Is Retail World of Warcraft Too HARD for New Players?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- As we continue to head towards a new era for World of Warcraft, with The War Within's release starting off The World Soul Saga, there are still some issues facing new players who want to try World of Warcraft. It's fair to say that Classic World of Warcraft has kept its charm over the years, however, the introduction new players get to Retail World of Warcraft isn't quite as straightforward. Issues such as previous expansions and too many confusing choices for new players to make are a regular challenge. So, just how can we tackle such problems for new players in Retail World of Warcraft? Let's find out.
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How do you think the new player experience could be improved? 🤔
logging into retail gives me anxiety its so overwhelming. Id rather play classic
Can't blame you!
@@SmoothjazGamingTVits sad cuz i love how polished it looks compared to classic
I’ve been playing wow for years I only play classic. Every time I log onto retail and try to level up I get so confused as to where I even am. Like I feel like I get teleported to a new place every 5 seconds and I have no idea where I am.
Good quality, didn't knew it was a small channel. Very nice
Appreciate the kind words! 👌🏻
Retail is only challenging when your doing high end mythic keys and raids, either then that you can slap your head on the keyboard and get stupidly powerful without any effort
Retail is challenging regardless for the average "gamer" even if you're not doing high end tasks. That is just the nature of MMO's and especially ones with as many abilities as WoW has
@@vPzWalkerxit’s not, though. For pvp and mythic, sure, but otherwise people can play at 20% of their character’s skill cap and breeze through everything. At least in classic only a hunter can get away with that
@@Purriah You say that when Classic has multiple 1 button classes
@@Purriah ????? warriors not being able to 1v1 a rare isn't hard. hoping the rare doesn't parry ur autoattack isn't hard
The insane amount of different currencies seriously needs to be addressed, I'm an original player an I have no idea how or where to get many of these or wtf to do with it once I have it, can't imagine how a new player sees this.
Hard agree - took me a long time to understand what on earth was going on too, finally got to grips with it thankfully
One big difference between classic and retail is that it's super easy to create alts and level them in retail.
But leveling in retail is too fast to learn to play the class properly. And by the time you get to the end game lets say M+.
You're overwhelmed because you're supposed to go fast in M+ (well in retail you get kicked even from normal dungeons if you don't blast trough it).
In retail there is also way more pressure to perform. When in classic it's more acceptable to be more chill.
Agreed - especially in retail dungeons if new players encounter full heirloom speed-running level 10 monks 🤦
@@SmoothjazGamingTV oh yes, then the run becomes a walking simulator.
Specially if you play a class that has to hard cast. The experience is not fun.
Just the fact that you level way to fast and that 99% of the content is way to easy so you start blazed thought everything some not even grabbing new spells because I got 2-3 spells and they deal whit 99% of my problem.
hit max level (or close) only casting 3 spells. well well well who fully under prepared as I now was told to learn 30+ spells at ones that I did not know I had.
in classic the levelling was slow and even a random mob (if you was not the 1-2 classes that could easily deal whit it and min maxing) and even then as by the time you could deal whit multiple mobs you had properly get slammed by said mob groups so hard and so many times that your still recovery from the repair bill.
so even if you could deal whit multiple mobs at ones you was conditioned not to.
and even then... one bad pull and it was over.
Great Content, you deserve more of those numbers
Exiles Reach was a mistake. Remember your first time playing and looking at all the races and classes and finally deciding, or maybe one really stood it out it was obvious? Imagine not spawning in for the first time in a zone that fits the vibe of your starting race. Class quests also added a ton of flavor, not to mention classes really felt immersive and different back in the day. Even with orcs and trolls, or gnomes and dwarves sharing a starting area there was plenty of flavor there.
"classes really felt immersive and different back in the day." care to explain? since until mop all classes were dogshit to play and had no depth whatsoever.
the main issue with the game is the entry cost. 40 for the expac and 13 a month for a sub is too much for new players looking for a game
I think it is actually worse than 3: Modern(Retail), Classic Era, WOTLK Classic, SoD, Hardcore (Normal and SF) 🙂 That is 5 choices....that is crazy for new players.
