Early Game Kinda Sucks In WoW Right Now... (But Here's How To Make It Better!) 

This video has gotten a LOT of really positive feedback and engagement so far. Thank you, everyone! Glad to see I'm not alone in caring about the new players to the game.

A long quest chain via the main stories from lvl 10-60 using main events from all expansions would be frigging amazing!

I really like the idea of Khadgar/Chromie showing you different zones and storylines that visit past expansions for new players

Idk if Im the only one on this but I love the intro questlines for each race. It gave me reason to create other characters and learn the lore of these races inside ally or horde. I would really like a race quest revamp and a guild revamp too so it would give ppl even more reason to stay playing (like renown for guilds maybe) and harder content out in the world that either need profession itens to boost you or the need to play with other ppl to overcome those challanges

"The Story of Azeroth" sounds like a great way to improve the game. Take the new player through some of the most important moments in the WoW timeline and then drop them into the newest expansion. It would allow them to level throughout the whole world, but gets rid of the old questlines. I tried to play WoW a year or so go and it was just confusing after Exile's Reach. I wanted to explore the world, but it wasn't relevant anymore--of course neither was Shadowlands.

My friend returned to the world of Azeroth after a long time. He wanted to play the Kul Tiras race and I was really surprised how much a "new player" has to go through to get access to these races... Definitely character leveling needs a change.

For the old world feeling empty, I've been saying forever they need to add things like copper randomly to new recipes or different stats or something. Make current use for old matts. Will make the world more used randomly and will make lvling your lower level skills more profitable.

Honestly the idea of having a sort of tour through the time lines is such a killer idea. Gives the new players a chance to see the full story of which ever expansion peaked their interest the most, gives old players something new to try out, and helps boost them through leveling alts a bit. All around it seems like it would be a win win idea

That's actually an amazing idea, specifically for new players. There are a TON of new players for DF and showing them the previous expansions and their stories in a fashion you mentioned, like being on a tour with Khadgar and/or Chromie would be an amazing idea. They learn the gist of Azeroth and the recent history and are then prepared for the current events of DF, or whatever future expac. Blizzard legitimately NEEDS to get on this.

For me the worst part of the experience as a new player were the dungeons. You're thrown into difficult dungeons that people have been running for years and you get kicked out in a couple minutes because you don't know the mechanics. Seeing how the kicks are so quick, I'm surprised that any players follow that route. In classic, we can learn our class and progress by stepping up dungeon content as we go. Would love that in retail.

As someone that enjoys questing I still think that the level squish was a stupid idea, If you want to get to max level quickly use a boost. I find it really annoying that after playing a few hours in the lower level zones I am suddenly one shotting everything and apparently can't be killed (unless I fall off cliff, which I have done more times than I can remember.

A custom levelling experience which takes you through key places, experience key story and defeat key enemies. It could he via the Lorewalkers and Chromie. Taliesin thought of something like this. Similar to how the 15th Anniversary worked with the World Breaker Mount and the boss rush raid thing a tailored levelling experience to fights like that. Could introduce the infinite dragons too as they interfere with you.

Some kind of "Path of the Curator" thing (as Tali calls it) is honestly one of the best things that could possibly be added for new players. Honestly, even though I've been playing for a good long while now, I wasn't there for all the story and stuff of those earlier expacs and would love to go through that myself. Even though I am generally aware of the lore of previous expacs, being able to actually play through it would be so much better, since I never really get very far into any of the Chromie time stuff before I get bored of not being able to do the current content surrounded by other players instead of all the old stuff that just feels off with basically no one around. Not to mention the fact that afaik you don't really get to do the whole story of the expacs, just generally the base patch content. Being able to take a new character through a curated experience of all the lore and important story moments leading up to wherever the current content is would be so nice. Then your idea of having Chromie tell new players along the way that they could come to her to experience the full thing is great. As Blizz goes forward, I just hope they keep up the good momentum with Dragonflight with regards to base/fundamental systems (like the Path of the Curator would be) and away from the borrowed power. The part where I do agree on a fundamental level, but disagree on the implementation is your idea of the extra dungeon challenges. I do definitely agree that new players (and let's be honest, many current players too) need to get a good understanding of mechanics and how interrupts, swirlies, buffs, debuffs, and other things like that work, but as shown by how awful some of the dungeons post-Legion are to do with lower level characters even disregarding the wack tuning of many of the numbers, it may be a better idea to include some of that in the Path of the Curator thing instead. It could even be implemented as simply as while going through the path, it has you queue up for a dungeon, but there is an AI or two in there with you and the other players also doing that dungeon for the first time that can help fight with you and demonstrate the mechanics as the fights go along. After the person does that dungeon once like that, it could be left like normal dungeons are now, ideally with the numbers still fixed, though. Obviously, this would be pretty annoying for returning players, so options to skip things like that should definitely be made available. Oooh, those ideas about the Explorer's League and profession stuff sound like interesting concepts too. I really hope Blizz continues the recent trend of finally listening to players and adds some of this stuff in in upcoming patches/expacs.

I do like the idea of a Big Questline, Where Khadgar shows you the events that happened through the world, ending with Chromie, It sounds great to me!

The idea with Khadgar taking you through the events is really good. Lost Ark kinda does this too, if you take a "boost" with goodies for fist-time clearing.

Honestly, I think an "Azeroth Reborn" recycle would be good for the game. As you said, have them quest through main story beats while "hiding" side quests as trivial until you've cleared the area.

I’m not unhappy that new players don’t do Cata; I find it lovely and quiet down in Vash’jir when levelling alts. I do think that Khadgar as a guide through old content would be tight!

Wow I think you are on to something Nix! Having a new player going through curated "moments" across all WoW expansions to reach max level could be fun idea.

My friend sent me this video as he is trying to see what a new players thoughts are on the game (we’ve just gone through most of the leveling of Dragonflight) and honestly, your idea where the player gets a tour from Cadgar of the history of Azeroth and then you talk to Chromie to play through the expansion you find interesting is exactly the sort of thing I was talking to my friend about. The early game sucks if you don’t just use a level skip, and with all the expansions being abandoned like they are makes it hard to get invested in them, especially seeing as you’re just thrown into one of the starting cities and are told “hey, check out the board and do an expansion, they will be scaled to your level” is kinda underwhelming and probably very confusing if you play them out of order.

