You can achieve that with an addon called Zygor or quest line which will take you through chronological order. Also, most patch content will not be available at once if you are a new player as you will not have the prerequisite achievements.
I’m not sure why you’re taking exception to what I said.
I simply pointed out that it isn’t something players ‘can’ do in FF14, as the OP claimed.
blizzard has changed its philosophy and is no longer an RPG game.
also with the mentality of WoW players who are eating the addiction of looting and gearing that the game feeds them, it´s no longer about a hero journey but a mindless Diablo button smashing til you get what you want.
It’s still a RPG. A RPG don’t need a fancy story or huge campaign. Give me some nice background lore and dungeon like in Eye of the Beholder and I’m happy.
RPGs need to be more gameplay and less story again.
that isn´t a roleplaying game, that’s Tetris with good music
1 Like
Ff14 is unique when it comes to storylinie. I utterly love it.
Could I see the same gameplay work with wow? No,sadly not. The playerbase is different…
I hope wow eventually will get some coherency in their storylinies. Nothing ties the game together story-wise. One expansion, one semi plottet storylinie, then onwards with the bext
Is this correct?
Most story quests have a pre-req of doing the previous quest.
Old expansions tended to be made up of lots of little storylines. Most barely related to any other storyline or even the main expansion theme. In Hellfire Penninsula you did stuff barely related to what you did in Zangamarch which barely related to anything in Netherstorm.
But in these zones / storylines there was usually a breadcrumb quest and then the quests came in order of the storyline. You couldn’t just pick up the quest to kill the big bad straight away, you had to do the other quests first.
MOP is probably where there were chapters (not quite as structured as Campaigns we’ve had since Legion) but I’m sure you’d have to do chapter 1 before chapter 2 became available.
they could introduce option to upscale content with higher drop chances on epic rewards like mounts etc for timewalking but yeah
Those prerequisites never require complete previous patches linearly, or in case some patch has such a prerequisite, Blizzard usually removes it during the patch or next patch as some sort of catch-up mechanics. It’s great for playing alts but very bad for trying to play the story linearly later.
I have leveled to 70 recently, and as soon as I complete the leveling experience, I have available all level 70 quest chains from 10.0, 10.1, 10.5, and 10.7. Probably once 10.2 launches, the quest chain from that patch will be added, too. I know it because I have not yet done that content and already have more than one quest in my quest log that starts a major story quest chain. One of which was added to my log as soon as I reached 70, before even completing the leveling campaign. And I genuinely don’t know which one to start because the game doesn’t care to provide a way to help me play the chapters in a strict order.
The same happened in previous expansions like BFA, Legion, and Shadowlands. You were fresh level 60 in Shadowlands, and Zereth Mortis quest chains from the latch patch were available. With all quest chains available, I need to search. information in sites like Wowhead to check in which patch was each quest chain added to be able to complete it in order.
No, not, that is not correct. It is true that the oldest expansions were like that. But there are exactly two older expansions that were like that: TBC and WOTLK (I don’t count Classic because it is not available in Retail). But old expansions are not only TBC and WOTLK. Old expansions are everything up to Shadowlands.
It actually started with Cataclysm. At least Cataclysm content for levels 80 to 85 had a story that was initiated when the expansion launched until the last patch. But even if we only consider from MOP onwards, as you say, it means MOP, WOD, Legion, BFA, Shadowlands had this problem. There are already more than double of old expansions with the modern chapter storytelling than the Classic of small storytelling with breadcrumbs.
I get what you mean.
But this has always been like this and to do this blizzard would need to dedicate a whole patch if not a whole expansion just to rework on how scaling works and making it feel worth to do old raids.
If i were a lead dev i would make it so that if you do these raids and dungeons on thier level it would fill your vault slots and the loot table would just be the current raid.
That way you wouldnt exackly be “wasting” your time doing it if you are bored of the current raid.
I would even go as far as to make so during timewalking the loot table would go from that instead of the current raid as some TW raids do have really good trinkets and gear compared to what you can get from that seasons raid and m+.
They don’t need to dedicate a whole patch to reworking how scaling works because playing the story in order and scaling are actually two unrelated things. And the changes you believe are required for scaling to play old content are already available, anyway.
Because WoW’s focus is newest expasion story, endgame raids & M+.
They want to rush you there as soon as possible.
This is one of the main reasons as to why WoW is not getting new players.
