This is for players who are playing WoW for the first time. The current questing system puts them directly in Battle For Azeroth, and is very confusing lore-wise. I have recruited 2 friends who were so confused with the Story since they landed in BFA directly.
How about a Single Specially designed Quest chain that will take the player zone by zone everywhere in WoW starting from 1 to 50 while traveling throughout Eastern Kingdoms / Kalimdor > Outland > Northrend > Cata Zones > Pandaria > Draenor > Broken Isles > Then KulâTiras/Zandalar and finally get the normal quests in Shadowlands or whichever expansion is current.
This will be ONE Single Question Chain like a campaign that will help the player level to 50 (Or whichever level is highest in the previous expansion), where he will be introduced to all the Major characters of the game and get to know the Lore of the game till the current expansion.
Itâs an interesting concept but levelling is so fast now that there would be no need to âdoâ a whole zone and if it is part of it to learn the lore, which part in each zone adequately sums up the lore at that time?
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you propose, because I do like the idea, but I just canât see how it would work. I would imagine that if a new player did a little in each area they would also require some cutscene to explain the rest and I really canât see that Blizzard would invest in such.
Maybe I am taking too much of a simplistic view of this, which I often do, and others my come up with ways that it can work.
I was hoping for the new starting zone to be more like that. Giving new players the lore info they also need to understand. Maybe have short stories to go trough which teaches them about lore while also teaching them how to play their class.
It shouldnât be for the purpose of leveling, the priority is letting the players understand the Lore & the Map and explore areas, Maybe the quests will give less exp, but the players will enjoy it more than the tedious kill or collect quests.
Whilst I understand what you are saying, in the original post you did indicate levelling from 1 - 50. As I said, I like the idea, itâs the implementation I think is problematic. We have had a level squish and levelling is now much faster. I canât see that doing a small part of an old zone would give you that understanding of the âloreâ. Doing everything from the beginning would not even give this, as I understand that some was included in books and not in game.
I am not a lore buff myself, so wonât argue on lore aspects as such, just the implementation of this. If we slow down the xp gained, then we are asking for longer levelling times, should this be an option? If enough people want it I would say yes, let them play through every expansion from the beginning if they wish to and then start to experience end game. As I said doing a small part of each zone wonât give them a full picture of the lore and will require additional information.
Edit: I would not force this on all players though, but can see the appeal for new players. Loremaster is also a way for people to experience old areas/quests/lore.
There are a couple of issues with this.
Firstly, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are Cata zones now.
Secondly each zone would get such a lightning fast visit that they would barely learn the name of the zone let alone anything about the zone.
I do think that being thrown straight into BFA could be confusing and so there could be a better intro, Exileâs Reach is a good idea although somewhat short and rather lore-light.
Perhaps a cinematic could give a bit of history to whatâs happened and how we got to where we are.
I do think that the older expacs could use an add-on which provides several more coherent storylines for that expac. Northrend could have an Alliance story from Borean Tundra to Dragonblight to Icecrown or a Dragon Story from Coldara to Wymrest Temple to Howling Fjord.
I am somewhat wary of overly prescribed linear storylines though. The last couple of expacs had very on-rails questing which are not so much fun on alts.
So having a selection of storylines that are somewhat self containted might be better.
Another thing that might help would be to add in the original Vanilla zones into Zidormi / Chromie time. This provides a better pre-Northrend experience and would allow for a better journey.
Thereâs a fix for this. New players who start this quest, letâs call it the âLore Campaignâ will automatically be phased to the old zones till they reach a certain level or quest that will phase them to the current timeline.
I think thereâs way too much lore in that even for a 1-60 leveling, let alone 50, unless itâs done in a nutshell and outtakes like the anniversary event where you fight Anubâarak for a small bit, then Arthas again for a tiny bit.
But, since they managed to do that with Chromie, the most important events indeed could be picked out like the Wrathgate in 6-8 quick quests, or Yseraâs remembrance too in a small chapter⌠jumping from moments to moments to experience smaller bits of this whole story which also lets the player decide if they want to check the full story themselves when playing their second toon.
