the first dungeon because my teammates were zooming and I wanted to look around.

[@aspannas]

@@deeznuttes9340 not in ffxiv lol

[@lowochi]

I recall trying out draenei, I wanted to be a healer because I like buffing others, so ofc I picked priest. At this time they still had the old starting zone. My BF made a new acc so we could play together, he has played since the beginning. He kept telling me that this current experience wasn't how WoW was, since we spent time running back and forth so often. The guy in the vid was really good at describing how I felt. If I hadn't had the help from an experienced player I would've never been able to clear the starting zone. I managed to play for another month and then quit when it was time to renew the subscription.

[@ramencakes5196]

Game is trash anyway leveling isn't even fun in dragonflight every quest I did was me just flying around to kill one person to just fly back to turn in rince and repeat I quit dragonflight the 2nd day and turned off auto renew

[@dragonballptkjr.3922]

@@ramencakes5196 i think u played the wrong game if you really thinking that. vanilla-wotlk all had mid quests which mostly felt pointless and where the same. Nowdays you interact with the whole story if you doing quests and you feel like only because of u the story is even moving forward. I remember back then how many times i got bored and just broke up all my quests to switch to a another area. And u know what? It doesnt even felt like i skipped the story. Which is a huge issiue for a game which they glady fixed

[@Xnate13X]

I felt alone in the game back in the day with the 7 day free trials. Everything felt so lonely and each time I tried playing the game I felt so lost and there was nobody around. I ended up just going back to RuneScape back in the day, every time.

[@spacestation13nerd50]

@Fauch2ouchjust brcsyse you suck at RuneScape and suck at setting personal goals doesn’t make it a bad game. Actually if anything it’s kept the most consistent player base since it’s creation.

[@Jdkieddj]

@Fauch2ouch WoW would give anything to have the interactive player base that RS has. Stay salty chode boi.

[@cannedsquasher5923]

​@Fauch2ouchyes that is why I play WoW.

[@MrMW3tricks]

@@spacestation13nerd50perfect example of toxicity from the WoW edge lord elitist.

[@Brother-Caliber]

Forgot to mention that for new players, you’re forced to play exiles reach -> BFA on every character until one reaches level 60. I had a buddy try the game, after exiles reach (which is absolute brain rot) they’ve had just about enough and never played again

[@DOSFrost]

Many of these issues were issues I brought up in the wow video that praised wow's leveling. Especially about how the leveling felt good at the beginning but felt like a slow slog when you get around the middling levels towards the latter levels.

[@Kadash10]

I had the idea of how to solve this when they first announced the idea of Chromie Time. I said back then that it just wasn't good enough. The correct thing to do with Chromie Time is to create a Caverns of Time - like hub that had scenarios that summed up the expansions stories, and had the new player experience being going through that place. 1-10 is learning about your race/faction, 11-20 is about your class and the class/faction leaders, 21-25 is vanilla, 26-30 is TBC, 31-35 is Wrath, etc. until you get to 60, where the Caverns of Chromie or wherever would get attacked by whomever the current xpac baddie is for the current expansion, all the timelines break down and you do an npc filled story raid to teach the player how raiding works and then bam, the new player is all caught up and ready to go out into the World of Warcraft and if they want to go and experience the full story of the summaries they just did and collect stuff then they can, or they can go forward into the new expansion. Is it perfect? Hell no, but it's waaaay better than what we have right now.

[@Max-dv1kq]

decent take on it imo, the thing is wow will never be the game it was before since the whole chromie time stuff has been added, new players wont experience the whole process like starting in durotar as a lvl 1 orc and becoming a soldier of the horde who gets send into the barrens doing all there is there and afterwards proceeding into the questzone that follow by lore and reading through questlines every step from beginning to end feels like this journey you head on..nowadays i cant even imagine what new(er) players have to go through to understand every concept evolving around the questing process in itself starting in bfa and going into sl completely brakes the whole immersion and thats also why the new allrounder starting zone exists..to not confuse new players as much for everybody wanting to start this game in 2023, get yourself 1-2 friends that are already playing this game (+ are good, have decent rio, rating or raiding achievments) and learn from them -> level a character together and let them teach you everything else don't start this game youll only b disappointent by your inabilities to do dmg or whatsoever

[@DarkAztaroth]

I had a friend that wanted to play wow again, they quit due to chromie time and current leveling. Changing expansions through an npc and having limited dungeons depending on chosen expansion and not seeing all the world as they progressed through it and getting a feel for the world again, the quick leveling and meaningless progression/professions as they're expansion locked with the enemy scaling made it a very awkward, unnatural and diluted experience compared to what they remembered from wotlk and pandaria, not to mention even rare mobs not dropping anything interesting for them and everything being quicker and better in dungeons. They ended up spamming dungeon and switching expansions every few dungeons to change things up a bit till level 60 on 2 characters and quit as they reached dragonflight as they didn't care to pay 50$ for just 10 more levels of that 'content'. Hard to sell them on endgame content they're not familiar with when the rest of the game itself isn't appealing before then, they didn't get attached to the world or their character. Telling an unfamiliar player that ''You can play infinitely scaling dungeons to obtain scaling gear'' and ''you can do a long 3+hour long dungeon'' to farm better gear does not have the same feeling as when people got invested into the world first and then had the option of doing these things on top. They don't give a shit about any of it.

[@jacobmawyer4229]

@@Max-dv1kq questing is hardly even relevant until 60 currently. better off doing dungeons for leveling. it sucks cuz it makes the world feel so small. you just sit in town and que

[@alex-suciu]

the whole chromie thing is plain stupid. I started playing wow a while ago, for the first time, mostly for the storyline, as I was unfortunate to play it back then. well, guess what. it turns out it's not quite the way I thought it's gonna be, like doing quests for each of the xpac, unlocking those cutscenes etc and go through each of them in order. NOPE, you have to go to the freaking chromie and choose a "timeline" and even with that it's not quite the same. classic is 1000x better than this mashing buttons type of game, even without those cutscenes in it.

[@xiphosmaniac]

this idea will work in other games too, like destiny. damn. Just run a "Simulation" of past events, allowing you to retcon them out the game to save space/remove janky code, and replacing them with a quick summary you can play through so you can get the jist of the story even though you werent around originally.

