This is Why WoW Can't Get New Players

I tried to relive the new player experience to see how bad it is.

[hatthebear]

Well seems as though I made some mistakes here.

I hereby rescind my criticisms of exiles reach on account of me being dumb.
Also I did not realize new players don't get a choice in leveling zones so that's even worse than I thought.
Overall I still stand by what I said about scaling, By the time you reach 50 you will be massively undergeared if you don't have heirlooms.

[TrueXyrael]

The worst part about the "Chosen One" storytelling is if you haven't been playing the game constantly since around Cataclysm, or you're a completely new player, you're being credited with all these huge accomplishments you didn't do. I've never claimed to be a 101st Airborne veteran but every time someone calls me the champion I feel like I've stolen somebodies valor. Here I am, a Zandalari Troll who hasn't been in the Horde for more than 3 expansions, and you're telling me I did things I literally couldn't have done because my race wasn't in the Horde then. Alexstrasza literally said she and I went way back like homies and I've never done a quest for her.

[SolaisY]

You touched on some good bits, but oh boy, you are not aware how bad it REALLY is for a completely new player! I recently tried to get my gf into the game, she liked some MMOs before, like FF14 and all that, and was interested in an MMO with more dynamic gameplay, but, just to point out, she never played any Warcraft games before. So, she did look up some stuff, and she really wanted to make a Void Elf character, as she really resonated with how they look. Turns out... as a new player, the choice isn't even there, not even grayed out!

Then she starts the game, and the new player doesn't get the choice, you are automatically put on Exile's Reach. That went mostly well, the new quests and tutorials do tell you how to open the spell book and drag the spell on the hotbar, the only problems were some weird graphical glitches that never happened to me before. However what she had problems with how small the UI was by default, and even with the new more customizable UI, still can't resize the minimap, which was very small for her and pretty useless, and in general everything was really hard to see for her. The outlines around NPCs are hard to see as well, so she set it back to the old sparkles which are more easier to see. For the rest, I had explain what are addons, how they are not banned like in FF14, and how everything Blizzard didn't fix is actually fixed by them.

So after wasting a lot of time for her to assemble an actual player friendly UI, she completed Exile's Reach... and turns out, what you say is not true. "You are guided towards BFA, so new players will likely choose that." NOPE! New players cannot choose! They are automatically put inside BFA! And suddenly my gf was utterly confused! "Who's this Jaina? Why am I an ambassador, summoned by the king personally? I thought I was just a recruit? Or am I an adventurer? Why are all the soldiers in the castle duplicated, standing inside each other?" (Apparently there's a phasing bug in the Stormwind Castle for new players who are starting BFA.) She was so confused about the cutscenes about some characters she never met before having emotional moments while her character was nowhere to be found in them! In Kul Tiras she almost quit the game, because she just felt the game is hollow, not explaining anything, why she is even there, what she is doing. There were too many quests pointing towards everywhere in the zone with no indication what would be the main story that, by all accounts of the game, she should be following and making sense what it was. She then quit the game out of confusion.

In the end, she decided to play it again with my help, with a weird-ass thing we pulled: Quickly leveled her up to maximum, then skipped through Legion to unlock Void Elf for her (because apparently you still need to go through almost the entire expansion to do that). Then, we made new level 10 characters, and started... in Cataclysm/Old World, from the Human starting area. And she loved that so much more! Why? "Because I actually start as some noname adventurer, killing wolves." The world is explained to her piece by piece, sure there's not a big bombastic story where she's the main character, but that doesn't matter, because she feels a lot more immersed in the world now that she can just explore it for her own leisure, following the trail of simple quests with simple goals, learning the little bits about the world and the people that live in it, making it a lot more personal experience. She is annoyed that she is leveling too fast, especially because I know that once she hits 60, the game forcefully ejects her from Chromie Time, making everything weak and too easy, so we decided to lock our characters at 59, and go through all expansions in order, so she can get to that part where she finally feels like the Big Goddamn Hero BFA expects her to be.

But all this was just because I was there to guide her. The way the game works right now, it was made for existing players to quickly level new alts, not to actually make new players play the game and get into the game. The so-called "better" new leveling experience to make the game faster to get to the new content actively turns away new players from the game; at least those who go into the game with the expectation that they will be playing an MMORPG, with a world they can enjoy and immerse inside.

