So I didn’t have to (because I have every class on both horde and alliance at 40+), but I gave exiles reach leveling experience a go last night on Alliance and I have to say, its great for today’s game.
Introduces new players to multiple mechanics they will find in the game, the types of different quests you could encounter, a couple of ‘rare’ spawns, some chests to open and a dungeon at the end where you have to dodge some boss abilities and you experience getting boss drops. And then once you’ve done with that, it ties in really well to then begin the BFA campaign, with a short tour through Stormwind to get your mount and Hearthstone.
I only got to level 12 because I’ve done the BFA campaign already, but I was super impressed actually. The leveling experience for a new player in today’s game is actually quite good. Much easier than Classic obviously, but I think it would still give new players a fun experience. And its perfect to do BFA storyline because you get a tour round Boralus Harbour where you can see other important parts of the game, like the bank, another inn to set your hearthstone, and flight paths.
Only thing I’m unsure on is what the transition from BFA to Shadowlands looks and feels like. In terms of story, and how much of the story you get through whilst leveling 10-50. But starting experience, very good
I really enjoy Exile’s Reach but it’s sad that so many of the datamined weapons that people speculated would come from there didn’t actually make it into the game, they looked great!
I’ve done it lately on hordeside a few times (as the money you make when levelling in BFA content is really good, i’ll send a char about 4000g to set them up and they’ll always have enough for each step of flying and by the time they hit 50 they’re sitting on about 3-4k gold!) and my experience was:
Doing the entirety of Zuldazar (all major quests and side quest hubs and bonus obs) will get me to about level 27-29 depending on whether I do the final dungeon quest or not.
Completing most of the second zone will get you to level 50.
So what i’ve found is you don’t need to run “all three areas” and with these chars I ignore the war campaign completely (which is more exp) so i imagine if you did that too when you can (I think it opens up about level 25-30?) you’ll need 1.5 zones of BFA content.
That’s a shame for new players but if they’re just alts its probably better to level faster.
Maybe they could have scaled that a bit better so you do all 3 areas, and then the war campaign is just extra. But I guess that would annoy alot of existing players leveling alts xD
It’s pretty fluid imo so i wouldn’t mind, once you have flying it picks up a lot.
At the time BFA was pretty oooeerr for levelling 100-110 but as an experience from beginnings to 50 it actually feels really nice and the stories and such really work well for a new character.
The main thing is you will complete the first zone. That’s key, and sets up the main faction story. The other two are often “side concerns” anyway so i don’t see it as a huge deal that you don’t get to see both of them.
Some years ago, Mike Morhaime said during an earnings call that 70% of new players who get the game in trial never get past level 10. I can understand that they might want to see whether they can improve that number.
From dealing with the comments of new players, I would suggest:
Requiring Exile’s reach to a first character:
The Good: Exile’s Reach is a careful, competent, and controlled tutorial for new players.
The Bad: Exile’s Reach gives no sense of history or race identity for a new player. A Worgen gets no idea why they are a werewolf. A Tauren gets no sense of the bucolic tribal background. A Goblin never gets an Executive Assistant or drives a hot-rod!
Enforcing BfA as a starting expansion:
The Good: Gets new players into the current story.
The bad: Bypasses all the better stories that WoW was built on. This is especially troublesome for people coming back from Classic./TBC era, people who have just read some books, people who played Warcraft in the pre-WoW days.
The very bad: BfA dungeons SUCK as a new player. There is a MASSIVE difference in required knowledge between Deadmines and Atal.
Exile’s reach was a fun experience, and speaking as someone who did both the Horde and Alliance sides I can say that The Horde side had more humor in it, and made me laugh at least 3 times.
My wife loved Exile Reach, I introduced her to WOW a couple of months ago, but she hated BFA, but I changed that by showing her how to go back to the old Northshire and starting there. She loved the old questlines in the old zones and is still playing. Shes currently in Duskwood and loving it there as well.
Yeah, that’s a reaction I have seen from new players.
a) They have no basis to care about the BfA stuff,
b) no prior investment in the characters or story, and
c) the BfA quest sequence is too linear and controlled.
Not only this, but the old questing zones have quests similar to what the new players get in Exiles Reach. After you leave Exiles Reach as an alliance newbie you are taken to Stormwind where you learn about mounts and how to set your hearthstone. If you are brand new to the game you want to ride around Stormwind and explore the castle area. As a new player who just purchased her first mount, she wanted to ride the horse around, in BFA you are stopped from doing this in the beginning as you are in that phased scenario, which I go into detail more below.
My wife had no interest in BFA, because she accepted that quest and was taken to where you go that scenario to break out of Tol Dagor to go to Boralus which she hated the instanced combat there as I could not help her on this char as we were phased.
In the old zones you can help new players as there isnt hardly any phased content in Northshire, Goldshre, Stormwind, Westfall, Duskwood etc… so it helps their progression and the story lines are farrr better in those zones than in modern WOW
I know. Already had some parts. One of the things I was looking forward to with Shadowlands was the previous tiers of pvp armours becoming purchasable so I could finish the sweet leather armour; and then I didn’t have to spend any pvp marks on it at all thanks to Exile’s Reach. Yay!
I feel it’s a really well done zone, but i have two things i don’t like about it:
Horde and Alliance experience is different, the questing is the same, you do all the questing and all the zone the same for both, but the NPC’s and questgivers aren’t? I don’t like how they’re still trying to split and segregate the playerbase, despite how it is shrinking and in majority indifferent on the whole faction war crap. What is so wrong about introducing the other faction and showing players from the opposite faction during it?
You have to play BfA, again, not that questing is bad, but rather segregated and disconnected from the other faction, which kinda just force the new player into a very limited experience completely disconnected with the other half of the playerbase, it’s almost like Blizzard is forcibly and unnaturally trying to “radicalize” even new players into a faction.
I mean, people say it’s Warcraft, but everyone forget this is a World of Warcraft, not War of Warcraft.
This is faction propaganda! Now seriously, stop dividing your playerbase Blizzard.
just whyyyyy ?!!! The zone is eh 6/10.