I disagree, tbh. The main point of WoW is to enjoy it; as long as the OP is managing that, then they’re doing it right
Although anyone who suggests ‘preparing’ for Shadowlands by doing anything more than reaching 120 is definitely sending you on pointless tasks. There is no preparation needed if that is the goal. I just don’t think it’s the OP’s goal
Then yeah, definitely get into a community and guild. Don’t be discouraged if the first ones don’t fit. There’s a lot of players in the game, and a lot of different goals. Make sure to look for ones that are newbie friendly and social, rather than “key pushing” or similar. The more goal-driven they are, the less space they have for people who need guidance
In general, if there’s a priority list when aiming towards general PvE content, I’d suggest…
Stay on the War Campaign and Heart of Azeroth quest lines. Make sure that if there’s a WC or HoA quest, it’s on priority. Keep checking your ship to be sure there’s nobody with a new orange ! waiting for you.
Queue for random “normal” dungeons while you play. These will teleport you in and out, and put you right back where you were, but it’ll help pass time while queuing if you’re also running through quests. Hopefully you’ll hit 120 with a few dungeons under your belt and a little experience of group play.
You may well hit 120 before you finish the quests; that’s fine, but you do need to continue them to completion.
At 120, you’ll open up the world of Nazjatar, Mechagon, Essences and the Legendary Cloak quest. You will have a real hard time with the cloak as a fresh 120, so I suggest that when you get a summons from Magni and he’s talking about a black dragonscale, that’s the route to go. This will get you your first Essence.
Go to Nazjatar the moment it’s offered. This was the new zone in 8.2, but it will deliver you a respectable weapon relative to the gear you’ll have right now. You’ll also get a second Essence out of it. It’ll also bump your heart up to like level 50, so never farm AP until you’ve been here since it all gets wasted.
Follow the quests to upgrade your Essences. The Heart Forge should give you some clues as to where to get more, e.g. some come from completing a mythic dungeon within the timer, or by a certain PvP rank, etc. Some Essences are better for you than others; you’ll have to do your own research here. I recommend the Icy Veins class guides.
Keep on queuing for dungeons while you do the above. Really, this is where you’ll get most of your gear. At some point, normals won’t be an upgrade anymore, and you can start going for heroics instead.
Mechagon… is sort of optional. It’s good to do the intro, get the flight route; whether you want to bother with the rep grind and dailies is up to you. It’s a big lump of solo content that was meant for people who were already fully geared from the previous patch, and coming to it now, fresh, it might be unnecessary fluff.
Frankly by this point, I’m hoping you’ve gotten to know at least one community or guild, because once heroic dungeons are useless, it’s time for mythics, and that means manually forming teams. While you can enter the world of pick-up groups (pugs), I really recommend trying not to. Zen Horde and similar are very good at helping people get to grips with dungeons, so definitely ask them for help.
Somewhere around item-level (ilvl) 430-445, that’s about the time to bother with Wrathion’s legendary cloak quest. It really will be a bit ball-busting below that and I just don’t recommend wasting your time on it. Even the assaults are aimed at people wearing gear of this quality or above, and will be hard work if taken on too soon.
Oh, geeze, wall o’ text, sorry! Didn’t realise how big that got
Short version:
War Campaign
Dungeon gear, first normals, then heroic
Essences
Do some mythic 0s, maybe 2s and 3s, with friends/community/guild
At ilvl 430+, think about Wrathion’s cloak quest, assaults, and visions
First you need to chose your directive in WoW, as in what activity is it you want to do. It can be one, two or all of them depending on how much of your life you are willing to throw away.
Chose whichever suits you the best and that you get the most fun out of.
PvE: Getting gear
So you have dinged 120 and you want better gear. Let’s go over what I recommend as the first things to do to get better gear.
Do the opening in quest for Nazjatar, this will reward you with a ilvl 370 weapon and unlock the quest chain for your legendary cloak
Do the legendary quest chain to unlock visions
Do the daily quests in Pandaria and Uldum to gain echoes of nyalotha and currency to buy vision tokens
Do as many visions as you can as this will upgrade your cloak
Google a guide on how to get your BiS essences for your class/spec
Do every LFR available to you for gear upgrades, beg people for loot they don’t need
Do World Quests that reward you with gear upgrades across Nazjatar, Mechagon, Kul’tiras and Zandalar
Run heroic/timewalking dungeons until you reach ilvl 420
Run normal mythic dungeons, and mythic keys 2-6 until you are ilvl 440
Now you reach the endgame PvE and I recommend joining a guild
Do Nyalotha Heroic/Mythic and beg for loot other players don’t need.
