I don’t think it’s too complicated. You could probably learn the ropes in your first month with a little bit of research.
your friend was right 
easy to play tough to master type of deal i guess.
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The pace of shadowlands combat in pvp because of the billion modifiers and borrowed powers is definitely not accessible to a lot of casual or newer players and it’s really unfortunate for anyone who will have shadowlands pvp as their only taste of wow pvp
In a straightforward game you’d be able to buy cheap crafted pvp gear on the ah, quickly get yourself a competitive honor set, and then slowly work on capping your conquest every week so that by mid season you have epic gear
Shadowlands did the opposite by making honor gear insanely grindy to get, made it horrendously bad, and then locked the ability to make honor gear less bad behind weekly timegated renown that couldn’t even be earned from pvp 
and then they allowed casuals to slowly get conquest gear but made unranked conquest gear the same ilvl as honor gear. covenant campaign pve necro gear was way more competitive than early honor gear for pvp which is the opposite of what a new player would expect
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More complexity!
I agree with this concept 100%
I played EQ through Luclin and had a blast. Quit for awhile and tried to go back. With all the Alternate advancement and everything else I just said screw it and kept WoW as my primary since it was much easier.
Complex systems are great with an aging player base that is invested in it for years, but keep out newer players.
Like my boss said the other day “I have been doing this for so long, I forgot what its like to not know everything about what I am doing”.
That applies to games as well.
Personally I think there are so few actual brand new players that this doesn’t matter anymore. They should be more focused on bringing old players back than finding new ones, which has clearly failed.
I can count on one hand the number of brand new players I met in WoW in the last say, 6 years. Basically none.
I read your article and I have two thoughts. Some sort of bookmarking feature would be cool so we can save what we read and come back to it later.
Second is several of your suggestions would replace one complex system with another. Your version of the game would be just as complex but different. I’m not sure about the merits of reintroducing systems such as the original talent trees, but I do agree that “borrowed” powers are getting old now.
I’m really tired of this “addons are bad” crap.
Addons do exactly the opposite of bloat. They allow blizz to leave functionality out of the base client. If someone wants it, they can go get it. If someone doesn’t want it, it’s not bloat.
A base u I with functionality I’ll never use and don’t want would be a hugely bloated waste of disk space.
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Here it to hoping they go back to the basics in Dragonflight and ban a lot of addons.
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RPGs are fundamentally different styles of games than MOBAs and FPS games like you mentioned.
That’s pretty much it.
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you want to remove Alterac Valley ?
madness…
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I think the high barrier to entry for new players is because knowledge is by far the biggest component to “skill”. I do mostly M+, but there’s so much you need to know to play well. It doesn’t matter how much speed, coordination, and dexterity you have, you simply cannot perform well without simply knowing a lot of details and facts about the content, your toon, and your groups toons.
This has benefits however, it allows many people who are unable to be competitive at other games a way to be successful in this game. If you just put enough time and effort in learning all the details the majority of people can be successful. The downside is that it takes new players a very long time to become good. In counter strike, if you have fast reaction time and precision you can be decent as a new player, but in WoW you just have to know things to be successful and that takes time.
I personally would prefer a shift toward execution rather than knowledge but a lot of people would hate it.
I do agree that all of the various systems layering that Blizz so loves is overwhelming.
They’ve said they’re going to Tone that back
We’ll see.
I also think raiding has grown more complex to the point that it’s not all that fun anymore, it’s tedious. I’m tired of bosses so complex we have to spreadsheet them. Tired of massive 12 minute fights that take 4-500 pulls.
I recognize that I’m probably just tired of it overall and should consider hanging up my raiding hat, but I feel very much pushed into having to make that choice by the increasing complexity of the fights.
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I don’t use add ons and my goal is not to be the top geared or beat the game, I pay $ to play for entertainment and have since 2013. it’s my down time, but I have seen changes that no longer feel new player friendly, but I think that’s just the order of progression. I used to raid on a now forgotten character, but kind of glad I no longer enjoy that content.
not even selljunk ?
I played for about 3-4 expansions and reached glad this year. My first heroic raid completion was in BFA. So I’d say it takes roughly 4 years maybe more depending on the person. And yes 100% it’s overwhelmed. I still feel overwhelmed at times.
I also often think of the definition of insanity when playing an MMO ( to do the same thing constantly hoping for a different outcome) and wonder if I’m going insane… so for a game type period to make someone question their own sanity I think will draw people away from the game as well.
I was really bummed when they took away the talent tree’s and made specs rigid instead of being able to mix my points between all three tree’s. Like for my priest I was mostly holy but always dipped into the shadow tree a bit to pick up the increased spirit on kill and the better bubble from disc. I also has a Prot/holy hybrid pally that was the bomb. While they are bringing back the tree’s in a form it looks like they are still spec locked.
You are right which is why we hear that the bottom 85% has never killed more than two bosses in Mythic + or Raids. A lot of us just do the storyline quests and some of the side quests and the occasional regular dungeon. Others add on PvP.
The one problem is that I have to use the cut scenes on YouTube to see how the story came out in the end. It would be nice if they had a simple version of the end of the story for those of us who can’t do the super hard stuff.
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Most people don’t even know how their passive abilities work.
No one needs addons. They are 100% optional.
There will always be a cookie cutter spec.
They did that in SL and a lot of people cried about it.
This is a good idea.
There isn’t much blizzard can do about this. They don’t have any control over the Que system. They already give alliance bonus incentives.
Catering the game to the lowest common denominator is stupid and likely to alienate established players, new players need to step up, not the other way around.