Story/Lore used to be WoW’s one of the strongest points but new players, unless they go to youtube and watch like 25 hours of lore videos, have no proper way of learning the lore of WoW.
Realistically, Blizzard should do a “main quest line” for each race, that should lead to the latest expansion. Main quest line can also unlock certain sections in some sort of in-game book, which they can utilize to detail / fill in the gaps of the story.
I occasionally see people complain about micro transactions, gold being buyable via tokens and now trader’s tender coming to shop as well but they HAVE to do this. Game is not getting new players and expansion after expansion its just bleeding players. They have to substitute lost sub. revenue via other means.
I agree that the story telling in DF has been poorly organised. Stories are scattered geographically and often have Renown gates or dungeon gates meaning that you’re seeing bits and pieces of story out of sequence. This seems to be a particularly prominent issue with DF. There are several Campaigns, Dragonflight Campaign (mine is stuck at the Fourth Protocol of Tyr as I don’t do dungeons), the Valdrakken Campaing (also stuck by the same dungeon Halls of Infusion, Dragonscale Campaign (only finished that recently at the last bit was Renown 24).
I found a Nozdorumu quest in Eon’s Fringe recently that had an Alexstraza cinematic with Vyranoth. Not sure when it unlocked or how long it’s been there.
Whilst I can somewhat agree with MOP since when you get there the Vale of Eternal Blossoms is already ruined and the faction war in Krasserang is in full swing whereas when we played originally these happened as part of the expansion life cycle.
They would need some serious phasing to have a pristine Pandaria when you first start questing there and then have these phases evolve as you quest through the story. Possible but quite some work I imagine.
But with Legion onwards Campains (until the mess of DF) there is a main campaign. In the Quest log / Map it will tell you what chapter you’re on and where the next quest is or if you need more rep or similar to unlock.
Frankly it was a little bit too “on rails” sometimes. It was ok the first time through but with alts the next time, you’re doing the same quests in the same order.
Yeah, the missing pieces of quest chains THAT are not available in MOP (and WOD) are a big problem. But I was only talking about playing non-removed quest chains. Even ignoring the pieces missing and only playing what is available, it is such a mess that is very hard to play it in order.
Cataclysm (the max level part), WOD, Legion, Shadowlands, and BFA have the same problem. It is an endemic problem with this game.
That’s only true for the leveling experience and the max-level content if you play that part the moment it is released. If you miss a patch, you are screwed. Once the expansion advances, more and more quest chains are added with catch-up mechanics. The game doesn’t tell me which quest is the next one to continue the story in order for every DF Patch. The game right now tells me which quest to do to start the last quest chain released in 10.1.7 (The Emerald Dream) when I just finished the leveling content up to 70 and the first quest chain available at 70 guides me into the first expansion raid. But the “help” jumps from the leveling quest chain to the last patch.
And that little help to know when to start the next patch only works…until the next patch is released. And then, once the next expansion is released, DF will have the same problems as every other expansion. And the new expansion will have the same problem too. It seems that no one cares about the game story. Nor Blizzard nor the players.
And then the worst part is that I believe fixing this problem is pathetically easy. This means without any doubt that WOW’s lore is so messy because that is what Blizzard wants. They don’t care to solve it.
The game is already made with a way to know which quests belong to which chapter because we see this in the leveling content and the last patch available. Even if we didn’t have this, it would be so easy to get all the quests belonging to the quest chain by querying their database starting from the first quest in the chain.
They could put an UI with a list of expansions in order and a list of chapters for those expansions in order. Mostly, one chapter per zone for the leveling part and one chapter per max level patch, nothing more.
Then, let us select one chapter from that UI, and once we do that, enable a Story mode, which consists basically of hiding any quest that doesn’t belong to that chapter. So, no quest from other patches is available until we disable Story Mode, letting us focus on the chapter we want to play. Optionally, at the player’s discretion, world quests or daily quests can be disabled in Story Mode.
Bonus Point 1: Blizzard could even reuse the system available in Party Sync to let us in this system repeat already completed quests. Party Sync is a very simple system; it syncs your completed quest list with the completed quest list of another player, and you can use it to repeat any quest chain.
Some players have found ways to do this by creating a second trial account and syncing with a level 1 character to turn their characters temporally into a level 60 one without a single quest completed. The only drawback is that every time they sync, they must start from scratch.
