So Exile’s Reach is obviously a tutorial island, but that quest after you give the fallen ship mate food has got to be the most mundane and jarring experience of them all.
If you completely deleted this part in development, it would make absolute no difference. Its just bad and annoying.
At least with the first sparring session, your comrade actually switches positions to be behind you so new players learn to rotate and navigate the world around them.
The second sparring session is just … pointless. Feels like a massive waste of time.
“Use ability 3-5 times against me”
I mean I’ve already been doing that against murlocs, and end up doing the same thing to quilboar… why make players waste their time with such a pointless experience?
A better use of time is swimming across the channel and talking to that big ogre dude.
Like try to recruit him to push through the zombies or the final boss battle in the dungeon against the dragon and the warlock ogre sacrifices him to revive the dragon
TLDR
Delete the annoying sparring session after you give your shipmate food. The only class that gets to skip this is hunter.
So far I’ve played through the tutorial island about 50-80 times. Lost track on actual #, but i am an altaholic.
Here is how I would optimise for new players
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Give level 1 players first two abilities. It’s actually annoying having classes that have combo points unable to expend those points anyway at lvl 1.
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Shift the ability tutorial with Waraxe / Garrick to the first target dummy on the ship and give it unlimited life like raid boss dummies. Warlord / Captain will commend you on using abilities against the dummy.
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Then you spar with your deck mate who will leap around you.
This ties in how to use abilities, how to navigate the world and how to interact properly all within the first 2-3 levels of the game.
kill murlocs
revive comrades
×××
After giving the unconscious ship mate food, Warlord / Captain commissions you to recruit the etin Jrokgar across the channel.
Jrokgar is reluctant, he doesn’t want to fight. He likes to throw! But a large crab named Señor Snips took his favourite ball.
Find a nearby cave and discover the crabs having a Crab Rave. Defeat crab minions and Señor Snips. Señor Snips drops a key which you use to unlock the large iron ball and chain attached to the wall.
-Insert standard Blizzard joke about marriage here.-
Drag the iron throwing ball to Jrokgar and he will be happy his ball and chain came back to him after all this time. Theres some new dents in it though…
If you ask him nicely he will then throw you to your commander in charge to hand in quest who will reward you with a pair of green boots. (You dont get boots in any of the quests lol)
They will be disheartened the etin won’t join the cause, but at least he won’t wreck havoc on the survivors.
×××
And that’s how I would make adjustments to the tutorial island campaign.