Hey Blizz,
In case you haven’t seen this already.
Please pay attention to how inaccessible you are making the game, couldn’t agree more with this dude.
37 Likes
So I clicked, and, as someone who has more time with new players than most, I began the eye-roll manoeuvre, wondering what someone like Venruki would know about new players.
Well, he came across one, a genuine new player (Suddenly, a wild new player appears!)
The story starts 1:20 into the video, AND IT IS EXACTLY RIGHT!
THIS IS EXACTLY ONE FAILURE MODE OF NEW PLAYERS.
It’s not the only one, for sure. I could outline several more. But it is a real one I have seen too often. Venruki’s example was from PvP, as you might expect, but it applies to PvE just as well.
Thank you for posting this. 
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“Why new players are quitting”. That implies there is 1 reason. There is never 1 reason for all people.
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I WATCHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO AND NOW IM ANGRY.
But yes, less systems, more quests please.
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You can tell this youtuber is inspired both by PewDiePie and Asmongold. I call him …PewDieGold, or AsmonPie.
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This is very true.
But a high-level competitor like Venruki isn’t going to see many cases, so I’ll give him a pass when he - very nicely - describes one such case.
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this is the reason my alts are geting dust ever since azeroth neckless essences apeared… yeah not going to grinds systems i already find boring on my main just to play alts
and i used to tank on 5 tank classes as i enjoyed them
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I, like you, stopped playing alts when BFA came, legion was good, the artefact weapons stayed consistent and were the only system in the expansion and it grew in power steadily over the expansion.
BFA arrived and you had the neck and the 3 gear pieces and you had to grind out the neck powers and get the right gear pieces, know which ones were optimal for each spec (and they’d be different in pvp and pve) and then came the corrupted gear along side it. The list of things needed to sync up to play grew and daunting to manage on more than 1 character, especially if you wanted to change mains late expac.
And here we are in Shadowlands, Covenant abilities, conduits, soulbinds, legendries and now domination sockets and they’re all interlinked so one can’t be good without the other and some combinations are abysmal and downright ridiculous that it is actually wasted development time just making them.
I hope that the next expansion drops the systems and borrowed power concepts, it worked for legion, they experimented in BFA and lost their minds with shadowlands. I’d like to either take it back to how it was in Legion or drop these systems entirely and instead shift focus to the dungeons, raids and pvp (because that’s wow’s endgame, there’s not been and real open world endgame since Ashran / Wintergrasp, which are instanced now), give variety, expand the world more.
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This is the problem when people just want to play and instead of allowing that Blizzard decides systems are apparently more fun then the content that they want to do, this affects both old and new players.
The drop in players during Shadowlands and the complaints about the systems should have been warning enough to Blizzard.
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Indeed.
This here Shaman was created in 2005, so I think I qualify as an old player and I am struggling with the systems these past two expansions.
I’m what could best be described as ultra casual so I’m not reading min-max guides as I’m not Raiding, M+ing, PvPing.
I have no idea what conduits I need or where to get or which of the ones I randomly acquired from warchests or calling boxes are any good. In fact the ones I’m using are just the ones I had at the time. I’m sure with some research, theorycrafting spreadsheets or whatever I’d could be improved.
What, I hear you ask, do you need to be improved for if you’re not Raiding, M+ing nor PvPing.
Well the rest of the game. The Maw is awful, I can’t solo the elites and the normal mobs aren’t falling over quickly. I can’t do rifts in Korthia, something smashed me to pieces in seconds and I’ve not gone back. I tried a Freehold dungeon (a good while ago now but not confident I’d do any better now) and the trash roflstomped me in seconds. Going to Mechagon for old achieves or mounts feels no different to when I was 120.
This is the weakest I’ve ever felt in the game (apart from when as a level 2 orc I ran off into the Barrens just to see what was there).
Leveling alts is pretty tedious with the linear questing and horrible zones but when they do level they are more or less stuck in questing gear. Korthian Arms are no catch up, I have no Stygia nor do I intend to do the Maw to get any.
Today is my first day back in the game after being away for xmas. I’m doing BFA Pet Battles for family achieve.
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You will get/will have gotten all of your Conduits from your Callings, and in Korthia rewards. Icy Veins gives the following for Elemental with soulbind Korayn: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/elemental-shaman-best-covenants-soulbinds-and-conduits
We are giving more detailed information on Conduits below. For a complete overview, you can visit our Shaman Conduits list.
