This was my experience with the story as a returning player as well. I still have campaign stories open that only unlocked by reaching specific renown levels, which I only gained after completing the current story arc.
On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t have to do all of the story content before being able to do current activities and keep up with friends who never took a break from the game. If I had to do everything in order of release before I could have started with the Emerald Dream activities, I’d have felt discouraged to continue playing.
The issue exists on a large scale also. If someone has never played WoW and starts now, there is no good way to experience the story of World of Warcraft in a chronological order. Especially not without one-shotting everything. You get to pick one expansion and then you’re level 60 and incentivized to start with Dragonflight. I imagine it’s difficult for genuinely new players to develop any attachment to the game’s world and lore.
Well, I’ve killed Fyrrak. I finished the Emerald Dream story that ends with everyone saying coming together as friends is what it’s really all about and kumbayablabla.
I haven’t gotten around to finishing the Azure Span, which I’m assuming takes place well before the Emerald Dream (not that the game would let me know that).
If you haven’t found the renowned grind, you don’t unlock the story. We can see your achievements and raid progression as well. What you did is the last patch of the expansion. Just follow your quest log and you can unlock it.
Someone sympthazing with the ops point of view til Captain Buzzkill showed up with their self righteous accusations that since the OP had criticisms he must be lying about being new or returning.
When did this become political? You are projecting your political prejudices on others. It’s funny how extremists think everyone else is likely to be one. Get help. The only one on a self-righteous moral high horse is you.
Yes, I’m sceptical of strangers, you would be a fool if you were not. Especially when they talk nonsense and then show how they have no idea what’s going on.
Well, Karen if you wanted to tell people you had no idea what you were doing you might have wanted to say that instead of writing about the inconsistencies of a story you haven’t done even though the quest log guides you through it in chronological order and tells you each step along the way by just accepting the expansions first quest.
That would be the ultimate plot twist of wow - your character after decades of carnage across the multiverse finds love of his/her life and settles with some lovely wench/lad somewhere.
Damn I can see the scenario of the date writing itself, maybe I should stop watching too much anime.
It’s always going to be hard to follow the storyline of any expansion if you come in late. It’s that balance of players being able to get the latest gear in what is the current content and trying to catch up with everything that has been happening since Dragonflight launched back in 2022.
They have tried to make it less confusing but there is only so much they can do unless they force everyone into a very linear path. That comes with it’s own drawbacks.
It’s worse if you’re completely new to the World of Warcraft. Nothing can replace having played through all the games while they were current. They’ve done their best adding Chromie time to allow for players to experience an expansion in it’s entirety when levelling alts. I don’t think there is any way to make it a complete playthrough.
They are 2 out of 9 on LFR they haven’t done anything and they are in renowned 5 and haven’t even finished the Azure Span. They don’t even know about the renown grind in order to unlock the story when the game gives you a step-by-step guide.
No story is watertight and they never will be. Even the most modern classics have plot holes and alternative methods that would have suited the reader better. Heck, one of the most famous is the LOTR Eagles question. The real question is are you having fun and was the story told enough or better told than the previous story and are the developers getting to a place where it could be really good? You will never have an FF14-style story because that also suffers from logical inconsistencies, poor writing, and bad pacing and it also assimilates side content.
People forget these are MMORPGs with a multitude of stories regarding multiple peoples and while one story takes president over the rest it’s not a single-player RPG and never will be.
The reason he’s in 2 places at once is because it’s shared open-world content where multiple people can join in it’s not a single-player RPG. If you want to keep a mass of players together it’s far easier to include everyone than sharding people constantly creating fomo where new players can’t do recent content because they aren’t powerful enough and older players have moved on.
I don’t need to prove they are lying its not a court, I find it really suspicious that they critiquing content they haven’t even done and no their word isn’t good enough.
Just have a pop up that allows you to skip the right order or not… easy… feel like this should be an easy fix to make players like op happy… and not not impact the players that just wanna skip to the newest content
The whole expansion lacks massive direction and regular veteran players are completely tone-deaf to the problem. The game is extremely confusing and convoluted for a new player to get into, the crafting system is a confusing mess, players are dumped into the world and thrown into time travel levelling which they will not understand, dungeon groups that expect them to play like the MDI even though they probably don’t even know the basics of the game, which may result in them getting kicked from group.
The game does a really poor job of directing players, new or old and returning, and a byproduct of that is the story comes across as a mess. I also think the story has way way too much dialogue/talking and not enough action. The whole vibe of the expansion is just people talking about their feelings and consoling each other.
Game needs a massive effort to encourage helping new players, it needs to simplify some of the systems and it needs to put better learning/direction tools in the game. The Emerald Dream raid is a perfect example, how many times you gotta do a run where someone zones in at Fyrakk, is teleported to Tindral first platform where the portal isn’t visible and it’s actually hidden like a 30s flight behind a tree in the raid and they can’t find their way there?
They need to do better, not just the story, the whole game is all over the place.
