[Feedback] A Point of Reflection!

Community WoW Community Council
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I need to express this discomfort with these rules: why do players who financially support the game by purchasing expansions, paying for subscriptions and game time, and who do not commit infractions, have to inherit the same account restrictions as players who are starting as Starter Edition?

I understand the intentions of all the restrictions for Starter Edition accounts with the exception of the impossibility of a person being able to invite another player to the group.

When you play Fortnite, CoD, League of Legends, Overwatch, Diablo 4, Baldur’s Gate 3, Rocket League, Destiny 2, Dota 2, Genshim Impact among many other games, you are restricted to creating groups?

And why even when your account is no longer Starter Edition do we continue to inherit these restrictions?

If there is an issue with a Starter Edition player generating group invite spam we can limit those accounts to ONE INVITE and only to other Starter Edition accounts.

What about when you try to delete a character who has an item in the mailbox and you can’t without the help of technical support?

Has it ever happened to you that you collect an item and instead of going to your character’s backpack, the item goes to the mailbox and you can’t retrieve it due to account restrictions?

What about when you try to trade a lifestone (warlock) for a group member and are blocked even though the account is no longer Starter Edition?

Sometimes I feel like I’m being punished for having supported the game for so many years by buying expansions and paying subscriptions.

In Final Fantasy 14, the player can do three raids with different levels of difficulty, there is no restriction on PvP content similar to what is applied to twink players in World of Warcraft and they can even fly around the maps with their mounts. What raid and flight experience does a Starter Edition account or one that has run out of game time have?

Instead of restricting access to gold, the auction house, and the mailbox, there may be limitations for accounts that are outside of game time. We could receive items from mailboxes, but we could not send them. We could buy ONE ITEM from the auction house, but not sell it. Would limiting the number of items purchased and received in the mailbox per week be a bad idea?

We could have an account achievement that would allow players to access, for example, level 30 if the account has not committed any irregularities, if there are 10K achievement points, if throughout history the player has purchased the equivalent of one year of game time.

It’s not allowing an account to have full access but not having the same account restrictions as a Starter Edition if you’ve already financially supported the game over many years.

Wouldn’t it be a good opportunity to revisit these rules to be more fair to those who supported the game?

Sometimes I envy Diablo 4 players who, when they buy the game, can invite other players to the group, to a guild, they can trade, they can be part of communities even though they haven’t purchased the battle pass or paid for a subscription.

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World of Warcraft’s Free Trial is SERIOUSLY Outdated!

This is Why WoW Can’t Get New Players

6 Likes
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I definitely think the starter edition of the game is something they should revisit. It is an odd thing to give feedback on since naturally players already playing the game or are on the council are not trial players. The cap has been 20 forever which only really gained things completely incidentally through the level squish. I feel it is important to reevaluate the trial process because a revamp of the starter/trial edition can attract a new wave of players which is always good for the game.

I think they should just make level 1-60 entirely free, let people try out the game more in-depth and experience content. This may attract a subset of players who only play the game for free but I honestly don’t see that as an issue if it helps fill out the world. Plus the more a player becomes more attached to the game the more likely they will purchase a sub & expansion since the latest hot thing players are doing will always be the expansion content.

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They certainly need to do more about the brand new-player experience and how a new player at endgame interacts with it.

One example I can think of his how Newcomer Chat works, as a ‘Guide’ in the system I see the chat being used frequently by new and returning players but almost all the questions are in regards to specific quests (/wave to Gor’grok) or how to access Shadowfang Keep etc, because they go to their class trainer for whatever reason and get a quest to go there and are confused why they can’t queue up.

The system effectively throws you out at level 61 with 40 hours /played, before you even get close to endgame. The vast majority of the complexity in this game is centred around endgame, how to play your class, how to do X or Y dungeon, how do I gear up, what even is Mythic+? These questions are not something that can really be asked in newcomer chat because chances are a new player who has reached level 70 was unceremoniously dumped out of the channel without even being given the option to stay in to be able to continue to utilise the tips that veteran players have opted in to sharing with them. Their only recourse is to go to third party websites (which are usually helpful), or to try their luck in the other in-game chat channels which don’t have people who have self-selected to actually want to help them in.

Even from the very start the new player experience kinda sucks, whilst it won’t be a problem (afaik) in War Within because (I think) cross-realm guilds, a new player today is dumped onto a ‘New Player Realm’, designated as such usually because of their low population.

Whilst we’re at it, why is the Services channel turned on by default? A new player’s first experience after landing from the Gryphon/Wyvern into Stormwind or Orgrimmar is to have their chatlog utterly barraged by boost-sellers spamming. It makes the game look tacky, especially when you realise that almost every single one of the character spamming is breaking the Terms of Service by usually being new accounts purely dedicated to spamming boost sales and also being level 10s, which are clearly not able to be a player-character participating in the run.

