Forget what you know for a moment.
How exactly would a new player, that doesn’t bother people in main cities, know what they are supposed to do after gearing up in delves or heroics?
And after you’ve considered that a few seconds:
Why is the method of accessing the premiere WoW endgame content a tiny box of player-written custom game titles, accessed through a single tab among many others? Am I playing warcraft 2 back in the mid 90s? Do I need to set up my LAN cable before playing these games? Do I need to configure my 56k modem?
The game was invented in a time when groups of people who knew each other, often went to school with each other, played together and helped each other with the game.
There are still guilds but as the player base gets older more and more people are trying to play on their own.
One big thing I’ve found is that various AI systems will answer questions about games. Things like ChatGPT, Perplexity, CoPilot, etc will answer questions that were difficult to get answered earlier.
I think the only real indicator is probably the Great vault tab that shows your Mythic plus square and a little tool tip of what you need to do to get it. They really don’t do a good job teaching people how to play.
The intended learning path is accidentally seeing the mythic difficulty setting after right clicking on your portrait accidentally for the first time. You then wonder what it is and try it out.
When I hit max level for the first time in tbc I was so lost. All I knew was living and battlegrounds. So all I did was battlegrounds at max. Wow has never been fantastic at instructions and has a heavy reliance on thottbot, askjeeves, people in trade chat that say “google it”, and now wowhead.
I didn’t understand dungeon anything for 3 months when I first started. Zul Farrak as a leveling dungeon was like jumping into the pilot seat of a 747. I didn’t know what a tank was.
I’d say it probably happens over time. As in they see groups in the customs area and then realize that there are higher tiers outside of the LFR/LFD. this is without any friends helping.
Also, I read and watched a ton of videos after being clueless for an unnecessary amount of time. There are still aspects to dungeons I’m not fully versed in that I’ve discovered over the years. I remember how utterly stumped I was in just leaving the dungeon besides my hearthstone
And then I played ESO and it was that feeling all over again. How do I leave? What’s the max dungeon. Veteran. Pledges. Basically more reading and reviewing the content prior to joining it.
And because we live in an Internet paperless society, youtube and whatever else can give you all the answers. Newer players and possibly younger players will just instantly seek out some high follower count content creator and model after them. Whereas, I play incorrectly. Just bumbling through stuff until I hit a wall and try walking my way out like a blind man.
I tend to enjoy being lost in a new game than join already with a pre planned fully formed route in mind. But A, I’m weird and D I don’t do things logically because I’m a creative person
One of the weekly quests in Dornogal is “Emissary of War” where the goal is to complete 5 heroic or mythic dungeons.
If you go into the bank and see a bunch of people standing around the Vault, you might wonder what it is all about and check it out.
If you completed some delves and go get your vault loot, you’ll notice the Mythic row and ask about it.
There is a meta (purple icon) quest outside the bank that tells you about the vault as a new player and can trigger the “What is mythic?” question.
Is it as simple as go here and do this? No. This is supposed to be an RPG where you have to try and figure out some things on your own or consult others with questions.
A lot of games do this. A ton of RPG games don’t make every little mechanic or step of a process obvious in game. I lose track of how many times I have to go find external answers to questions I have about games. Skyrim, Stardew Valley, RuneScape, Deathloop, Grand Theft Auto, Prey… I mean the list goes on. This is not a Blizzard thing exclusively.
