New player experience

Community General Discussion
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Hello everyone,

Recently a friend and I have been discussing the general toxicity of some members of the community, and how we as experienced players/concerned citizens could make a difference. We discussed the attempts made to implement a mentor system, and then I had a brainwave and would like some feedback/suggestions from you all.

The new player experience is, as I’m sure a lot of you will agree, trash. The new island is a really great introduction, but as soon as they’re off the island, they’re kinda left on their own. So here’s the suggestion;

Guardians, Azeroth Points, and guilds.

Allow me to elaborate; Say you’re a guildmaster (it would need to be locked to guildmasters so it’s server cluster specific (sorry community leaders/admins!)), and you’ve spent time helping new players, and you think your guild members are great and would benefit from some extra recognition from the game for generally being good eggs.

We implement an application system to allow guilds to be recognized as ‘Guardians’ (a special icon next to their guild name), it must be filled out by the guild master. (Requirements could be that the guild has existed more than 12 months, have a minimum number of members, have a minimum number of unique accounts as members (so alt guilds don’t count), and an average number of active players (so guilds with 100 members with 4 active and the rest offline for years won’t count)).

When granted, the guild then earns Azeroth Points (karma) based on new players granting it (they would generate a certain amount each month they can ‘spend’, and the account would need to be not-trial, and be more than 3 months old but less than 12 months (sorry, but to try prevent abuse, a restriction like this would be necessary)).

Azeroth points could then be used to purchase rewards (like how we used to have guild-wide achi’s for mounts/pets (could be trading post items so no need for new assets)). The points would expire/drop off every X amount of time (so the guilds/people interested in this would need to continually be helpful or the guild would lose their status (again, in order to prevent abuse and move away from one-and-done mindsets)).

Within those guilds, the guild master could also nominate people as specialists (like the mentor system). PvP, Dungeons, Exploration, Lore, Mechanics, Class, Professions, Battle Pets, there’s loads of directions we could go.

The requirements would be on a player-by-player basis and you could fill the requirements for more than one area at a time.

For example; If you’re a lore specialist (maybe a title, ‘[Name], Ancient of Lore?’), you’d need to have loremaster for every expansion, and have all the ‘Well Read’ achievements.

Another example could be PvP; ([Name], Ancient of War?) You’d need to have reached rank X for honor, and have all the pvp faction reps at exalted. Or have a certain rating across PvP seasons (reach 2k rating across 3 seasons of PvP perhaps??).

Point is, it feels like making it a player-by player thing invites abuse of systems, and lack of engagement. But if your whole guild needed to be involved, and you got rewarded (heck, even extra traders tender for having your AP above certain thresholds would be cool) for being a good, helpful player, I genuinely feel more people would be willing to participate, and it would help with player retention (oh, I’ve done all the content I want to do this xpac, I’ll look at becoming a specialist in Lore).

The main aim is to drive player retention (by giving them a reason to stay), and rewards players having a positive impact, not punishing those that have a negative one (for example, there’s no downvote/negative karma/negative AP). A key point of this is that you’d still be able to earn AP without being in a ‘Guardian’ guild, but to get the extra trader’s tender, you’d need to be in a ‘Guardian’ guild. (maybe if you have an AP of 100 you get 100 bonus tender every month, but that’s your cap, and in a ‘Guardian’ guild your AP can get higher and reward you more tender?)

Thanks for reading, I look forward to your constructive additions/questions :grin:

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If I understand the wall of text correctly, you’re trying to implement a system that’s akin to the mentor system of FFXIV in the hopes of bringing a more welcoming atmosphere for new players?

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I mean, even FF has issues that I feel like this would address/mitigate/alleviate.

No system is perfect, and since we’ve already tried to implement a mentor system in WoW (which, to my knowledge, died pretty quickly), it’d be cool to try something different, which is why it’s guild based (as stated in the wall of text :sweat_smile:)

We already have a guild system we’ve tried to change previously, so why not bring that idea forward in a different way, and drive some bigger sense of community, which helps both players and Blizzard.

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I think anything that will help new players and make them feel welcome is a win win situation. However, the real crux of the problem with this 20 year old game is that most new players are required to do 3rd party research in order to even begin to understand or participate in end game. If these types of guilds can be a bridge then again I see no issue why this would a problem.

You have my vote.

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Thank you for your view!

I agree, and I’m hoping something ‘like’ this could be a step in the right direction!

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This is honestly one of my main gripes as well.
I came back last year, and I spent more time on wowhead than anything trying to understand mechanics, classes and quests or even figuring out certain things because the game is absolutely horrible at explaining things.

Mind, it has improved a bit, and once you’re in the systems, the rest starts making sense. But for new and returning players, the learning curve is absolutely insane, and to be honest unless you have a good guild or friends, don’t count on the community…

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I think you and @Ruffntuff have both hit the nail on the head that this is trying to help. I genuinely feel that something like this would be a very good first step to resolving the issues you’ve both raised, but without a decent foundation, no matter how well we ‘fix’ the latter issue, it’ll still crumble, y’know?

But thank you for your comments and your view ^^

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Fairly certain they did have some sort of buddy-chat at some point, right? What happened with that?

A more helpful atmosphere for new players is surely welcome. So I think your ideas have some decent grounds.

Additionally I think that it’d help already if they could just ban the boost-selling spam in the trade channel. This to keep the general channels readable and mitigate you from getting the urge to instantly leave all of them.