That aside, New Players are also directed into the Battle for Azeroth story. If they are a story and lore focused player they will get to do only ~70% of their faction continent, even less if they decide to do a few more than average dungeons or participate in other forms of content.

They will never see a resolution to the story as to what happened to Jaina Proudmoore, what happened to the Zandalari Kingdom and so on. This was even worse back in Shadowlands, where after a new player would’ve levelled in Battle for Azeroth, with Jaina being imprisoned at the very start of the expansion. The next time that new player would’ve seen Jaina if they went through the game as it was ‘delivered’ to them, would have been in the Maw introduction experience. I know Lady Ashvane was a villain, but I don’t think even she went that far! This is because the conclusion to that story required you to complete the continent story and then it was behind a series of (at the time) max level quests.

I know this is being changed in TWW, but even with Dragonflight being the experience for new players, I can’t help but feel like they’re going to hit level 70 roughly 75% through the Azure Span zone and then never actually see any of the conclusions to the Dragonflight storyline, and zone stories such as Zaralek and Emerald Dream will not actually be done. I’m hoping that this will be different though, and players can actually experience the story as intended, if you’re going to devote as many resources as you are in trying to tell a compelling story, the way in which you then rush people away from it is bizarre.

I’m not sure how they could do it but I think they might also want to take a note from FFXIV’s book, one of the things I enjoyed when playing that game was when levelling up I could participate in each version’s dungeons and raids to take in the story as well as gain experience. I wonder if something like Timewalking could be reconfigured to work more like the Duty Finder does and grand people lower-tier crests as well as perhaps some sort of cosmetic currency to queue up for and pad out the finder. Maybe rework Fyrakk in the future to be a one-boss ‘raid’ experience for those new players to see the finale. I’ve seen some people suggest in the past to make this a solo experience, and maybe that’s what they might be going for with the introduction of AI teammates in normal dungeons in 10.2.5.

I also feel quite bad for what it’s like to be a fresh or returning 70. The amount of quest spam in Valdrakken needs to be looked into in the future. Having all this content to do that was added in the various updates of Dragonflight is great but they need to figure out a way to deliver that better to the player at the appropriate time. Story quests are offered out of all sorts of order and it’s no wonder people end up being utterly lost. I know that some work has gone into creating new quest icons to differentiate what is important to the campaign or what unlocks some sort of feature.

8 Likes
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I agree with this entire statement, specifically when you called out the following:

Services Chat - As stated, this chat is full of nothing but “Boost” and “AOTC/HEROIC/ALL THE GEAR” spam chats. Why has this not been actioned upon? Why is this allowed to continue thriving? Communities offering “boosts” and “Runs” works great in Diablo where most players will do it for free as it takes little of their time and is a great fun time to see the new player get completely leveled and geared from it, but these communities within WoW are quite the opposite. It’s detrimental to the games communities to allow these activities to continue, activities as in advertising it.

The quest spam at level 70 should also be looked into. As stated, upon initial launch it wasn’t that bad. But now, it’s all disjointed and discombobulated. I understand why it’s the way it is now, to allow players access to the most recent thing right as they hit 70, but I believe there could be a better way of doing this. Maybe a disclaimer stating there are parts of the story they will be missing if they continue, or providing a roadmap of the quests in order? Or, possibly could even do a threats of fate type thing where an NPC pops up asking you “Do you wish to proceed to unlock the current storyline quests(Still leaving all the previous storyline quests there not completed) or would you like to do them in order.”

I’ve stated it before too where I believe that Chromie time could be expanded to allow a max level character to experience previous expansions at the max level so it’s not just a game of wack-a-mole. And that all previous events should be brought back for players new and old to experience.

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As an active player of both FFXIV and WoW I can share some things between both starter accounts types. Starter accounts cannot do PvP at all. However they do have access to three tiers of raids starting with base game up to stormblood.

FFXIV starter accounts are just as restrictive as WoW Starter accounts; you cannot join a Free Company(FFXIV Guilds), you cannot trade with people, I don’t believe you can use the party finder, you cannot send or receive mail from players, you cannot play expansion races/classes that aren’t a part of the free trial experience, I don’t think you can use the marketboard, you cannot get retainers (NPC banks and sells things), you cannot PvP and you cannot bid or own a house.

With a FFXIV starter account you CAN join a linkshell (collective non guild groups), You can group up with people and run dungeons, and you can add people to your friendslist. Everything else listed thats not in the “restrictive” section I listed is free game. Quests, Raids, dungeons, end game (restricted to those expansions listed as free trial), side stuff, activities.

FFXIV is more open about their free trials compared to WoW but they are still just as restrictive in some key elements of the game.

1 Like