[@jameszoeller1517]

I’ve always felt that the best way to improve the level experience while questing would be to encourage players to group up. There ought to be experience bonuses to being in a party of similarly leveled players.

[@Brassfinz]

I think Vanilla was by far the best at encouraging group play in open world content. Players grouped up organically because the open world was actually dangerous and many areas were just too difficult to solo, even at the appropriate level. It just felt more natural and cooperative.

[@deaconfrost796]

@@Brassfinz so true! questing was fun because it was so brutal. I fall asleep with retail questing. its too damn easy and boring.

[@Mick0Mania]

@@Brassfinz I tried out pirate vanilla servers (before official classic) very very briefly, and THIS was my experience from the get go. Even in lvl 1, opportunities to group up with people against mobs are there, and people will be genuinely thankful that you helped tank a mob they accidentally pulled (which happened very often, and was a legitimate threat). Made me realize what made WoW so special and what the modern version has lost (as I initially tried out the modern version and hated the barren overworld and mundane leveling that felt like playing a bad single player rpg.)

[@Jaquan018]

I feel like the issue here is also that the gear doesn't exactly match up with how fast you progress. The Exile Reach gives out a pitiful gear for what's essentially level 10 character. It does become a bigger problem once you leave it though as while zones now scale to your power level the gear only scales in BfA zones. I spent 15 additional levels in Belf zone (since I genuinely like it) and gear I got as rewards was worse than random drops. Had to return to the plot just so I could have some on curve gear.

[@GholaTleilaxu]

Like in Guild Wars or The Elder Scrolls Online? :)

[@Phyankord]

my only problem is that when you cross the barrier into "chosen one/champion" territory there is no going back. it gets old being referred to as the "champion" by all of the most notable heroic characters like thrall, and there is no way to go back to being just a nobody or a rank and file soldier in future expansions because of that.

[@bluefoxbrawler]

I agree with your statement, but I'd also like to add that it feels like our characters have become Mary Sues because of all this "Champion" bs. Like, I get that it's part of the story and it's what we as players are meant to do. But what makes our character(s), this one random schmuck from Stormwind or Ogrimmar, so special that they are Champion of their respective faction, chosen hero of Azeroth, wielder of [Insert Legendary Artifact Weapon Here], AND the "Maw Walker" of the Shadowlands? To be all of these things at once; no one man should have all that power.

[@xanderlaskey2753]

@@bluefoxbrawleridk about Mary sues lore wise our characters have been around since the beginning of WoW

[@bluefoxbrawler]

@@xanderlaskey2753 Perhaps, I'll give you that; and maybe "mary sue" was a poor choice of words. But this whole "chosen hero" aspect on several different levels as I mentioned in my initial comment; it just kinda rubs me the wrong way.

[@NotOats_]

I mean, Champion is from the old WotLK Argent Tournament content where your character works their way up from nothing to champion of their race to champion of their faction. The issue is that since our characters in game are supposed to have been in all of the previous expansions everyone gets that (and other) character flag at a specific level. There's a similar one for being called "hero" tied onyxia in vanilla too.

[@Authurious85]

Random thought, but what if they used a Chromie lead leveling experience? Chromie sends new players to a zone or area to complete a series of tasks (quests) then moving the character on. You get extra loot that helps with scaling, and you get a taste of different zones from different expansions. This would be entirely separate to Chromie time, and the Chromie would be telling the new player about what was happening at that snap shot in time.

[@Salmon_Toastie]

As a new player myself for 2 months chromium time was only explained by a mate who used to play wow. The amount of content that’s hidden away is nuts.

[@nardalis4832]

@@Salmon_Toastie Absolutely, there's lots of content for a new player to do. But the game doesn't even tell you. Just go BFA then go ahead to dragonflight, missing plenty of expansions. I'm certain that confuses so many

[@Salmon_Toastie]

@@nardalis4832 The only other one that’s obvious to find for horde is shadowlands. Fuck knows how you find it on alliance.

[@nardalis4832]

@@Salmon_Toastie Alliance main here. Stormwind has portals damn everywhere these days, but most of the important and newer ones expansion worlds can be found inside the purple Mage Tower. Then you have a bunch of others in the stone circle slightly northeast, and also near the boats. I'd also like to say if you're gonna do Draenor/Outland content, there's a mage just as you enter the mage tower that has a teleport to Blasted Lands. So.. yeah.. they are all over the place. In my opinion Horde has it way more scattered though xD

[@brandonboss6868]

I've always liked the ability of feeling stronger the higher level I got. Having the beginning levels be challenging and grow easier over time.

[@Golemoid]

You would love Piranha Bytes games then

[@TheOJDrinker]

I agree, just most games have the opposite progression... especially MMOs

[@kthy0056]

I don't even mind if the game is "harder" when I'm stronger ... as long as the difficulty curve makes sense. I'm okay if the final dungeon is challenging, just don't make me struggle with the fucking wolves I was beating at lvl 1 on my way to the final dungeon.

[@tarille1043]

Yeah, there's often difficulty in creating a good power curve with levels. It's why I think that actually having levels creates more problems than it solves (Like, there's 0 reason to have both levels and gear score if both simply increase your power over time... Only to have enemies scale at an equivalent rate too) It makes far more sense to only use gear score as a scaling. I.e. You go through content and get geared. Then you go to harder content and get better gear which lets you do harder content and get better gear etc. At no point do you get "Weaker", you simply are tackling harder opponents and then scaling up until you beat them easily and can take on the next difficulty. Levels these days are more of just an artificial time gate than an actually interesting mechanic. Especially as more and more dynamic scaling gets used so level 10's and level 50's can fight the same enemy and be doing similar damage... At that point it's just a meaningless waste of time that serves to just bar you from playing the relevant content and obtaining actually useful gear (It's a similar thing across many genres too... Including things like Diablo... What does levels do in that game other than make it so that any items you have drop are ultimately trash until you reach an arbitrary max level?)

[@Golemoid]

@@tarille1043 Leveling is necessary in an RPG, you can't provide abilities and talents via gear. But every level up must feel important, WoW could easily reduce level cap to 30, have a new ability every level and make talent points more impactful (no +1% crap), something like MoP talents, just have more of them.