I started in Legion, and I personally loved playing through every expansion, it really helped me understand the world and since leveling took a lot longer then, I got to experience so many different zones and it was truly great! I do wish however that if they brought this back, they added a mechanic to where you need to do the final raid of the expansion or something for a really cool bonus reward and a ton of xp or something cool like that!

The Explorers League idea is brilliant, combine that with a rebalancing of XP between dungeons and open world questing and I bet the old zones were a lot less empty. I would also like to see Blizz cut out many of the chore quests out of the main story questlines. Or combine cut down versions of those into todo lists. Instead of kill 12 of X, next quest kill 8 of Y and next quest gather 20 of whatever, just combine those to "kill 2 of these, 2 of those and get me a sample of that" in one quest.

I love your ideas concerning professions and the curated quest line. Even as just a new player starting in TBC Classic, I still feel like I missed a lot of the Vanilla story and context, even after I completed leveling to 60 in the Azeroth. Certainly there was a lot to learn and it was pretty easy to get easy to overwhelmed by the amount of content even just with TBC and Vanilla available. I can imagine how much more disjointed it could be in retail with 9ish expansions. Thank you for sharing and hopefully Blizzard sees this and considers some of these ideas!

I like the Khadgar tour idea...problem is I can't think of an execution that would allow new players to get what's going on in just 5 or so levels. Exile's reach = 1-10 Classic = 11-17 BC = 18-25 WTOLK = 26-33 MOP = 34-40 WOD = 41-48 Legion = 49-55 BFA = 56-63 SL = 64-70 DF = Exclusively endgame

Best leveling experience from 1 - 60 would be mandatory solo torghast.

I think that a world tour quest line is a great idea, but I don't think it should get you to level 60. Really it should just get you to level 30 when you get your flying mount. That will make your questing experience much more enjoyable (assuming they remove pathfinder flying from old zones) and give the characters a solid base for their talents and rotation.

I have something in mind for the timewalking experience as well since I'm not really enjoying doing the same quests over and over again. And to offer a bit of variety to the system we could have us players select an expansion to level through and either choose the regular questing experience (that exists today) or a new one that offers a new quest chain to see what the expansion was actually like. So it could work like a more linear progress like exiles reach with quests that focuses more on the story of the expansion. So for example WotLK with a quest line to seek out yogg saron, or killing the lich king. And at the end of each questline there would be some kind of mini ish version of a raid like Icecrown citadel and it could work as the dungeon in exiles reach works with npc raid group. And of course it wouldn't be very hard to do the raid and wouldn't be very long but focusing on the most important fights which would also bring new players into the raid perspective of the game.

Honestly, I would update many things with the leveling. For example: when you start a new character (with the old starting zones), you're introduced to a cutscene, explaining the lore and story around the race. Let's use Humans for example. When you start a Human, it explains lore and details that happened in *Cataclysm.* These events happened 10-12 years ago, meaning the cutscenes are extremely outdated. I believe that the early questlines need updated as well, such as Westfall. In the Westfall story, it focuses on the Defias Brotherhood, who've been defuncted since Cataclysm. Minor things like that break immersion very quickly, and I do believe a new, fresh storyline for new players will boost the morale of the early game.

I think a major major positive about your special dungeon idea is that it could be an opportunity for more advanced learning about playing the game. The intro island is a great fun introduction to ease you into your class and the world but it only goes so far. I absolutely love the idea of having a challenge-like dungeon for levelling players and I think it should also be taken as an opportunity to teach new players these mechanics. Having one week with CC and maybe interrupts being key to surviving would be a good way to teach new players these mechanics but also marrying the concept of that challenge/learning with higher rewards IE: greater incentive. Again like a lot of what was said and self-admitting that this is a more complex problem, I still think that philosophy is sound and a good foundation to make *something* akin to these ideas and I think the game would gain a lot from it. (Also I would love to see some sort of Healer and Tank 101s. Idk how to implement that but it'd be great to also get maybe a role-focused quest line with rewards that gives you a low-down of the role.)

What do you mean, right now? It has for over a decade. There's still systems on top of systems on top of systems running under the hood that you'd know nothing about unless you played at the time they were implemented, not to mention the complete cluster of a story.

This is something most MMORPGs go through as they age. Old content is abandoned, the new player/leveling experience is gutted, everything is converted to catering to the veteran crowd who don't want to go through the process of leveling their 45th alt. Even without boosts, leveling is turned into a race to get to max level, then you end up with a large population of players trying to do end game content who have absolutely no idea how to actually play, because there was no time for them to really learn their class or game mechanics. I hate it. My favorite part of MMORPGs is the leveling experience, I always get quickly bored and burned out when I hit the end game, because at that point all you have to do is the same stuff over and over every day. I like the challenge of taking a new character through the world, finding and doing things I didn't do on a previous character, actually have some sense of danger, that you could mess up and die if you get in over your head. That's largely removed from most games.

The old zones should be reworked as the same level of dragonflight zones, this can be done in like patches, I do agree that professions could’ve been more useful in lower levels for it takes along time to level professions up so it could be nice to be useful early game.

And yes, after exile's reach you should be able to go to Dragonflight. Old content should be optional.

I'm a returning player and I'm LOVING leveling ALTs. I pick an expansion for each ALT and have had a blast with each very different adventure

TBH My main suggestion would be for Blizz to make Exiles Reach a sort of Chromie/ Norzdormu zone for players to be briefed by each expansion and main events in WoW but through the early leveling experience so it flows naturally for new players picking exiles reach or choosing to run the ol fashion exploration way. Exiles reach could have mini zones that symbolize each expansion on that mini island.

