Pretty wild how badly designed this game is around new players

New players exist in world of warcraft???

I always expect a fresh level 1 be loaded with heirlooms. I have not seen an actual newbie in 4 months.

I think leveling was, good in Vanilla, while it was current content.
Afterwards the only content that mattered was the one present in the new expansion.
In fact I believe if it wasn’t for the fact that players would protest, in masses, Blizzard would gladly place all players in the new expansion.
That would mean:

  • You can’t login without buying the new expansion.
  • You start at the expansion entry level. All you have is 10 levels. The rest of the time, you are doing high end content.
  • Old content is deleted as soon as the new expansion comes out.
  • New players would only know the story related to the new expansion.

Cheers.

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I think people start new MMORPG’s for different reasons. I have now leveled a couple level 60’s and for me the only real sense of progress comes during those levels. I quit for about 3-4 months after my first level 60, because I didn’t know what else to do and felt like there’s no more progress, just expansions for the lore, if you want - but even then you kill everything in 1 hit, so the world isn’t immersive

I think levelling is very broken. The biggest issue I think is that levelling is essentially completely detached from the game at max level. If you like the levelling experience you won’t like the max level game and if you’d like the max level game you probably won’t like levelling so you’ll never see it.

I think the other big issue is that the game does a bad job at power progression, characters actually get weaker as they level, which is the opposite of what should happen…… Scaling I think is really a disaster in terms of giving any sense of progression.

At max level it’s really just about gear which doesn’t really feel meaningful at all. For the most part the only thing that matters on it is ilvl, so it’s neither meaningful nor memorable. And of course all progress is soft reset very frequently which makes gearing a bit of a pointless treadmill.

Ultimately the only real progression in the game is measured in transmog and mounts.

Progression is just broken.

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You meet plenty but you simply don’t notice is all. I mean, even today i had like at least 5 of them in my few hours of playing

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New players don’t get to random a dungeon, neither do alts, you have to select the specific expansion and then only get an option for anything if you wait too long. Id’s prefer an all dungeons in existence option.

The game actually has narrative in the new dungeons, the early expansions had very little narrative, if any.

I have to disagree. The 120 levels in the game were excessive, and it was difficult to level up normally while also following the story, as you would outlevel quests and zones quickly. (While scaling could help, it still felt like a flawed system.)
Moreover, having 120 levels can be overwhelming for new players and may cause them to question whether they want to commit to such a long process, similar to how some people avoid watching long-running series like One Piece.

they could really use some hints from games like the farmvilledust valley, zelda, genshin impact, or even LOL (make fun character/lore/ stories–> people buy the skins lol)

The levelling experience should be only valid to the current expansion. Consist of a tutorial to teach your spells. Then complete the bouquet of dungeons on normal and you should ding 70. The rest of the levelling experience should be on ilvl to reach HC, mythic and raids etc. that’s instant gratification covered and win win to prevent the scare off new players.

Players can go back to older expansions if the wish and complete the stories in their own time.

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There is a sub on reddit thats full of new players asking questions because the game is useless for that info they are asking and online resources do not help them much if their basic understanding is not there before they read anything.

Newer players who have not previously experienced WoW or even an MMO struggle when they reach max level with the content that becomes available. Its not even just about getting to max level thats an issue.

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Tell this to the players of LOTRO. They have a level cap currently of 140. The Game Directors reply to a level squish? - “Why on earth would we want to do that?”. The players? - “The best thing about LOTRO is the levelling journey through the world and the story”. That games early levelling is garbage however, still same kill and fetch quests from 2007. Also their endgame isn’t up to much. The leveling experience does have a one single story progression system that follows on from each expansion and it is actually quite fun once you get into Moria.

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The level boost is basically an admission that leveling sucks but it’s okay 'cause you can just skip it for money.

It’s like… okay, now they have a financial incentive not to improve leveling. Nice.

Of course it’s possible. They just have to convince everybody that leveling is just like the end-game except it’s got way more content.

I mean sure, there’s always gonna be the players that feel like they’re not ready to play the game unless they’re in full BiS gear. Yeah, they can do one. They’re hopelessly addicted to the point of leveling for 200 hours anyway, who cares.

I think the two things have been having a tango. Blizzard kept adding new content only to the end of the leveling process, and that has meant players wanted to be fast-forwarded to it, and Blizzard obliged, and then more players got to end-game because actually the expansions aren’t that long compared to the core game.

The fact that this led to far more content than could be experienced wasn’t a problem. The fact that the zone had the same amount of quests but for less XP, causing its content and atmosphere to be woefully cut short, was a problem. The result of this, then, is that zones needed to be rescaled. But instead of being smart about that Blizzard instead elected to just scale all the mobs to the player.

But the problem with scaling mobs to your level is that, instead of feeling like you’re moving through a world and growing a character to become stronger you’re instead leveling up to become weaker against the same mobs. Furthermore, no mob can be intimidating and no mob can be a pushover because they are all the same level. I said this at the time, and I’ll say it again: This was a HUGE mistake.

