Hello everyone! Recently I have been watching Day9’s experience playing both WoW and Classic for the first time ever, and it’s got me thinking.
While Day9 concluded that his first impressions for both versions of the game was that he had fun, he still expressed a lot of frustration with Exile’a reach and thereafter BFA starter quests.
Day9 showed concern as a brand new player to the game who knows basically nothing about WoW’s current story, that there was zero context for him to get immersed with the storyline, and also the poor gameplay flow of constant interruptions of cutscenes before finally getting to play his character where he did have fun, but still lacked real context for what’s going on.
That brings me to my idea for a new Evergreen style content that the current WoW devteam seems to be so passionate about, I call my idea the Azeroth and beyond recap!
So in my imagination it will be like this:
The Azeroth and beyond recap will be the new but also optional way to level up in WoW. This storydriven gameplay experience will go through all major highlights of each version of WoW in bitesized scenariostyle for each expansion that takes 5-15minutes, so that you can easily binge until you’ve all catched up to the current storyline, and can seemlessly transition into whatever the latest expansion leveling experience is.
If this feature was added to the game now it would go from Vanilla level 1, all the way to DF level 60, and after TWW level 70, The Azeroth and beyond drops a new scenario going over DF drops that will seemlessly take you into TWW without needing to play all prior expansions to get some sort of overarching TL;DR based knowledge of the story of WoW.
If done right, this could be a fun way to introduce new and returning players and re-engage them into the World of WoW again.
What to do with the gameplay, storytelling and the tutorial is up to the devs, but I would advice against telling people everything, and perhaps showing people new concepts better, and letting the player experiment with mechanics in a fun smallform openworld experience that spans all eras of WoW in pre-existing zones, using Bronze dragonflight to pull off the magic and tell a story of the core elements of WoW’s overall story.
If this recap gets too long over time, just make sure there are ways to speed it up on the player’s request, and also make it quick and bitesized to begin with.
I hope somebody reads my idea and at least considers thinking about it. I for one would love to play The Azeroth and Beyond recap one day, and see how Blizzard can keep adding content to it, to try to eliminate the questionable starting experience of current WoW. Thanks, and ya’ll have a fine dandy day.