Don't think the goal should be really fast xp. There should be a single, cohesive story thread to take new players (or alts that choose so) through all of the main storylines. It would require a whole new experience. All of the main storylines could be easily condensed, all of the actual good events and plot points can be focused on. Vanilla pre-cata should also be included in this, as well as in chromie time, cause like, why not? It should also include solo experience dungeons and raids that are important to the story, such as Black Temple, ICC and its little sub-dungeons, Siege of Org, etc. It would take a lot of dev time, but having an actual solo-friendly MSQ that brings people through all of the story they would otherwise not even be hinted at would be tremendous for new players, and for old players who want to experience TBC but without the awful questing experience.

The 1st char quest that take you through all the previous expansions sounds awesome, they can make it a much better experience than what new players get atm.

A big questline involving different zones and a mandatory dungeon from each expansion would be an interesting idea and I think people would like it.

I love that idea of doing a massive questline going through all the expansions. I think that's something they should've done back in BfA.

As a new player, I felt very lonely and bored during my 1-20 journey. The questing is barren with no player interaction, and if you do happen to see someone they completely ignore you. The whole “pick your expansion” thing was confusing and I was bored with the BFA questing as soon as I got to Kul Tiras. As a newb I had no idea of the story/what’s going on, but they call me a hero? okay…I then decided to journey to the Legion expansion. The content itself was engaging, but the “mmo” aspect feels completely absent. I’m basically playing a single-player campaign. Nobody talks in dungeon groups either, just clear and leave. I managed to get to lvl 20 but now I’m not sure I want to subscribe and attempt to “catch up” to current content. And the option to “boost to lvl 70” doesn’t seem appealing either. I’m really disappointed with how new players are handled. I feel like an outcast that is way behind, nobody talks or bothers to help newbs like me, and there isn’t much incentive to stick around when I don’t feel welcomed. I’m sure there are many others who feel the same as me that tried to get into WoW. My experience with FFXIV was the complete opposite, the story is progressive, players were extremely helpful and talkative, dungeons always began with greetings all around. People were willing to answer questions and explain boss mechanics. They don’t get mad when the group wipes cuz a newb didn’t know a mechanic. They explain what to do and try again. Overall has a way better “mmo” experience. No one is racing to end-game, everyone just enjoys the experience. I really wanted to enjoy the lvling experience in WoW but sadly it’s hard at its current state. Basically my options are to subscribe and force myself to lvl to current content, or fork over extra $$ to get instant access to Dragonflight and miss all the experience of playing the game along the way. Any suggestions as to what to do? I’m either resubbing to FFXIV, pushing thru WoW, or play a private server? I heard Turtle WoW is popular but it’s Vanilla and I do prefer the updated graphics and gameplay of Retail….

Agreed with this. Not only for new players, but I just hit level 60 while in Draenor chromie time. I hit it doing the literal last quest of a zone which I wanted to complete for an achv and the game literally yanked me out of the quest and straight to org to start Dragonflight. Like what the hell game let me at least finish what I'm doing

Honestly, I think this is where FF14 has a major advantage: Its MSQ. You are required to play through the entire main story, and you have to go through the dungeons and trials to progress. And there's a utterly token xp gain for the quests in the Patch Content, minimizing the overleveling problem WoW suffered for years with. I'd argue WoW would greatly benefit from this, but it would require a massive overhaul to the questing, dungeon and raid system. This could be an opportunity to update the Old Worlds (I'm looking at you, Blood Elves and Draenei zones), and better integrate Allied Races as well. Determine if a zone storyline holds up still (Ghostlands, sure maybe; Silverpine Forest, yes). Weave an MSQ to include those, while making the obnoxious side quest (Fetch/Kill X of Y) optional (most are corequisite quests to progress the zones). •While FF has a single MSQ, WoW could easily support several across Kalimdor and EK, and take faction or even race into consideration. •Mandate dungeons. Do the Silverpine chain as Horde? You're going into Shadowfang Keep. Do the Gilneas chain as Worgen? You're going into SFK. FF's slowly making all MSQ dungeons solo friendly with AI support; the dungeon in Exile's Reach has this as well, so just adapt all subsequent dungeons. An AI team could be the player's alts, too, which could mitigate MSQ replay issues. •(Alter Timewalking so all MSQ dungeons are available if unlocked and scale down higher level players with bonus rewards [player housing items?] if players are running the dungeon for the first time to encourage foster friendly multiplayer play) •Disable xp gains once an xpac level target's been reached (like 80 in LK), but keep a small but notable power progression as the player finishes the relevant story which should build to the next expac. Suramar comes to mind. •(MoP: Finish Siege of Orgrimmar, the quest chain deals with the aftermath, with cinematics featuring Garrosh's trial to properly set up WoD, for example) •With AI support and proper player scaling, this could help make older raids more relevant (the amount of trash mobs really needs to be scaled down though), though given how well LFR is... x.x This idea certainly has some shortcomings, particularly given an MSQ weaving through 9 xpacs and most of their dungeons and raids - even if all the fat's trimmed - that might be a long ask. But that's what buying a WoW Token and purchasing a skip from Chromie's for right?

Here's an idea. Month long events for leveling in a specific expansion, with lets say bonus rewards cosmetics and bonus XP like 10-20%. So one month would be Burning Crusade era and you get X amount of extra xp from quests and dungeons, and better scaling loot.

I’m glad I got to experience each xpac as it was current. Can’t imagine starting now and being so overwhelmed by the story and all the old content

I am definitely a fan of the idea of a proper leveling campaign. Something timeless and world spanning that really shows off some of the coolest looking zones. I also really like the idea of expanding avenues of play that serve as routes to level. Things like pet battles, and professions should also be lucrative ways to level. Just to sort of encourage exploring those forms of play. In DFs leveling, it really feels like you can level however you want. It should feel the same way 1-60. They could add a bunch of thematic, but simple world quests around the whole world to add in some dynamic play. Events in other games have done a good job of funneling players in large zones to the same area.

