I have recently gone a bit alt crazy and started several. While I am not a “new” player, I have been trying to evaluate what a new, returning, or alt friendly player would experience.
I had posted in General in a thread about fresh starts but it all would fit in here.
I have been doing some testing of this myself with a new character or two.
Just hit level 30 today. I have never played Hunter so, learning that with help from guides and such.
- I did get a quest to go to SW castle and start the BFA line, but it did not force me to do it. Instead I just went outside town to Goldshire and started the quests there and went through zones until I hit 30 and could fly!
- Quest gear I got was actually mail for my class and reasonable to play with.
- They have added some helpful things to the quests like warnings that you need to make your pet STAY to work the mechanic.
- I got a lot more gold than expected from quests. I was able to buy all my riding skills, including flying, with just quest gold and selling greys.
- Quests have been re-worked since 17 years ago and are a bit more streamlined. I found it easier to figure out where to go and what to do.
- When you gain skills it tells you and puts it on your bar. Anything you did not have on the bar stays lit up in the spellbook to remind you. I found that useful - esp if new.
- Quest sending you to get your flying training is excellent. Makes sure people are aware and go do it.
What I did NOT find friendly and really wish they would change
- FLIGHT WHISTLE NEEDED! Please don’t make me trudge back through murloc infested waters to the other side of the zone to turn in 3 quests. I just want to call an Uber to the nearest flight point. I want this for ALL ZONES. Huge QoL improvement IMHO. I may even just ask in the CC forum.
- Profession leveling for gathering skills in Vanilla zones. There is nothing telling you what the fishing or herb levels are in order to actually catch fish or get full flowers instead of petals. That was a bit counter intuitive. I remember it from Vanilla so knew what to go for, but new players would not.
- Duel requests. Please for the love of everything let us turn those off in the game interface instead of with an addon. (if this is done and I just don’t know please tell me). It is very annoying standing there trying to actually read a quest with someone spam duel nonsense at you.
- I find I have to look up HOW to play my class and how to handle pets. Still quite confused about a lot of pet stuff. I get button overload and resort to Wowhead which a new player might not know to do.
I did not do any dungeons so can’t comment on how those go for the under 30 set. I don’t do group content.
I would say WoW is a lot more leveling friendly for new players than it used to be, by far. I don’t play the other MMOs though so I can’t compare to how that goes. I also have not used the Newcomer chat although I think it is a great idea. The game is so complex nobody can ever sort it all out.