I would like to present a few points about my “Returning Newcomer” experience.
My history with the game is irrelevant, and I want to keep this as brief as possible. I have previously created some threads about experiences and suggestions. This is how I see the game in its current state — except for recent two expansion content.
Here’s my Warband (I wanted to link my Warband picture here, but I’m not allowed. Thanks.). I love this feature. It creates an immersion and provides account-level features that are, in my opinion, very long overdue.
I have created an Orc Shaman, a Kaldorei Demon Hunter, a Dreanei Paladin and a Sin’dorei Death Knight. Each of these characters are meant to level up in different expansions. Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands respectively. I didn’t find Dragonflight to be an interesting expansion, but I played it until I got Skyriding feature, which is a fantastic change in mounts. I haven’t played my old “main” and my many “alts” — as my intention was purely to try out what has happened since I’ve last played this game, which was 7 years ago, apparently. I originally left in Warlords of Draenor, but I returned briefly during the Legion and played through the Draenor with my Human Death Knight, but I absolutely don’t recall doing this. Then again, that was a different time for me as a person, so that might be why I don’t remember it.
One important problem with levelling up new characters is timelines. Timelines are great, Guild Wars 2 had this implemented a long time ago in a different way that somewhat eliminates the content becoming obsolete. So Warcraft needed this feature badly. I have created a thread just to detail the problem with it. In summary, timeline selection is poorly explained, hidden in a capital city and less accessible in terms of knowledge. Features of timelines are also a problem on their own. The current timeline is also problematic as it promptly asks the player to “come to this place” like the player knows these people already. So the player experience is more about current players and not so much about newcomers.
Regardless, I started with my Orc Shaman. I love playing Shaman and I felt right at home. Draenor was an exhaustive experience which I haven’t fully finished. Lost my interest after finishing up some portion of the story and levelled up to 70. My main concern was getting all open world cutscenes, and I did just that. Garrisons are abandoned, and time-gates seem like a complete waste of time at this point. So Draenor timeline is a theme park within a theme park. But I did like the levelling process. It wasn’t anything that radically different than Mists of Pandaria which I’ve played from the launch to 6.0 patch.
My second playthrough was with my Kaldorei Demon Hunter. A side note here is that treatment of Hero Classes is a chore. Hero Class starter maps should really offer a skip option to those who already have played these maps and have a character of these classes. Anywho, Legion was a great experience, but due to quest prerequisites don’t really work well with timeline — to say, a person who is actively playing the Legion as an expansion, I’ve had so many quests about many other different things in the world, specifically in Dalaran. So I pretty much avoided Dalaran for the most part, because it was confusing to navigate whether a particular quest is many events ahead of what I’m playing or not. Otherwise, Legion was a solid Wrath of the Lich King experience that I knew, and it was a Wrath of the Lich King experience. I especially loved Suramar. But time-gates/grinds were still a thing in Nightborne storyline, which I very much disliked. This might have made sense during Legion, but it doesn’t really welcome a person who wants to play a well-streamlined story. Not to mention, at some point, I was basically kicked out of Legion timeline and had every NPC becoming a one-shot practice dummy.
Battle for Azeroth was by far my favourite thing in this experiment. I loved leveling through Kul Tiras and it was a breeze. But. Again, I was bombarded with some endgame quests for Battle of Azeroth and at one point I was in pursuit of Jaina and being able to speak to her at the same time — which is not a great experience. It breaks so many levels of immersion, and I’m sad that after going through three maps of content that I deeply enjoyed, I had to carefully choose between quests that wouldn’t contradict each other in the bigger picture. I was annoyed by some NPCs trying to give me quests at this point and in my failure, I picked up those quests, which led me to abandon the expansion altogether. I just don’t feel like pursuing it further.
My last stop was Shadowlands. Playing a Death Knight, I was again given the chore of New Avalon. I gave the Mograine’s letter to Saurfang, for which I had many questions about. Also, people were still throwing tomatoes at me. Which timeline is this? Anyways, I went to Chromie like someone with a Wiki in their head, and picked Shadowlands. Lost my interest halfway through. So I just did the “main quests.” The biggest problem with Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands in terms of questing is that required interactions between NPCs and event triggers are meant to be picked up according to ground mounting or non-mount exploration. Flying mounts break these scripted events. So, while I understand you want to give people the ability to fly in these maps, I would expect these event triggers to be more proactive and activate upon the player’s entrance to the trigger zone, not both NPC(s) and the player. That’s not a great experience, because you allow one thing and expect the other. I haven’t finished Shadowlands, and I don’t know if I want to, but I might go back at some point in the future.
One thing I realised was that in-game cutscenes had quirks here and there. Animation jump cuts, NPCs not moving their mouths, their lines cut short; at one point, I had Genn Greymane t-pose sliding towards Katherine Proudmoore like they were in a horror movie about video game glitches. I laughed and skipped the cutscene.
I have no point of reference, other than YouTube videos, so I have no idea how was the game back then. But for me, those were minor inconveniences that just bugged me.
In conclusion, I very much believe newcomer experience isn’t a strong point for WoW. I understand they somewhat tried to salvage that with Exile’s Reach, and I see that as a positive for newcomers, but player cannot explore about one of the most important features this game has to offer: expansions. Core content is fine, I’ve finished each of these maps many, many times, and perhaps certain players should go through the core game with quests that point them towards the general direction of a new adventure. However, the game doesn’t provide an alternative. Adventure Guide isn’t useful in the slightest, and the general notion was “use Dungeon Finder” for the most part of my previous playtime a decade ago. I don’t know if this is still the case for people who are newcomers that were recruited by their friends, but they certainly aren’t pointed towards content that is hidden away in an obscure NPC in a capital city. By that point, they can ask “Who’s Chromie,” “What led us to this plot point,” and most importantly, “Who are these people?”
Again, this assessment heavily relies on the idea that a newcomer is expecting 20 years of content in a video game and not looking for a “lifestyle game” that provides daily and weekly fixes. That was my mindset, I’m a 30-something person working a full-time job and doing master’s (thinking about quitting, though).
The bottom line is, I wanted adventure and I’ve had adventure. But pretty much all of these adventures were without a proper ending. I quit the moment I felt overwhelmed with the feature-creep approach to the video game. I understand this might be a “me problem,” but the moment I feel like I’m doing chores to get a piece of a storyline, or I’m bombarded with illusion of choice that would lead me to different but non-chronological progress, I just quit that.
Seems like the only way to see through a story here is to play the latest and greatest, when the things are happening in the correct order, and you have very little chance of being directed towards an irrelevant plot point.
Additionally, I’m conflicted about going through Dragonflight and buying The War Within. Perhaps the progress I should be looking for is to do daily activities and wait for the next content update. But do I really want that? I’m not so sure.
Some relevant topics: