Has the WoW Universe got too large?

Community General Discussion
1

Let’s have a look at why I don’t think BFA has been the only reason why our community has diminished greatly. I will mainly be looking at the maths behind content and what might be putting off new players from engaging with the game.

How large is the Universe?

I will start with roughly (I quickly counted) how many zones per expansion and argue as to why there has been too much.

Vanilla – 40 zones

Burning Crusade – 13 zones + 1 new planet

Wrath - 12

Cataclysm – 10 zones (not including reworked zones)

MoP – 12 zones

WoD – 8 zones + 1 alternative universe planet

Legion – 9 zones +1 new planet

BFA – 6

That is 108 zones that you have to quest and level through. This is less so for early content as there was more choice regarding zone choice. Now there is a repetitive cycle of completing set zones. I assume this is in an aim to try and not to make the wow universe event larger.

IF you were to spend 2 levels in each zone and each 2 levels took 2 hours there would be 216 hours (9 days) of levelling involved of sole levelling no breaks or dungeons.

How many dungeons in the game?

Vanilla – 26

Burning Crusade – 16

Wrath – 16

Cataclysm – 14

MoP – 6

WoD – 8

Legion – 11

BFA - 10

This is 107 dungeons. If each dungeon took 1 hour (for ease of maths) that is 4.5 days.

How many raids are in the game?

Vanilla – 4 (was more at time of classic)

Burning Crusade – 8

Wrath – 10

Cataclysm – 7

MoP – 5

WoD – 3

Legion – 5

BFA - 2

If each raid took a minimum from start to finish 3 hour that would be 168 hours (7 days).

How much core game time?

The above would come to 20.5 days of nonstop game time.

Why is this an issue?

If you are a new player looking to coming to wow no amount of end game content will make up for the hardy grind of heavy content from 0-120 with zones spaced out massively including a different time zone AND 2 whole different planets.

Would new players look at the content and think it’s too much? I think so I mean 120 levels is far too much for anyone. If you are a long timer player of wow and end game is exhausted at this point then you go back to what you may have done a million and one times over the years and level another alt. New players coming into wow may see wow as a bit of a “boys club” and those that have been here from the start get to enjoy the game the most which leaves the new players skipping out zones and missing out on what has already been built for them.

An aging population.

That being said the long time players of wow are now getting on like myself who now works full time with multiple commitments in my RL that I didn’t have at the age of 15 when I first started playing wow. That money every month paying for your subscription is no longer where your pocket money or maintenance grant goes anymore but instead it’s your savings, it’s your investment and is it a wise spend? Probably not. Do people even have that 20+ days to play on a character now?

Players that pick up the game now? What is their average age? Are they 15 like we were? If so the game has become vasty more complicated than we experienced when wow was first released. This year we have seen a decline in young page who are 18, does this have an effect on membership for those that would usually spend their time and money on the game? Does this affect the game? (According to data from the Office for National Statistics the population of 18-year-olds in England has been on a steady decline since 2009 and is due to hit an all-time low in 2020. It is then due to grow and by 2030 will be around the same level as 2010.)

For those that would usually spend their free time gaming are they now picking games that are fast, they can dip in and out of? With the rise of Battle Royale games I would argue so. Games with high commitment, time and money investment are on the decline.

So, I know this hasn’t been the most well concise put together post but I think I can highlight some issues which might be affecting subscriptions and the wow community in decline;

  • Wow is now too large for new players. There is simply too much exhaustive content.
  • The grind has got too much for old timers.
  • The aging wow population and new commitments.
  • Decline of 18 year olds.

Let me know what you think and I hope that this post made some sense at least.

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I think this has been the case for many years.
The flipside is that WoW becomes increasingly catered to its existing fanbase, which in turn gets increasingly devoted to WoW.

Warcraft as a whole has gone on for so long now that the lore and story and universe is very unfriendly to newcomers. As a veteran player however, I really want more lore and story and universe building, because I’m so invested in it.

But yeah, I would never advice anyone who hasn’t played WoW before to start playing it today. That ship sailed long ago. :neutral_face:

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There are two processes here:

On the one hand, yes, they have been mostly adding content, without removing much (removed a couple of things, but added more comparably). So, yes, total amount of content grew.

However, on the other hand, the amount of content that presents gameplay of any interest to new players (excluding those who are coming into the game to “do everything” - it’s mostly old players who try to do so, new players aren’t interested in this much) didn’t grow a lot. In fact, it’s likely reduced.

