Elden ring is a good example of easiest rotation(literally you have strike and strafe) and hard raids (boss mechanics) and I said before there a plenty ways to min-max by experimenting with the stats and gear.
Imagine elder ring where you have to set up weakauras to make it possible dealing maximum damage while you have to survive the hard boss mechanics. Thats retail now
Also, rotation and proper macro play is not something you should demand from yourself in instant. The whole retail ecosystem (WAs, binds, UI) stems from starting with easy things and going deeper as you get more comfortable. The point here is always reaching comfort zone and then go deeper, but in small bits.
Itâs very bad example of a game for wow player tho because itâs very taxing on spinal activivty and wow players usually have poor reaction times and lose themselves in minimal visual clutter.
also.
You donât need weakauras to play, you donât need dbm or bigwigs to play (but can be good as learning tool).
Everything that is crucial for reaction time wow tells you, wow tells you without any weakauras on when to break LoS in ToT or Dazarâalor, and WeakAuras is maybe MAYBE required only for handful of classes for optimal gameplay, i for sure donât need it on any warlock spec
Come on, you deal no damage without the WeakAuras on every spec. Even on bc and wrath and moreover, currently in retail, when everything is built on procs without a clear pattern. WA is a must-have for any competitive player.
But donât focus on WA, Iâm saying that elden ring has the easiest rotation possible, but it is still competitive and fun to play. Easy to learn hard to master. That what it was before.
Retail is hard to learn, hard to master
You can decieve yourself all you want
elden ring is not easy to learn, but it can give you leeway and possible âeasy modeâ
To use WA properly you have to know: 1. Why this exact WA and what portion of focus can it leverage, 2. You need first the pure experience with the item you want to sensorically streamline or reorganize using WA.
Otherwise it is just colourful madness all over the screen.
The thing about dragonflight is: itâs very overwhelming.
however
Itâs also the expansion that explains more things than ever. My way of dealing with everything was taking my time and exploring everything 1 by 1. For example during the campaign you meet the crafters faction. They have quests that explain things to you. If youâre a gatherer you get a quest to mine/gather a few reagents, then they went and explained step by step about how to craft. In the next zone you had the same faction but for crafting gear. Theyâd send you around the area and youâd gather information off of them. Thatâs also when youâre introduced to optional reagents and the possibility to order your first item or make it yourself. If youâre a crafter you know that your profession has 2 to 3 blue items at pre-70 levels. If not youâll be able to see that by opening the order menu and for example picking armor-cloth-legs. This is where they could have done better and explained but if you scroll down youâll find the items for your level. It was self explanatory to me but not to everyone. When you feel overwhelmed you tend to forget things, I understand. In the azure span the very first quest gives you the option to learn how to fish. In valdrakken thereâs a continuation and an undead npc you talk to about crafting orders, trying to convince him to order off a crafter.
The sparks of ingenuity questline is a great teacher about crafting too. While the sparks are outdated, youâre taught about the sparks there, what theyâre used for, and youâre taught that you have to go through trials(ingenuity) to get them. As you play through later patchesâ content( a big mistake which overwhelms players with the 3 spark types) you earn the splinters which make their corresponding sparks.
All these words can be summed in: The quest text and the process of quests are a great teacher for crafting systems.
As wow is an enormous MMO of course pve and pvp would be very deep and hard for someone new. Could be better, of course but⌠weâre talking about the game as it is right now. As a newbie you get thrown into exileâs reach. The game there shows you how to do some basic quest tasks, how to emote(wave to gorâgroth in the newcomer chat can tell you just how many new players play this game) and shows you your first dungeon. You are also with players if there are any queueing with you. More often than not thereâs at least 1 person playing alongside you. You get shown the role of a tank and healer through the bots(a missed opportunity to let players learn these roles if they choose to) and some basic dungeon mechanics. The NPCs also comment and give you hints. They also just introduced follower dungeons for dragonflight which are essentially the same as darkmaul citadel but you can pick your preferred role.
