20:03 Man, I’m so glad Tali is discussing this. I hadn’t played any DF content for about 6-8 months and decide to pick it up again and holy hell…the amount of quests to pick up was absurd. And I’m definitely not trying to catch back up on my crafting stuff. Much too overwhelming
Same here! Even though I played through 10.1 main quest line, I've logged in and got very overwhelmed. I even checked the adventure guide, hoping there will be a big button "new content here!" but no, new quest line is like on 10th page after all the raid wings in lfr
Omg don't get me started on crafting. I had tailoring, and apparently it's impossible to level up past 65 unless you have some high renown so you can buy a single recipe to level up with. And then renown quests give like 20-40 each so that's like months of grinding.. no thanks, I just gave up.
Guild Wars 2 handles the story order issues perfectly. In the journal, all of the chapters are laid out in order. When you pick one, it becomes the one and only story quest, because GW2 *has only ever tracked a single story quest at a time.* It's almost like the game was *built* to convey story. During Season 3, I was able to play through all of Heart of Thorns, Season 2, Path of Fire, and Season 3 with flawless continuity, no trouble, just by picking each chapter in order and playing through it.
its a shame people shat on guild wars 2 so hard when it first came out around the time of late cata/mop. it does the actual MMO bit of multiplayer, story, a big world etc so well yet everyone was so resistant to its changes back then
I mean Korthia WASN'T a distraction from a narrative point of view, it was meant to be the "Secret City" that would tell us all the secrets that would enable us to defeat the Jailer. The problem was that it didn't deliver it.
it wasnt meant to be from a story standpoint but from a gameplay standpoint, a couple buildings and wall to wall enemies it was definitely a distraction I skipped on every alt. so much for a "secret city", felt more like a forgotten outpost.
@@Red1Green2Blue3 Korthia didn't just fail at being a "secret city", it straight failed at being a city. It's just some random area with a bunch of buildings scattered here and there. I wouldn't raise my kids there.
the in-game ending cinematic to dragonflight should have been a montage. showing everything our player has accomplished. cutting to different scenes like the tuskaar village thriving again with a big pot of soup on, new dragon whelps hatching in the hatchery and many different colored dragon whelps playing together, the wind spirit Ohn'ahra watching over the centaur as they hunt on the open plains, stony tony working with the drakanoids on something in valdrakken city, Chromie and Nozdormu laughing together as all of the oathstones shine brightly, the cute mole people sitting in a circle around a fire in zaralek cavern, Veritistrasz setting off with hemet nesingwary jr on a new adventure into parts unknown... etc. The take-away should be "show, don't tell".
No, this would’ve been much better as a credit role scene where they could’ve gone and visited all of those scenes And if you haven’t completed that portion of quest yet you get a blank screen with credits rolling instead, so you know what you have to go and do still. Tallie’s right the Amirdastil ending would’ve benefitted from a credit roll.
I did like the way the party allowed you to take your time with it. Slowing down and recognizing everyone really gave me a lot more breathing room to take in the moment than a cutscene quickfire montage would have.
Tbh. They fked up by not giving us a proper final raid atagonist. Even in WoD we had Archimonde himself, and killing him was huge as we took away the legions top general, and he sent gul'dan off to kickstart legion at the dame time. So grommash forgiveness aside it was much more epic due to the boss itself. Fyrakk has the Jailor problem in that they forget why an Illidan or Arthas work. Or a Kil'jaeden and Archimonde. We know their motive, characteristics and the stakes. And defeating them felt diffrently. Also Vyranoth just forgiving Alex after what she did is on par with grom forgiveness bs. Her whole plot, and with it the incarnate storyline never concluded. The we want to be free of titan influence happily joined and accepted another titans gift. Now being at Azerozhs mercy. As some suggested the perfect big bad for a Dragon themes expansion were either a Galakrond brought by the infinite, or the Chromatic multi headed Dragon madw up of every flight to thematicly be all flights vs all flights. One alone, the aspects together. Not only is this a bsdass design, room for mechanics of all flights in a fight. It is an actual ancient enemy thats really strong and more interesting then "Angry fire dude who wants to burn everything" Ragnaros at least made sense as the elements in general want to conquer the world and wage war on each other. The incarnates had a complex plott, but it was abadoned by all and somehow we are supposed to forget.
Your point about the returning player experience was exactly what I needed to see, because I felt like I just wasn't reconnecting with the game, but it's somewhat gratifying to know I'm not alone in this issue. Hope you had a good Christmas!