Every time they add a new shed of content with the new expansion / patch, they render a shed of old content obsolete and uninteresting. A lot of old content have been downright broken and presents zero interest even at level, thanks partly to level scaling and partly to changes made to the specs.

So, to your central point - the size of WoW mostly only got too large on the metric that doesn’t matter to the new players. It only got too large nominally. The amount of content you’d do likely shrunk.

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Aq20, Aq40, Naxx, BWL, MC, ZG, OL.
And we’re not even talking about the 4 nightmare dragons + Kazzak in the blasted lands.

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No, I don’t feel the world is too large. If anything, the sheer size of the game is attractive and immersive. I think the actual issue may be that WoW has always been very end game / max level focused, so that leveling (after vanilla) has always been something people try to get over with as quickly as possible so they can play the relevant, “real” content.

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It’s not about size, it’s about how relevant those zones are.

New players don’t do the old zones because they don’t matter. Old players just dungeon slam their levelling because they already did those quests once or as many times as needed depending on how many alts they have.

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That’s a rather sweeping statement. Whenever I’ve tried to play a new MMORPG, then I’ve always just done whatever is presented to me. As a newbie you don’t really have the game insight to know what is outdated or inefficient or redundant. You mostly just tag along the path the game presents you with.
I suspect in WoW most newbies are lead by the Hero’s Call Board thing in the major cities that tells them which places they should go to do quests in.

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I love the size of wow and the diversity if I want to visit the lich king I can go to Northrend see its frozen areas and of course rock out to the grizzly hills music.

If I want to just be in awe of the beauty of the world I can go to panda land. If I want to feel like a dirty grime covered dwarf I can go in to the centre of the earth.

If I want ot be a spaceman I can go to draenor… Two VERSIONS of draenor.

Or if I want to get SNIP with demons there’s Legion. so yeah it’s big but it’s also awesome.

The thing I don’t like is, how the areas kinda become void after a new expansion I loved loved Legion and every time I visit or level through it I get all nostalgic and remorseful that there isn’t anything there any more but apart from that I love the world… Bfa needs some loving though the areas are beautiful but story is meh.

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I don’t think that the world is too large but i do think that now after 14+ years we have too many levels especially when you think how boring and mundane leveling has become after the removal of so many RPG elements.

I love how large the world is and how it is not instanced “open” world like so many other mmos have.

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You don’t have to level through 108 zones. In BfA you only have to level through 3 zones. And you can entirely skip all of Burning Crusade and go straight to Northrend.

You may have to do half of the zones in vanilla. And in WoD you can get from 90 to 98 by only doing 3 zones.

New players also get a boost to max level so they can experience the current content at once. So no, I don’t think WoW is too large, that’s just the natural progression of a game that’s as old as WoW is.

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But it’s not just a matter of playing the game for its gameplay progression. If you’re a newbie to WoW (and maybe Warcraft) your first question is probably going to be:

“What is Azeroth, who am I, and what am I trying to accomplish and for what reasons?”

And to answer that question you basically need a longer education in Warcraft history and lore.

Imagine a newbie who picks up WoW and BfA. One of the first characters they get presented with is Jaina Proudmoore. A main character by any definition. But who is Jaina Proudmoore? Well that’s a story that spans 17 years! Good luck trying to quickly summarize that in any meaningful way without creating a thousand new questions in the process! :rofl:

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I don’ think Wow is too large! What about players who want to do old content? What about new players who want to explore every region, do every quest, have all the reputations exalted?

If I was a new player, I would be amazed by the content of the game! I would think, oh man so much content to do, I’ll try to do it, probably making a plan of which content I want to do first, which region I want to explore…

This is like a new world to explore, a lot of hours to enjoy myself maybe with a friend or alone!

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If you’re to go by that logic then you need to start at Warcraft 3 and play both Reign of Chaos and frozen throne as well. Who is Arthas? Who is Sylvanas? What happened to Silvermoon? What happened to Lordaeron? Why did Thrall go to Kalimdor? How did the Tauren get involved in the Horde? Not all things started in WoW, so if new players are to experience the lore through the game they would have one heck of a long gaming session ahead of them.

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I remember a funny post from someone a few months ago about the journey of his Mag’har orc. In the end his chara jumped to around 20 different points in time until he reached max lvl.
Depending on your race as Horde player you meet 3 different warchiefs at the start (goblins have Thrall, most other races Garrosh, allied races start with Sylvanas).
And after 60 lvl with Garrosh as warchief you suddenly meet him for the first time in BC, maybe even after you dealt with him during WotLk. And with lvl 80 he suddenly is your warchief again.