[@haterblocker3000]

I just started playing wow myself recently and when i received a new ability I had a huge flashing icon showing me the abilities book and even did an animation to drag and drop it on the bar. Small note but I think he has tutorials off as it ran me through almost every interaction including talent trees through the quest in Ogrimmar.

[@TheAcolyteX]

Yea I think he has it turned off. It shows all of that by default.

[@chuckbass7276]

He's entitled to his opinion ofc, but this video seems very biased.. Its not 2005 anymore, people can find a spellbook and talent tree..

[@zebedeesummers4413]

@@chuckbass7276 Not if they are a NOOB. Why would they even look for a talent tree if they don't know it is there?

[@szarvasszilard5061]

Hope you enjoy the game bruh!

[@sc29607]

And also every “noob” joins automatically the “Newcomer Channel” where they can get help and advice, which is btw. very well used on the two realms I’m playing. Also in the US realm I’m playing. And FF14 is the biggest grinding Chinese game I’ve ever seen. Even worse than AION. The effects are ridiculous and the quest system is just confusing.

[@davidhowell2456]

If I could play the game without having to play with others, I’d still be playing the game. Forcing a paying customer to rely on other paying customers to get the best rewards is the biggest turn off for for me. There are way too many elements of just random good luck required to get anywhere and your levels and experience count for nothing.

[@jvint33]

I was surprised he didn't know about the moves in the spell book. For a brand new player, tutorial hints are default on. When you unlock your first be ability, it basically blocks your screen with text saying to open the spellbook and how. And then had you drag the move to the bar. He must've turned off tutorial

[@TheLastSane1]

Possible, if he has made alts before he likely turned them off and just didn't remember to turn them on for this experiment. But even still that might make a new player think the game is gonna tell them when to add their new moves.

[@dmoney_pimpslap]

WoW and FFXIV's story is all about you being the hero. Guild Wars 2 is all about you bringing the world to the brink of destruction time and time again because you're just a person trying to do the right thing in all the worst ways.

[@KyleJordanGaming]

Unironically the most appealing thing I’ve ever heard about GW2. Can definitely relate.

[@brynphillips9957]

To be fair, in GW2 the character doesn't have many 'good way' options. They are kind of having to wing it as they go.

[@galethsaldor8293]

At least in GW2 your characters react to things that are happening around them. Doing HoT story as a Sylvari was just amazing experience.

[@ScarfFoxxy]

Speaking as an old time returning player, I genuinely had no idea what most of the systems had turned in to and what each statistic affected when I got in-to the game. Back in the earlier versions it was a bit easier to understand that, for example, each statistic would tell you exactly what it gives you down to the exact percentage. The abilities and their lack of descriptiveness also appears to not be in line with the design philosophy I saw with previous abilities from WoW, some of them just seem to do more at base than others with no real explanation as to why. This only became more confusing as I put on new gear and watched the damage values change drastically despite not even being remotely high level yet, and I had to go online and do some searching to begin finding out that there's one stat that most of the classes seem to mindlessly stack for the results they want. I stuck with it however and leveled up to the new maximum, did some dungeons while leveling and at max, did some of the end-game content, and yet... I fell out of recent WoW back into private servers. In a non-modern world of warcraft server you generally have a good idea of what each statistic does on its own and each individual spec requires building for a specific statistic, it's more involved and requires more work initially to create something that will be effective (as not all stats were created equally), but I feel that makes it more rewarding and thought provoking than every class relying on Versatility to some extent. It also made looting in groups more of a chore in the sense that each person shared the loot that was dropped and had to distribute it amongst themselves, but it similarly made it more rewarding and the variety on most classes (except hunter) was good enough that you generally would see the loot you needed if you worked for it; compared to the recent system which is meant to give everyone a participation trophy of sorts just for playing the dungeon. The modern dungeons and raids don't feel as engaging and you don't get that same "awe factor" of when a rare item drops, because it is infinitely more likely than with the shared drop system. It's basically just "Woooo! Nice." and everyone moves on to what they were going to do next, very little real celebration takes place from what I've seen. I *want* to love World of Warcraft and play it again, I don't even want the nostalgia or world building I felt from before, I want something *exciting* (not even necessarily new at this point, one step at a time) that isn't there just to extend our play-time. I also want the game to make more immediate sense so you don't need a PHD in physics and astrology just to understand half of what you need to start building to do well, compared to previous editions where it was simply more clear by default, with it only becoming complex primarily when you wanted to *optimize* rather that being the factory settings. The only real downside I can genuinely say exists in older editions in my opinion would genuinely be the addon system, where you lose some of the wider implementation of the system than in later editions of the game.

[@GodwinXZ]

I left WoW for two reason the same day I got Lore Master is the day my late wife’s cancer was diagnosed. There’s nothing in Azeroth worth saving.

[@kozlowskinator6056]

What I think would solve some of the problems with power scaling is changing how level scaling works. Instead of having everything scale to your level, give each zone a certain range for each expansion. So you can still pick any expansion to level in, but now the intended route is to go zone by zone as you would level back in those days. For example if you picked Burning Crusade the mobs in Hellfire Peninsula would be between 10-20 and would stay at their levels when you level up. Same thing for dungeons. Things having an intended level range makes it more fun when you are over-levelled if you're looking for a power fantasy, or more challenging when you're looking for a more hardcore experience for a veteran player.

[@PenNamed]

Doesn't it already work that way tho? each mob has a level cap based on the expansion.

[@kozlowskinator6056]

@@PenNamed no it isn't. I wasn't referring to the level scaling after you hit level 60 whre those mobs go back to a lower level. I was referring to a levelling journey closer to the vanilla experience where all mobs quests and dungeons are a specific level and don't scale up to your current level automatically.

[@kinggoon565]

I remember this being how old wow was first area was 1-5 next was 5-10 ,10-20 and so on

[@sameu100]

they did that lazy power scaling in diablo 4 again, which makes the game boring pretty fast.

[@valaxius]

@sameu100 Not really. That's why you get 4 paragon points after level 50 per level. So yeah they stay your level but you are still getting stronger. Also world leveling stops at 95 with the exception of hell tide and legions I'm a level 100 sorc and have done up to level 66 NM dungeons because anything my level just melts. Hell 10 levels higher and I still melt things.

[@relhimp]

Probably first and for sure most important lesson of gamedesign I've learned: Listen closely how player feel, then ignore him when he telling you why. Player have no idea why this happens, but if it feels bad it is bad. You can't reason someone into loving thing.

[@Andy_Classic]

I agree with the boosting thing. Not being able to boost until you max leveled one toon already. I quit wow during Cata, came back last year for WOTLK and Boosted a rogue because I already knew how to play one. However, I DID NOT boost a toon in Retail because there are so many new spells, zones, dungeons, etc that I was not familiar with.

[@coshvjicujmlqef6047]

They should just remove entire boosting shit altogether. Boosting and wow-tokens are absolutely p2w features

[@spaceowl9246]

​@@coshvjicujmlqef6047 That will never happen. We're in a bubble here. The absolute VAST majority doesn't give a fuck about boosting and the problems it presents. They come home from work, kiss their wives, eat a meal and go on their computers to play WoW for 2-3 hours. They don't consume videos or streams. They don't care that there are shop mounts or boosts or transmog. They might even buy that shit. That's just reality. We're a small minority.

[@PhantomHalf]

Playing with my non “gamer” girlfriend has opened my eyes to a completely new player experience. People need to realize that 90% of people aren’t degenerates that have 100000 hours playing games.

[@4everNFS]

Same here, i actually quit WoW completely thanks to her as I was getting pretty mad when she was standing in stupid shit on the floor in dungeons

[@redacted8008]

Functional battles and mechanics are huge in FFXIV, which make it feel more involved and you more invested. The jumps from boss fight battle mechanics at levels 15, 30, 50, 70, and 90 are insane, not to mention extreme raids and whatnot, but it's such a comfortable and fluid progression from start to end that you don't even realize how much you're learning and progressing until you step back and say whoa. I used to play WoW and I don't miss it.

[@TwinTurboOnly]

Yeah you only need to play through 150 hours of bs to get to the good part. Great game

[@redacted8008]

@@TwinTurboOnly Still better than WoW's 500+ hours of bullshit.

[@sparhawk2195]

FF14 is a slow clone that hasn't done anything different since 2.0. You have no interaction with the bosses, you just run around playing DRR with ground lights. Actual learning is at a snails pace as you spend 90% of your time running back to the waking sands and watching cutscene after cutscene barely playing the game. I used to play ff14 and I don't miss it.

[@redacted8008]

@@sparhawk2195 Lmao, the Waking Sands? Really? Everyone knows ARR is slow and boring. It's too bad you could never get past those baby steps, because the game gets really good, story and all. I mean, what are you even comparing it to mmo wise to have such a weak take?

[@TheAluvisify]

@@sparhawk2195 Crazy that your only examples of the game is from ARR and none of the expansions. It's always obvious which people have done savage raids/extreme trials and which people have only done story content. I'm guessing you're the latter.

[@michaelfitzsimmons8393]

One thing to note is the "Starter Build" talent feature isn't automatically selected when starting a new toon. Many new players would likely not know about that feature and would be totally lost on choosing which talents to get them through. I know when I start a new toon, I have to consciously choose the Starter Build feature. Mostly I do it now just so I don't have to think about which talents to pick. That's something to worry about at max level.

[@littlemisspipebomb4723]

It takes about 5 seconds for it to automatically pop up, likely when they're still reading their first ability.

[@shadowweaver1599]

If you look at talents they give you a pop up about auto picking talents. For the most part to me at least talents don't really matter till 60 thru 70 then it's nice to Google a guide for builds. But I have level quite a few characters recently on retail and the 64 to 70 leveling is a joke and my characters feel super week compared to lower levels. After 70 I start getting better gear quickly and I feel way more powerful.

[@Orodof72]

I was super motivated to start my journey and even bought the most expansive option but dropped the game arround lvl 25 because when I thought about WOW I thought about a big world where I would see players everywhere, but it felt so empty...

[@Superpollon69Taiga782]

all players are on the newest content but yeah, you only will see like 5 players when doing a dungeon and that's all x)

[@spaceowl9246]

Play Classic Era right now!!

[@DoC1171]

Just started playing this year. What I found out is if your tutorials are turned off at the very start your spells/skills won’t transfer to your action bar. Took me 5 minutes to figure that out. Not only that, with tutorials turned off, your map and other interfaces won’t show.

[@Doggonewood]

I remember playing in 2005. Talents didn’t automatically go to the bar. People are supposed to spend time clicking on things and learning by doing. The more someone clicks open quest logs and spell books they become more in tune to how everything works. It takes patience.

[@eTSu15]

I still remember the feeling when i was 1 level away from questing in outland and then had the same feeling when i was going to level in northrend. It didn't feel like i was going to level in a new zone, it felt like i was going to another world. I was so happy that the next day i went to school i felt like i wanted to tell my teachers that i'm in Outland or Northrend but didn't because i didnt wanna get expelled. Then when i hit max level which was 85 back then and got into a group to do ulduar 25 achievement and got my first ever proto-drake, i couldn't sleep for school. Now the game feels empty with so many stuff i have to do just because it's expected of me so that i could maybe get into a group.

[@CobaltContrast]

Same.

[@or10nsharkfin]

85 would have been Cataclysm. Wrath's cap was 80.

[@druidmeats]

As a new player, I had a pretty rough time. Did not enjoy playing for the most part. It was cool being a druid but I didn’t want to be a cow or a skinny troll. My friends picked the red side and I wasn’t certain that me picking the other side would let us play together. Druid was fun but there were too many builds being thrown my way and I wasn’t enjoying thinking I was forced to pick one for the rest of my time. I switched to the dark elf’s with blindfolds and those weird shield like swords. The beginning was okay, enjoyed being agile and killing fast. However, very quickly I was running in to mobs with health like a boss, they were killing me in less than 5 hits. Became a hard stop for me and haven’t been playing since.

