This, but I’d also ditch Exile’s Reach and give them time in the racial starting zone.
Abandoning the leveling experience was a huge mistake. People are buying a game with almost 20 years of story and content, yet Blizzard changes the new player experience to AVOID ALL THE 20 YEARS OF CONTENT THE PLAYER JUST PAID FOR.
They’re practically stealing from new players.
I love this idea too.
The Horde side could really use cleaning up too. Too many phased war chiefs.
I don’t think this is realistic without going back to spending many hours to level.
You can’t deliver an entire expansion’s content in just four levels (which is probably 40 mins.)
You can if you cut out all the crap.
Let’s take Hellfire Peninsula at the start of Burning Crusade, for example.
For Horde:
Just as 1 example.
Remove the junk, keep the story. That trims down the time while keeping the important stuff.
For Mists of Pandaria:
My god does MoP have a lot of pointless crap, now that I think about it. It can easily be trimmed.
People level too fast (or want to level too fast.) Just by doing important story quests, they’ll be well beyond gaining just four levels, and not at a pace which makes leveling seem too slow.
I agree that instead of exile’s reach, the racial starting zone is better character flavor and immersion. Great suggestion!
Also I know I am gonna get flak for saying this, but raiding would have to be streamlined.
Having four difficulties of raiding separates the raiding player base way too much, the structure of the game used to be about joining a guild and finding friends inside to play with. Now everything is so funneled into being competitive and chasing higher and higher rewards that almost nobody wants to interact with new players.
Imagine yourself being a mythic player who is always chasing to be the best, why would you stop to help new players get into WoW? You have n things to run and chase, it’s too much of a “waste of time” to help someone learn how to play or do low keys, or teach them how to normal raids.
You are so far removed from the reality of a new player that it doesn’t even feel like the same game. As long as the game feels like this in all realms (Raiding, Mythic+ and PvP) new players will feel like there is too much of a divide between them and the veterans and just quit. It’s better of an investment to play a newer game, with a more welcoming community and less complicated systems.
He is strange… that he pays for an account to troll on. No non-combat pets. Not even the mandatory ones from quests. No mounts. Blizzard really should just lock it down.
Incentivizing people to carry others through easy bosses isn’t the solution that you think it is.
I afk in lfr sometimes or intentionally die.
One huge mistake that could be easily corrected is new players should not be automatically put into the paid services channel, i know it’s good for token sales to get people into the mindset that it’s normal to just pay people to take you everywhere, but it’s a really bad look.
OP is still level 10 of course he never ran into any new players.
I ran into new players on different servers, they are there.
Who is we?
I don’t work for Blizzard, I don’t think anyone here holds employment at this company. I’m a customer I don’t get paid to play.
Most folks nowdays don’t want to play an MMO, and barely an RPG. Mobile games are what nabs most people’s attentions these days, that said:
faster leveling experience because most people have done the leveling dozens of times by now and even new players are gonna eventually hit the point where they’re leveling over or may care to do endgame rather than level to begin with.
WoW needs several updates to not just graphics but several RPG elements as well that are YEARS over due. The performance we have now was a relic even by early 2000 standards, compared to games in 2023? WoW stands no chance.
This is partly a dev created problem, they wanted their M+ and raid or die crowd and they have it, but what they’re slowly realizing is that those people pay, raid or M+ until they reach their endgame goal, then leave. We need content that engages folks all expansion long and that encourages social interactions.
Number 3 in particular is sort of a “chicken or the egg?” catch 22. Once they start adding open world stuff that isn’t just raid logging open world edition, people’ll start mediating toward it, and the social atmosphere will start to shift… or in this case I guess redevelop since they kinda destroyed it outright over the past 3 expansions?
I didn’t mean for older players to carry new players, but more like why would you stop chaining dungeons to go back to the starting zones and say hi to the new player, hook up Discord and do a dungeon together?
I meant that the gap is so great that for the veteran player it feels like a liability to play with the new player exactly because it feels like they are just carrying while receiving absolutely nothing in return.
I don’t think it’s a problem that can be solved. Per social events (community feast) for example, that content is less than desirable… also tried researchers under fire once.
You’re kidding. This is a thing?
It sure is.
If anything I’ll give it to him that he keeps it varied at least 
You are never gonna find a solution if you just look inside of WoW for examples.
The community feast is a cool novelty, but it is just a novelty.
If you ever played Guild Wars 2, they have special maps that work like PvE battlegrounds, the players call it “Meta Events” everyone in the zone has to collaborate to defeat waves of enemies in different places and advance together in the wilderness until they reach a final boss encounter.
It is actually amazing gameplay experience that I wish WoW could take notes from because so far their attempts of making engaging content (suffusion camps, hunts, community soup, researches under fire) feel very mini-gamey and too steamroll to make any friends along the way.
Multiple separate objectives I guess?
In the ancient past, wasted time taming rams in Alterac Valley.
While others did actual PVP by fighting players or securing objectives. Stuff like that?
I think the new player experience is a little overwhelming. When I joined it was BFA and I felt overwhelmed with all the things that you could do from past expansions. Only because I wanted those things, transmogs, mounts etc. I feel bad for new players just starting in DF. Hopefully they know to watch youtube video as some really make it simple and focused.