Where to begin…Imagine wanting to show your friend this game after loving it for nearly 2 decades, just to find out they are FORCED to play through the new player guided scenario, and then FORCED to play through Battle for Azeroth. I want her to experience picking a race and starting where that race originates from, while enjoying the current ui and quality of life additions from over the years. Unfortunately, as a new player, you have to pick either the new system and a story you know nothing about and don’t care about, or you can play wow classic, enjoy the original flow of the game and story, and potentially burn out of the game before you even get to max level.
Complaint #2: we’re playing through this expansion because it was the first one introduced to her, and the one we were forced to start before getting other options (chromie still isn’t an option for her). she wants to make herself armor with leatherworking, but oops, you have to be level 45 to wear the first recipe you can make with zandalari leatherworking. if she wants to get leatherworking for something she can actually wear, she would have to spend 15 minutes getting there through portal cutscenes and walking (not a big deal tbh, just not something a brand new player finds fun), and then not have any of the materials because we’ve been leveling on a different continent.
It’s really unfortunate that you have access to buy everything from the shop with your first lvl 1 character, but you can’t enjoy leveling the way you want to until after you’ve gone from 1-max lvl. At that point, A LOT of brand new players won’t even make an alt because of the first leveling experience.
Man I keep seeing this same type of thread pop up it’s weird. I mean I played classic and the zones and guess what? I couldn’t stand it at all. They’re just so bad these days it’s hard to get through any of them.
You’re somebody who did it before, going back and experiencing classic as reruns, though.
For a new player, classic content is the 20 years of game history that they paid for. But they can’t do it until they’ve done the poorly-done BfA stuff.
True but if they want to do that leveling is pretty fast regardless. Not sure if they have to fully complete all 4 bfa zones or just reach at least level 60 and get to DF. If you have to just reach DF that doesn’t take long at all, then you can go back and rerun the game on Cataclysm mode if you want.
The notion that new players can’t do the starter zones until they’re done is… silly.
(And it’s solely because of the usual Blizzard Staff Turnover And Developer Hubris. “We don’t want people doing that old stuff, everyone should experience the game under OUR NEW VISION because we’re better.”)
Looking back at my experiences being a 21 starter….
Touched WoW a few times on throwaway accounts never able to get past 10.
‘Get into’ it a bit more after doing Exiles Reach October 2021. Confused AF and I think I used the game boost to get to 50 or 60 while also levelling a character slowly through BfA, had a friend show me how.
What actually got me to commit to this game was buying a gold boost to get a Sylvanas kill. I was under a misconception that I would get a legendary bow and that this would lead me to become the best hunter.
Needless to say it did not drop but that initial sunk-cost fallacy got me to commit and eventually learn.
Yes I agree as someone who can still remember when and how they started it was very confusing to get back into the game. Credit to the covenants for giving my character a ‘feeling’ of home.
I started this new account during DF. I rolled my new character and had to go through Exile’s reach. After that I ended up in Stormwind and had to do the entry to BfA scenario. Once in Boralus, I did a few quests, opened the mage portal room, went back to Stormwind, where I was able to choose a different expansion by talking to Chromie.
Classic and other crafted gear for low levels are now garbage due to scaling changes.
you can make them not-garbage item levels by using relics of the past which are crafted by every crafting profession except engineering and jewelcrafting and can be bought and sold on the auction house. It is a minor pain though. And it doesn’t really make much sense that you have to do that maybe.
it’s true that they often lack secondary stats and even primary stats or compensation for not having secondary or primary stats. kind of crappy really.
I dont know the new player zone actually shows new players how to play , is that a bad thing ? New gen players are soft when i started we had no quest trackers , or wowhead or anything like that
I’ve been told that if you want to unlock chromie time on a new account before reaching level 60 through BFA you can make a temporary trial character log into the trial character. Hearth, then log out.
She should have Chromie time unlocked after that so she can choose her expansions. I’m sorry if this does not work, I haven’t tried it myself.
If it does work and they unlock chromie time you may want to tell her to freeze her exp at level 58 so it does not push her into the dragon isles and she can experience all the previous expansions content at her own speed.
I do agree disabling chromie time on people’s first character is ridiculously stupid and the new player experience in this game is defintitely trash. I don’t really see how exiles reach is a problem for a brand new player tho? It’s pretty short and only lasts to level 10. Anway, good luck to you and your friend.
Chromie Time is now available to even a new player these days, which was a change they implemented with one of the major patches during Dragonflight, iirc. As far as Exile’s Reach goes, for most players trying the game for the first time without someone to help them along, it’s a decent intro to the game and how it works, and it also doesn’t take all that long.
Even with the ability to use Chromie Time once you complete Exile’s Reach, the default expansion a new player is put into is still the old required one of Battle for Azeroth. But now you can go to talk to Chromie to change it to something other than BfA right off the bat, if you want.
Personally, I’d still recommend BfA or maybe Legion to new players, which were both pretty good and also recent enough to make the transition to DF not too jarring given the similarities in game mechanics and many expansion features.
As a practical matter, once you choose an expansion with Chromie Time, all the content from all the expansions will now level with you until you ding level 61. The only difference you see from choosing a particular expansion is the selection of dungeons in the dungeon finder.
they have my deepest sympathies.
I started in Legion so it was pretty good.
had I started this game with BFA or SL, both would have made me quit WoW in a few weeks.
Its not that terrible a punishment. It gives some insight into how the game works for new players, is pretty effortless even then, and gets the player’s character to level 10.
As for being forced to do BfA, I see people saying that once you get to a certain point int he BfA questline, you can go back and choose another expansion via Chromie. Although I cannot find a blue post on that (would love to see a link to it if there is one) if that is true you can play with your friend wherever they like.
As far as crafting is concerned, get your friend to learn vanilla crafting, you can buy them some of the cheap low level leathers and they can work on it to get to a level where its useful. Or you could be very generous and buy them a couple of heirloom pieces.
Pretty sure the only game with a worse new player experience is Destiny 2. At least Bungie recognized it so now you can completely skip it and they give you everything you need to start doing real content lol.
get a legendary bow and that this would lead me to become the best hunter.