What Blizzard needed to do is recognize that their world’s leveling hah been flattened compared to the days of old and go through the zones, handpicking what should and should not be dangerous and rescaling the zones. But they didn’t…

Fortunately for them they have a lot of this data already from old versions of the game, and so largely this can be a technical exercise in restoration, but they need to dedicate a designer to it that fundamentally understands the joy of character growth and exploration. Or just someone who really likes Elden Ring but doesn’t want to copy the hardcore combat, just the world structure.

I mean think about it - the two games were very similar. You can handle about the same amount of mobs, they’ve both got progressive zones, and both have hugely dangerous mobs wandering the roads occasionally and tons of optional quests and content hidden in zones that are far more dangerous than the general open world. They both have relatively safety on the roads and more and more danger the further away you seek. They both have quests without arrows that ask you to work things out for yourself. Elden Ring literally just copied Classic WoW and added Soulsborne combat on top (which WoW should not do, its fundamentals are fine) and the gaming community went absolutely friggin’ wild to the surprise of absolutely nobody except Ubisoft and modern Blizzard.

This proves that WoW’s old formula is still as fresh as it ever were. Time to get back to basics.

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Agreed, the new player experience has needed a proper overhaul for the better part of a decade.

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I am not telling them this. The game is telling them this.

Pretty sure if I took my sweet time levelling, maxing out professions, weapon skills, doing quests for gear, getting gold to buy enchantments and consumables, I pretty much felt unstoppable and was never met with a challenge I couldn’t handle.

No, you don’t know that one of the fundamental gameplay mechanics of an RPG is seeing your character grow stronger and more experienced that he can tackle new zones with ease and can completely rush through older content that he had a problem with at first, it’s a good feeling.

Honestly if it wasn’t for your snobby remark up top, I wouldn’t say this but it looks like you know 0 about actual RPG games.

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The relative strength of your character compared to new zones as you level up has always been the same. I don’t know what kind of hello kitty adventure style games you’ve played if you think otherwise.

Show me exactly how the game tells new players that leveling is irrelevant, and how it was different in classic.

Right now if you spam dungeons or buy boe/crafted items you can faceroll leveling content, so again, you’re flat out wrong.

It’s not gated, have you actually tried doing the stuff in newer patches? It’s like saying Suramar is gated behind rep when this hasn’t been the case for years now.

Only stuff I can think of that is time/rep gated is from the WotlK-WoD era.

That’s entirely dependable wether on how you progress and what items and gear you had. The first time I levelled in classic on my warrior it was a pain but that’s because I tried to rush everything, once I took my sweet, sweet time levelling a second warrior getting the best gear and enchants, it was a whole new level of gameplay.

I thought that was already clear? If you didn’t bother with professions, weapon skills, traversing through dungeons early on, you were going to have a rough time when you dinged level 60. Partly because as a high level, levelling up your level skills on mobs that were lower level took longer than if you were to train them on mobs your own level.

There’s a reason why a level 60 still lost to a level 55 if the level 55 bothered to invest his time running BRD and other dungeons. There’s countless amount of videos of twinks beating the crap out of higher levels than them. I can link you a level 50 rogue right now that picked fights with level 60’s and won if you want.

I have a level 10 monk that facerolls dungeons by just spamming crane kick with a leech enchant lol. My level 20 warrior can only dream to do that.

You don’t know how stupid scaling is at the moment.

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You so conveniently forget the complaints and discussions about previous systems.

A. Classic. You grow like you desire but leveling takes ample time to ensure that you have enough time to experience most stories. Doesn’t work well for alts, 100 hours per expansion gets tiresome eventually.

B. Cataclysm. Shorter levels, but finishing zones got clumsy. Grants xp stops triggering, breaking classes. Touch down, say hello, move on from each zone before getting a grip on what’s going on. From BC onwards it’s Hellfire, Howling Fjord, Nordrassil, Jade Forest, Shadowmoon, Azsuna… Zero variation, unless you intentionally zone hop out of boredom. Crafting becomes an AH exclusive game (rebalancing would have been possible).

C. It’s dungeons, baby! Set up shop in your choice of inn, queue, win, vendor, repeat. At max level, fly straight to dungeon entrances. What World? It’s Mythics of Warcraft.

D. Scaling enables you to play any story through and get rewarded according to your level. As you gain experience, you can tackle more difficult challenges. Keeps you entertained on your toes. Zones remain relevant if you so desire. You can skip your most hated expansion but otherwise play and alternate as many as you wish.

I did some dungeons recently on my 57 mage, using Ice Lance to delete everything. It is absolutely horrendous, mindless, boring experience. I question the sanity of anyone in favor of that. People want it to farm rare drops and stuff, as no one is around, but it’s just bad design.

Even with the current system I feel like leveling up is a punishment in the sense that I have less content to enjoy. If you make it to 70, the only thing you can do is farm DF and participate in M+. Very limited. I’d rather stay level 50 and have access to the entire world.

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Lol, you want people to go through 9 expansions to level. You’re in a fantasy land and it’s not Azeroth.

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No, I don’t. Read it again.

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