Another suggestion is, death knights, demon hunters and now the evokers start at a higher level, but giving the the option to start in exiles reach from level 1 could be enjoyable as well. I mainly say this because let's be honest, the dk starting area aged like milk compared to the rest of the game

I definitely like the idea of leveling characters through professions - like where you mentioned mining herbing for leveling, but also w/crafting things too!! Not everyone wants to go through the stories and "Champion" experiences I'm sure, and as someone who has played since TBC and when I want to make and level a new alt, I'm not interested in all of that anymore, but I absolutely enjoy farming materials and working on professions - that could ABSOLUTELY be a way to make Archeology come back in full force and be relevant again!!!! 😄

Exile's Reach-Xpac with relevant lore to current xpac that will take you to the start of current xpac-Current xpac. For example Exile's Reach-Cataclysm-Dragonflight.

They should make an entire sub expansion for new players that is basically a linear tour of each expansion in order. Basically an extension to the tutorial island Maybe just have Chromie narrate a super general story of each expansion on their own phased Zones. Each resembles 1st Zone of each expansion so new players get a taste of what each expansion means and holds for them. Draenor could even just be the intro up to the garrison. Legion is just up to pick up your artifact. (Just skip ShadowLands. No player needs to suffer that ever again) It's some work, yeah, but it makes it so new players get hooked to the game and makes them go back to those expansion and see more content. And helps them understand what is going on in the current expansion.

Yea i'd really welcome some kind of fix of the old stuff for new players. I brought 4 of my friends to WoW with the DF expansion and leveled with them. Everyone at different times and it was a sore to somehow make the leveling process seem to be fun by guiding them at the right pace and showing them the cool stuff. Explaining everyone the jump from nothing to a free Talanji who why and what is going on kinda is awkward without saying "ye the devs were lazy here" or "They dont expect new players to be able to free her yourself" which would also then leave to spot open of why we go there in the first place ( to free Saurfang? ) I suggest they make a small story Quest that guides the players through all the mayjor events of the expansions and make some character like Chromie, Kadghar, Thall, Silvanas, Garrosh or Tirion first introduce themself and and taking them more or less by the hand or kick them into the cold water of battle and intrigue to make their personalities known and after each chapter make a dungeon or scenario where u fight a Lich king, Illidan, Yogg or even recycle old scenarios like the bombing of Menethil. There would be even something in for max lvl players to join those scenarios/dungeons by giving them a chance to obtain the mount of each of those baddies or other time walking stuff.

I think Stormwind/Orgrimmar and their respective zones need a visual revamp too, like what they did with Arathi in BfA. I feel like going from the stunning, high-res Exile’s Reach to Stormwind’s 2004 graphics might be a bit jarring haha

Totally agree with your new player experience idea! Having a summary of events so far would be amazing for new players and having them introduced to the Chromie system make s a lot of sense. Each expansion could give you like 10 levels and you'd get caught up by the time you reach current. The only issue I see is that this experience would have to be updated every single expansion so it may be complicated.

First off, on the professions thing. Nixxiom, are you aware that, with the recent ilvl changes, enchanting and other professions that add enchants to certain items like scribe for shoulders ect is impossible to do now? All enchanting is capped at ilvl 50 for items pre WoD, and a lvl 10 player can obtain item lvl 59 epics. This makes the whole profession 100% worthless. BFA enchants cap out at 140 ilvl, with lvl 50 players having ilvl of around 180+. This has been an ongoing problem for the twink community since the change and blizzard has NO intention to fix it. Do you *really* think, they are going to even attempt to make the early game any good? Next, for the overall concept, like I commented on another of your videos, this would require them to PAY a team of devs to work on revamping the leveling system, which they simply can not afford, being a small indie company. They have most of their resources put into union busting efforts and ensuring Bobby Kotick gets his 12 100k bonus checks. They can't afford to hire on a team of like 6-12 people that could work on making the leveling actually FUN. It takes millions to do all the union busting they are doing and hire such expensive union busting teams like the one Amazon uses to keep their slaves in order. No mater how many times you bring it up, bitch about it in videos, they are NEVER, *N E V E R* going to make leveling at low levels fun in any way, shape or form. I genuinely don't understand why you don't get that yet.

The rest of the zones of Azeroth drastically need to be more interesting for leveling players. I was leveling my mage and wanted some nostalgia and level through Northrend, but the questing was so slow and spamming dungeons was way more rewarding. A ding per dungeon and good items. I would love to see dungeons being buffed up. That you have to level through the world to get gear and more talents before you can just do any dungeon. I still remember that I joined a UBRS group in WotLK and I was drastically weaker than the rest if the group but I helped out with a lot of CC so that was cool. It was a real dungeon crawl but I'll never forget that run. Challenge us, the player

This would be an amazing idea for a guild to do for an annual Recruiting event. Have guild members all over the world giving newbie’s “quests” to do to go find other guild members, NPCs, etc. sort of like a scavenger hunt, but for leveling.

Sometimes you just want to play old content and not new on wow, especially if your an old time player. Forcing us to play new expansions and skip all old content we intentionally restarted a new character to play would be a super disappointing experience. Best thing you can do is allow us to play old content and ignore new stuff, so lvl caps are great addition and not being forced to go into new areas would be a must.

This is why I appreciate Classic a lot. Early game in retail is suffering from a lot of problems and is given very little attention from Blizzard because they've made it so quick and easy to get from 1 to 70 that it doesn't really matter. Classic still retains that idea of the leveling process being a journey, or at least it would if a large number of people in the Classic community didn't focus on boosting.

A short version of all expansions, where you reach 60 at the end would be really nice for new players. even i might do it once again just to see all of it again ( as long as it takes maybe 4-6 hours and you are done )

They should just do what they did in thaldrasus at the end, a super quick segment of each area briefly explaing the story for every 10 levels, like 1-10 exiles reach 10 -20 vanilla story 20-30 bc and so on.

Goblin tours. One of the neutral goblin factions take new players (Both Hoard and Alliance) to each of the expansions for a tour. This would happen after Exiles Reach as the 'Heroes' need some down time after all that happened there (Remember they were basically recruits so they are not use to all this stuff) so they book a Tour from one of the goblin factions looking to profit for said down time. The goblins however are using a Time device 'Borrowed' from Chromie (don't ask how they got it, it involved an exploding sheep, jumper cables, and a tub of butter) and are using this to cut costs on their tours by showing the heroes some of the most exciting locations through history, only they have no idea how it works and its just goes all sideways and drops them into some of the outskirts of the major events that have happened through the years and have to fight/figure out a way to move on to their own time (of course getting slapped into a small portion of each expansion, should be about 10 or 20 minutes per jump) until they get to their own time. When that happens Chomie will show up to take her device and offer the players a ride to the current expansion where they would have to complete a quick side quest (Getting an item or something to fix all their blundering through time) before offering to dump them into a time period (Expansion) of the players choice.