[@ramencakes5196]

Just play RuneScape it's better

[@thalstantrailwalker2393]

As a player of MMOs since Ultima Online (and including MUDs before that), I admit I tend to look at modern MMOs through a different lens. That said, WoW could take a few more cues from FF14 that would make it a lot more "new player friendly" 1) Guaranteed loot from leveling dungeons. While a FF14 dungeon isn't always level appropriate when doing it in a roulette, you are always guaranteed a piece of random loot for your spec at the end of the leveling dungeon. Getting level appropriate gear is key to the game, and when they sped up the leveling process, they did not speed up the gear acquisition process to match it. This means gear from dungeons and improved/increased green drops from world mobs in leveling areas 2) The talent selection process is very confusing on what you should be choosing. If you don't know about resources like wowhead or icyveins, it could be very difficult for any player, much less a new player, to select talents that will help them level. Talent trees should be reduced in scope. If everyone is choosing one or two builds for a particular class, how much does it really add to the game to have those other skills there? 3) The game needs to help walk people through adding spells, actions, walking players though the process of adding in skills to their action bars. 4) Stop making people feel weaker as they progress through levels. This includes when you move from one expansion to another.

[@OneTapFortuNe]

So true

[@dominikb9202]

He kinda missed the whole "community not found". Since its an established gamed there is simply no big new player waves. He simply speed ran 1-60. Its no wonder his gear is not up to par and its hard. WoW classic is even harder. But we did do nearly everything to get better gear. Imagine trying that journey to scarlet monastery today in retail. It was a time of having the full immersion exp of adventuring in Azeroth. And it wasnt pretty or easy. It was a difficult, time consuming and dangerous journey.

[@basteala525]

I don't necessarily dislike the idea of basic abilities not cutting it at higher levels to make you use your other abilities, but those higher level abilities should make you FEEL more powerful than your level 1 self. To compare hard caster to hard caster, look at Black Mage in 14: around level 30 you get two mid power attacks that lets you easily switch between your fire and ice stances whereas before you had to work a bit or wait for it. Fire IV which significantly boosts your damage. Umbral hearts that let you cast your Fire IVs more often. Triple Cast which turns your next three long casts into instants--that is *always* satisfying.

[@TheAluvisify]

Yeah, FF14 did a great job at that. It's not so much as just feeling more powerful, it's the fact that you slowly learn how your class comes together once you unlock more combos and synergizing abilities.

[@MayHugger]

@@TheAluvisifyWell, they do also literally make you more powerful with potency increases over the course of levelling, but yeah you’re pretty spot on.

[@Combsdave1]

What any game is really about is immersion. When you don't care about the story or what's happening that's because it's not being told or shown in an interesting way.

[@DontKnow-hr5my]

I actually restarted in Dragonflight and something i realized was... you had all these people around you, but you felt so alone. Noone was talking, having conversations, i had to initiate every single conversation, even guilds felt... not what they were supposed to feel like. People barely talked in Dungeons. Everything felt so industrialized. I do blame Blizzard aswell for this, they did condition the players to be like that with things like the Dungeon/Raidbrowser and these. Back then the world felt alive in a common struggle to rise against this harsh but amazing world with things to discover. Nowadays, there is nothing of that left. The world itself barely poses a danger, back then even for leveling the World felt dangerous and banding together to brave it was part of the game. Now everything feels steamlined.

[@wantanamera]

I think that’s more because most of the people still playing wow are like in their 30’s and most 30 year olds aren’t playing video game to socialize or make friends.

[@wantanamera]

@@Avrelivs_Gold yes, it is

[@wantanamera]

@@Avrelivs_Gold yes

[@lucadesanctis563]

@@wantanamera so u can't socialize at 30? Why? Biggest BS ever

[@wantanamera]

@@lucadesanctis563 it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I don’t want. I don’t give a shit about socializing on a video game, if I want to be social I’ll go to a bar. People as they age tend to get less social.

[@harrymorton6872]

I think your point about there being too much in the game is so spot on. Me and my older brother grew up playing WoW but he was always better at it and had more time to play then me, so I was always playing catch up! At first during vanilla and BC when everything was still new and the worlds were full of players I didn't mind trying to catch up and he and other player were always on hand to play with. However, by the time we got passed MoP, I felt like every time I was getting close to reaching certain goals, those goals suddenly became extinct and irrelevant as a new patch, content, raid or expansion came out. So every time my brother was like "look at this cool new thing I've got", I would aspire to get that thing, but by the time I did, he had something else. I always did find it overwhelming and felt like I was always aiming for loads of moving targets that would appear and disappear in a matter of moments, but I carried on anyway. Until about Legion, by which time I just felt this is just a constant hamster wheel that is never going to stop, and as a casual player I'll never have enough time to enjoy the achievements before they become irrelevant. So, I stopped playing. Even my older brother has stopped playing now.

[@kerem121]

they should use instances or layers, like they do on launches but for each chapter of wow, like beating one expansion takes you to another instance where the world is changed, and you can always visit back, but next expansion instance is unlocked. as new players we want whole story.

[@bertiebuttercup]

agreed

[@Lycanite]

I think the nobody vs hero thing comes down to consistency. FFXIV has the player as the chosen one from the very start as well some later lore that explores how other players being the same chosen one in a dungeon/trial works. WoW originally started off with nobody but then changed to champion/hero over time but lacking a consistent way to play through the story, it just gets confusing. I personally prefer the nobody approach where it's a wide world them my character is in, but if it's consistent then it's all good.

[@JJJBunney001]

I've never seen the issue there if you've played over time, it makes sense considering all the things you do. If you played from vanilla to dragonflight, you've been part of saving the world so many times of course people would look up to you. As a new player though, it's terrible and confusing

[@CoreStarter]

But ffxiv didn't just have you be the chosen one, you were a nobody for the first half of arr, then you were kinda special because you could resist the primal influence, but this was not a trait unique to you, it was just kinda rare, some foreshadowing made it seem like maybe something more was going on but in the context of arr you are a special, but not unique person, it isn't really until the end of stormblood that you being the literal savior of the universe starts playing out, but it's all foreshadowed very well because ffxiv has had mostly the same writers working on it for over a decade and the same director the whole time, ffxiv story feels like a crafted narrative arc, wows story feels like reading a web comic where the plot points are made up on the spot.

[@arkadiccal7271]

I think some of you are confused here. In FF14 you are not a chosen one. You start off as a new guy who ends up getting the Echo which other people have and is complete random it's not made for specific people. Secondly your not special because you can resist the primal influence that literally comes with gaining the echo as your being protected by Venat. And this goes for all people with the Echo.