- Best Potency Conduits: always
Call of Flame and one of the Covenant-specific Conduits (
Tumbling Waves,
Elysian Dirge, or
Essential Extraction), except the Venthyr, assuming single-target damage is the priority, use
Pyroclastic Shock instead.
- Best Finesse Conduits:
Spiritual Resonance for the possible DPS gain or
Thunderous Paws for the small mobility boost. The latter will be more generally useful.
- Best Endurance Conduits:
Vital Accretion (extra personal cooldown) or
Refreshing Waters (solo content).
The “weakness” argument is another one I see with new players, but to be fair it is a) separate from the Kafka-esque Systems argument and b) it is more complicated than just a general “weakness”, but concentrated in different phases of development.
I’m doing just about nothing in the game these days. If you would like to take an outing on one of those cases you mention with one of my characters at some point, I’d be happy to take the opportunity to log in with some purpose. 
2 Likes
Thanks. I should really read the guides. I used to, back in MOP I had various guides as bookmarks (Can’t remember if Icy Veins was one back then or not but I’ve certainly used them over the years). I used to gem, enchant and generally try a bit harder than I do now.
I’ve acquired a general ennui over the systems, perhaps started with Legion but certainly was very evident in BFA.
I think my Soulbind is Niya (just as it was the first one).
When I get back into the swing of things after my xmas break I’ll get my paladin going again and then I’ll need your help with the dungeon quest in Bastion campaign.
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Thing is, the guides used to just require looking at.
Now you have to practically take the night off to study them as they are so big to cover all the garbage systems put in the game.
Then each time you drop an item, gear piece, patch or hot fix comes around you have to take another age to re-consult the guides to make sure it’s not all changed.
It’s ridiculous and I don’t blame you or anyone else for not doing it.
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I’m a casual player. I play the parts of the game which interest me or are at my skill level but I struggle to keep up to date with the new systems. I’m almost constantly having to look up websites such as Wowhead or Icy Veins to learn how to play my characters, when I shouldn’t need to.
When I get new gear, or when abilities get changed, perhaps my class becomes flavour of the month/year - I need to check the websites or use addons eg AzeritePowerWeights but there’s still the problem when the guide/addon I’m looking at hasn’t been updated with the new content. At best I’m just picking things/items I think will do because I don’t understand how the systems work.
Besides knowing which stats eg Intellect, Haste etc or what’s the best food and enchants, everything else is not necessary for me.
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Why am I not surprised lol. I think Blizzard hate the casual/new player.
Thanks for posting this.
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When you need to do extra 5 mandatory activities for several days/week in order to play your favourite one for couple evenings - then there is a problem.
Lets compare: beack in MoP I could easily raid 4times/week, even have time for an alt:
- Faction dailies wasn’t mandatory (they were good to have, but not mandatory).
- timeless isle/isle of thunder was fun (no sttange grindy systems).
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I very often don’t agree with this guy, but there’s something to be said for this video.
I don’t really agree with many of the conclusions in the comments, either, but I will say this: The problem is real, and there are so many things that had to go wrong in order for this situation to come about - but it did.
Mistake number 1: The level 60 boost
This guy buys a boost - or probably even got the boost for free with the purchase of the expansion - and is thrown straight into the Shadowlands end-game with no introduction. He doesn’t understand any of the many systems in the game and so he just does what he always did: PvP. He thinks it’s WotLK - it’s not.
Mistake number 2: The many systems
Upon seeing what he has missed out on and how, during all the grinding that he did he could’ve gotten most of it done for free, he gets a sense of hopelessness and in a state of exasperation just closes the game.
How are we in a situation where you may end up not getting a reward and have to go back? I mean it was one thing when it was like a quest and you had to go back, but this is a million times worse because of the sheer scale of it. At least give him renown tokens or something? Something visible where he can go “Oh dear, I’m missing something.”
Mistake number 3: Torghast and legendaries
Torghast can be kindda interesting to be honest, but it’s absolutely no fun grinding it for more time than it takes to level up because there just isn’t enough variety in it to justify spending that amount of time.
Mistake number 4: Not wanting to level
The fact that he even buys a level boost and the fact that it’s even available is systemic proof of the fact that the levelling game just isn’t fun. If the levelling game was fun people would relish at the idea of sitting down with it and playing it for 10-15 hours. Why not? And you could bring your friend along - he could do low level dungeons and levelling with you. We have systems for this, but nobody uses them, why? Because levelling sucks.