@@synmad3638Have you not listened to a single word Blizz have said about delves? They are abso-fucking-lutely NOT what you say they are. They're end-game content for casual open-world players who don't get any slots in the vault because they don't touch raid, m+, or pvp. Delves are *N*O*T* ANYTHING like mage tower or horrific visions. Please stop thinking so and please stop saying so. The last thing we need is the community hyping delves way up beyond anything Blizz have said, and then giving Blizz shit when delves turn out to be EXACTLY what BLIZZ said, and not what the delusional community went ballistic and dreamed up in direct contradiction to Blizzard's explicit statements.
22:05 Huge fan of this. I also recall BFA having much more "the story so far..." and filtering the quest log by patch chapter, which I think they could refine, so you'd see very clearly that shield quest #1 takes you into zaralek caverns and the "Embers of Neltharion" questline, etc.
Dude the returning player segment was pretty mind-blowing. I dont really skip patches so ive never thought about that. Blizz REALLY needs to fix that for next expac. Thats insane.
I actually like flying around in the cavern. It's spacious enough to not feel like I'm constantly in danger of hitting my head, while also giving me the consistent feeling of swooping through rock arches.
Thank you for talking about the returning player experience. I played the first part of Dragonflight but drifted away for a bit. Returning was so confusing (although I loved Amirdrassil). I main a night-elf druid and the ceremony for Amirdrassil was really amazing - brought a tear to my eye actually. I was one of the few that appreciated the burning of Teldrassil mission as it was genuinely horrifying in a Red-Wedding kind of way and this patch gave real closure to that horror. And I even kinda liked Tyrande's quest for vengeance (although I didn't care for nearly anything else in Shadowlands). When her Night Warrior powers fade as she has her hands around Sylvanas' neck I truly felt for her. Also I think every game should end with a party.
Yeah parts of the Emerald Dream zone and storyline gave me a 'core' Warcraft feeling despite not being in Azeroth. It feels like Night Elves are finally getting the respect they deserve, although they still need a new capital in Azeroth proper. Having them just live in the Dream would be like having the Forsaken live in Maldraxxus or something.
In regards to the story issue, I'd direct you to advocate for what GW2's got goin on. Their story journal is amazingly sorted chronologically with in-game dates of events and plot summaries, and you can select, activate, and quit any stories at a whim. Not to mention, you're also able to REPLAY stories that you already have. Would love love love to see that come to wow in some form.
The biggest problem with the Amirdrassil ending cinematic was that it was the culmination of all of Dragonflight's lackluster main storyline. The dragon flights finding out that they're family and that this fact gives them strength isn't engaging because it doesn't involve any of the player characters - and the family-theme had been hammered home dozens of times (and often in much better side content) by the time we reach the ending cinematic. There's sticking to a theme and there's bludgeoning people over the head with it repeatedly - and Dragonflight, unfortunately, did the latter.
exactly! after WE restored their power, and defeated fyrak; they shoved us through a valdrakken portal and pat eachother on the back for working together
I feel like another thing that they can take from BFA is the unique campaigns for each faction. You don't need separate continents each time, but there is something about having the leveling experience be different on each side, gives you more reason to level through the story on the other faction at least once, and allows for each faction to get story love that tends to be missing when we get expansions where we all do the same quests.
Does there need to be an excuse for why more story is good? It has been a problem that we get practically no horde story outside of the faction conflict, I think it would be nice to delve more into internal stories for the factions that don't have to deal with the other side. It can still be the same general areas, but I think it'd be worthwhile for a few reasons to have the factions have their own experiences. You get different experiences leveling on each faction, you can spend time telling stories about the subgroups of a faction and how they work together etc. Take Legion, would it have been wrong if say in Highmountain if horde had Mulgore tauren take lead in the story of that zone. Stuff like that. It would help give the story space to flesh out some smaller aspects of the factions. @@alihorda
i completely agree on the Story problem Me and my wife (who rarely plays wow but loves the story) were going trough Dragonflight, and me despite having it all done up 10.2 still got confused on where to go once 70's dinged on our new chars, i had to use WoWpedia to dig out the "Chronological Story order". This should NOT be the case. The idea you propose with "either endgame or Story" would be great! It would make for atleast a usefull Splashscreen Popup for once. Blizzard nows how to make Splashscreen Poputs heck they were able to in Shadowlands and BFA so you didn't had to grind trough the Story each time you visited Oribos and could choose the covenant right away (beats me why they removed it NOW so i have to go trough the Story on EACH ALT again which never had been to shadowlands..what the fish Blizz) It's like they take one step forward and sommersault 20 steps back on purpose on the most easiest logical quality of life stuff they allready had fixed before! i just don't get it.