[@SuperBeast641]

​@ArkadicCal I'm not sure how you think we aren't the chosen one and yet know who venat is. It's stated very clearly at the end of shadowbringers how we are in fact unique from other echo users. Which endwalker then greatly expands on, which I loved.

[@brynphillips9957]

@@CoreStarter That isn't entirely true. While you are an unknown, you literally have a vision at the very opening of the game and by level 15 you have basically the god of Light speaking directly to you and singling you out. While your character takes time to build their reputation, it is pretty clear very early on they are special and important. By the end of ARR the villians are literally calling you 'Hydaelyn's champion'.

[@ellicavalcante7850]

Imagine playing an MMO with not only an active and helpful community, but a dev team that actually cares about what you want/need to have fun in the game, regardless if you're a casual or competitive player. Imagine a game built by a dev team that PLAYS their own game, put their heart and soul into their craft, creating multiple layers of experience for many types of people... imagine a game that keeps getting better and better not only through new ideas, but through the player's feedback. Man, I wonder if such a game exists. 🤔

[@joonyoonjii2166]

sounds like FFXIV to me.

[@Mj4life1230087575]

Guild Wars 2.

[@pJerrry]

Sounds like Path of Exile

[@alphazero5249]

Warframe

[@JopieA]

So what I'm gathering from thr replies is that every other MMO has better devs and a better playerbase then WoW Yep, sounds about right

[@Charlie-qe6lv]

I quite WoW for a number of reasons, but#1 being it became like a game made for the 5 minute attention span kiddo. It did not require any challenge, and even made it too easy to do "LFG," "LFR," etc. Although, the lazy part of me liked those features, it totally blew away any sense of community. When you had to gather a party, then summon, you were reticent to lose a group member, and thus be polite, build community, and maybe add a tank, heals, or dps as a friend. The ease of everything, including getting so-called, "epic" items was/is a turnoff. They should cater to the dedicated, as that may be their bread and butter.

[@eenpersoonrandomnes6444]

I started and VERY QUICKLY stopped because I wanted to play a healer and got yelled at for hours on end while trying to clear dungeons :)

[@genjiros4198]

Try classic, I started healing a couple of dungeons there and overall I'd say it's a nice and helpful community (I'm on pyrewood). Good luck!

[@Lordoziom]

Went similarly for me, played classic, leveled a shaman healer to cap, got flamed for no reason (nobody died, we cleared), quit.

[@sirazazeloflowkey6424]

Yeah, very relatable. My brother and his wife as well as a few of my close friends were really into W.O.W. and eventually convinced me to give it a try. I quit after three days. It was so boring and it didn't feel like I could meaningfully roleplay. I went from lv 1 to lv 20 and that was all I could handle. Everyone said I should keep going until I get to lv60. But none of those same people would eat 10 plates of poop in order to get their first serving of their favorite dish 20 times.

[@tut-wv4pe]

They should've make new characters and level up with you. Such games as WoW are pretty boring if you are not into grinding stuff, but it's fun with friends. Completely your brothers fault that you quit the game

[@sirazazeloflowkey6424]

@@tut-wv4pe You could be right. Perhaps that would have made it fun enough.

[@xRedacted_]

If you use spellbar(s) addons like bartender or whatever installed the new spells don't go onto the default ui bars automatically. Pointing this out cause a new player won't have addons so this issue isn't an issue.

[@metalmilitia89]

Every time I want to go back to WoW, I remember that the same toxic community exists.

[@boblasauce2836]

go turtle wow

[@guillaumelabonte2702]

Wow toxic community..? What ? I feel like its the best ive seen in any video games haha. Have u seen league ? Holy cow

[@reviewthereviewer7034]

Maybe get some thicker skin. If someone is calling you shit because you fail constantly, maybe thats your fault

[@CoreStarter]

@@guillaumelabonte2702 "you think lava's hot, what? I feel like it's pretty cold haha, have u ever been in the heart of a star? Holy cow" league being your barometer for what a toxic community is is pretty shit lmao, league is probably the most toxic game community bar none, being better then the literal worst is not hard, as a matter of fact it's guaranteed, every games community is defacto better then leagues, because it is the worst

[@Akirathedon92]

​@@guillaumelabonte2702 Just because league is more toxic doesnt diminish how bad WoW has gotten. I dont mind its toxicity because its never really directed at me and I just let it roll off my back if it ever is. But seeing how people treat others is brutal. Ive seen a tank leave a +6 HoV right before Skovald just because a DH pulled one extra pack of mobs on accident.

[@liamwinterton7370]

I'm literally levelling a character right now on retail for the first time in years, and my spells got auto added to my spellbar...

[@ianhorne9594]

I think its because he either has tutorials off or the game knows hes not a new player

[@mactassio21]

@@ianhorne9594 this, although he is mostly correct about the new player experience a lot of the things he complained are because he has his settings messed up

[@ianhorne9594]

@@harambe4267 Well we was just addressing Exile's Reach and the tutorial. BFA may not be a great story, but its the most sensical and grounded story to start for a new player. It would be a very big transition from Exile's Reach and then bam, you're in metaphorical hell (the maw) and the afterlife. Cant really go an expansion back to Legion because then you're going from Exile's Reach to fighting off space Satan. We're not necessarily defending the new player experience, we're just addressing the part where his settings may have made him make a few points that aren't true.

[@mscalifornication88]

I discovered wow during the pandemic, that's how I ended up finding this channel too for wow tips. I love exile's reach, lots of fun and I found it to be a great tutorial for questing in the rest of the game. People were pretty helpful but I heard that was because I'm a girl. I made it to level 40 something mostly solo playing, only stopped playing because the memories of playing with someone made me sad 😂

[@maxw565]

Most mmo players are definitely thirsty boys. But you shouldn't let that ruin smth you enjoy. There are also lots of guilds out there with normal people

[@vegetablelomein1111]

When I was still playing retail wow a few years ago, if I made a female character, I would have dudes coming up to me and asking me if I was really a girl (im a guy IRL) and that they could help me quest and give me gold etc. A couple guys asked me if I wanted to cyber. Maybe it was just the server I was on, I don't know. Definetely not like that on classic era.

