I think the reason this is probably the logical option is because BFA doesn’t really make any sense in regards to any prior expansions. It’s entirely disconnected and considering how united we were in legion, having new players seeing that togetherness, then sudden all out war with each other is probably quite discouraging and completely unbelievable. Give them a brief intro then off to BFA which at least has a tangible link into Shadowlands.
BfA is far more modern than Cataclysm questing, whether or not BfA leveling is superior is another question.
However, there are plenty of the iconic races. Trolls are present all throughout Zandalar, as are the core races throughout Kul Tiras and Zandalar. New players will have a better, sensible journey than the one they’re on today.
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Before players had to 1-60 CLASSIC and then start experiencing other expansions ONE BY ONE, now they go 10-50 on BFA and then they start to experience WHATEVER they want in WHICHEVER ORDER they want, either on max lvl or on an alt, so…
…what is really the OP whinning about really? LULK
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Don’t worry about new players. We will see maybe 0.001% new players in Shadowlands.
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Storywise it makes perfect sense and i understand this decision.
I am worried about one thing though: other players. Existing players can choose where they level up. BFA can be completely skipped, no one has to even put their nose in there if they don’t want. And from personal view i know i am NOT going to level any of my alts in BFA for years, because first of all i have just been doing that content over and over again with so many characters and second of all because i don’t find it a very good expansion. So while i know not everyone has same taste than me i worry that BFA will the most empty from existing “old players”, leaving new players leveling in ghost town.
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But that’s what already happens. To get to 110 a new player will only see 50% of each edition of the game unless they stick around in zones they’re already out-levelled.
Now there’s a starter zone, then 10-50 in any region (so you can play it 100%) and then 50-60* in Shadowlands.
*From how I read it, at the start of Shadowlands, all chars at 120 will be reduced to 50 and then level up to 60 in the new expack. Is that right?
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Those are older stories that have less relevance on the current (then Shadowlands) expansion. So I get where they’re coming from.
And new players will be able to experience all those older stories on alts. They’re not gone.
Yes thats correct 
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I think it makes sense to take new players through the latest expansion while lvling to keep up with the most recent events. They will then see the build up for shadowlands before going there. It would be very confusing to play BC and then jump into SL i think.
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It’s the fastest route towards familiarizing new players with the current lore without going too much into details. There’s kind of a difference between shadowlands and other old expansions.
While the stories of older expansions aren’t exactly disconnected from one another, they don’t really affect one another that much. These continuing storytelling kind of started with mists to wod to legion to bfa and now shadowlands. And if new players want to experience the new expansion, it’s best to start with the previous one so they wouldn’t be too confused as to what’s happening.
They’ll eventually get to see other expansions too if they remain interested.
I don’t actually see this as a bad thing.
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Correct me if I’m wring, but this is an MMO, and the main appeal of this genre is e ploration, not linear storytelling. Locking a new player into 3 zones does it a total disservice. You know there is a reason WoW back then launched with dozens of varied zones instead of 3/6 big ones.
And yeah, imagine a movie like Friday 13 Part 8: Jason takes Manhatten comes out. It may have slightly more connections to part 7 conpared to the original, but any new viewer would rather want to see the first one to check out if they like the concept at all, rather than one of the many sequels which requires a lot more context.
Classic zones, even the Cataclysm versions tell stand alone stories which were meant to be introductions to new players. BFA waa built assuming people already know all these characters like Jaina, Sylvanas, Saurfang, Thrall, Tyrande, etc.
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But we already will have an introduction for the game with the new lvl 1 to 10 zone. It’s a new thing they’re adding with shadowlands
BFA is more of a catch up mechanic to allow them to familiarize themselves with the story so far.
Sending them in the middle of all the new and old zones and telling them to choose one, won’t give them quite the needed understanding of the story. I mean let’s assume a random player decides to start playing wow. Goes and finishes BC for leveling. and now he’s playing shadowlands.
What the hell happened? Why are we suddenly in shadowlands? Where’s shadowlands? Who’s sylvanas? What’s happening? It’s a lot more confusing than the current system. At least, they’ll get to know things a bit better.
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I say fine, let them RECOMMEND BFA but don’t lock them out of all the other content.
How crap would it feel anyway… obviously we are sent to Stormwind and/or the other cities. So naturally any new player would be curious to walk outside to check things out, and there will be nothing to interact with?
And by the way, new players won’t necessarily get all the context for Shadowlands either since much of the story happens in raids and even in the books. They even removed the War of the Thorns questline, a move that damaged context in the first place. Now new players will just see Teldrassil destroyed with zero explanation of what happened, why did this war even start.
For new players, I think familiarizing with the world through smaller, self-contained stories in the old world is way better than starting with part 8 with an overarching story, and half of that story is told outside the game anyway.
And even technically speaking, what happens if there is a player that is in the middle of leveling their first character when 9.0 releases? Will they just have to abandon everything and start the BFA introduction? As if that won’t feel bad.
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I doubt they would prevent them from interacting with things.
I’m sure they can go to different zones and pick up quests.
but the game won’t send them anywhere but BFA.
You know when mists and later expansions start, there’s a quest first that you accept and then can go there? Same thing here. New players will just have no way of reaching pandaria, dalaran broken isles, draenor or outland. They’ll most likely still be able to travel around kalimdor and eastern kingdoms. They might even be able to go to other zones too. Maybe portals will work. Who knows?
As to what their plans exactly are, we’ll have to wait and see.
If that’s true, that is fine. I’m okay with giant pop-ups, adventure guide and whatnot guiding towards BFA content but leaving everything else open too.
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Didnt they say u would still be able to go out in the world and explore if thats what u want? Just that for new players they wont get the chromie option to start whatever previous expansion but only bfa. There are quests in bfa that sends u around the world anyways, so i suppose they will be able to just go explore if they want to.
I’m quite sure they will just continue levelling normally, since they are not “new players” in the sense of having no characters.
I do see your points. There is much bad in this change. Personally, I cringe at the thought that new players will get no introduction to their race’s character and will never see their starting zone - no Ellwyn, no Mulgore, (no Goblin hot-rods!). More generally, I see new players coming to WoW determined to see the whole story - though they usually don’t know what they’re asking for! Now they will have no opportunity to grow in Azeroth, and once left out of their starting zone will begin with, in my opinion, by far the worst questing experience in the game.
That new starting zone would need to be a rare breed of amazing to justify obsoleting the starting zones that captivated tens of millions - and I have no confidence that the current team contain the sensibility or vision to make a zone worthy of that.
On the other hand, I also see the confusion of new players trying to figure out where to go next, and what is going on, and who is Warchief, and all that. I understand they felt the need to “do something” about it. The Politician’s Syllogism strikes again:
We must do something
This is something
Therefore, we must do this.
I don’t know how this will play out. Their record is not inspiring, and there wasn’t a word about feeling power growth. I suppose you could say I’m cautiously pessimistic.
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I see that Blizzard (and a lot of people here) give not much credit to new players. Like they will be totally lost if they have to choose between playing in Elwynn forest or Darkshore.
It’s really not that complicated. Sure some storylines are stuck in Cata times and others in Classic times, but we dealt with that for like 10 years or so and it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
The whole problem with Blizzard (and most gaming companies) is that they are afraid to give people a choice! I hate scaling and squishing but it’s all forced upon us. This change is the same thing.
Blizzard basically tells us: “Play the game how we want it to be played”.
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New players needs a proper introduction that actually have people playing in the zone, unlike past content were you might not see anyone.
WoD leveling in my opinion was the best.