i really loved the raid cinematic for azshara’s eternal palace. also BFA deserves its flowers fr i’ve been saying since it was live that it was actually great & one of my favorites despite its flaws with azerite armor & the final patch 😭 the zone design especially was great, like please play in any of the alliance zones in particular they feel so authentic & lived in with a cozy ambient vibe. drustvar is top tier wow imo
As far as content goes, bfa was probably one of the best ever. The class design and some of the game systems were pretty garbage on expansion launch and kind of tarnished the whole thing.
Class design was very boring in bfa and farming all the bs was horrible, everything else was really good. If we had df classes and the freedom to do whatever, BFA would be great. (N'Zoth isn't dead, its a vision!!!)
As someone who recently returned after skipping most xpacs since MoP, I can definitely feel the returning player experience issue. WoW desperately needs an MSQ like FFXIV. I know some players would scream bloody murder if such a system was introduced, but just let it be an optional suggested thing only for the first character leveled through that expansion's storyline and I think it would in practice be just fine. Because I really don't like doing things out of order, and right now it's really hard to know if I'm doing that.
Loved Dragonflight. A feeling of danger isn't something that drives my interest with WoW. I've played WoW since original beta, raid cinematics I barely notice. Quests with lore, those have a big impact.
Thank you for talking about returning players! I am a returning player and am so overwhelmed and confused that I just keep rolling alts to play through chromie time to catch up on what I missed before, rather than explore end game content. I feel like there's so much to do, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing or what order it should be in. I started just picking up some quests but the rewards seem irrelevant? I did a bunch of emerald dream quests but I think I finished that area (I am not sure, but seems like it's done except for weekly quests). I also do not feel ready to dip back into pugged grouped content (LFG scarred me) so I've been looking for a guild.. and even that is a struggle. It's just too much.
There is probably an easy fix for the chapter quests so people don't get confused. For example, maybe match the colour of the quest shield to the colour of the campaign as it shows in the quest log.
I actually was a returning player. Shadowlands burned me out during Fated so I didn't arrive until .1.5. I did about 60% of each questline with a shield before I realized I was nowhere NEAR the cavern and had to actually look up how to even start them. I didn't stay playing the game because I was so frusterated by finding a way to go back to the endgame despite playing wow for over a decade.
I'm a pretty active player and I had the same experience when I used a level 70 boost on an alt took me like 1.5 hours before I noticed I was doing the wrong quest to goto endgame.
My wife and I experienced the same issues returning to the game after being gone for 6 months, and we had no idea what was going on, we did half of the Cavern quests and then got spun off on the Emerald dream dream stuff and had no idea what exactly was going on and we went back to finish the black dragon stuff then came bak again. It was a pain lol.
Not only the visual but also the lines. "You have seen what I have seen. You know what we face. Now, mortals, follow me...into the abyss! " gives me chill every time.
Honestly for me the biggest lesson is the Xal'atath one. WoW is hurting for a through line big bad that lasts through multiple expansions and actually feels threatening because we can't seem to get rid of them. Do that and make them charismatic and you have yourself a winning baddie.
I remember when TBC was announced and people asked if we were going to fight Arthas at the new level cap and Blizzard said 'nah you won't be strong enough yet'.
Seriously, it took us 6 expansions to topple Sargeras, needed the combined powers of the Titan Pantheon to contain him, and he still ended up creating problems we haven't solved 3 expansions later. Meanwhile there was Zovaal off supposedly pulling the strings of everything and we took him out shortly after learning of his existence with no real lasting effect on the world
Tbh they’re doing with Xal’atath what they TRIED to do with Zovaal, except this time they’re doing it properly After Legion, the series needed a new Big Bad, and so they tried to set one up, but the problem is they tried to get too clever with it. Like sure if you knew what you were looking for you could see Death was up to something all through Legion up to Shadowlands, but even if you DID realise that, Zovaal still came out of nowhere and expected to be taken seriously as The Big Baddie Behind It All. Xal averts that. We see her in Legion, even non-priests knew about her because out of all the Artifacts, she seemed to know what was going on more than anyone. Then in BFA she has a role, we meet her personally, she hands us off to N’zoth and leaving with one hell of a mixed message of “We WILL meet again, I am certain of it. Shadows guide you, my dear friend” Finally she’s not explicitly in DF or SoD, but there’s enough hints that we were pretty damn sure she was the Harbinger and Iridikron’s contact before Blizzcon confirmed it. Xal’atath’s rise to power is our fault, we’ve known her from her introduction to the series, she, N’zoth, and ourselves have a strange interconnected relationship through time and fate, and though we don’t know WHY yet, everything about her feels more personal, she seems to have plans that specifically rely on US. She is Zovaal done RIGHT.