[UmbralDweller]

New player experience:

- You're on a boat, look out ogres!
- Skip to 7th expansion.
- Now you're a well respected diplomat for Ally/Horde.
- Pushed out of expansion before you finish the narrative.
- Now you're like a messiah to godlike entities.

[control]

I tried WOW about five years ago, my friend was quite heavily invested in it and I thought it would be fun to imerse myself into the lore and hang out with my buddy. My main memories are of being ignored by other players who were just rushing here there and everywhere to level up, hub areas being largely deserted and then being shouted at in chat for not knowing the most efficient way to run a dungeon that I had never played before. I did stick it out for a few months but the general lack of direction put me off and I never went back.

[chuggajr]

I unironically think the Death Knight or Demon Hunter is the best start, since you have to do the DK/DH starting zone. These zones were designed to make you learn the class and engage in their lore. But I’m pretty sure the new players can’t even pick them first.

[dustyt]

I think the biggest issue is forcing new players into BfA content. The zones and dungeons can be incredibly frustrating, even for a veteran player. My girlfriend recently started playing and if I wasn't holding her hand through every step of the way she would have given up within the first hour for sure.

[skeletonsystem]

Id love to see this type of video of having a collection of new players playing with someone like yourself going back. But not hold their hands, as they work it out between themselves but discussing what they're loving or hating between each other and with you. Because you already have so much knowledge on it, to truly see their take on it and bring it to you as a seasoned vet would be so great.

[kevak]

I started WoW about a year after 1st release after playing Everquest for about 5-6 years (yes, I'm old 😉). I had a blast for several years before binning it on Mists of Pandaria, literally before even completing the leveling part. I went back on a classic server a few years ago after they released Burning Crusadeand played to the (almost) end of Burning Crusade and again, sacked it just as they released Sunwell. I was in a decent, non-hardcore, middling level guild

My major annoyance was the whole equipment grind, the meta seems to be to race to highest level as fast as possible, grind normal dungeons for good gear, to grind heroic dungeons for better gear, grind dailies for gear, to grind raids for good gear and for more raids to come along to grind for even better gear and even grind older dungeons for incredibly rare drops (mounts) - notice a theme here? 🙂

On my second visit to WoW i thought, "WTF am I doing - waiting for raid lockouts to expire so I can try, once again, to get a drop I never see" and then only having a 1 in 5 chance of getting it (yes, I know about DKP, same shit, different grind). Also, the elitism and amount of toxicity I saw, especially on my second visit put me off. Everyone racing to beat every dungeon in the shortest possible time frame. Quit the game, deleted WoW and closed account. I won't go back - I have no idea what the answer is, just showing my thought process for my reason to quit.

[minnaraiha]

Putting yourself into shoes of a new player is what nobody does in this game, well done man!

[Conandus]

WoW is definitely harsh on new players. For example, the game never mentions keybinds, or unlocking new action bars. I have seen new players that think they have to actually pick and choose which abilities to fit inside their action bar, cause they don't know about the existence of toggling on more in the settings. It would also be nice if Blizz just added useful keybinds like Q, E and F to new player's action bars, since most new players that don't use any guides just click their abilities, which not only makes them worse, but makes the game less fluid and enjoyable. Also, a lot of settings are downright bad, like music not being looped by default, or the camera adjusting when moving your character.

[shannonmcstormy]

"I will never have as much fun in a game ever, like I did those few years with WOW when it was still young." - Ninnjette I feel the same way. My partner introduced me to MMORPGS. I had never really played video games. She introduced me to Ultima Online, which she was still playing. That meant that she played Everquest while I was still playing Ultima Online. Eventually, I came over to EQ, after they had the bugs worked out. We spent years exploring and leveling up. We tried EQ2 for a while, but despite high end PC's, we never had enough power to play the game on max detail. Then came WoW, which we played for quite a few years. These were all magical times, things we did together. It was amazing.

[MrSpikebomb]

As someone that only recently played through the majority of WoW, it would help tremendously by having a "curated main story" like system similar to ff14. Imagine having an easy system to go through the entire story from warcraft on up. The sense of story, power, and faction progression would actually allow new players to appreciate the world. Along with actually having an all dungeon queue with lvl sync would get ppl to play old content. The game is too focused on experienced players+endgame content rush

[hmm_norah]

I kinda wish that you would've shared a real-time comparison of killing mobs instead of telling us how long it took. Make us really feel the tedium along with you! B-roll of close calls at the later levels could've been a good compromise too.

