Thanks for playing.
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Yes, it should be:
Slow > grind > bored > quit.
I am afraid you are out of touch with the younger generations.
If you want them engaged, you have to have a fun game from level 1. Not from level 60. They are not gonna stick around for that long. They have options, which we didn’t 15 years ago.
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The younger generations are just like ours. They want a good game in which they can be immersed. Something that can provide good escapism. Retail WoW doesn’t do that at the moment.
They said the same thing about modern audiences having too short of an attention span in entertainment and then Joe Rogan came along.
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My guess is that Blizz sees that a lot of new players give WoW a try, but leave the game without becoming invested. Gaming has changed A LOT since WoW launched and so has life in general. We live in a society that places a much lower value on delayed gratification, and where maximised consumerism is now the aim of life.
Personally I don’t like the new direction WoW is taking and I’ll also be taking my first long break when I’ve played through 10.2.5 content in January / February and my sub expires. I’ve already decided to postpone my purchase of 11 so that the free month comes at pre-patch and not in March. Given the way I game, if I find something really good to play instead there’s a good chance I won’t return.
However, I’m pretty sure that Blizz has factored in losing players like me as a hit they’re willing to take. Entertainment is all about soft reboots and reimagining existing IP. Reinventing a tired franshise can give immediate financial rewards. But the risk is that Blizz loses WoW’s dedicated fans without bringing in enough extra new long-term players - kinda like how Disney cashed in big time at first, but ultimately killed Star Wars at the cinema (at least for the time being).
You know that new players are going to start in DF in next expansion, yes? It will be awful to traverse that continent on foot.
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I mean dragonflight is gonna become the new leveling zone for new players where flying is the meat of the expansion so of course everyone is gonna get that early.
Also im thinking that they’ll change the glyph thing to just give you the abilities every X level you reach on the character. Much better than people just opening up wowhead & pulling up a map with all of the glyph locations.
Which is honestly such a shame. WoW was special in Classic Era (Vanilla through WotLK) because of its progression with leveling. That magic declined as soon as TBC came out but wasn’t fully gone until Cata.
You can’t capture that magic again because the focus is so much on endgame. Everyone wants the newest transmog or the flashiest gear.
It’d take a massive overhaul by Blizzard to make the leveling progress matter again and even then, people would whine that it’s too slow and they just want to raid/PvP at max level.
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You’re preaching to the wrong audience. People who love what WoW was would understand but retail isn’t wow. It isn’t even an Mmo. It’s a lobby action game. People who play those don’t want immersion, a journey, long moments traversing a world that demands you work for what you want. They want good mechanics, as little ‘downtime’ as possible and rewards.
It is like honestcon’s version of the cinematic says. “I have no hope.” Because you are right. Retails devs do not know or do not care about what a good levelling journey is. There are actually ex wow devs who have come out and said this. Ion doesn’t know what an mmo is.
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and in classic etc
Think the glyphs will remain as Dragonflight content, but not outside on dragon isles. At least that is how I remember it from Blizzcon.
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The game evolves and I for one have been really impressed with how Blizzard are finally letting go of some of the old mantras in the next expansion. We are finally getting a more account wide approach. Dragonflight has respected my time a lot more and they are going forward with that.
Dragon riding was also an experiment this expansion. To give players an interactive way to fly but the reward was to be able to get about faster. Although we still have to work through the campaign on our first character, we have more freedom to travel about and go where we want, even more so on the next alt. On the whole it’s been a roaring success. DR makes me motion sick but there is no denying the player base loves it on the whole. I am happy to slow flap to places at a slower pace.
I’m not sure why forcing players to move around slowly and wait a long time before getting mounts is seen as a better system. It’s not like you don’t get to explore with a mount. It feels a bit like some feel ‘I had to suffer this way, so should you’. It’s a much better experience for players not to have to wait IMO.
TLDR - I think it’s a good thing the game is evolving and giving new players a better experience than we had when we started.