You'd really hoped that Blizz would have learnt their "don't kill off all your cool baddies" after fucking BURNING CRUSADE, where they absolutely MASSACRED fan-favorite characters like Illidan, Kael'thas, Lady Vash and more - abd have struggled to bring them back in ever since.
1) Roadmap: Agree 100% great hope they keep them up. 2) 'Danger': Disagree, I think they did a good job, Sarkareth's story is important to dragon isles, the new class, and the black dragon flight. I do agree they needed maybe a few more quests with Sarkareth in 10.0 leading into 10.0.5, but this needed to closure before last raid. 3) Cinematics: VoI and Aberus had good end cinematics. Amirdrassil would have been much better as 1 pre-rendered cutscene starting with Fyrak being defeated, then the surge through the aspects, and ending with the line about the blessing being from Azeroth. The jarring-ness of it being split into two and all of the rest of the conversation should have happened after the raid in by the feast, or outside, or in Valdraken. 4) 'return experience': Agree 100% needs help, on the upside this was mentioned in a blizzcon panel that they talked about how quests are marked so maybe has hope. 5) 'killing off big bads': Agree, definitely should not kill of good antagonists early. '10') I think the pacing has helped the story delivery a lot and the number of cutscenes has been great, but I would LOVE to see War Within, Old Soldier, Reckoning, etc style cutscenes more often.
BFA got so much right and it's been my favorite expansion. You just melon scoop out the gearing issues and it's a pure banger. The best continent (Kul'Tiras) and best zone (Drustvar). The nautical theme and the new england horror. Oh. my. goodness. It's just amazing
Resubbed to WoW for SoD. Hadn't played retail since the first month or two of DF. Thought I'd check it out and after the beautiful simplicity that I've always loved with Classic, I was insanely overwhelmed stepping back into retail. I had no idea where to begin to continue my journey. And this is coming from someone who has played retail on and off for 15+ years, so I'm no stranger to the complexities of retail WoW. However of all the breaks I've taken from the game, this one felt the worst trying to come back to it. I logged off so fast lol. Glad it's being talked about.
One thing I want them to keep, as it's been a game changing feature for me, is the Revival Catalyst. I much prefer world content these days, and I NEED a gearing path that isn't raiding or mythic+ so I can keep up with my family members who do raid and do dungeons. My primary reason for playing is because it's an activity we can all do together, otherwise I'm doing other things. The Catalyst has let me participate in the game with my family while respecting that I cannot spend long periods of time grinding. I've got a job and I am, in many ways, one of the only able-bodied people in my family. I want to play with them, and it lets me do that.
What's so great about the catalyst is that it's deterministic loot. For those of us who are time-challenged, chasing RNG drops is not fun. You have no control above and beyond doing something once a week. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are at what you're doing, you could be waiting 2-3 months and still not have the item drop. This feels bad.
The first character I ever made on my account nearly 20 years ago, and which is still my main, is my shadow priest. Tali, thank you for properly representing spriests when you were talking about Knaifu in the 24' mark.
Recently returned player here: Can confirm that if I hadn't had T&E in the periphery during my 2-year vacation to FFXIV from mid-SL to mid-DF, I would have been absolutely lost on taking in all the story bits and parsing what "order" things fell in. I *will* say that my experiment of "return for the last patch because WoW's catchup game is top tier and always must be" served me well *logistically,* because I don't feel behind in "numbers," but as for doling out the story, huge fail!
Perhaps a minor thing, but please Blizzard fix the bag issues. My bags are fileld with mats, things I may or may not need to buy reputations stuff, lore books and currency'ish items. Please do something about it. Give us a collection tab for books and stuff, make items of different quality stack do something.
