New Players Guide - Mentor Feedback

[Bendrick-silvermoon]

Hello everybody,

So i have been a Mentor for new players for almost a year now, and i would like to share my experience, and try to provide some feedback on just how much new players are confused at the beginning.

I will also try to keep the post as small as possible and just note the biggest issues.
Other peoples feedback is very much appreciated but just try to keep it civil without any major unnecessary discussions and stick to the topic. <3

I will post examples of peoples confusions:

-New players are confused on why they cant trade each other gear that drops from bosses, because they don’t know that you cant trade items which are Ilvl upgrades and nothing in the game tells them that’s the case. (You try explaining that to them so that they understand the reasoning behind it)
This lead to a lot of confusion.

-New players who are level 60 and farm transmog don’t understand why on some expansions (SL, BFA, Legion etc) some have personal loot which drops only the gear that they can wear, but then do for example Dragon Soul, and it drops useless items which they don’t even unlock their appearance even though they got the item.

-A new guy asked me about the Raiding and PVE content in general, where i proceeded to advise him to install Add-on (DBM, Weakauras etc, from third-party websites (not many people believe a stranger on the internet)), exactly at this point is where the confusion started, and it ended poorly because he immediately stated that he wont do those actives because its too complicated. (And i agree with him)

-A LOT of people tend to type inside the Newcomer Chat "wave at ",which makes me believe that they cant find the emote tab in the chat and also are not familiar with commands such as “/wave”- my advice would be to implement a proper emote tab on the Micro Bar.

-People not knowing that inside the Dungeon finder you need to type on /instance, and tend to fill the Newcomer Chat with “spicey” conversations. (When i play other MMORPGs i also tend to type in /party because it makes sense, i haven’t seen /instance in any other game and people don’t know it exists).

-Confusion about the servers, and why they can see players from some realms, but not all of them (connected Realms System), that leaves people having to Google which servers are connected on some other websites because the World of Warcraft website doesn’t give any information about that).

-Being able to Fly in some zones, but not be able to fly in others (Pathfinding Achievement) is not explained at all, lets face it, when you are a new player you struggle a bit to earn some gold, and when people finally can afford their Flying mount and getting it to max speed, its a buzz-kill to learn that you cant fly in some zones when you progress trough expansions.

-Older Systems and Outdated Content.
Garrisons, Artifact Weapons, Artifact Relics, Old Set Pieces/Legendry’s with Disabled effects, Hearth of Azeroth Necklace, old consumables, enchants…

-Too many different currencies, Reputations, unlockables and Achievements which are not Account Wide hinder people on making Alt Characters. (Myself included)

-Too many restrictions, example: You can do unlimited number of M+ Dungeons, but a Mythic dungeon is on a Weekly limit 1 time Per Week. (You try explaining that to somebody on why that is)

-Scalable zones makes players weaker every single level instead of making them stronger.

There are many many more questions people had which also made me question certain systems in the game and are they really necessary.

I hope that the post wasn’t too long i tried to keep it as compact as i could.

[Gráinne-earthen-ring]

That’s a very good, well-presented list.

I have no idea whether Blizzard will do anything about any of it, though.

[anon66707849]

@Bendrick-silvermoon

Being able to Fly in some zones, but not be able to fly in others

This one got me.

Ported back to SW and bought flying… Flew around for a few minutes thinking “this is pretty cool”.

Got back to Boralus and suddenly couldn’t fly again.

Confusion.

[Punyelf-draenor (Punyelf)]

Great effort, I don’t agree with all your points and I think some of these are the types of things people used to ask guildies and friends. Now many rely on guides to help them out in newcomer chat, or simply expect the game itself to explain everything.

Wow was far from user friendly and explained nothing when I started, they have come leaps and bounds explaining and guiding players. That’s not to say they can’t improve further but I don’t think the game should be dumbed down to achieve that.

Funnily enough I recently played another well known MMO and they have several emote quests and they all work the same way. I smiled thinking I wonder how many people get stuck there as well. It certainly needs something else to demonstrate to people playing their first MMO how emotes work.

The locked into BfA expansion and BfA dungeons is also a big disappointment to many new players who just want to go off and explore. Or that they can’t access Chromie time from the beginning. Some refuse to follow the BfA route but then they can’t do any dungeons at all.

The flying thing is the worst to explain, yes you had a quest that sent you to go and learn this skill that they send you back to a zone you can’t fly in because it is gated behind a long winded achievement aimed at end game.

Not all new players appreciate being babied with the tutorial style introduction and others desperately need it Exile’s Reach. Some even want to leave newcomer chat straight away. There are also players who just find too much information overwhelming and skip through things, regardless of how well they may or may not be explained.