The problem of MMOs as old as this is that they have to appeal to the old players and not bore them. That means changing things up. That means making it difficult. On the side of new players I agree it can be better but you really just have to be willing to slow down to learn. Thereâs no way you can treat them like games that came out last week. Or FPS games that just require you to practice to get better at aiming, learning advanced techniques and maps as their very core is simple even if the skill ceiling is high.
What I mean to say with all of this is, the game puts in the effort to explain the basics of the game but wonât throw tips at you, it explains it in the more immersive way through NPCs and itâs up to the player to read/sometimes listen.
Things like the talents system are up to you. You figure out a build that is likely worse than mostâs but it works for you and likely will at a low difficulty level of endgame too. Same for the starter builds. You can also choose to pick up a guide and get a build from there. I think that systemâs great as it is.
For rotations: You just have to learn them or pick something simple at first. As above, things need to change for long-term players to stay and that often includes increasing the difficulty. The enemies still sit and auto attack you, even if mechanics slightly change on bosses. But if nothing changes not many will stay. If you have a new friend playing the game recommend them a beast mastery hunter or something, let them have an easier time. Let them learn the basics of the game. Help them if they need it. Be nice to strangers who seem to be struggling. Itâs a social experience and if you want it to be as it was people like you who want those days back need to also treat the experience as they did.
Give it time, give it love, give out to people around you as well, just like you did in the past. Only then will things go back to how they were. Or you thought they were. Personally people are adding me almost daily and multiple times in the past iâve reached the friend cap in bnet as it expanded it over the years. You just have to put in the effort.
Also you can choose to try classic and things like season of discovery in vanilla are an amazing experience. Why not try? if itâs not for you there are many games out there. Find something that makes you happy ^^
P.S. If you ever invite a new player PLEASE donât show them DPS meter addons as theyâll just be very discouraged, especially in leveling dungeons where an arcane mage using an arcane explosion can clear dungeons by themselves.
I disagree (as long as weâre talking about learning and mastering Your class & rotation). You donât have to play at 100% of Your class capabilities to play retial. You can easily do all the dungeons on normal/heroic difficulty as well as LFR with only a few basic skills. To enjoy world content or this lowest tier of group content, You donât need to learn or know a lot.
So hard to learn? No. Hard to master? Now thatâs true - the skill ceilling is quite high, yes.
I agree about the story. The shark was jumped in BFA for me. Even though WoD dropped the ball and cut a lot of content that could have been great world building and developed lore. Although they did give us Legion next which felt quite Warcrafty to me but then then they did throw everything at it lorewise, old characters, locations, weapons and what not.
Iâm hoping that with the return of Metzen theyâll do better in this regard.
As for complexity of grouped content, I canât really comment on this. I donât really do it anymore, I gave up randoms with strangers in WoD which predates M+ and I canât imagine ever attempting that again.
I do like the Follower dungeons though. Iâve done them all except Algelath thingy so far.
I used to like grouped content in TBC where we paused before every pack and marked up the order etc.
But my eyesight is worse and the game is a lot faster so itâs just not an area of the game that I can participate in anymore. I donât really miss it that much. A bit like nightclubs, I seemed to enjoy my time there when I was young but I canât imagine going to one nowâŚ
It is not a deception. Itâs a fact. Youâll never find a high-rating M+ or mythic raid player who doesnât use the WA. If you donât use it - it is your way to improve your skills.
But the thread is not about it
We have one in our team. Zero customized UI, he is great player and colleague of mine, mythic raider as me, way above my RIO (3000 on me).
Define high. In BFA I was a mythic raider and ever since s4 of Shadowlands Iâve been doing at least a few +20s per season while clearing the heroic raid every patch I actually play during. I donât need weak auras. It just requires you to have awareness of your class and as iâve said many times, taking your time to learn the encounters first.
Judging by the title of this thread iâd say he wants to play retail.
Fair ^^ Iâve been typing that post for a while and many messages have been written inbetween me finding the thread and finishing my post. So the quoted post I definitely missed.
I agree that Blizzard trying to teach me during the leveling up, but the important learning quests could be in between killing 10 hogs and gathering 5 boxes. Somehow I skipped it.