As new player you have no idea what’s going on unless your read through different fan sites. And even then it still can get pretty confusing.

But WoW is just too old and doesn’t have the appeal to many people anymore.
Otherwise it would be really helpful to rework the complete leveling system, including at least the classic zones to match with a more current expansion.

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Yes, that’s my point.
I had a friend I played with during TBC and WotLK who hadn’t played any of the previous Warcraft games. As enjoyable as I found it to explain the story of Illidan and Arthas, it was also an admission that the game itself had failed to do that to any satisfying degree.

And that issue has definitely only grown as WoW’s storylines have increasingly more lore background that you need to be aware of in order to enjoy the game on a higher level than just “herp derp kill stuff!”.

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19

In warcrafts case it’s pretty accurate though.

Old player doing new alt or new player will pretty much skip old zones, they are mostly irrelevant too due to the way the game has progressed over the years as well.

I don’t know if it’s still the case as it has been some time but I was leveling my warrior and I got agility plate gear, which was utterly worthless.

There was things in the game after changes were made that should have been changed but weren’t. There were raids removed, content shut down that left gaps in old content.

Then there is the way wow progresses, aside from forcibly halting xp gains the talent system doesn’t exactly make that idea fun or worthwhile there is no where near enough people on any given day at lvl 60/70/80 to do raids or enjoy that content.

It is dead content at this stage, it has added value only to the overall game but has no value to new players or existing players on alts.

but that’s just an opinion.

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Yeah, if you’re a veteran player and you know the ins and outs of the game. Absolutely. You’ll level that alt up in an efficient and wise way, because it’s counterproductive not to.

But if you’re a newbie you don’t have a clue what exists beyond the walls of Northshire Valley in Elwynn Forest. Your way of playing the game is likely just to follow the breadcrumb of quests and go wherever it takes you.

So it’s not that newbies don’t do the old zones because they don’t matter. Rather, they don’t do them because the game doesn’t tell them to do each and every single one of them. The game presents a path to level 60 that will take them through some zones – but not all – so that’s what they’re going to do.

You’re not making the same educated choices as a veteran player if you’re a newbie – because you’re not yet educated. Rather, you just tag along on the road that the game presents to you.

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Well the tools we had back then are minor by comparison to what the game offers in terms of information.

Websites have far more complete information now than they did as well.

I don’t believe any new comers are that ill informed at least not for long.

I’ve looked into joining other mmo’s that have been around for a while and I honestly wouldn’t get involved at this stage in most of them.
I don’t believe WoW is suitable for new players at all.

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I think wow needs an overhaul or remake like WoW 2.0.
Once that is out, then they can focus on making old zones relevant again.

First, by removing levels from game but instead give us azeroth points like,
1~60, Azeroth point 30
61~80, AP 120
81~100, AP 150
101~120, AP 200
So, the max level would be lvl 60.
Thus, a new player being lvl 1 would get AP 1 as well and all zones would scale to his level like its now.

Therefore, a Veteran player starts a fresh character then he would immediately be AP 200 but as to lvl to 60.

So, the Azeroth Points would give a different flavour to the gameplay and can be accessed on the fly.

The flavours the Azeroth points would provide are a new skill trees that makes a player more powerful.

Also, the old content can be accessed anytime to make it scalable to the players lvl not AP by clicking it on the settings on the main menu in capital cities.

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I think we’re talking a bit past each other. Here’s what the other guy said before:

If you’re a new player, then you don’t skip old zones because they don’t matter to you. As a new player, then any zone you haven’t done before is likely to hold some interest to you. Exploration, story, or sheer curiosity.

The reason why you don’t do these zones is because the game doesn’t lead you through all of them during your leveling. And the reason why the game doesn’t do that is because if it did, then leveling would take thousands of hours!

And that was kind of the OP’s point: That WoW has grown so big that even if a newbie wants to play through all of it, then it becomes a daunting task considering just how much stuff there is in WoW.

So what the game does is to simply introduce you to some zones – but not all of them – so you reach max level in a fair amount of time.
And that makes a lot of sense, but the obvious down-side is that newbies are left with a lot of holes in their understanding of WoW – especially as it pertains to lore and story. And there really is no easy way to gain all that understanding besides playing through the entire game, but that is easier said than done.