Well, depending on how you look at it you could say it’s 2 choices initially, retail or classic,
and from there if you chose classic, it’s 3 choices, wotlk, era, and SoD,
and if you picked era, it’s 2 choices again,
regular or hardcore, and if you picked hardcore you can decide to choose self found or not, or both as it’s on the same servers and is per character.
Very few new players are going to play SoD, and the only ones picking hardcore already decided that because they saw streamers either playing or reacting to death clips.
So for most people it’s just retail or classic, and some of those will consider wrath.
New accounts do not have the choice of which zone to start in - they all start in Exile's Reach. It's only once you have a high level character that you're given the choice.
as a new player i can confirm that retail is not hard at all, if anything classic is hell compared to retail. (started in dragonflight)
Classic is a safe haven for me whilst Retail makes me feel like Grandpa Simpson from that clip in The Simpsons where he talks about times changing where “what was it, is no longer it, and it’ll happen to you” 😂
I think they mean the actual end game content and not the leveling, classic dungeons etc are a cakewalk compared to retail. Leveling in retail is much easier. I did classic molten core back in the day and its nothing compared to retail. Its basically just a grind. That doesnt take away from the experence but still, its a much easier fight.
@@CaiRobinsonI recently leveled a character in WotLK classic, I wouldn’t say that the vanilla leveling was harder, more like tedious compared to the more “modern” experience that you even get from WotLK compared to Vanilla and TBC. Quests with what feels like a 5-10% drop rate in 10-60 content, with too much downtime between killing mobs, really made me wonder why I wasn’t just boosting to max level. Putting up a couple of dots and then wanding the mob to death is just really boring.
Retail isn't a "difficult" game, but it does an abysmall job at teaching players anything whatsoever.
Also; the insistence on trying to keep the world first/e-sport stuff relevant,and to generaly please the hardcore crowd, as well as the competition with stuff like DBM results in a host of questionable design decisions. Even if these decisions don't always add genuine difficulty, they often make a lot of things far more tedious & annoying than they really need to be.
Combine that with the awefull group dynamics you frequently see in PuGs and it becomes obvious why new players struggle to stick around.
It's not so much that retail is hard for me but how different it has become compared to the game I loved playing back in 06'.
Same game in name but that's literally it. I can't sit here and point out what it is I love about classic or what I hate about retail, luckily for me classic servers exists
Edit: actually I can point out one thing, and it was the beginning and reason I stopped playing retail...the cataclysm world revamp. Hated it
wow! a 20 year old game changed over the years?
I'll never tire of saying this: NEW player experience should start with a brief introductory phase (Exile Reach, to be constantly updated) and then straight into the latest expansion.
Older content should be only used for alt leveling with an enhanced time-walking experience.
Bad take. Exile’s reach was a mistake. After finally picking your first character, and especially if a race / class stood out, it was so cool to log into a starter zone for that specific race. Theres no immersion or flavor in everyone going through exiles reach and into bfa or df. At least if it was legion they would still have some class fantasy
@@Purriah Exile Reach isn't the point. It's a matter of being pragmatic: totally new players just need a brief introduction to the game's basic systems. From that moment on, the journey can really start.
Having dozens of starting zones to be constantly updated as the game progresses is simply impractical but they can still be used for alts.
It's literally enough to read if I want to know something :D
Retail is hard in that theres too much going on / too much info thrown at u at a faster pace. Makes it worse that almost everyone has addons that are deemed necessary so if ur like me and hates using addons to play for u (telling u when to press a button bleghh) than it will be hard to keep up. Also with having macros for pvp just makes keybinds a nightmare!