[@SkyClears]

How did they know you were a girl?

[@mscalifornication88]

@@SkyClears I guess they assumed 🤷🏾‍♀️ from my fem-looking range character and screen name (draenei hunter with "leeloo" in the name). I've heard there's some kinks towards draenei in general though so maybe just being draenei made people interested to help

[@mscalifornication88]

@@vegetablelomein1111 yea I played on Moon Guard so that also might've had something to do with the helpful hand, was a draenei hunter among rp pervs haha. Never got offered gold though I guess I never played with people for long, I'm more comfortable soloing unless something has been impossible for me to do alone

[@eldiablo2418]

you know what i love? esp when i started playing grim dawn is when you get stronger you still nuke basic foes even at higher levels. its the elites that will mop the floor with you which is fine even if at times annoying af. but tis great because you become so strong that you can cut through hords of foes just fine and when you start facing real bosses its a actual fight and i love it

[@dectracy5429]

My wife is lvl 30 on her first few toons. The thing keeping her playing is the world. Exploring and seeing all these new places is what's doing it for her. Something we can't really do as vets pretending to be new. But besides that yeah they need to rework the old and leveling content. I'd love an expansion that focused on that at launch over profession and mechanic overhaul

[@gabrielmanzo2432]

Im curious how long would it take to explore most if not all land just to see ive never played wow

[@RowdyLpx]

@@gabrielmanzo2432 If you are doing classic and leveling to 60, it could take months/even years depending on your speed. It's a large world.

[@m16dude967]

its what they did with the world and what they didn't do that keeps me from playing spanning back since warcraft 2. Everything went downhill after wrath of the lich king and i was done after that.

[@amesasw]

Even being an experienced player, it is really hard to start a boosted character. Feels much better to learn while leveling.

[@AcerAz115]

Honestly i just experienced this. I was in a normal leveling dungeon and the tank whos a new player didn't know about the short cut i trued telling him and even whispering him to follow me but before he even could the other 3 decided to kick him. Like damn... he's learning he even told us he's learning. So yah... playing solo and especially as a new player is rough when a lot of long time players have absolutely no patience and are hostile af.

[@TheBlastMage]

That's so sad, especially since I had a really fun experience with a new tank several years ago. They got lost in Black Rock Depths which was supposed to only be the bottom 5 or so bosses, but we just followed the tank around and wound up doing the ENTIRE dungeon! All 20-30 or however many bosses in that place, saving the one we actually needed for last. We did nearly every quest and cleared almost every room, only missing out on a few hidden secrets we couldn't find. This was the most fun i'd EVER had in a dungeon in WoW, and i've never had such an experience since. Makes me realize that I just want to go on big, stupid adventures with friends or strangers and find cool things. Making numbers go up isn't all that fun to me anymore.

[@RKGrizz]

People leave because the game was boring to play 15 years ago let alone now day.

[@Tiersenhiphop]

Yea I guess that's why it's the highest played and most emulated MMORPG of all time lol

[@MorfsPrower]

I mean its all in genre. There's a lot of people that can stomach this kind of game. Much like the people that can stomach doing Chunkman RuneScape challenges. And then there's lil old me playing a Mabinogi private server because I prefer a more active combat system. I cannot stomach WoW. I tried 3 times to get into it, and every time I got bored and insulted by it.

[@Aerisot]

Exile's reach should have you choose your spec right away, and then train you based on that current spec, and then ask if you want to try any of the other specs, if you do, they train you on those.

[@Keyce0013]

In spite of how grindy and tedious vanilla used to be to level, it really does seem like it was a better levelling system (just way too slow). Quests would frequently ask you to travel out of the zone or even out of the continent to complete them, so you got to experience new atmosphere even if it was only for one quest turn-in. You didn't have to feel like you were leaving a zone half-finished, because one quest would take you a zone or more away and new quest givers would be right there for you to enjoy.

[@фанатКуплинова-ь1е]

it was slow because the level span was huge, compared to the expacs.

[@BknMoonStudios]

*"It's not about the items. It's about **_getting_** the items."* What a fantastic quote to end the video on. The fun of video games is not in the rewards you get. It's in the process of getting them.

[@williambarnes5023]

I saw the best take on the chosen one trope and I don't remember where it's from. The Mad King would just randomly summon kids to his throne room, tell them they were the chosen one, that a grand adventure awaits ahead, hand them a cheapass sword and shield, and send them to go -feed- slay the Legendary Beast. Those kids all fucking died, and the King just kept picking new ones. YOU'RE the chosen one now!

[@DvanderPluijm]

Someone else pointed out something that can be detrimental to a new player's experience as well: the chosen class. Some classes are, dare I say it, insanely easy to level with, either because they have pets that can hold aggro and help dps stuff down, or they have good survivability options like having a big hp pool and have self saves/self heals. For me, mage has also been an absolute pain to level. To be honest, though I'm a big druid fan, for me the most levelled class is warrior (either fury or arms), because it just 'rolls' through the whole levelling experience. So, of course I feel that new players should of course have all options available to them, but maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of indication of how a class would play and how difficult it might be for someone new to the game/genre to play it/understand it. Like 'hunter, recommended class for players new to the game' and then maybe even with a suggesiton of which spec to use lateron, and 'mage, difficult class for starting players'. Or, maybe even give people a chance to play with a class for a short time, like in a practice hall, before choosing. I think wholly new players would really benefit from something like that.

[@jewsco]

@@nakano15 exactly, yet if you level a warlock or Hunter it’s easy mode due to pets or any tank class especially blood DK’s

[@T3hPUGZ198]

Also if you're a new player tips are on by default so it gives you notifications to open speelbook and talents whenever you aquire a new spell/ability/talent point. Talent trees also have the beginner guide, so it tells you what you should take if unsure

[@kelathos]

As someone who mained Frost Mage, Frostbolt is def intended to hit like a wet noodle. Everything is in procs and cooldowns. Your main attack is merely a roll of the dice.

[@Natheroc]

Exactly but for new players it is not explained at all which is the point he makes

[@christonchev9762]

y and Group Quests lost their meaning PVP class/spec also lost it and lvling is so boring and that's why so many ppls are playing Privete WOTLK servers

[@chuckbass7276]

@@Natheroc So should people be hanheld the entire way, not learning anything on their own? Not learning their class, just being told what to do every step? That seems terrible.