One thing (you did mention in your video) that really bugs me - and has been an ongoing issue - is that things get really messy for new or returning players partway through an xpac. My wife recently started her own account and has been playing and trying to figure out which quests to do in which order is very very unclear. Even for new alts, at this point I just abandon and skip everything if they're max level.
19:00 I cannot decribe how much I agree with this part. They just drop you there, lost with no directions and the problem is, when you have too much choices most of the time you end up doing any of them, or just going to m+ or pvp.
Calling Iridicron Iridi-diddi is a moooooood. Great video Tali and Evi especially love the squarespace ads. They are basically the only ad spots I ever stay to watch. ❤
As a player that fell off after the first few months of Dragonflight I can confirm that the returning player experience has got to be fixed! It felt pretty smooth back in BFA, so idk what went down to make Dragonflight so much a pain
Okay Tali, first, I’m gonna need to watch this again cuz I was driving the first time and couldn’t watch that demonstration cinematic you had inserted, but I need to because it sounded awesome AF! I was too busy focusing on the road to get any of the context, but I was getting ‘Optimus Prime monologues at the end of the movie’ levels of epicness vibes, and I totally need to put a face to it. Second, the part where you suggested giving the option to either do the storyline or skip to the max level content? Isn’t that what Shadowlands did, and everyone hated it? Isn’t that what Dragonflight was supposed to fix?
16:45 omg I didn’t have words for this until I heard you say them. I recently got a good buddy back into the game after years away and it’s been a nightmare. He has no idea what to do when I’m not with him. And there’s so much catch up work with dragon glyphs, flight points, questing, etc. I never know where to start him.
I think a reason why the Amirdrassil "cinematic" was only cinematic for a short part is that it was probably done by the new live-content team which I think is probably smaller than the expansion teams and might not feature these professional cinematic creators as in the expansion teams who for example made the War Within cinematic. This is just a speculation of course, because we don't actually know how the teams are structured, we only know that they are separated like this.
The game is lacking in immersion, imo. I'd love to see them go back to an expansion 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 a main narrative, bringing back the 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 of Warcraft. To me, part of the thrill of Classic, TBC and mostly Wrath was a sense of a bustling, thriving world/continent, where characters didn't solely exist to be pushing the main plot. They have their own quest/town/zone problems to be dealing with, that have nothing to do with the expansion's "big bad". Future gameplay loops, systems and narratives would benefit from falling back on the foundational philosophy of "𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓"; which is ironic considering the "Worldsoul Saga" is literally seeing Azeroth as a main character. Fingers crossed for The War Within 🤞
As someone who jumped in after Blizzcon and tried to follow the story chronologically, I'm so happy you spoke about the mess of quests when you finish 10.0 content. I immediately grabbed everything, and ended up doing things completely out of order, the story immediately became a jumbled mess.
I wonder if they were caught off guard when players came back for 10.2 instead of for 11.0 -- because we know they have the ability to do the "Do the story? Or jump to the end?" They did that with Shadowlands threads of fate.
Glad I'm not the only one who actually starts to feel nostalgic to how good BFA was storywise, music was god-tier, still listen to bfa zone's ambience music on RU-vid! Drustvar is still my favourite questing experience in wow, played since TBC 2007 :)
The ending cinematic should've been something like: *After the final phase of the fight when Fyrakk is defeated by the player base, he's on a knee, wounded, holding himself up by his axe. The player base is shown unfocused at the bottom on the screen so that it can represent all of us in the moment. He's there, wounded and angry, but not yet finished. He stands, enraged that he is once again stalled in his efforts, and begins to growl at all present: "You think you have won? You think you saved your precious tree and that these 'Aspects' will protect you here after? No, you have not. You will be LIT ABLAZE IN FIRE AND SHADOW! YOUR ASHES AND BONES WILL BUILD MY THRONE AS I RULE THIS WORLD!" *He then transforms into his dragon form once more, and then everything around us becomes ablaze, all of our efforts seem to be for naught, and as he cackles maniacally during his build up of a ultimate flame breath, it seems like we are done for. He lets loose his power and RIGHT AS IT SEEMS LIKE IT WILL KILL US, Alextrasza jumps in front of us and briefly stops an contain his fire breath with all the power she can muster. But it is too much, and when it seems like it will overwhelm her, then jumps in Merithra, and then Kalecgos, and then Nozdormu, and then Ebyssian. All join in to help in stopping Fyrakk's fire breath. But it so powerful, that it may seem like it will overwhelm them.... Until.. Their eyes begin to glow, being recognized by Azeroth herself, for their sacrifice in trying to save us champions, she grants them the return of their Aspect powers and at that very moment, their combined efforts was enough to push back his fire breath and and smack it right into his face, defeating him finally, and we all get to see him basically become aflame of his own fire and die within it. Then end.* Or something like that, idk, I'm not a game storyteller
as a person who hasnt played wow since the middle of the patch before the last of SL, it was nuts and nearly overwhelming. all the quests all at once, including all the quests for each patch and everything else with it. it was nuts
Well said man if a seasoned player like yourself had this much confusion just getting to the right quest when returning imagine how a new player must feel, my wife has been playing for 8 years, and my best friend has been playing for 14 they are both lost as all hell and too discouraged to do anything without my guidance (been playing 18yrs).