I love the Starter Trial. Fun fact when u talk to Chormie in Stormwind all that happens she just Shows u a Cinematic.

They could do what Star Wars the Old Republic did in a later expansion. It reworked it's quests seperating the Story of the game from the side quests, making the Storyline quests of each area give a huge amount of XP while all the sidequests were there as just extra stuff to do, minor xp, with some minor rewards for crafting, side gear, etc. You could tell the difference between the two by the quest indicator on NPCs. For example they could make the "!" in WoW be yellow for the main story and some other color for side quests. That way new players could zoom through the streamlined story of each expansion while skipping the fat. With 70 levels it's hard to fit it all in though.

I think that the bottom line is: blizzard doesn't care about the leveling experience with how quickly you get to 60 nowadays, I don't know why they haven't removed the leveling process completely yet. There are other ways to teach new players how to play their class. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of leveling progression. I love to level alts and explore the game. Blizzard just has completely ruined that and made it Currentzone of Warcraft instead of World of Warcraft.

I think the only way to really fix it would be to redo the entire world cataclysm style. That’s would probably take a lot of dev time though. Maybe a king main storyline and even class story quests like in ffxiv

Basically the new player is tasked in stopping a bad guy form altering events in the past. Khadgar takes the new player through all the previous expansions in scenario type quests exploring the different old expansions and telling the stories of each. Maybe its a chrono dragon gone crazy that is causing the alterations in time. Each scenario would give the player 5+ level boots and you get a custom set of armor reflecting each of the expansions.

As a solo world content player, I LIKE that older content is 'dead', player wise. Other people get in the way, steal kills, steal quest items forcing you to have to wait on respawns and hate the overall experience because of how much of a bunch of dicks other players are to you. 'Dead' content is amazing. A nice, peaceful, chill levelling experience that you can enjoy is MUCH better and having levelled 26 characters (13 on each faction, 1 of each class) ive come up with a PERFECT levelling arc to follow for fast but fun solo levelling 1 - 60 and I never tire of it even after 26 characters. :)

An intro quest line for a new character could be Chromie bringing the Player in various pivotal fights of the various expansions to fight against the Infinite Dragonflight for example. "Ok so in burning Crusade you have to stop them in the Black Temple, they mean to kill Illidan so that we don't get his help durig Legion" "In WotlK you'll have them stopping from keeping Tirion encased in ice during the battle against the Lich King" and so on, this way you can also include a decent summary of the main events so far.

In lost ark they have this when you boost a character for the first time, you go to a timeless place where you experience all the story so far till the start of the endgame story areas in short where you go through some text, images, voice lines and narration, cinematics and also play some major events as well as try some spells you earn along the levelling path till that point. I had an idea about having the levelling experience be similar to that and when you brought up the idea about an NPC like Khadgar taking you through the starting of each expansion in a chronological order to get some context added to the idea I had so we can have it in a similar way but instead of going through just blasted lands or something you get specific existing key story quests, not the boring kill and collect ones, alongside narration from Khadgar about why we got here and how it happened especially when transitioning between zones and expansions and the XP you get while doing the levelling experience is enough to roughly get you to level 60. And during that levelling experience you get to do some key dungeons that tie into the story alongside the cinematics of the stuff that happened, and these dungeons can be done with players or be like in exiles reach when NPCs accompany you to clear them instead. For the raids that have context you can just skip to specific fights like killing the Lich King for example where you either witness or participate in the fight and it can be done with NPCs dressed in appropriate gear, similar to how the Illidan quest, where you get to experience his fight from his PoV fighting the NPC raid. The technology to do that is present in the game as it has been done before like in Illidan's quest and also the Thaldraszus questline where the NPC can be Chromie or any time dragon instead of Khadgar or even it can be multiple main NPCs who had big roles in the expansion or zone you are experiencing.

1000% yes. Playing with my family trying to get them into the game as new players requires mental gymnastics for me to explain to them what we are doing and how it will be fun once we get to 60.

Future expansions need to streamline the current game. Cataclysm did an amazing job at resetting the world making old content relevant again and reworking the leveling experience. Problem is now, we have a million different zones/quests/dungeons and players are just going to get lost. The game needs another Cataclysm, or at least something that puts players on a proper path from level 1 to end game.

Another perk that could be added, especially for alt leveling, could be the game recognizing quest chains you haven't completed offering more experience than quests you have run through previously.

As a new player to WoW, I fully agree that the biggest problem in the game I’ve found is the early game content. I hate that everything prior to the newest expansion feels useless and empty. It sucks ad a new player to have an entire world that is new to me that I want to explore with tons of cool zones, dungeons, etc and all of it is completely empty. It makes it so that 90% of the game is empty and doesn’t matter. The game shouldn’t just be focused on endgame content, that’s not fun for me as a new player who still wants to enjoy and experience things besides endgame content of the newest expansion. My solutions might be simplistic and dumb because I don’t have as much experience playing the game for years. With that said I think a few things that would make early game content more fun for me and for veteran players would be: 1. Make questing non linear. Make it so that questing requires genuine exploration and thought and effort. It shouldn’t be as simple as checking the map where to go, doing a chore, and done. Make some quests actually difficult or intended for groups or make the player have to figure out where to go. Make it so we have the freedom to tackle quests in an order we want too. 2. Give players a reason to revisit old content. Maybe make rotariins where every month a different expansion will get an influx of new world bosses that give great gear, encouraging players to go back and spend some time there going after them, so lower level players are still there to quest and higher level characters are there for gear and fighting world bosses. 3. Make leveling slower. Most veteran players might hate this, but as a new player I hate that I’m rushed through this process so fast. I want getting to max level to feel like an accomplishment. I want to enjoy the journey getting there. I don’t want it to be done so quickly that I’m forced out of zones or continents before I finish what it has to offer. 4. This might also be controversial, but have a few different types of servers. Like maybe have some that are raid servers, pvp servers, questing and exploration servers, etc. Make it so that if all a player cares about is end game raising there are servers where that is the focus. And other servers for people who want to spend time exploring the world and questing etc. That way they can go to servers with people who want to experience aspects of the game they want to as well. That way it increases the likelihood you find players interested in the same aspects of the game as you, maybe in a questing/exploration server you will be more likely to find players out in the world looking to group up to quest as opposed to blazing through but to get to the end game content. Maybe for the questing servers make the leveling process much slower with alternating quests available in each place depending on the time you are there, giving you even more reasons to go back.

