I bought DF and played a bit. Then I left. Now I came back. And I’m now suddendly, magically playing the emerald dream campaign?
What the? How can I play through the story, linearily?
It makes me so mad that Blizzard doesn’t support this. Why the hell do they push me to the top of the campaign stack without asking me? Why can’t I just enable “linear story mode” or something like that?
What’s an addon that does that? Why is it so god damn complicated to consume this game.
Not fair! How did you get advanced access to this?
It’s not due out until next week.
Yeah, this is the part I hate most about WOW. They don’t help us play the story linearly.
I search in Wowhead or Wikipedia about every quest chain to know in which order was added and complete only the quests from the next chapter in the order I am playing.
This one lists every quest campaign from Dragonflight on release order
You could just look in your adventure guide. That normally points you in the right direction of what’s next.
that *** doesn’t help you at all. What I want is to press a button or something and it just spoon feeds me the content like a game usually does. I don’t wanna think. I want to be fed like you get fed when you are playing it the time it comes out. Extremely simple. Like why the hell would I want to jump in my campaign? Makes no sense.
No, that is false. It doesn’t point you in the right direction to complete the story in order. It point you into things you could do, including many story campaigns, but it doesn’t tell an strict order or even point you to campaigns skipping previous ones.
Does it need to be in order?
I think with World of Warcraft it’s most important to be up to date with where the current patch is so you can participate in its content and live in the moment. just like in the real world. Do you see last weeks news on the front page of the papers, or do you see what’s happening now.
Players of WoW usually want to just be able to jump in and get going again, they don’t want to be forced to play through an entire expansions storyline just to play the game.
Not saying that works for everyone, but that’s just the way WoW is.
I like it because it means I can jump in and out of the game. And when I have a bit more time to see the story I can do it in my own time.
Yes it needs to be in order. In perfect, linear order. They can add a skip button for all I care but just, for the love of god, give people the chance to play it linearly. I just don’t get it. I just can’r wrap my mind around it why the hell we can’t play the god damn campaig in linear order.
Why the hell spend all the money on the story and why make the switch from classic era story telling to this hollywood esque one if you just make a big f*** mess out of it. Makes no sense.
The world is going mad people, it’s going mad!
So I logged on a fresh character that has done no max level questing in DF. They’re about 4 weeks old. I have opened up my Questlog and it says:
Dragonflight:
Continue the campaign by accepting the quest “Renown of the Dragon Isles” in Thaldrassus.
That wasn’t hard was it.
I’ll warn you though, some of the campaign quests are locked behind renown. That I disagree with.
Yes, I play the story in order, or I don’t play. That is a red limit for me. The moment I can’t play in order I will quit because the game lore is the only thing that keeps me subbed.
If you want to do that, good for you. I don’t want to just participate in the last content. I want to play the story of the game because that is the part I like about this. I enjoy the lore, I enjoy the characters. I don’t enjoy participating in the content on raids, mythic+ or PVP. I only participate in the content the minimum possible to view the story doing once every dungeon in LFG and once ever raid in LFR.
Who says players should be forced to do anything? The only way to not force players to play through an entire expansion storyline is to force players to skip the expansion storyline? The only thing that we want is a way to be able to do it for those who want to do it. Do you don’t want to do it? Don’t do it, no one wants to force you. I want to choose to play linearly, I don’t want to force others into anything.
I also have a fresh level 70 that just finished the leveling campaign and the questlog points me directly to 10.1.7 quest campaign skipping previous patches. Wich means I can’t trust Blizzard’s help to play the story.
Well if that’s your thing. WoW has always been more gameplay focused than Lore focused.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t improve it though.
Cool, I’m not saying it can’t be improved. I’m just pointing out that WoW is like it is for a reason. It has just followed the way the core player base has focused the game.
Unfortunately the Lore has suffered because of that.
I enjoy the linear experience of the story because I’m usually active in the game. That’s kind of how the game is designed to be played.
when I go away for a few months, I just jump back into playing as usual, and then just pick up the odd bits of story as I go come across them. What matters most is that the game is good.