Classic is technically the same but because the progression and combat is actually at a much slower pace, u have more time to read and think and it is simple enough
I see it almost oppositely. You don’t need addons in retail unless you do mythic raiding, because all of the important information is easy to see and understand. In classic the unit frames are 100 miles away in the top corner of your screen because the game was made for tiny crt monitors. You need addons to see decent enemy cast bars and debuffs, etc. and some of the quests are so obscure that you really need questie. There’s also so many items in the game used for crafting etc that you need an addon to show what it’s used for etc. basically I’m Saying classic just doesn’t give you enough information without addons
All you need is plater so you can see all the important casts
I believe new players dont get to choose the starter zone, they just go to exiles reach (first char only), also in the war within new players will be forced to play the DF campaign instead of the current BFA campaign
Personally I still don’t like the idea of DF being the levelling zone. I liked DF levelling and although the endgame story in DF post-Dawn of Inf. does lead into The World Soul Saga, the actual levelling on The Dragon Isles doesn’t really fit in with their plans for the next 5-8 years. Needs reworking.
diffficulty isn't what we're talking about - when you open the game you have a certain sense of patience or suspension of fun in order to learn to "play/interface" with the game.
which means finding leveling fun/educational, jumping over into group content and while interfacing with others, learning what things are important for that game mode.
without any incentives - getting to endgame AND becoming on par with the community costs so much patience and handling the drawbacks of the community not "tolerating" players who don't know things. it's just not worth the effort. not to mention because of the amount of content you COULD do while leveling, you never have a sense of "I'm on track / I am playing the game as designed".
And none of that would matter nearly as much if the leveling experience was enjoyable. Theres no challenge, so there’s no fun. Nothing to overcome, no sense of achievement. It’s also very shallow. They removed so much class flavor by giving everyone everything. They removed race flavor by making new players start in exiles reach, and by also letting taurens be rogues, dwarves be mages, etc.
@@Purriah you're right but I think the most glaring problem is the structure of wow as a live game.
Any other game has a starting point and an endgame. Wow has had 8 starting points, 5 of which has been subpar and forced upon new players as THE experience. There's been so much fomo over the years that 50% of content you can't even access any longer... they used to have an rpg system with choice but the community streamlined and "bullied" a meta and the devs had to work around that phenomenon for a decade... imo its unsalvagable, they should make a new game.
That's why classic has been so successful, it's simulating the beginnings, a new warcraft, none of the extra weight of 8 expansions...
its boring to chip through mobs with 10 billion hp and 10 abilities at minimum
I played a few years ago until lvl 10 or so
Excess of options in character creation wasn't an issue, the opposite was. Why can't I be a tank gnome? Or a Warlock tauren? Or whatever they're called
Let me be a stealthy orc if I want to. Give me a pop-up that says "you'll have to travel to find masters of your craft" to warn me that I won't have 40 quests waiting for me in Ogrimar and I have to go to the bone zone to learn to be extra sneaky. Just let me be what I want
A tank gnome (warrior) and a stealthy orc (rogue) has always been in the game lol.
As far as Tauren warlocks… well the playable Tauren are from Mulgore. They’re peaceful and live in harmony with nature. One of the things that makes retail feel less immersive and shallow compared to classic is that there is too much choice and flexibility. Letting people do anything they want takes away from the world itself and is a big part of what ruined the game.
You should have played more. You sound bit stupid.
I'm no genius, but I assume it has to do with the need of add-ons
It's the reason why I don't touch the game
It’s not that it’s too hard. We just don’t see the point in a sunk cost. As well as gatekeeping so hard that you have an easier time getting into fort knocks instead of getting into heroic or mythic content. We also see that for example the raid for example is balanced around world first and 10% of the population of player. Those 10% just shit on the other 90%. I say to offset this by nerfing bosses based on difficulty tier by 5% over and over again until 40-50% of the population of that tier can complete it. Example if 1000 people play mythic raid 500 should be able to complete it with relative ease while the other 500 will struggle and claw there way through it. Newer players have seen the issues of the past for those like myself that have taken the time to look it up. I don’t know about all you older people but I don’t want a raid to take 6hrs from assembly to completion or just disbanding after 3 attempts and 3hrs wasted. We just want to get the shit done without memorizing a ton of useless info that will be irrelevant when the next raid drops.