As a new player myself, I couldn't agree more with everything you said. Especially with the lore and story telling. It's a little ridiculous that for someone who's never played WoW, to be bombarded with the overload of different quests from the different expansions that are set in different timelines and expect to know WTF is going on or who is who or why there's 2-3 different warchiefs in Orgrimar at 1 point and trying to figure out which timeline you're in. Yeah, there's RU-vid vids for lore recap but Blizzard has the resources to make this a more seamless experience. You shouldn't have to rely on an outside source to tell your story properly. Now with that said, I've thoroughly enjoyed my new leveling experience and the story telling of Zandalar quest line as a Horde player. This coming from someone that hates 'tab targeting' combat systems. But if it wasn't for that awesome experience that I had, I don't think I'd continue playing. But as said, I loved it and I wanted to know more about the lore and story. Scouring RU-vid and Reddit forums though to see what's the best way to go about it or being told to read the books/comics just isn't the way to go.

These a really great suggestions, Nixxiom. I have been away from the game for a year and a half now, and part of it had to do with the disjointed leveling experiences and lack of classic dungeon challenges. I think implementing even a couple of these proposals would be a huge help to the game for we veterans who like to jump back into old lore.

I’d also like to shed light on the starter accounts and maybe some fixes to make them feel better overall: What you can do currently: -level up any basic race up to 20 -1000 gold cap -professions up to a certain amount (tried to look it up but there wasn’t any info on it) -and 100% mount speed Plus some other stuff I can’t remember off the top of my head. What I propose: -reduce gold cap to 500 or 750 but have a separate auction house just for free to play players that way you feel closer to that mmo feeling -maybe allow free to play player only guilds but only up to a specific amount per server and per faction as to not make things bloated -update older professions with the new system from dragon flight so it actually feels like they have a purpose again -maybe allow the free to play players get a heart of Azeroth or the legion class artifact weapons so there’s something to grind and look forward in getting when they get to lvl 20 -maybe have a end game thing for free to play players who love mid maxing or just be as strong as they can at lvl 20 I’d also like people to reply to see what else could be a good change to make the game more fun and feel like an mmo.

I think some zones of Azeroth (maybe 4-5 on each continent) should remain timeless and/or gated (at least during the leveling experience) so players can level up those zones until they are able to jump into the latest content. That way, leveling would always feel like an introduction to WoW, and the storyline wouldn't be as confusing, you're just training so you can help in whatever the newest campaign may be.

What i think would be the best, is if after doing exiles reach you would go to your class trainer, and do a series of quests that teaches you how to play your class, and would show you your place in tge world (for example a rogue could get a quest chain of infiltratiot and espianage, and a mage to do stuff with laylines and elementals, or even just helping out in the world) and these quests should make you lvl 60, as it is already really fast to lvl to 60, and even in a normal pace (questing in draenor) , can be done in an afternoon. So it would be kinda like the legion quests, but merged with what nixxium said. But in the end it would take tons of effort for blizard to make it, and it wouldnt really be justifiable as most people would never interact with these quests, or only do it for 1 class. But if we dont want to add in new stuf, bfa is defenetly the best expansion to throw a new player into, its clear and lineral but has a bit of exploration, it is designed for not having flying, and even if it doesnt make too much sense in the lore if you just end it after doing only the 8.0 stuff, and never the 8.1-8.3, that is true for every other expansion, and while it would kinda make sense for them to do cataclysm tonget familiar with the dragons, i wouldnt wish for anyone to lvl through cata (even if the low lvl zones are some if the best wow has to offer)

I really do like the idea of having a quest campaign that tours you through all the timelines/expansions, and the weekly rotating low level dungs with wacky challenges, but a lot of your video shows that you seem to misunderstand the major issues here. Most of the proposals you make end with "and it could give you a lot of XP" "it would level you up fast" etc. You made a good point about being able to do a low leveled version of dragonflight, but we don't need fast leveling, we need more varied and enjoyable content to level through. If you only add the fast leveling campaigns and dungys, that would just leave the players who want to quest and level up 'organically' in the dust, not to mention people that will walk away as soon as they get freedom, they'd miss the fast pass and be stuck in a game that wasn't made for his powerlevel

As someone who's play style has constantly evolved - started in wotlk clueless using swords leveling a warlock to raiding mythic shadow lands to now casually enjoying endgame content - I would love a cohesive beginning to now quest you could do every new alt - constantly refreshing your memory on the events and tying in with the current storyline if you've been afk for months. I just leveled an evoker and it would've been awesome to get a history lesson and show the easiest way to get around everywhere. I spend so much time just trying to get to old content because the portal isn't easy to find/doesn't exist for no reason other than the world is huuuuge.