I can’t help you on that one then. Maybe you finished the campaign already. Or maybe you need to unlock some more renown.
All I know is: I logged in and my questlog said “Emerald Dream” quest and then I click on some shield quest and I got a weird cinematic I have absolutely no idea what is going on. So there some kind of mixup. I do not want mix ups.
What I want is: Log in and continue. That’s it. I don’t wnat them to feed me spoilers now, do I?
I just don’t get it. Make a proper UI and implement proper UX and everybody would be so happy, their face would hurt from the smiling but no.
Anyway: Thansk for actually checking it! Very kind.
Edit: Also with their new worldsouls thing or whats it called, having UX that helps the player consume the story becomes even more important.
Yeh, I think they could present the story better for those who want just the story. That’s a definite.
However, the absolute 100% best way to enjoy the World of Warcraft story is simply to live through it and and be part of the world as the story unfolds in real time.
I know that seems like a lot of commitment, but it truly is the best experience.
That said, I hope you work it out.
I understand your frustration and confusion, I’ve had it a few times as well when I joined an expansion later. I’d have preferred a more lineair approach at those moments because it quickly turns into a incoherent mess if you pick up the main storyline quests and they turn out to be all over the place timewise.
It’d be nice if there was an option for it. I have no idea how hard it’d be to implement that in a way where others can still choose to do it the way it is right now.
And you wouldn’t be able to keep playing like that if I could choose a strict story order?
I want a story mode for every expansion in which every campaign is playing in order, yes. But I want it because I want to do that. I don’t want to force people to play my way.
So, what harm could be in having an optional strict Story Mode and letting every player choose if he wants to play in order or skip to the current content like now? It could be a UI option.
Do I want to play everything in order without spoilers? I enable Story Mode.
Do I want to play the last content to play with orders? You disable Story Mode.
Everyone should be happy.
I think they could do this by having a UI presenting every chapter of the story of the expansion in order, indicating what chapters you have completed and what parts you have not.
Selecting a strict Story Mode would mean selecting the first uncompleted chapter of the story and, doing that, hiding any quest from other chapters. So, If I want to play the next chapter, that for me is Return to The Forbidden Reach. Any quest from patches after that is hidden, so I won’t see the exclamations in the NPCs, nor those quests in my quest log, nor any of those will auto-start.
Once I complete that chapter, the next one is enabled, so now I will see the quests for the following campaign. 10.1, I think.
I could choose to enable story mode for the chapters in order. Other players could choose to play one particular chapter, enabling story mode for that one, skipping the previous chapters. And others could choose to ignore it and not enable Story Mode at all to continue playing as they do right now.
World of Warcraft does not have a linear story mode because most of the time it does not have a linear story. You’re not the protagonist, you’re not needed for the events to unfold, and not all questlines are related or interdependent on each other. If you stay away for a long time, the world goes on and when you come back the game directs you to the most recent content. If you want to do everything in order, either play patch by patch, or go find the questlines you missed, by exploring, reading your quest log, looking for the campaign symbols on the map or looking them up on wowhead. They’re still there, find them and do them.
I have never said that they can’t improve this experience.
I have merely pointed out why the game is like it is.
As I said above. The 100% best way to experience the WoW story is to live through it and watch the story unfold in ‘real time’ week by week. But I understand that can be a commitment even I can’t always stick to. But when you can it’s a fantastic experience.
Yeh, there is definitely space for improvement.
But they need to be careful with it though. It’s important to show players the recent history if they wish to see it. But they need to remember that the Game is the current season. The Story is what’s happening now, not really what happened in the past.
I think simply having a tree representing quests and stuff would do it. Add a little diary that summairzes what happened so far and we are golden.
I think having something in game to understand the sequence and which npc you should be bothering would be so helpful.
I’ll never forget my endless struggle with Legion and wowhead trying to make sense of it all, which quest I should do next and where I should go. It felt like the Christmastree lights that you put away neatly the year before but somehow, magically, it became a gargantuan knot in the attic!