If done right, there might even be a precious few levels left on the first toon even! Of course, raid and dungeon content is best not covered, after all those are the climax of most major conflicts.
I agree itâs just too much. You just canât recreate levelling through them when they were current. Not without making levelling a slow long arduous task that puts people off, making end game hard to get to.
They have tried to help with Chromie time. You can choose a different expansion every alt and see as much as possible. It still wont cover the end game of each expansion though.
Whilst I actually really like the idea I think that forcing people through all the zones would mean that the players ended up spending more time travelling than doing anything else. Even back in Vanilla you didnât go to every zone on the original two continents.
I meant small bits of everything, as in something similar to movie teasers - youâll go through the lore in a handful of quests for each event, say, no more than 10, hopping event to event in a chronological order.
The good thing about this is that it gives you variety, so you wonât be focusing on a single thing all day that you might not like.
Itâs similar to that Kyrian event as you arrive in Bastion for the first time and light a flame 3x to relive a random conflict. The lore is covered in both quest text and in-game dialogues.
I agree with you, BFA is too much for a brand new player, even veteran players hated BFA, so you can imagine how new players feel about it. If anything, players should start in Origimar or Stormwind, depending on faction and there could be a choice to either go through the old leveling route or a new compressed one that takes them through expansions. Not to mention there are specific starting zones for Belfs, Nelfs, Dranaei, etcâŚwhich are not even taken into onsideration.
New players also miss out on the many achievements, toys, mounts, and other items from the past expansions and zones, via the new leveling process for them. I think Blizzard could give brand new players the option to either A: Take a Shore Lore Journey, B: Go to the latest expansion, or C: Take a Long Lore Journey (the previous leveling experience we all know).
I saw a video of a woman trying out wow for the first time in SL and she was so confused and also didnât care because she didnât know these characters or significance.
She was like why did Jaina get arrested ? Why did I get arrested . Drustvar storyline ⌠Drust ?/care
Then she was like now I got to speak to Bolvar ⌠whoâs Bolvar why should I care ?
xD she was just like I donât understand whatâs going on ! This was on her first 2 blind playthroughs before doing lore research etc.
She unsubbed but she pointed how WoW is just not new player friendly at all. The game expects you to know everything.
WoW lore is so disgustingly bad, that I can not even⌠Blizzard should focus on gameplay instead of doing both things, and they are doing both things badly now even.
I hit 60 with a new character yesterday and I had only just started the second zone of Shadowlands. Worst was that I had only just got to Arathi doing all the quests in Eastern Kingdoms before I hit 50. I had switched Chromie so that mobs stayed yellow after 30 just to make it more interesting. I did do the WoD starter up to the Garrison. Remember you will get like 10 levels just from XP exploring the map. Seriously.
Each expansion is designed to let you level to 50 without going anywhere else.
The game should offer a video intro that explains the story so far. None of the quests explain the timeline of where what you are about to do relates to the Warcraft universe. And Sylvanas appears all over the place. It is all crazy now, but I sense the game is structured more for existing players than new ones.
I play Burning Crusade now to get any kind of depth to the levelling process. Otherwise Iâm just on a bonkers roller coaster in this game, and it makes no sense at all. This is what happens when you abandon the fundamentals of âZonal Progressionâ and introduce scaling to level the playing field. Warcraft was never built around that. And now with Shadowlands they restrict access to campaign zones as a way of forcing zonal progression. And that is nonsense. As I have said before it happens when you unravel the ravelling.
Would be lot better let new player use chromie instead force go thru bfa once. For lore why not put lore quests what you could do at end game. Then you would see story behind zones and most likely explore areas more and do side quests on that zone too. Put cosmetics or something like that to rewards after finishing lore quests.
I think a single quest of the entire history of the game would be like the Night Faeâs campaign quest where you summarize legion and BFA to the winter queen in a play on stage.
The lore is covered in both quest text and in-game dialogues.