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The RPG elements don’t need to be just in the leveling experience. They should/could/were once part of the max level endgame experience too. Now it’s mostly just railroading players into following specific narratives brainlessly. Ooh, Legion bad, Illidan bad. Ooh, Titans good, Legion bad, Illidan good. Ooh, Primalists bad, Dragons good, Incarnates bad. Ooh, Dragons good, one Incarnate good, Titans bad.
There’s as much an issue with the endgame immersion as there is with the loss of the leveling experience. We do all want instant gratification. Everyone hates those escort quests that you can’t just fly to the end of and turn straight in. People loath RP dialogue when they are in a hurry.
But then, all that can be taken into account if they just did things properly. Balancing endgame purists with immersive MMORPG fans is only impossible if the effort is not put in. WoW is very much an action-MMO, and for now you are 100% right that endgame feelings like a glorified lobby. There could be so much more done with this game if they gave it some thought!
I agree with you for the most part, but the issue with instant dragon flying is that it makes things a bit too rushed. People should get that later on. It’s not about suffering but experiencing.
Unless someone is really messed up, I don’t think experiencing your early levels at a slower pace with walking to quests is meant as a bad thing, if you get what I mean?
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I personally don’t see the value but people all have their own ideas of how it should be. I think having to get to grips and learn to dragon ride early on is a good idea. There is a knack to it.
There is no way I’d want to inflict dragon ridingless Dragon Isles on any new player. The zones are vast in comparison because they were made with DR in mind. DR is also going to be added to the old world.
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You are the definition of what stands in the way of WoW improving, and not being stuck in 20 year old traditions…
Go back to classic
I believe I’ve gotten short on this topic. My argument is that we shouldn’t be getting DR at level 1 in places like Elwynn Forest or Durotar.
With the release of TWW we’ll thankfully have the DF as the default leveling experience instead of BFA or Shadowlands. DF was made for DR so I understand that players would need to get DR early to actually experience things properly.
The issue then, though, is that we’re stuck with this “uber-skip” button in the hands of new players who then don’t get to experience the world at all. DF was made for it, but that just means the other zones/rest of the world is a massive travel-downgrade for some people.
I do worry that there isn’t much between hotspots in the DF zones. A lot of areas you can skip over, whereas in previous expansions there was a lot more stuff you had to travel through.
Obviously, I do not want to inflict tedium on anyone - there have been a lot of times where you end up auto-running through tracts of nothingness for too long. I still don’t want to lose more of the magic though that new players would get to experience!
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Hello, younger generation representative (21 yrs old, started in legion when I was 14), was bummed about 120 levels in legion and thought that level 60 flying is the worst thing ever.
New players wont miss what they never had. Wanting others to have a hard time, just because you had a hard time when you started out is just spiteful.
This will give new players a more enjoyable start, and wont affect you in any way, i see nothing wrong with that.
The gatekeeping in this community is insane. First people complaining about the removal of borrowed power systems because it “makes it too easy for people to get to end game” and now complaining about a an actual flight mechanic being given to new players.
The “carrot on a stick” should be all of the dragon cosmetics and the talent points and class abilities you get for levelling while getting used to a new spec in easier open world content. The ultimate carrot being that once they reach level 70 they can start gearing for endgame and can solo everything else for old mounts and transmogs. Not a mechanic that allows players to actually play the game instead of just watching Netflix while they autofly to the quest marker. This is a none issue.
Personally, I feel like this is just a bitterness/selfishness thing. New people being given things that they begged for and wished they had for years. I don’t see how this affects those people in any other way as they can just choose not to use it on new alts. It’s the only explanation I can think of.
I really get that. I think with putting new players in DF as a starting point, it’s in essence intended as a ‘soft reboot’ of the leveling experience. DF is self contained, and from there you can just hop into the upcoming expansions.
In that sense I have the impression for this dev team, the older content is unnecessary baggage for new(er) players. They’ve done a reset instead of trying to fix the unwieldy beast that is the previous expansions by now for players who come in clueless. I know I’d be lost and overwhelmed if I was in their shoes.
But yes, the experience of leveling on the ground seems sort of a sacrificial lamb on this altar. I get the voices against it. I don’t think WoW as a game, an mmorpg, warrants these kind of roadblocks anymore tho. For some that is a good thing, for others a sad thing.
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