I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for over 17 years and I know the game from the perspective of an end-game player and, more recently, a more casual side. While I do enjoy many discussions people have regarding end-game content I am deeply disappointed in the negligence of new players and their struggles with getting in the game. Over the past two years some of my close friends have shown interest in the game and I’ve been given the task of introducing them to the game and its core mechanics. There are many things which could potentially streamline new player experience but I want to focus on one element which I, and many others (I provide the links at the end), believe would help in providing new players with a tool that would immensely enhance their experience with learning the ropes of the game. I wish to rekindle the discussion of new-player experience which could potentially precipitate some action on Blizzard’s side.
At some point in one of the first episodes of The Bench Podcast Growl spoke of watching Day9TV’s videos of his first World of Warcraft experience and being amazed at how he interacted with the game and its world. To Growl it was a bizarre experience watching a newbie play through the game ‘wrong’ but it is the purest experience of WoW - the one many of us had before the internet completely took over or we discovered the endless grind of the endgame. Such videos clearly showcase how big of a jump there is between the first few levels spent on the tutorial island and the chaos one gets thrown into in expansion prior to the current one - the player is lost. There is a huge discrepancy between the endgame player and the new player but only one of them is being catered to while the other, the one who needs help, is left to their own devices in figuring out the immense world of this game. For example, the player turns from an adventurer into the hero (or champion) of Azeroth. How is a new player supposed to find a connection between the two stages? The videos, voluminous comments, in-game discussions and social media posts unanimously agree - the new-player experience is pitiful and rudimentary. It would be difficult to re-do some sort of new player campaign with each new expansion or provide an overly lengthy tutorial that would have to be iterated on with each new mechanic or system that is introduced with each season or expansion. Instead, why not offer a static solution at the base level of the game - a menu.
An in-game window, much like an achievements menu, which could present players and provide context for the world they are experiencing could be salutary for the new, returning and even veteran players. In a 2018 interview both Alex Afrasiabi and Patrick Dawson expressed interest in the idea and mentioned that it has been previously discussed, yet up to this point we have seen little effort to bring the lore to the player. Ideas such as the recent Lorewalking do little for the player as it is not intuitively accessible for the new player nor does it offer a link between the past and current event. Usually such solutions do not offer a chronologically cohesive structure that would explain the what, how and when of the game world. What is needed is a ready-made, coherent and comprehensive in-game menu that would present players with an encyclopedia of the World of Warcraft as well as its basic mechanics and game functions. No game should, nor should want to, force players to look for out-of-game sources regarding the in-game world.
What I gathered from various threads, websites and fan-made addons is that it needs to be comprehensive. It needs lore, as well as game mechanics - think of the glossary in CDPR’s games - The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Everything you need to know about the game or you learn as you progress through it is saved and presented in a compact form readily available at any stage of the game. Some things can be collected as you explore and progress through the current story (e.g. in WoW’s case it could be new expansion/season quests, dungeons and raids) while others are already present in the glossary as they are needed for you to understand the context of the present events. Naturally, 99% of the glossary would be the latter while only the things that you haven’t yet explored in the current content would form a part of the things to be discovered through playing the game. Players need to have a source for the characters who are taking centre stage and play a major part in the world’s drama as well as our character’s journeys.
This glossary should contain: places, events, major characters (including the player and their role in the story and current position in the world), important items (like the Ashbringer or the Dark Heart), systems (M+, raiding), tools (group finder, guild finder), as well as tutorials - like when you can interrupt an enemy (gold bar and not the silver bar under their name) - with visual cues in form of images or gifs. The player should not be given a summary of the events of all the side stories in a given expansion but should be given information on where to find them. They need an overview of things presented in a clear and comprehensive way and the links that connect character X with place Y. That’s why it’s best to imagine it in a form of wikipedia - a description where highlighted words point to other characters, places, items etc. that have their own ‘page’. It should encourage the player to go and explore the piece of world history that is described in the glossary by carefully explaining the main plot points and leaving the side stories of the people affected for the player to play through on their own. If a player wishes to explore everything themselves they can just ignore this WoW encyclopedia but it needs to exist as it is simply impossible to fully understand what is currently happening in the game after over 20 years of its existence.
A 30 minute tutorial island is too little to provide the player with all the information they need to succeed in the game world and I’m speaking from experience with having to teach over 5 people how the game functions in the past year. Only one plays until today and that is my girlfriend, despite her interest in the game and the world she still finds it difficult to know who is who and what is what. A person like that should not be forced to look for out-of-game solutions to problems created by the game itself. You need only to look at the forums themselves and the tab dedicated to helping out new players - if someone can not find an answer to a lore question or needs explanations as to some basic game mechanics they are directed to see youtube videos or use WoWhead.
Please, for all our friends, family, or those of others, if you believe that this to be a sound solution or at least a step in the right direction consider discussing this topic more on the forums and everywhere else. People already “in” the game rarely care about it as they are already past that point and those willing to discuss it are overshadowed by the discussion happening around endgame content. Tell me, what do you think about this idea or others similar to it. What do you think could help new players understand World of Warcraft? Would such a glossary be useful even to veteran players and not only new ones? Please, share your opinions.
Here are some posts from the past years discussing the topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1ew7mz0/a_little_mockup_i_made_of_an_ingame_lore/
(the forums only let me put two links but there are many more across the years, maybe I’ll post others in replies)