Remember when the 10.0 storyline was about getting the "oath stones" to reactivate the aspects' powers and then those were never mentioned again and they just randomly got their powers back from a tree at the last minute
Returning and new players need A LOT of love and attention. The story of previous expansions needs an IN GAME way for you to get the basic idea of what happened in those expansions. As you mentioned they could do much better on the first character you play through with directing you to the flow of the main story quests and not just plop multiple on the map at once.
As someone who started the expansion and came back later I was definitely confused where to even pick up from or what came next and just shot straight for Emerald Dream. But even after I still felt lost on story and where to backtrack at to see content I missed without looking up a list of patches and what quests to start. The idea of having the option to pick continuing the main story in order and eliminating unnecessary map spam or jumping into current content would be a great start.
What really sucked for me, on the Amirdrissil raid ending cinematic, was that I didn't even notice that the dragonflights were even there during the fight. There was no leadup to it and no planning, and when they popped up I'm wondering more where the heck they came from rather than paying attention to what they were talking about.
beyond my other comments and happy to you yall are known enough to make a difference, and this little video might just do it. these are the simple suggestions needed to really put he cherry on top of world of warcraft.
I skipped BFA, came back during SL pre-patch (and left after 9.0, but back in DL)..anyway, I dig story so I'm playing through BFA, and literally just went through those BFA cinematics and was like, wow that is the shit. And I watched this video right after, not realizing you'd talk about those very same cinematics. Awesome.
1000% agree on returning player experience. I played 10.0 and loved it, but a year ago, half my mythic plus group had their first child and ended their wow time. I ended up stopping too, but just had some time off at Christmas and decided to come back. I spent 5 minutes in Valdrakken, wasn't really sure what was the current stuff and just logged out.
Best expansion ever, especially for world content, looking forward to AI in dungeons (lfr one day). Raid boost has totally confused a returning friend and my advice was take a Shadowland alt and lvl it up! I also introduce him to events at the rate of 2 to 4 a day. He did the Emerald Dream campaign, now is doing Zaralek and is yet to start the Obsidian quests: how can anything make sense? I love the solution offered: guide the campaigns in chronological order or skip to present content. Another problem is rares no longer made relevant and disappearing after 15 min in Zaralek, so now 8 weeks ago is "older content": what a waste. Crafting being RNG and depending on chats is also a no-no as well as many players asking max rank with no mats and 1 to 100 gold not covering the thousands of golds in mats. However in comparison to SL it's day and night (life and death?), so they are heading in the right direction and players are slowly returning.
Oh man! The returning players problem... I thought it is just me being stupid and lazy. That is the reason I never did any story after leveling and just played some PvP and decided to wait for next expansion hoping it wont have billions of quests up at the same time and I'll be able to do stuff chronologically
I'm a returning player, stopped not too long after getting to level 70... and the best part is that there is a 35 active quest limit which is very easy to hit just by wandering through Valdraken
Honestly I think 10.1 story was fine. A big criticism we gave blizzard was story trying to always raise the stakes and raise the stakes. 10.0 was a good tone setter, and foundation to build the incarnate story. And 10.1 is where I feel a lot of people really started to like the incarnate story more due to the fact that we weren't just instantly dealing with them. I think sarkareth was fine because it was something we had to deal with in the moment but always knew the incarnates were out doing something else. It got players wondering more and more what their plan was. My only down side to the Incarnate story so far is the vyranoth side switch. I wish it had been drawn out alittle longer. I like the background for it but the speed at which it happened was a bit fast. Maybe I would've kept vyranoth with iridikron until dawn where she see how he's made those deals unknown to the other incarnates, then have 10.1.7 as is. Let the player experience her own dissatisfaction then have her step away for a while and let players wonder what her goal is along with where iridikron went and then we deal with fyrakk.
The returning player experience criticism is so right. I have had the issue since I started playing in Legion that there is no intuitive way to see the story from start to finish. Personally, I would fix it by categorizing all the questlines in a catalog (a library tab maybe *wink*), making all questline completion data account wide, and then introducing a new feature/npc that lets you reset key questlines if you choose (if you want to play them again for any reason). There is unfortunately not much to build on for this though because WoW was always designed with the mindset of "a new character is a different person." A course correction now would be so much work. Can I also add that WoW has always been bad at teaching players how fight mechanics actually work? There is far too much ambiguity in the visuals and effects of mechanics. I believe more unique visuals would solve this. Even just updating the buff/debuff bars would do wonders. Have unique symbols for the different types of status effects in the game. More than a tooltip on the debuff image would be nice. Players shouldn't need to modify the game or watch third party guides to learn essential information.
I came back in July, I had quit during Shadowlands, and once I hit 70 there was almost too much to do. At first I thought it was better than having too little to do, but there really has to be a happy medium going forward. I'm still finding new things I hadn't seen/done before.
I just came back a few weeks ago. It's been a very good experience. When I tried coming back during tier 2 instantly quit as soon as i unlocked the underground area. Just seemed overwhelimg with all the quests. But this tier has been great and much easier.
I always loved how W3 had the campaign menus with the characters and the background adjusted for it. I have no idea why Belizzard refuses to use the thing they created! Just make a glossary or campaign menu where you can pick ANY expansion then select the story campaigns to start it or continue, just like you did 30 years ago Belizz!
I came back after being pushed away by the SL narrative, and you nailed my returning experience, everything went fine leveling dragonlands until I got to Valdrakken.
with your option of choice, auto complete with no rewards all prior quests so they dont show up with a disclaimer that you wont receive any rewards for the quests but it will clear your map. Give nozdormu an option to bring back those quests if you chose the option to remove them from visibility prior.
I also started Dragonflight with the level and gear boost 3 weeks ago and it was exactly like this, I had no idea what to do first and what is the order of the quests, it was like a chronological puzzle
My personal problem as someone who returned was the thing with dragon flying. I didn´t want to do it but I had to. When you don´t have many runes already, flying up to Alex and the other aspects is a huge pain the ass. Most of the time I went afk to wait until all my skills were avaiable again. And yes I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of quests that came there. Still, it would´ve been nice if I could just fly the normal way. A new mechanic is nice and all, but not if the player doesn´t like it and you force him to do it. About cinematics, I have to say one of my favorites was at Azshara´s palace. An old god unleashed, then the sheer madness of his assault afterwards was great. But then it felt cheap because it was over in a single patch, the cinematic still was great. For Xalatath, I really hope they will build her more up. We know that the addon after war within shall be the final war against the void. Would be nice to see that Xalatath tricks us in the last raid to do something and then it ends with a cinematic where Xalatath, Azshara and maybe a mind controlled Alleria appear at the sunwell and unleash the void.
Amen on the returning player experience! I'm a new player in DF and I have literally no clue what comes before what or where anything is time wise to each other. If i didn't have a friend guiding me I'd have given up.
Okay, I think the number one lesson War Within needs to learn is this: DO NOT MAKE US FEEL LIKE OUR CHARACTERS ARE JUST ALONG FOR THE RIDE AND DON'T REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE.For way too much of Dragonflight I really just felt like I could have stayed back at the Capital city, and not accepted the Dragon Isles invitation, and everything would have still been just fine without me.
I hadn't bought Dragonflight prior to buying the expansion+boost from the Black Friday sale. It's every bit as confusing as you say. But I'll let you in on a little secret: They do this every expansion, dump massive numbers of questlines on latecomers and tell them to do them all at once. I've said they need to have available a freaking flow chart. So they saved a few hundred dollars and there's players like me who aren't even doing DF content besides events. And trying to learn the dungeons. Well, at least I managed to get honor gear. I look at the map and see dozens of quest markers and go do old content.
Dragonflight is the expansion where I finally got my dad to play again after his best friend passed years ago. Mostly because I wouldn't shut up about it, especially the season 3 stuff. My favorite things in fantasy as a genre are elves, dragons, and druids. Well guess what dad we got all 3!! I'm super excited to experience an expansion launch with him for the first time since legion, and I hope it doesn't disappoint.