I would also like to see an update to “Timewalking” by having Chromie scale down players to a specific expacs level and Ilvl then put you into that expac to progress through just like you were playing that expac. This progress can be saved per character and toggled on and off whenever you want so you can enter the main timeline continent as an op character or go in as a timewalker. Timewalking for a specific expac can happen for 1 month total rotating. When Timewalking is enabled and you enter the Specific Timewalking Expac, you are scaled down and restricted to that expacs content only. You can’t bring any gold, gear or items with you, as you have entered another timeline. You enter the Timewalking with green gear at a few levels under that expacs capped level and need to quest to level and get gear. Main timeline gear, item and stats and timewalking gear, items and stats separated Only that expacs professions are enabled and the auctionhouse is separated from the main timeline game. Everything you do in timewalking should reward timewalking currency Timewalking rewards should be vastly expanded to include decent item rewards (gear, mats, gold) in the main timeline or even buy time saving coins to lock your timewalking gear to bring to the next timewalking event. Gear looted in timewalking counts towards tmog in the main timeline Tied into this, there should be new stat next to ilvl which is called “knowledge” This knowledge is a number adding all of the world bosses, dungeons and raids together which you have completed as current expac content. Having 3 color coded numbers showing the individual boss completions Bronze = normal Silver = heroic Gold = mythic Number = how many bosses downed These numbers and colors can be accumulated through current expac content but also through the time walking content.

Instead of the Khadgar intro questline being a 1 to 60, one time, super fast questline, it could be like a 1 to 20 ish, hour long quest chain that takes you from expansion to expansion, summing them up, same thing. And then at the end it takes you to Chromie and you get to choose which expansion takes you the rest of the way to 60. That way, we don't have to worry about making it too long and it's a slog for a one time quest. But it also isn't too fast and the new player gets whiplash and feels like they're thrown into the new expansion without being fully prepared for it.

instead of releasing new expansions, i would personally focus on the zones forgotten by blizzard from classic or older expansions. as a kid, i kinda bonded with the atmospheres in zones like elwynn, redridge etc. these are zones with rich lore that can potentially be digged. how about a questline where you could find out more about the aftermath of the defias in westfall? or how about a questline where you help a peasant's family build a house in elwynn. simple stuff like that gets me. or weekly special quests where instead of killing something or doing a raid, you just meet with someone like jaina and you go to a tavern like the one in goldshire and talk about theramore. making you more engaged in the lore and the warcraft universe. i think little things like that gets people. just look how well people looked at the conversation with the dwarf about his life in the waking shores.

OK Hear me out, long quest chain tour is a great idea, the icing on the cake would be leveling instances of the major raids that scale to be completed solo or in a group of any size. This way the quest chain could actually take a similar amount of time but tell the ENTIRE story and have the play take part in some of the more important moments in the game. What good is the WOTLK story if you dont actually stop Arthus yourself?

its not about the speed of leveling, but that the leveling is so tedious and boring. The old world needs a whole new rewamp to the leveling and systems to make it more fun to go from 1 to 70

The time line thing is a good idea you would just have to have fixed xp to have it a little slower vs other toons

Great video, i also had the same idea, it would be nice for players to travel through all xpac's, drop some quests here and there and fight the raid bosses (atleast the last boss through a scenario), would be alot of work to do, but i think in the long run this is necessary.

I think a "Warcraft Abridged" is probably the best way to handle the leveling experience for new players or as a choice for alts. More or less a somewhat railroaded and curated experience of existing quest chains that have the filler quests cut out as much as possible to guide the players through each expansion's main plot points / campaigns in a fairly condensed fashion that also avoids unnecessary expansion mechanics wherever possible (soulbinds, covenant sanctum anima upgrades, mission tables, most of the garrison, etc) so new players know what the hell has happened in the world that lead up to where the current game is now. It could more or less be broken up into: 1-10 Exile's Reach, then Chromie stops the new adventurer and has them take a "history lesson through time" and throws them back into the past for level 10-15.55 in Vanilla, level 15-20.55 in BC, level 20-25.55 in Wrath, level 25-30.55 in Cata, level 30-35.55 in Mists, level 35-40.55 in Draenor, level 40-45.55 in Legion, level 45-50.55 in BFA, level 50-55.55 in Shadowlands, and then the player is taken back to the current timeline by Chromie at the end where they will be guaranteed level 60 and ready for Dragonflight. It could even be made so that when the player gets to the end of the expansion they're playing through, they can queue for a LFR style version of the old raids of that expansion and any expansion they have already completed that they can do with other leveling players. This version of the old raids would have significantly tuned down mechanics which would get new players familiar with how raids work, teach them skills they can use for end game as they play, and give them opportunities for acquiring old raid gear for transmog and specifically to use while leveling to really sell the experience thematically. No doubt this would be a pretty serious undertaking to accomplish, but I feel that it needs to be done sooner than later, else the leveling experience will only get more and more unwieldy as time passes and more expansions come out.

The best way to solve this is to revamp old Azeroth zones (EK & Kalimdor) and let players loose there. Give them recommendations on where to go, but they could always choose from a set of zones. They don't need to be connected, and they should be as evergreen as they can unlike they were in Cataclysm where they very much were tied to the expansions storyline. Self-contained storylines where the player gets do do some good old-fashioned adventuring. Somewhat guided by the Call Boards/Adventuring Maps where as they advance, they unlock access to groups of zones on each continent to choose from. It'd have a lot of replayability as 4-6 or so (depending on the size of each zone and the length of its story) should be a good amount, enough to get to the current expansion storyline. They'd want to play through the other zones they didn't choose as well.. They'd be encouraged to venture unto current content and Trivial quests would need to be turned on to do more of these Azeroth zones.. but, they could be told that they can create other characters who could choose to go on a different journey, or, they may choose to go Timewalking instead. This would be a much better system that also isn't too linear and guided where a player can just have some fun with exploration and getting lost in the world.. but not so sandbox where they'd literally be lost, not knowing where to go ofc. Revamping the zones would be a lot of work ofc, but it's inevitable..

So we have Bronze-Dragons like Chromie, Mages like Khadgar, Lorewalkers like Cho and the Explorers League like Bran Bronzebeard to get you up to current events. I loved all the Quests around Lorewalker Cho and especially all the Visual-Stories you could unlock within the Lorewalker Faction in Pandaria telling you what happend in the past. Same goes for the really cool "Theater" Questline in Ardenweald to "remind us" of what happend before. Or the Bronze-Quests in Thaldraszus. Khadgar & Velen could show you (playable) visions of Events (Scenarios), same goes for the Bronze-Drakes. Caverns of Time or "the Deaths of Chromie"-Questline. It's all already in the Game. You could start by polishing those and giving the Player a particular Questline through them all and fill the Gaps in between with new content.