The thing is that just that we can sync with real players, Blizzard could create template players with the appropriate quests already completed so we can sync with the objective of repeating one particular chapter.
Bonus Point 2: For scaling the content, they can, once again, reuse Party Sync. Party Sync is not just for you to repeat quest chains. It also scales everything. That is why they don’t need to do any work to scale the game for a Story Mode. It is already available. Party Sync scale all content to level 60 and downgrade level 60-70 players to level 70. So, if players could Party Sync alone to decrease their level, everything would be scaled. It should be optional, of course.
Extra Bonus Point that won’t ever happen: Include in the chapters UI major lore chapters removed like Prepatches, MOP, and WOD Legendary quest chains and other story quests removed. Without rewards, if it is needed. They shouldn’t ever remove a lore quest chain from the game. If they want to keep things exclusive, they could just remove mounts, legendaries, weapons, achievements and transmogs from the quest chains, but the story shouldn’t ever be removed.
Basically, Story Mode is a Solo version of Party Sync.
You can never play the game through the way it was originally intended cus the original zones were not scaled , they were subject to zonal levels and local mob strengths as were all the dungeons. Legion introduced scaling and destroyed the base concept of the game. Therefore the whole game became a mess and so they resorted to just BfA and Chromie as their ‘cop-out’ to get players to the newest expansion. They just couldn’t be bothered to maintain their old expansions and resorted to Classic as a way of cleaning up the mess.
You can try and make sense out of it as much as possible but without the other aspects of the gearing attributes associated with the old zone level status and dungeon and raid status you are always playing a botched game. Patches and even scenarios have been wiped clean in terms of the way they impacted on the game. You will never be able to play the whole story arc cus loads of it is missing and or destryed by scaling. Zones had individual level status that impacted on everything. They have all been removed.
For me I just don’t bother with Chromie and I don’t get hung up on scaling and just pick up the breadcrumbs of where each expansion starts and select the trivial quest and play thro the story. It’s not rocket science. Sadly you are always going to hit the road block of scaling, cus zonal level progression was dumped by Blizzard and changed the game forever… FOREVER. Thats why folk play classic to avoid the nonsense.
For those that recall playing say Ghostlands before scaling you will appreciate the way the zonal progression impacted on the sequence of levelling which gave meaning to the structure of the quests. The two worked hand in hand. What is the point of having an area that culminates in reaching the hardest part of the zone Deatholm when in truth cus of scaling there is no issue with you going there the minute you leave the Blood Elf starter area. The controlling aspect of level status was removed in favour of scaling. Rendering the whole purpose of the grading of mob strengths mute. They basically crippled the game at that point cus they never reworked any of the zones or quests to take this into account. More likely they just removed difficult to accommodate quest chains. And there are many.
Folk wanted scaling, cried out for scaling, love scaling so just put up with what that means to the game prior to Legion. Or play Classic and wait for it to catch up.
Two games … Scaled and Not Scaled. Take your pick. You can not play thro the original expansions cus they really don’t exist anymore outside of Classic.
I understand. I miss levelling progress too. But I also understand Blizzard’s position.
Because the sheer amount of content would be too much.
Doing most of the quests in Cataclysm used to level you to max then.
Doing most of the quests in Mists used to level you to max then.
Doing most of the quests in Draenor used to level you to max then.
… and so on.
Each expansion took 3-7 days to level in if you were taking it chill. Yes, you could blitz it and dungeon spam and so on to do it the first day if you had enough energy drinks, but most people took a few days.
Cata. Mists. Draenor. Broken Isles. Kul Tiras/Zandalar. Shadowlands. 3-7 days each adds up to 18-42 days to work through the expansions before you start Dragonflight.
Blizzard’s aim is to get people all together in the latest expansion AND KEEP THEM THERE. I don’t think they’re quite right in this, but they have a helliva lot more data than I do, so whaddo I know?
Having people work through all the previous content - even excluding the end-game content - at the original pace is something they feel would lose them players along the way.
So their answer is to have players work through ONE of the expansions, or hopscotch through the expansions, doing a zone or or two in each.
It’s that simple.
you cant even level through 1 addon. maybe 1-2 zones and you hit lv 60.
Let’s be honest. Very few play WoW for the story cause it’s so bad. I don’t think your friends would care anyways at the end of it all.
Easier to watch a cinematics compilation on youtube. Nothing good will come from getting too invested in the story of WoW. Just unsatisfaction.