Why All New Players Quit WoW | Asmongold Reacts 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just started playing, never even before, I got 2 friends that we rotate when we jump on so all 3 of us can play together or separate and I’m loving it so far, ever character I come across it’s different gear and it looks sick can’t wait to get higher and keep doing dungeons lvl 24 pally right now! Getting the mount was so amazing lmao

3:25 honestly though I’ve gone back through exiles reach. It gave tips and tricks since it was automatically selected. He may have that option deselected automatically through his account. And it also added new spells to my bar. So it’s probably an interface selection he undid on his main.

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

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

The day I quit was during mists expansion. The legendary cloak quest. I tried for so long to finish that quest. The guild I was in required raid participants to have the cloak. I couldn't get guild members to help me run quest sections that needed a group. I ended up saying forget it and logged off and never looked back.

In vermintide II, it's so great that you level a race instead, then have access to all that race archetypes of classes. Much more motivating, you unlock the differents archetype as you level, you go and try the new ones, come back to the first to see the differences...

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Wrath Classic, I personally enjoyed and played more leveling each class than endgame this time around. As I get older I enjoy playing solo or single-player games more.

I played for the first time ever like last year before the dragon flight expansion, and leveled to 60 with the bfa quest line. Did a few dungeons but that’s it, I had no idea what else to do after I did the main quest, so I just haven’t touched the game since..

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

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

I'm currently a new player who just reached level 70 playing completely solo, the thing that's going to make me quit is the gear grind in end game. I'm used to grinding for runescape so only being able to do raids a certain number of times a week feels really bad, the avenues open to me as a new player to work towards tier set gear are so confusing that I've had to read multiple dissertation level posts about, those posts have explained its probably going to take roughly 7 weeks if I do all my lockouts to get gear that my class apparently needs (i've been told by the raid finder fellows who have accepted me)

I haven't played in years and I started back yesterday. I'm not really sure the best route to take in order to want to continue playing. Should I run through the quests solo or jump in a bunch of dungeons? I'm not interested in rushing through the game. I have tons of old characters but I honestly forgot all the skills and rotations so I created a new character from level 1.

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

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

Recently saw your video about a gold seller, and it kind of ties into this. Recently-ish, I started playing WoW for the first time to game with a friend. The leveling process and item scaling felt so bad that I honestly felt obligated to buy gold so that I could buy heirlooms. All of the other options just sucked. But then suddenly I just didn't have anything to look forward to any more, character progression just got boring and all my friends could say to look forward to was cap level. But if that is all that there is to look forward to, why isn't ever character just created ten levels under cap? Shockingly, I don't play any more.

I remember leveling a new character during CATA, I remember going zone to zone and working through levels and each zone had a complete story about what was happening. If all the mobs in an area scale there isn't any progression. The level cap might as well be level 10... I can understand scaling the levels for a max level player to go back and revisit older content though. Maybe they need to scale the region, for example MISTS if you choose to level there the Jade Forest starts at level 10 and each zone has a progression of levels like the old days to direct the story. But if your already max level you can set it so everything is also max level?

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

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

It happens with every game. Most recently Elden Ring gave me that same addiction rush that I had when playing BC and Wrath, and with time the feeling fades. I respect what was but look forward to new and different games now that are more casual as a man in my mid 30s with kids. Finally quit WoW this year after playing since Vanilla. Very bittersweet, so many hours and friends in the game.

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

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

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

My favorite advertisement was when a bunch of level ones would die in iron forge near bank, and the corpses spelled the website.

about the spellbook thing, the game literally tells you on the second quest of exile's reach that you have a spellbook that you should drag the spells from whenever you level up lol

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

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

17:20 That's true! I'm playing DF and I have been doing some dungeons/heroics during last two weeks and there's no talking, no communication at all

WoW: Giving your new character the "chosen one" storyline, while making you feel weak and isolated in the process of leveling.

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

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

My first attempt at Exile's Reach was full of spammers too. Wild that its such a common experience.

Honestly the leveling experience shouldn't be pick a place from chomie. It should be chromie popping you through time ans having you do quests explaining each expansion. You fight "mini" dungeons that feature old raid bosses . So your hero has been that champion. Each expac is like 5 to 10 levels of stuff in a more compact questline. Chromie would drop you in a new tone line. Have you find the flight path achor point then the key paths would open and each place some that land mass would have a few quests aimed at the lore of that expac while giving you at least the main flight bath to that land.

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

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

What expansion would you recommend for leveling? Which one has the best story?

I remember starting a first ever character and got a lot insults in my first dungeon (in roulette) coz i was expected to know all skips and mechanics in dungeon before starting it.

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

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

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

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

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

after long time i started palying dragonflight as a newbie and didnt use anythiing from mounts to heirlooms to any buffs, i just quested and read thru the quests and compleated zone chain quests (loremaster in progress) and thats actualy the best fun I had in ages playing wow as single player game

Bought classic wotlk yesterday and everywhere I go it’s empty… Is this only the starter zones or…

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

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

i just started playing again and trying to understand what is happening, is there a video or something that explains all the changes made since 12 years ago lol??

I just started playing. The game did tell me to drag my new abilities onto the action bar however the first hour was still pretty obtuse. I've been playing runescape for 20 years so I know some basic mmo mechanics and thats helped a bit

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

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

coming back to wow recently, i realized that if you do dungeons you level so fast, so ofc you're going to be behind on gear, i have 1 character that mostly just did dungeons, and another that did the bfa story with zero dungeons, and the non dungeon character was farther ahead with gear.

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

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

I stopped playing because the only way to obtain stuff was the vault. Mythics and raids only gave crests to upgrade stuff past level 5.. but I had no stuff to upgrade 😂

I played WoW for over 13 years and even when I played a class I had not touched in one or two xpacs I would go back and level a new character with heirlooms just to get muscle memory and familiarize myself with spells that have been added. I do find the character boost helpful if creating a new character of the opposite faction that you are already familiar with.

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

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

Dose this include doing side quests? I feel like if you are only doing the main questing then of course it will be harder. Idk if I am missing something here.

I remember back in the day, multiboxers doing ads with characters speaking out letters.

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

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

I found it hard to start wow because I never saw a lot of people and dungeons took forever to que into then people just flew through them expecting me to keep up or know what to do.

Idk what his game settings are but when I started a new character it ALWAYS put spells on my hot bar, so Idk why he's not getting that

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

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