[@anthonyfaiell3263]

13:23, this has always been one of my major gripes with WoW. . It's fundamentally designed this way. Even more so in dungeons where enemies are just completely immune to any CC... which happens to be the literal only skill input that a player can put into fights. The only other thing a player can do is just mash their rotation to do as much damage as possible. And then going to higher keys to do the same thing but when the enemies have more health so you are mashing for longer... And if your gear isn't high enough item level, it literally wont matter what you do anyways. . For a completely opposite comparison. Dark Souls can be beaten at level 1 with no weapons. This is because the entire game design is built around skill. Whereas in WoW if your tank dies in a dungeon.. you pretty much just die. Because there is no amount of skill that will let you kill un-cc'able enemies that run faster than you and whose attacks cannot be avoided...

[@Eli-234]

One thing that put me off when I returned to wow for the first time since legion was how my gear had scaled. I had pretty decent, heroic raid gear when I stopped playing, when I returned in Dragonflight it was like ilvl 26 or something. I was getting massive gear upgrades while running WOTLK Dungeons (for mounts), and leveling was absolutley brutal untill about 60 by which time I had replaced it with questing gear. My alts where even worse.

[@AFpaleoCon]

lol if you think levelling has ever been “brutal” in WoW then you shouldn’t be playing MMOs. I think Fortnite is more your speed.

[@shawnp1780]

I stopped playing in legion as well and came back for classic as well as DF. The stat squish messed with me too. All my toons sitting at level 45 with way below ilvl gear. But getting close to having my full roster to 70. I just don't have the time I use to have to play.

[@yep8058]

When I tried retail WoW in Shadowlands, I got to choose whether I wanted to level the classic way or the "new" way from Exiles Rech into BFA. I tried both but not having had played WoW since WotLK, it was very alienating to me. I enjoyed playing through the classic zones at the start more and then picking any Leveling area of choice (I went with Legion because never tried it before) a lot more interesting than the "default path".

[@TheWolf5575]

I remember playing some wow back when the expansion with the portals and demons came out. What I liked doing was exploring the different places and gathering herbs for my alchemy. The reasons I quit were: Felt weak, grinding my herbs or levels was very tedious, and the insane camping. Always had these lv 100 or more camping my herb grounds and then waiting for me to return. Everyone was so hell bent on min maxing items and item levels that finding friends or people to play with was hard. The dungeon wait timers were insane. Additionally I don’t remember the skill tree mentioned and shown in the video, don’t recall using one at all.

[@RS-bu1vz]

About the sellers, i remember the corpse signs in stormwind.. there was also always multiple spamming in trade and yell

[@trainershade1937]

19:36 This is actually one of the nails in the coffin for me when it came to WoW. I was already somewhat bored and unsure what to do, the game was somewhat expensive to keep playing (which I did mostly solo, never finding a group to regularly play with), and my attention was being drawn to new games that I could spend money on instead. There were some things that I wasn't satisfied with, so I looked into these additional services and was kind of upset with the monetization. Now sure I wasn't playing much with others to begin with (outside of dungeons), but I'm not about to pay an additional $25+ if the server I was playing on ended up dying (/ if it was already dead). I understand some of the reasoning as to why they don't just let you freely change... but couldn't they just put the service on a cooldown?

[@DemonicLemur]

Imagine having a subscription fee, but also including every monetization method of a free-to-play game, and then as a cherry on top, you have to buy each expansion for nearly the same price as a full-priced game. I am sorry but wow players are truly obsessed with this game by allowing Blizzard to do this with no recourse

[@Darsam88]

I'm having a similar issue when trying to return to any mmo, whether it's WoW or FFXIV, it just feels like I am so far behind and there is so much to do. Like in FFXIV I wanted old relic weapons but then I was falling behind on leveling and getting to the raids to interact with my guild. Not that the people in my guild weren't great and unwilling to help, but it just constantly felt that I was out of the loop because I was so far behind and had so much to do while not being able to partake in the raids and other stuff. Add on all the new abilities and being rusty I had to spend a ton of time relearning my old classes or choosing new ones to learn at my pace but then I'm even farther behind. Even in FFXIV where the community was great I had tons of people get irritated and tell me I'm not tanking right and need to pull more mobs, going as far as to run ahead grab everything and bring it back to me when I wasn't ready for that yet. Coming back to MMOs just feels like I'm in a race, but I'm starting laps down and the gap feels insurmountable when solo. It was fine when I had friends to play and interact with and they would rush me up to the point I could play with them, but now when I keep trying to go back to these games solo it feels like too much.

[@Acquilla7]

Honestly? You might want to look into GW2. They explicitly don't have gear creep, so once you're 80 and have exotics, you're basically set for pve (legendaries are Nice for playing with new builds and having a couple ascended pieces is good if you're going to go HARD into wvw, but they're hardly required). I left over nine years ago and just came back for EoD, and all of my characters still had usable gear and the same set of weaponskills I left them with. Also because of how flat gear progression is you can typically find people doing old content. I regularly see people putting together HoT skill point runs or going and doing the map events from soon to be two expacs back.

[@WhiteDragonTC]

Another thing is also, that in the bfa zones (mandatory for new players) the scaling in the horde zones is significantly worse then in the alliance zones. i couldnt bring myself to level one single horde char through to 60, but have multiple ones on alliance. simply because you get better ilevel and the zones are structured in a faster pasted manner (which is really bad for horde players).

[@erkhardtify]

I played for a couple months during WotLK then put it down. Played FF14 and that lasted for 3 years. Got married and gave up all MMOs but I would still be playing FF14 I liked it so much more than WoW. One character all classes. I love that system, I also love the reactive fights, the story, FF nostalgia, etc. Plus, the community is a big big PLUS. You'll always meet friendlies willing to help if you look. I had the Dungeon Master Achievement and I definitely put it to good use by helping new Guildmates get through content, teach, etc. That was my role.

[@roric6769]

I recently got back into the game after not playing for 6 years. Started a new character. A goblin shaman , elemental, just quested. I enjoyed. Now that I'm in dragonflight content I'm starting to get confused and the real first time experience is coming through and it's rough.