Even for experienced players this can be overwhelming, and it honestly gives a free-to-play vibe…not the most nice experience out there once leaving the newcomer’s isle.

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Exactly why I think something needs to change (regarding the buddy system you mentioned!), as it’s pretty much ‘gone’ (at least I’ve not met anyone that uses it/opts into it).

I think the trade-chat stuff is a different issue, and putting them in their own Trade - Services channel has helped a lot with that (credit where its due!), but I agree, Trade chat in general is just full of people spamming macros, and is overwhelming. I don’t know how I’d begin to think of fixing that (short of removing the trade channel entirely and maybe doing a server wide professions list (like the guild one but amped up?)).

Thank you for your support and input though! The chat channels was something I hadn’t thought about when thinking of this.

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Yes, so much, yes.
It’s time we get rid of these practices and services as they cause more harm than anything.

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hell no. We all playing the same game, the faster new people get into reality, the better for everyone. You are supposed to do your own research outside the box if you wanna be decent. Casual guilds already exist, just look for them. I can’t stand these commie ideas, building a karma system wth is wrong with you…

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I present exhibit A your honor.

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While I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to respond, this kind of mentality is exactly the issue I’m trying to alleviate with this idea. So while I find your response inflammatory, thank you for sharing another view point.

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25170 achieve points and you’re new ? Press X for doubt.

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Where did the OP claim to be a new player?

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The guide system still exists and answers questions posed by new players.

As for the suggested guilds system, I don’t dont really see the benefit over the existing communities and guild system which is not realm locked.

I’m not in favour of any reward system. One of the things that has encouraged the right people to be guides is that they do without getting anything in return. Any sort of points or reward system is just counter intuitive and attracts the wrong sort of players IMO.

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Thank you for your viewpoint!

I think the necessity of a change for something like this is that, yes, while good people will do things for no reward, why not reward those people anyway? Good begets more good, and while there would need to be no ‘downvote’ system, being able to identify those helpful players by sight would make the new player experience better. Personally, I’d be more likely to ask someone who had a reputation for being helpful and could see that, than risk asking someone something and get someone that’s toxic giving me abuse (which does happen).

While communities can be beneficial, keeping it as a guild thing (and thus locked to the server cluster - as stated) means people are getting help from their server, the people they’ll see walking around and posting in chats, before they start looking at things cross-realm.

As for attracting the ‘wrong sort of players’, that’s why the reward I suggested isn’t tied to player power or utility. It’s not supposed to be a ‘oh my god I have to act in such a way to get this cool thing’. It is supposed to be ‘oh, that person I helped appreciated it and I’ll get a cool little bonus’ kind of thing.

Like I said, thank you for your viewpoint, but respectfully, I disagree with you.

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I’ll bring a more stern approach: There should be no reward for helping people. Even the absolute slightest such reward, even if entirely cosmetic, will entice some of the worst vile scum that play the game to enroll in it and poison it.

The problems new players face have been explained myriads of times:

  • Not enough guidance where to go and at the same time too much handholding that they do not learn to explore
  • Complex systems that are complex simply to appease people who believe that others should not have access to the same rewards as the former. The entire current crafting system and the crest system exist explicitly due to this.
  • Lightning-fast levelling that lets players hit the end-game before they get acquainted with their abilities as they level up. A typical level 80 character with Starter build ends up with 40+ active abilities and quite a lot of passives as well. Levelling from 1 to 80 for a new player who doesn’t use any shortcut like Timewalking or Seasonal events is what, 25-30 play hours? I am right now levelling a new character and is already level 33 by just Mining and with less than 5 quests done overall, with playtime of less than 2 hours.
  • Tied to the point above, an absolutely dangerless overworld where death or general mishaps are improbable and limited to either intentional (like falling intentionally from a great height) or due to carelessness (like pulling multiple enemies with a dragon portrait or the even rarer but still existing case of pulling enemies of significantly higher level than you). Players get accustomed to the idea that standing still and just firing their damage-only abilities on their bars as the game automatically placed them is enough. And this is still true for level 80 overworld!
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Thank you for your viewpoint!

I think I should re-iterate the ‘karma’ system as I don’t feel that I’ve explained it well enough. The idea is that the new players get points to give to people they’ve found have helped them (could be one a day, five a week, that’s up to Blizzard and the design team). Some new players will receive help and not have points to give out, or will receive help and not give points out at all. The points are then what dictate the ‘reward’/‘prize’ the person that helped receives. There is no exchange of ‘I did this for you, you do that for me’, because there’s no guarantee you’ll be rewarded, but that’s why I think it’d work, because there’s no guarantee. It’s more of an invitation to people that want to help ‘if you help this person, you could be rewarded, and the more people you help the ‘better’ the reward’ kinda thing.

I do agree that levelling is awfully fast for a new player, and the abilities at max are things that need addressed. But neither of those points are what this suggestion is trying to resolve. Are there other issues? Yes, but let’s start somewhere and then progress.

If we don’t keep people engaged and supported, it won’t matter how quickly they level, they won’t stick around long enough to figure it out. So let’s start at the beginning and build from there!

I do appreciate your thoughts though, thank you for sharing.

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idk the whole new player experience need a complete overhaul, from learning classes, gearing systems, types of content available, UI setup etc. etc.

I don’t think having a better mentor system will fix the current learning by doing type of system we have.

If I didnt have someone to throughly explain to me what to do when I started playing this game I would’ve quit right after boosting my character and getting teleported to a random hub.