Regarding the first dungeon with the bots - it is very superficial. It is like learning in school and working on a real job. Real dungeons are different. Imagine you have no guides and you are coming to the raids or m+. Youâll be kicked for a first slack
The new player would choose the class that looks cool. He doesnât know how hard his rotation is and it would be very frustrating when understanding comes. This new guy would not create another character to complete the exile reach, he would drop the game
The game doesnât teach you where you can spend the currencies, what is that reputation scrap on your bag, what content belongs to season 1, and what belongs to s3 (that was an issue for me, I finished the amidrasil first), and very more nuances for each spheres.
It is not that newbies friendly, the learning line should be improved for sure
Iâm old and loving it still
Is this actually bad?
The days before everyone used to love original clasic, but somewhere wrong turn happened and we have 2 camps now
The social aspects moved to Discord, and before that to TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. I talk and socialize much more now when doing dungeons than I did before, because now most people are willing to voice chat - and thatâs just easier.
There is less typing now and also less waiting around. In vanilla, it wasnât unusual to spend two hours building a group and then dedicating the evening to one dungeon (Maraudon, BRD, etc). It was a different experience that I have fond memories of, but itâs not one that would fit well into my life now. It took too much time, most of it downtime.
This was also a result of there being too many servers. On my server, even in the later stages of vanilla already, it was difficult to find people to do group quests or leveling dungeons with. You are on Silvermoon, so you probably never faced this problem, but most servers have been (and still are) much, much smaller or even semi dead, even back then.
I agree with this. It does depend a little on the class (there is a very large complexity gap between a Beast Mastery hunter and an Arcane mage or an Enhancement shaman), but I concur that the âmental bandwidthâ to play the game well in group content is significant and any non-casual content has an overall steep learning curve.
Everything is more complex and complicated than earlier in the gameâs life, and I can definitely see how it turns players away. I deliberately play a Devastation Evoker because itâs a simpler and slower spec, but still has a nice toolkit that allows for engaging gameplay (and I enjoy being a lizard/dragon thing!). But Iâd not want to play something like arcane mage, though. That requires a level of effort that Iâd rather put into learning a more meaningful skill (or into my career).
Yup! As they should. The most they can do is give a difficulty slider for example. Tell you this class is this difficult compared to that class. They canât just simplify every class. There are people who love that kinda stuff, they deserve it to be there.
So hereâs the thing. I did that in BFA. In 8.2.5 I boosted my DH with the free boost and hit 120 in 2 days. I did a few normal dungeons, then a few more heroic dungeons, then I was scared to try mythic so I asked my friends who were as new as me to join me. They also joined me for LFR Eternal Palace. We found it hard but we did it. Again, take it slow and observe things. Learn. I found us a guild, we did some mythic dungeons, i still have screenshots of my first +9 and how i died to frontals (i think!, it was the motherlode, after the boss you can kick balls at), thinking this was unfair. In 8.3 i found us a new guild since our first one went badly. We got into raiding, we got curve on nâzoth in 2-3 months. We got into mythic raiding too as we had the numbers, cleared half of Nyâalotha, cleared Jaina on mythic and got her on farm and got basically everyone who wanted the mount one each. I made alts and helped countless pugs, that also got me into tanking as I learned how to do the nâzoth pathing on the psychus phases alongside my friend, healing as I loved the idea but never got too far with healing until dragonflight. Every raid is done blindly since. Right now that same friend is competing for the top 1% for m+keys every season since forever.
Iâm not bragging. This is to say that Iâm relatively new and iâm trying to give people advice to actually get good at the game. Itâs hard but itâs not impossible. it might take some luck finding the people, sure, but outside of that itâs up to what you do. Iâm far from the best and still learning. Thatâs fine! Try to make a network of people you want to play with and/or socialize with. Offer to add them if you liked them in a dungeon, raid or even the open world. It worked for me at least. Hope it works for someone else reading it too.
Werenât you below 40 even? Not to mention old. 
While playing the bc classic I used to sit in a guild discord, but the chat of the game was alive as well. I think the game creates situations where you are comfortable talking (by typing), and where you are not. And the situation mostly means that you have time for that. But when everyone runs forward with their heads down to their rotation it does not create a friendly talkative atmosphere. The same works for raids. It is not about the laziness of typing and Discord, it is about the game