Mistake number 5: Level scaling
Why was it no fun? Scaling. There is no sense of progression whatsoever. It feels like a timesink, but here we can see what happens if you don’t do it.
Mistake number 6: XP vs targeted rewards
Targeting a reward is fun, but feeling nailed into a particular location FOREVER to get a reward is not. These problems were solved in the past - everything gave XP and the world was full of items you had to get exactly once and then you were done with them.
Because of these systems this poor sod has to farm tons of rifts and Torghast when he just wants to PvP. Is there any particular reason he cannot get his best conduits for PvP? Well, I can’t think of one, but he just can’t. That’s how the game is.
Why is this so difficult to understand? Why do we have friggin’ 20 currencies or currency-like mechanics that each must be farmed from a different place? In many ways it feels like having 20 experience bars, each tied to an individual location. What’s fun about that, exactly?
Mistake number 7: No social contact
If this guy hadn’t been anonymously solo queueing for up to a hundred hours, maybe even more, somebody would have told him what Venruki told him. There was gonna be somebody who did it before it got this far, but nobody ever did because this guy never got to know anybody because all people ever do is sign up for queues.
How is he supposed to learn?! How is he supposed to find groups?! How is he supposed to grow?!
Mistake number 8: No world
Everything that this player has to do does not involve any world-building. At no point during any of it is he walking around Azeroth, fighting players and mobs. He will never meet anybody, he will never fight anybody, and he will never know why he has to defend the Shadowlands.
To the extent that there are quests in the open world he should do they are daily/weekly or otherwise limited. He simply cannot grind his conquest in World PvP. It’s impossible.
He is stuck queuing the same few maps forever and he has no idea what the lore behind any of it is. He’s just grinding.
One of the biggest grinds he has to do is Research - a grind completed mainly by abusing phasing in warmode literally for days.
Mistake number 9: Chores
While this problem is greatly diminished by 9.1.5, it’s still a major mistake that bears repeating: The game feels like a job whenever you are limited daily or weekly. The game will tell you to log in for a certain amount of time every day, and then it’ll stop rewarding you just as you’re getting interested. Blargh!
So how does this relate? Well, the player rightfully fears running into them. Prior to 9.1.5 he most certainly would have, and it would have utterly destroyed any chances he might have had of getting his character ready in time for the end of the season because there simply wouldn’t have been enough days, and therefore not enough dailies, to complete them, making for an experience of hopelessness, and not in a fun way.
Mistake number 10: Limited content
All the farming he did took place in two handfuls of battlegrounds and a handful of arenas. Grinding all this stuff means going to this place again. There is no evolution and nothing new for the new season. He’s going into the exact same meat-grinder he just thought he’d gotten out of. We’re still playing on several maps released over 15 years ago though some of them got visual updates.
Mistake number 11: Unreadable combat
If this guy could actually read WoW’s combat he’d have realised that other ret paladins were using spells against him that he did not have and he’d have started asking what it was. He never did. In the case of ret paladin they are actually quite hard to see if you don’t know to look for specific debuffs. I know there are exceptions, but most rets don’t use them.
The game is visually cluttered and hard to read. He just thinks it’s gear.
Mistake number 12: Length of the guides
Because of all these systems and their complexity, writing a class guide is like writing 60+ A4 pages. They’re HUGE, and I find it very difficult to blame him for just looking at that and going “You gotta be kidding me man…”
Mistake number 13: I can’t stop
Every time I think I’m about to stop adding to this post I remember something else. How are there so many?!
I am blown away but I believe I understand it quite well. For heaven’s sake, when you add it all up…
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You make very… very good points sir.
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I run Mechagon on upto 10 characters a week now including an Enhancement Shammy. It is doable at about 215
I run it on 5 Havoc DHs, a BM hunter, Fury Warrior, Ret Pally, Ench Shammy and WW Monk, I don’t really play range so now idea how they pan out. I struggle on a 220 Rogue but I am terrible and playing it.
It is pretty easy at 225 and face roll at 235.
Freehold is very easy now, I think it was adjusted at some point, again anything over 210 should be able to run it, at the start of the expac trash mobs would destroy you as you stated.
I was kinda angry at Blizzard after watched video. This is unbelievable and failure by Blizzard!
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