Honestly, I just invited a friend to come play with me and my roomate so we can build a 5 man team (kinda lacking) and he has had a bit of a rough experience with the sense of lore and how things are paced. “Chromie’s Temporal Tour” would be a nice name for a streamlined cherry-picked cross-expansion series of quest with a boosted experience buff tweaked to give an average player a 8-12 hour (played time) tour to 60 that would take already existing. Quest chains/cutscenes/scripted events and weave them together with Chromie being a sort of on-rails tour guide that would help you zip to each area and still keep some sort of coherent chronological flow to recap new players through the nostalgic story loretrain through each expansion. I got to talking with my buddy and he feels rather lost in direction and aggravated to see there is such a rich loved world, but is left unsure as to the chronology/order/flow of it all. He also had learned that the point of going back to the older expansions post 60 felt like “Okay, but what’s the point? The rewards don’t scale enough and you just get gold/cosmetics?” And I’m just like… “Yeah, that’s fair! The incentive to explore the older stuff is a bit moot if you are on a power creep and want to feel like you are making progression.” (Especially since he is still without dragon flight for a bit longer and literally cannot use the LFG/LFR tool for 60 since Blizzard doesn’t seem to want to support that tool for lower levels as well. ) So in short Nixxiom? YEAH, Blizzard should look into something like that. It’s not really making a ton of new content, but having an NPC tour guide that would take them along a set series of events during their leveling experience and then give them the option to go back later would be nice. I’m fully on board with it and would love to do that as well. Fuck, if nothing else, have Zygor/Dugi/tomcat tours/etc make a very specific guide/addon I can plug to friends to GET that same experience! You know, to either re-live the tour myself after this last 2 decades in an enjoyable flow, or to have newcomer friends be on the SAME PAGE.

I think they need to make something kind of like Exile's Reach, that summarizes an expansion. By the end of it it gives you enough xp to get to the next. So Exile's reach is 1-10, Classic is 10-20, BC is 20-30, etc.

For me, i just dont know what to do. Exile reach is straight forward. Go to quest, do quest. But when ur done with that, there is suddenly a ton of quests everywhere. And idk which ones to do.

With the fact that you can't get a fully unlocked legendary weapon anymore at your class order hall, i would like to see a revamp of that system. Where you can go to your class order hall right after completing the starting zone. And use that class order hall as that faction where you used the explorers league for.

This is a great way to fix it. I tried to get a mate into WoW a few weeks back, did RAF and everything. He hated it after an hour, said he didn't know what was going on, had no context. This sucks, because I've played for a long time and enjoy the lore. Right now, short of watching endless lore videos on RU-vid, there's no way to get up to speed with the story, and thus draw new players in. Unless there's something else that draws you in, I feel like my friend's experience will be far from unique.

I would argue a good solution is to create something like a class order hall for all content in the game. Back in the day, players used to have to return to a class trainer to get new abilities when they leveled up. Rather than getting abilities these new order halls could give you quests related to the expansion you asked Chromie to adventure in. These quests would give you a condensed version of that expansion's story line, allowing you to see the patch content for each expansion in a much shorter amount of time. Beyond that, I do agree that much of the world of azeroth is just left alone and empty, so one thing that I would like to see at endgame is more patched content like in BFA or reused zones like in Legion. In Legion you would frequently get quests that would have you play max level content in old zones like when you had to get your artifact weapons or class mounts, and in BFA blizz would go the extra mile and give old zones complete updates for max level content. Such updated zones like Sillithus, Arathi Highlands, and Terisfall Glades had a bronze dragon NPC that you could talk to if you ever wanted to go back to the lower level version of the zone for dungeons or something. It's a good system, and it takes less work for blizz than making a completely new place from scratch. That extra time saved could let them create other art assets and more in-depth story, character, and quest design elements in game which has long been weekpoints of the current WOW.

THE SCALING FROM LVL 1 TO 60 IS RIDICULOUS. As a lvl 49 restro druid my BIGGEST heal heals me for about 15% of my hp. Whilst when I was lvl 10 my heals healed like 40% of my hp

I love the idea of khadgar going through the history of WoW, but I think it should only be about 30 levels. From there give the player 3 options. 1. Let them chromie time 2. Explorers league quest time for each continent, giving the player more info on the continent and its side quests before fully delving into chromie time 3. Give each race a small quest line that anybody could do so the new players can learn of the different races story in game

I feel like there needs to be 2 different kinds of levelling modes: -levelling mode that is meant for fast XP gains, don't care about the story and you just want to reach endgame as fast as possible (perfect for experienced players who just want to level alts up) -levelling mode that seeks to immerse the player the in the game's world and history (great for newer players or those who might want to play through previous stories/zones)

I think the quest chain idea is a great one and blizzard already has the plan in their hand without knowing it, in the form of the Exploring Azeroth series of books. If they follow the zone by zone narrative each zone having a couple of quests explaining what's it about and giving the player 1 or 2 levels it would be a well pace (not fast or slow) tour through all the zones and continents explored. Secondly I believe that the new player experience feels rushed it's because very few people want to spend their time in the old world with lower graphics and mechanics wasting precious game time. To this the solution is to make levels 1-50, with all the continents up to BFA all for free, new player will really get a true understanding without any pressure to explore the old world. This is done fantastically both in FFXIV and Runescape. Then when a person buys game time they can access the Shadowlands and when they buy the new expansion they can access the Dragon Isles. Thirdly giving older player an incentive in game to help newer players. Example in FFXIV when you play older dungeons you get a currency to buy older gear for transmog. Basically new players need to be cherished by the older players and not seen as problem because they don't know the mechanics or features of the game. Also they should add commendations with transmog rewars attached to them.

One thing I hate about the old world is when they revamped it in Cata, they made all of the mobs higher res and pretty much all of the mobs look the same. I hate the new Redridge Mountains because every single orc is the same model.

I think the levelling should just be in the old world and then you get called to the dragon isles at level 60