Not like there are guides and videos out there that will hold your hand and give basic instruction for setting up all the problems your so called friend had OP.
I just returned to retail after not playing since original Cataclysm. Luckily I had enough WOW experience to sort of figure out what was going on, but yeah, the new intros and everything are a mess. So many popups and windows, it just throws stuff at you. No new player needs this much info at once.
Also, being unable to edit the UI until you finish the intro is silly. The default UI is a mess. Why is my character pane right next to my action bar? No one plays like that right?
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Follow !
Push keyboard buttons
Kill monsters
Wow so complicated
My brother started playing during MoP remix, so luckily he was able to skip most of that stuff. Idk if I could have gotten him into it at a different time. But we were able to level a few characters over the final weekend so he was ready for TWW without having to worry about all the previous stuff. Now he can take his leveled up characters to old zones or level new ones through them, but at least now he knows what the game looks like at max level. It did make him a little too aggro at first since we kinda just ran through all the dungeons and raids and stuff during remix but imo it was a pretty good intro compared to normal. Idk if that’s really the best new player experience possible but it worked in this case
Welcome to my ignore list. Both in-game and out.
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When you suggest someone doesn’t have a friend like that, they typically will take it personally.
I agree with you. Exiles Reach was a great opportunity but failed to deliver.
Felpickle in here doing Felpickle stuff. Stop trolling bro. lol
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This thread was shared on reddit btw. I’m there more than here, so I wanted to stop in and give you my thoughts. IDK if that was you that shared that or someone that is acting like you, based on the context it was was you…
This is very good feedback and I completely understand your frustration with getting him set up. It doesn’t need to be this way. Blizzard just doesn’t seem to care to address it because they likely see if it would be worth addressing, more so than us.
As sad as it sounds, I personally don’t believe retail is a priority to marketing or bait in any way to bring new people in. Runescape has a similar format. Blizz markets NuClassic and Hardcore (and now new game modes like remix and plunderstorm) to bring people in to the game. That’s where their streamer community is and that’s the most important to them.
I don’t think this ideology is doing them any favors long term but here we are.
I recommend not even responding to people who reply negatively to feedback like this as it is very obvious to anyone that plays retail regularly that the new and returning player experience is a dumpster fire. The positive replies and likes you are getting STRONGLY outweigh the negative bs.
And warning you now, mute or delete that reddit thread. They are WAY more toxic than GD. To most of them you just committed a serious crime criticizing World of Warcraft on the official reddit.
GL, tell your friend to try Cata with HD textures, maybe he will like that. We don’t have all the annoying popups and forced quests going into your log right when you log in. Merry Christmas/Holidays.
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I used to when we didn’t have the personal bar under your character.
It’s more of a matter of gamers have a lot of choices for games to play so why jump into the yard with the most rakes to step on and slap you in the face?
Exactly the problem starts with the purchase. They get the game, some will think well I need the latest expansion to play with my friends. Then get in-game and they have to level in Dragonflight from 10-70 and they will probably finish 1 zone in that span of time? They will have no idea what any of this story is about when they start the most recent chapter.
The game doesn’t even try to hook a new player when it comes to the world or story.
I guess at the end of the day who is deciding to pick up and try WoW on whim with no one they know that plays it to help guide them… Without that I couldn’t imagine the experience.
I don’t even use reddit but I get weird vibes just based on the fact that you have the same achievement points as Rejel and have been following me in this thread.
I caught that by the way. The “Gender Identity” comment. I don’t like stuff like that. So if you are acting like me and posting stuff on reddit, I would appreciate it if you deleted it.
I get a lot of people that I know asking me for updates on games, which ones might be worth checking out/getting back into during a period they have more free time, things like that. I stopped trying to recommend WoW years ago.
While I love aspects of this game, I know that’s mostly because I played it from a young age and that it wouldn’t appeal to most gamers today. And sadly, that’s not just because of the early game progression. Yes, previous expansion stuff is kind of a mess and can be a lot to throw at someone because Blizzard went the route of abandoning old content instead of properly building upon it… but endgame progression doesn’t appeal to many non long-time WoW players either.
Rant I had on another post related to this subject
man i play on and off, the main thing for me is having to rearrange the UI and setting up talents and locations of moves, updating addons. It takes a few hours before you can even jump back in. If i am lazy, i will just create a new character to re learn the class and recreate the button mapping.
Cool story, bro.
u mad, bro
I was also annoyed by exiles reach - I wanted a goblin but I didn’t want go through the goblin starting area again - the not being able to adjust your UI is definitely annoying .
Maybe have a pop up that asks if you’re brand brand new or a veteran .
Brand brand new gets every tutorial possible and veterans can adjust their UI .
I will say Exiles Reach was definitely shorter then the goblin starting area by a lot !
Edit mode being disabled is the worst part of exiles reach
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I think a Remix will be the only time that is good for a new player to join WOW. They’ll go through a single expansion, level quickly, get powerful quickly, groups were helpful. Hopefully, a new one comes before Midnight.
I would rework Exiles reach completely. Races would start in their racial starting area, just for race lore background. At level 10 they should be introduced to the Bronze dragonflight that will send them to Exiles Reach. Exiles Reach would be a quick way to level, learn your class, and hit some lore high points.
Class trainers that would offer scenarios for the basics of a spec. rewards gear to use in the follower style dungeons.
Bronze dragon quest givers that offer follower style dungeons/ raid bosses that hit major lore points from an xpac. The end of which would give xp to progress to the next xpac. Repeat until you hit the level to start the newest xpac.
At the end I would introduce Chromie time as a way to learn more about past xpacs or level other characters.
I also would allow for people to invite their friends to help by using the level sync already in game. Because if someone is trying to get a friend to play let them use the characters they already have instead of making new ones.
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I’ve had two recent bad experiences, trying to get an old friend back into the game and trying to get my nephew interested in the game.
My old friend played quite a bit in vanilla and years afterward. He was interested in getting back into the game, and I was enthusiast about helping him. I thought that maybe I could carry him through some dungeons or help power-level him through some quests, etc, like the old days.
Instead, he found himself locked in a scripted, phased, inflexible, boring quest-line that he had no choice but to complete before progressing. I couldn’t help him since I had done it long ago and was thus phased. So his only choice was to basically spend 6 hours alone working his way through this BS. Suffice it to say, he never finished it, and ended up never getting back into the game. Enthusiasm destroyed. Opportunity lost.
Trying to get my nephew into the game wasn’t a great experience either. I don’t think that there was anything “wrong” with the starting areas, per se. The real issue here is that everything that is fun and worth playing about the modern game occurs at max level. The whole leveling process had it’s place a long time ago, but now it’s just a gate. It was too tough of a sell explaining to him that he would have to level his character up to max level doing mostly irrelevant content before he would have the chance to start having fun.
Fact is, in modern WoW, 99.9% of the relevant game occurs at max level. Barriers need to be removed so that new and returning players can get to the point where they can play with their max-level friends in relevant content more quickly.
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I haven’t gotten the chance to read every single post here (stopped around 34) so idk if someone already mentioned it or not–but there is a script to get the Edit Mode to work during Exile’s Reach :')
I recall discovering it from a comment in 2023, somewhere. So kudos to that person! 
I use it for any new character I make that goes through it–
/script ShowUIPanel(EditModeManagerFrame 
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