Keep doing mythic + in remaining available time until you complete a +15 key every week
Open your weekly chest and repeat
PvP: Getting gear
Do everything listed in the PvE section above. It’s faster and easier than gearing through actual PvP, and PvE rewards you with your PvP BiS gear as well.
Collecting
Press shift+P and look up what you are missing, be that pets, achievements mounts or transmogs.
I want to throw in the observation here that if the 370 weapon from Nazjatar is a big upgrade (which it is to a fresh 120), then the assaults and visions are excruciatingly hard. IMO, the focus needs to be gearing via dungeons until at least ilvl 430, preferably 445.
Sorry should say i’m not frsh 120 completely. I have got some benthinc gear (i think thats what its called) and i’m like 405 or something like. This hunter isn’t my main, though it probably should be as i’m terrible at not standing in fire. I have plenty here to try and follow, and first things first I’ll start trying to find communities and guilds to check out.
I was trying to farm mana pearls last I remember to upgrade this gear but as per usual got overwhelmed and wen to kill trash DK’s in bdo instead.
My desperation to find the right direction comes from a desire to play WoW since around 2008. Literally never found a sociable guild from then until now, though to be fair I probably always jump on mid/end of an expansion and don’t hang around long.
There is your issue right there wow is a game that requires commitment and time to be good at and understand it.But to be honest I follow the lore but gameplay wise I am clueless as you are dude I have been playing on and off because BFA didn’t impress me it was too hard of an expansion for me
Yeah I figured that would be the case, it’s just hard to want to stick around when you can’t find what to do to get up to speed, or have poor experience with finding a guild. I’ll see what I can learn between now and the new expansion and try slip in early for that.
Ok, that’s useful. I’d check what gear level heroic dungeons will give you then, and be queuing for those pretty much all the time until they stop being upgrades.
Don’t worry about the mana pearls; Nazjatar gear is already outdated, it will max out below the level of mythic dungeon gear. Yes it is horribly confusing. It made sense to people moving from 8.1 to 8.2 to 8.3 as they played, but coming to it all as one bit lump is a bit… messy.
What you want from Nazjatar is your Lucid Dream essence, ideally all the way to rank 3.
Sounds like you’ve probably completed your War Campaign and gotten 6 followers; you may want to use your mission table to get you some extra AP or reputation. The latter will help you unlock flying faster.
If you’ve got Wrathion’s cloak quest, that’s good, but I do think you’ll have a hard time at 405. I’d put your focus on settling into a community and/or guild, and getting some dungeons done with them
Not a chance no1 talks anymore Unless you got a time machine, best chance is to join an active guild. I’d avoid raiding only guilds though out of past XP
Even when it seems like a big chunk of the WoW player base are toxic angry little toerags, I can promise there are still good people out there
Finding them can be hard though, they tend to clique up and wall themselves off. Hopefully Zen Horde and the communities recruitment forum in general can get you going in the right direction. I think aiming for ones that promote themselves as social and newbie friendly is the way to go; the ones that are set up for pushing harder content will probably not have a lot of patience. Which is fine, they never claimed to, but they won’t be useful to you
While the cloak questline is more difficult than your basic open world stuff, it is very important to do as soon as possible, because even the world quest gear you get can and will corrupt and without cloak lot of the loot you get is not usable. And it is super frustrating to get loot that would be upgrade but you cannot use because of the corruption.
Same here Pal no idea what the f*** they were talking about, mage tower was awesome : me Mage what , There was a mage tower ? Really ? That’s nice… !
Whatever the lead designer is in his one trip making system about system and gated content and secret or not so secret level, that’s great He is having fun atleast !
it might help to look at the map. it’s always going to be a bit disconcerting jumping back into a game from where you may have left off. look at any quests you currently have. if you have none, look at the zone maps and you’ll see quest markers on them.
for the most part, the questing will introduce you to relevant dungeons.
do them or don’t. up to you.
so long as you are finding the quests and following them, you will get led to the various things you can do.
even the endgame stuff now, the vale and uldum, these are introduced to you by questlines given by magni.
If you are thinking there is other stuff besides what the quests lead you to, there is PVP stuff, like battlegrounds and arena, but I have zero interest in any of that so I can’t tell you much about it. I am certain there are quests that tell you about those things though.
edit: I guess priorities matter. for me, I think the story is most important so I do stuff to move along my story, my characters and the ingame story.
If you don’t really care about story, then I guess item level is one thing to look at.
you could try for rankings https:// www wowprogress com/
If you play an expansion from the start it is less overwhelming. If you are new to the game and you are trying to get to grips with it all, I can understand how you might be feeling lost.
Unless you got a time machine, best chance is to join an active guild. I’d avoid raiding only guilds though out of past XP 
, There was a mage tower ? Really ? That’s nice… !