Was honestly expecting turing the tea sipping that there was going to be a Grand Hunt tribute show up in Tali's inventory with a "Nice work!" taking us back to this time last year XD
to be fair, Shadowlands did manage to keep the returning/alt players a nice option to choose how to start the expansion, either follow the storyline or choose which zone to play. i can't remember how the maxlvl questline went once you got there as a fresh character.
Dudes, spot on with the returning player experience. We could really use some sort of in-game indication of how lore content should be played chronologically.
Totally right about the "returning player" quest issue. It's especially annoying if you are just playing ALTS. Yes they have made gearing ALTS pretty easy, but having to slog through the storyline again and again is brutal. Hopefully "Warbands" makes this less of an issue.
Tali, why are noone talking about the fact that Azeroth is breaking apart in the logo thing? Also the planet stops its rotation on Kalimdor, normally it keeps turning. Get on it Tali.
as always, some great points. Wish we could get more infographics from Wow, for retail, like the hardcore deaths infographics. They don't have to give us numbers; it could just be the % of players doing things. It could really help the community understand where the priorities are and could be
As a returning player coming in dark, 100% I have no idea which quest was for what and judging quests to stay under the limit was terrible too. I'm glad I made the decision early on to only do "shield" quests which was still more than enough to hit 70
When I came back (a week ago) I played through the story and when I hit 70 I felt the same way.. Overwhelmed with quests and things to do! I then went on to the Emerald Dream storyline and, it was fun entertaining and I enjoyed the playthrough! The issue showed up once I went back and started the other quest lines and it made everything out of order story wise. Yes, I wanted to enjoy the storyline and understand it. I understand the reason for catch up mechanics, but I feel they should be gated behind the other story lines for the first play through... But that would be a problem because you need renown to progress with the main storyline.. If they removed the gated story and made new (or returning) players have an option to play the story as intended or skip it this would help and it would have made my playthrough better! Overall, a week in and I am in the grind for gear and renown phase and it felt like hitting a brick wall!
If they could nail down a storyline and stick to it, we'd probably get way more high budget cinematics. That's what I'm hopeful for. Not just the high-fidelity trailer ones, but even the in-game cinematics would look better with more time to produce them. That can only happen if they know for absolute sure the systems people aren't going to throw a wrench in and force a story change.
25:09 is the best xD. Tali explodes rightfully so. Great vid and solid points. Im really fired up with Chris being back. When he said “ we will be called to lay down indiscriminate justice on those who got it comin!” I definitely felt that. Im looking forward to The War Within and happy to see Nerubians back to sinister stuff. Really excited for Midnight as well being a Sin’dorei focused player.
I'd like to add that also for returning players, new players, or just alts that haven't been touched in forever, the experience is pretty terribe for legacy content too. Say you've heard about cool transmog in a specific dungeon or raid. Or some side cosmetic objective requires you to have some legacy content unlocked. Well get ready for hours of progressing through unlocking different quest lines, patch content, and zones locked behind a quest chain. And that's if the quest you need to start progression towards the rewards you want aren't lost in a sea of phasing, like they are in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. BfA and SL were particularly egregious about this, with half of the content being walled off or requiring a mage, warlock, or uncertain trip through the opposing faction capital to access. In short, they've brought back attunements with a vengeance.
On item 4, I was so very happy for Guild Wars 2's story log. Choosing the story chapter you want to follow, unlocking new chapters in sequence, etc. while also leaving end game content open for you to access.
2 days late but I think the pacing is also important. One fun adventure expansion and then one big war event expansion would be a lovely way to play. Give breathing room for Dragonflight style fun in between big threatening events.
As someone who came back to level to 70 in the last few weeks, I *FEEL* that issue of hitting 70. I hit max level yesterday and the main city went from 3 quests available, to hundreds. I have no idea what to do next or even if they matter. So I'm probably going to stop until the next expansion comes out, and see if I can make any sense of that one.
The returning player issue cannot be understated. I played and cleared the raid in 10.0 and stopped, coming back in 10.2 was just silly. Some quests take you underground but you can go underground because it's not open yet (but the entrances are on your map). You can do world events that shouldn't be happening and Frost Dragon lady is an ally in some cut scenes but an enemy in others. Oh, and the Ysera quest line being hidden behind renown is bonkers too, the boost gives you high enough renown but other returning players who don't have the high renown can't even do those important quests if they even want to. It's so bad