"I say to offset this by nerfing bosses based on difficulty tier by 5% over and over again until 40-50% of the population of that tier can complete it. Example if 1000 people play mythic raid 500 should be able to complete it with relative ease while the other 500 will struggle and claw there way through it. "
that's literally how it works though? most of the time blizz lets ~1500 guilds get CE. HoF wasn't even filled and they gutted tswift. and soon they will gut fyrakk even harder for the 1000-1500 guilds that are wiping in p1 atm
Retail isn't too hard, but its a headache and a half to get into, just to play the game you need a million addons, the Lore is awful, the leveling experience makes you feel like you jumped onto a moving path and zipped to the end. I fully agree with Asmon that if you're a new player its better to play Classic, and I hate that, because while I love classic, I played its , I would like the new game to be good, but its shite
I really enjoy retail classes, and the retail style of pvp, even the retail style of dungeons and raids (to an extent). But yeah, everything else in retail is just problems, and the lore has been butchered, which is a shame, because WoW lore is/was fantastic up to a certain point (I would say it started going downhill in MoP, originally I thought Cata lore was meh, but as I read more of it, it's pretty good too). I think the lore is hugely important for why WoW was good, and with out it, the game has no soul.
I think classic leveling instead of BFA should be base.
I wouldn’t be opposed to that! Although I think they should rework Retail leveling to fit The World Soul Saga, Classic leveling still would give a better taste of what WoW is.
Retail has to many spells now … iv played since tbc….. please simplify …. Also bring back the old sound effects… I miss hearing all the spells not just my own
Its not the content its the community. The community is super toxic. Do you know how easy Heroic raiding is? But somehow every single person who starts a raid wants AOTC linked... like what kind of loser does that? When I start Heroic raids, I always make sure to bring in new people to make sure Im doing the right thing and actually helping people progress and have fun.
Just vorbid all kind of addons. problem a bit more solved.
Retail isn't hard... it's just confusing because so much to do (and most of the things u can just skip), too many FOMO events to keep up with, numerous specs to remember and learn differing what content are you playing (and like every big patch you're forced to change the spec you learned to play), no catch up mechanism for profession talents, campaign quests are mess'd up and clutched so that you really cant know which one to do first, list goes on and on. Classic in other hand, simple talents to learn and not so hard to master, no over complex rotations, almost 0 FOMO events, and not too many dungeon or raid difficulties to keep up with (depending which version of classic you are playing), leveling is part of the journey (least in Vanilla -classic), better community.
Imo, no; Retail is not hard per se, rather its overwhelming that keeps most of new players away.
This game was made for old players, they rely on old players to bring and keep new players. They don’t care so much about newbies but to keep the 15 dollar a month players paying. Those players cry if game isn’t annoying complicated and would cry if they created an easy class for new players.
Retail wow is fine but seems very disjointed. It's not one solid game, it seems more like 10 games loosely joined by world. There are a ton of zones and stories that new players won't even know about. They need to decide what's important. Blizz seems to only care about the latest expansion. That's not only shown by how quickly they try to get new players there but also by making all the old zones/mechanics/systems completely irrelevant. And that's fine. If that's what they want. But they make new players engage with the old irrelevant content while making their way to the latest expansion.
What they should do, is either force new players through the whole story like FF14 does, or let the new players start fresh in the new expansion. Like all of the previous expansions happened in the past that their toon wasn't there for. So the get placed in that area. If they are going to treat the latest expansion as the main game, treat it like the main game. They would either have to re-do level scaling or cater new zones to ALL levels of players and not just max level content. It's just sad that all the old zones get neglected and forgotten about
I've been raiding at mythic level back in Legion, managed to kill Kil'Jaeden on Mythic to which I think was the hardest fight I've ever done. And comparing that to Classic, I'd rather play Mythic Legion raids to Gnomeregan or BWL on Classic. The skill gap beetwen players is too high, the amount of people required is too big and lets say if someone mistakes a mechanic on Classic everyone is dead and thats minus world buffs, 5g repair gold, a 5min walk back, and a 5 min rebuff with an insane of gold spend on consumables. It's not hard perse but it's annoying, time wasting and frustrating.