Anyhow, this was really interesting as I haven't played current WoW since like Cataclysm or Pandaria and this showed up on my YouTube suggestions. The gold spam showing up in the cutscene for the tutorial absolutely killed me! Thanks for including that lmao

[TruthbtoldMD]

I was put off by the time you get to the dungeons where people are running in so fast just to boost their buddy.. I just wanted to know the story as a whole and kinda wondering how the dungeon works. It felt like you're missing out on something but in the end it felt like a grind.

[SenpaiTheExplorer]

I got into the game five years ago and still play pretty much everyday. But it damn near took me six months to a year to have a basic understanding of most of the game. I had my hand held by a friend for a few weeks starting out but after that i was on my own. And i got kicked from ALOT of dungeons. And i mean ALOT. Im still learning stuff all the time about the game. I kinda miss being brand new. I enjoyed feeling lost inside a world that i knew nothing about. It is still my most memorable experiences gaming was when i was new to wow.

[spaceowl]

I played WoW for 18 years. Started back in 2005 as a 10 year old kid. I grew up with this game and seeing it turn into this weird husk of its former self really crushed me. Eversince WoD I just level to max level and hope for the best, just to realize that the new xpack can't hold me longer than 2-3 weeks. When Classic came out, I was really excited and I still play it to this day. Retail just isn't for me and DF was the last expansion I've bought. I'll stick to Vanilla Classic. Right now I'm on Classic Era. :)

[Rizzerio]

The new players I did see that made it to max level had some common issues. In pvp, players don't want to wait 10+ minutes for dps queues, or they feel completely hopeless with the class they chose to level first. Imagine a new player trying to play any warlock spec at the start of the first season and how miserable that probably was. They go to reddit threads quite often asking what they can do to improve or circumvent queue times to only be told things like "just go level a healer", or "just play for fun, who cares if your getting shit stomped by melee for months on end". I'm sorry but if I was new and I got a plethora of responses like that, telling me that I made the wrong choice and my only salvation is to relevel a new character, I would quit on the spot. In PvE, I would see complaints about "dead guilds" "can't find a guild that raids" "my guild won't let me raid with them", or "I keep getting declined in group finder" "I apply to every group and nobody accepts me" "people kick me for not knowing the fights" "I got kicked for not having addons" "how important is ilvl and tier sets". All this really tells me is that there are not enough new players flowing in to counter balance the 10+ year vets who gate keep them from all activities. There is just so little opportunity for them to find other players who are also in their shoes to give each other a chance to experience the game and learn, rather than this nonsense of having to research every single encounter, research all the spells, research all the mechanics, research addons, research how not to be a noob so that you can participate in the game. WoW is no different than a entry level job that requires 10+ years of experience. Your just never given a chance even though you can easily train someone for that position, but the issue is that why go through the burden of that if you have 100 other applicants who've done that work for 10+ years. The game is just too convoluted and old to get a healthy amount of new players to create any type of new player communities that will keep them around long enough. There is just too much down time and social frustration in WoW's systems that if lucky can retain maybe 5% of newcomers to Dragonflight. I've been around since late Vanilla back in 07, and even I quit from time to time for these very same things. WoW is not a game, it's a job to put on your resume, so that you can apply to other job like tasks in the game and get hired by other players only looking for people with 10+ yrs experience. Young kids aren't interested in WoW. They want to play the new cool thing all their friends are playing, and it sure as hell ain't wow. WoW left that spotlight many many years ago. In my opinion, mmorpg's are an aging and dying genre.

[moon_bandage]

While exiles reach is generally a good new player experience (and you will be getting some very clear tutorials on where you can find stuff like your spellbook etc) after that it really does go downhill bad. You are indeed thrown into BFA which is confusing.

I think they should retexture a lot of the old zones, and put people on a Loremaster track. They go through each expansion, but get put on a fast track that outlines the main story progression, and get put into fake raids (with some bosses cut out). Yes like FF14s MSQ pretty much. Maybe they should cut out some less important expansions and all, just give new people a broad idea of the WoW lore and an interesting, guided track through the world.

It would probably make sense to cut out some expansions like WoD and SL, these were sort of lore disasters. Not many people can tell you why WoD existed in the first place

[Lilybun]

I can understand a lot of these issues stemming from a game thats been out for like 20 years but shamelessly tricking new people into joining empty servers they have to pay to leave? That's so insanely cynical and cruel.