Kudos to getting the KJ Mythic kill, I only watched videos of it and decided Mythic wasn’t for me 😂
lol, its not to hard. People don't want to START playing an MMORPG thats 239847239847239847 year old
Good maths
Classic was way harder difficulty wise just less complex
Exactly, the complexity is far too hard and the story is completely unavailable
Some good points here, but also some I disagree with, mainly I don't consider the starting aspect to be overwhelming, compared to most MMO's and any RPG tbh the choices you make in the start is very simple; race and class. I also believe that if it's your first ever character you're forced into Exile's Reach and only ever get to pick between the two after that. One of the reasons I believe they wish to push you into Battle for Azeroth (I believe once again that if it is your first ever character you have to do BFA) is because as a starting leveling zone it's not only mostly straightforward, it's also pretty removed from past stories since you're exploring new lands AND new characters. Also BFA most def has some of the best zones, characters and just art in general. Like yes we all have bfa trauma, but those starting zones are breathtakingly beautiful with some really fun storylines that are quite simple to follow along with. Take the Zuldazar story:
- You help break out some guys from the other faction, here you get much more out of it if you do know Jaina and the rest but it still works. After all Talanji and Zul are new characters
- You meet up with this new nation and get thoroughly introduced to their philosophy and city
- You meet the king, advisor who will turn evil, meet their loas
- And then shenanigans ensue dealing with all the aspects you've been introduced to.
Where it all fails is that you don't actually get to complete the storyline and is basically forced out of there once you reach level 61 and forced into Dragonflight which leaves you with no clue what is going. And a minor complaint is also that you don't get to experience any of the pre-expansion fight for the world tree + lordaeron which are kinda crucial. Once the first time players are done with Exile's Reach they should have been rewarded with some sort of cinematic showcasing what happened, they already got the amazing videos and work done for it after all, use your resources WoW.
I also consider Exile's Reach on a technical level too be FAR superior than any of the race starting zones in showcasing modern wow and the general gameplay you will experience from BFA and newer expansions. Though in terms of flavor and getting to know valuable lore, and key characters the starting zones are fantastic
That being said WoW is for sure going to switch to Dragonflight being your new levelling zone when War Within comes out. And also the issue still stands with that new players don't get to experience anything of the world before this, including the classic storyline, being stuck with the Cataclysm one. I started playing first in Legion, and being a lore and story nerd wanted to experience every zone and create lots of characters with the different races, which led to me making like 50 alts so I got to go through every zone (well most of them). WoW should have implemented a way to experience the main story of every zone both pre and post Cata, but alas they did not.
For gameplay stuff I don't have that much thoughts, mainly just that I think that there are TOO MANY BUTTONS, and UI from said buttons that destroy my immersion personally.
And also lategame is a mess for new players if they don't have friends to help them find guilds, etc etc.
Dragonflight suffers from a bad tone (kind like MoP, even) and TERRIBLE lore that is not only comprised of a mountain of retcons, but creates a world that seems bland, tame, and generic. It would be a really bad start for anyone who cares about lore or immersion. That's kinda the problem with Exile's Reach, too bland, bad lore, nonsense that doesn't matter. I would agree that BfA has some good zones, but the way leveling is now, you wont' have time to explore them, and it will be jarring when you leave (and, as mentioned by many, it keeps calling you the Hero/Champion, and gushes about all the cool things you've done, which is bizarre as a new player).
I don't have any problems with the updated UI, it removes the need for a lot of addons, and it's pretty clean while also having some style/flair. "Too Many" buttons is a "problem" with WoW since the beginning, you don't get any fewer with vanilla classes, just some of the buttons do a bit less. I think it's better to have more buttons than less, most rotations don't require you to use more than 4 or 5, which is simple, and the abilities broaden your class and its fantasy. That's why I can't play dk anymore, its probably the most boring class now after the reword in Legion? or was it BfA?