Pre-patch "new player" experience, and why WoW retail is still dead to me

Community General Discussion
1

TLDR Retail is still a shallow, incoherent point-and-click snorefest.

Not coming in here to hate, just giving my honest opinion as someone who quit at the end of Warlord of Draenor and thought I’d give it a go. I just want to explain why I won’t come back to this, and why this content won’t bring people like me back.

I’m playing Classic from time to time with my bros and enjoying the nostalgia, I figured I’d try the tutorial stuff and then get on with the “real” game (whatever that is) just for a hoot. Yeah, it’s still broken.

So level 1-10 is just tutorial stuff, I guess it’s ok for what it needs to do, explain the basics. I won’t get into any of the gameplay balance stuff, tutorial isn’t supposed to be “real” gameplay anyways.

But I have no idea who I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. I rolled a Tauren shaman and I got no explanation of where I’m supposed to come from or why I’m fighting for the Horde. Just “go rescue our dudes” or something, I can barely remember.

Obligatory shipwreck (so original!), do some fetch stuff, some sparring stuff, etc etc learn the basics. Run around and infiltrate some ogre base. Who are these guys? who knows, who cares, just follow the arrows and click on the yellow punctuation marks.

Then go to Ogrimmar, get greeted by a cinematic explaining who the Horde is, short and sweet, does a fine job I guess.

Then they say “go see the warchief”. Right, because a recruit who just joined the Horde 135 seconds ago is going to have a private meeting WITH THE FRICKEN WARCHIEF. Makes sense.

The warchief is now Sylvanas, I had no idea… I thought it was Thrall again, but either way you get no real introduction. I know who she is from my past WoW history but I can’t imagine a new player would know why some undead Elvish banshee with sweet curves and bewbs would be leading a city of Orcs. But I digress.

Then she and her lieutenants send me on some mission to go get some Troll, I have no idea who this troll female is. We get attacked on our ships and go to Zandalar, some troll empire in the middle of the ocean hundreds if not thousands of leagues away. Why? Because reasons. This troll princess (apparently she’s a princess, I didn’t know this) then says “we might as well help you because you just rescued me” (I did? When did that happen?) and then I meet their king. Yyes, that’s right, me, the new recruit, who theoretically joined the Horde 14 minutes ago has already met the warchief, a princess, and the King of an empire.

Then that same princess, standing next to Baine Bloodhoof, warchief of the Tauren (to whom you haven’t really introduced me yet, he just kind of shows up), we are going to go on some missions or something, I guess.

After another 10 minutes or so of completely mindless gameplay I totally gave up. It’s the same stale, shallow point-and-click “gameplay” that got me to quit before. My character has, for all intents and purposes, infinite health and mana and kills everything that crosses his path in 2 keypresses.

Nope, I’m not just going to mindlessly chase yellow punctuation on my screen interacting with NPCs I care nothing about for a bizarre story with no linearity, sense of progression or importance, all while being literally invincible where gear choices, stats, gameplay decisions and crafting are all meaningless until I start doing mythic raids in two months (or whatever).

What a broken mess. RIP retail WoW. Back to classic for me, which hearkens back to an age when Blizzard knew how to make actual video games which required active player engagement in order to succeed, instead of a point and click adventure where you are Azeroth’s invincible chosen hero because you paid your sub fee.

/bye

18 Likes
2

WoW’s leveling experience has always been pretty disjointed.

First criticism is that most of every expansions’ major stories and story beats are locked behind content that only a small fraction of the playerbase would ever really complete. Originally, newcomers that never played Warlords had no context for why we’re going after Gul’dan and why the Legion was invading after Warlords - because they would have never completed Hellfire Citadel, which provided that context.

What’s being presented now with this pre-patch is more coherence in the story and its progression than WoW has ever presented in the game’s entire history. It was always either you had to complete the Raids at the end of every release, or you had to read the books outside of the game.

5 Likes
3

The beginning sounds kind of like a slam cut of some Snatch rip off. Like you show up, shake somoenes hand, get stuffed in the back of a unmarked car. Now you’re dining with a Nigerian prince after saving his daughter by accident and are in way over your head.

but yeah, I kind of know what you’re getting at. I really don’t envy new players. When I got into wow it was definitely bigger and better than I coudl’ve ever imagined, I lack faith that that’s still a feeling.

1 Like
4

And no person of value will be missed.

You clearly don’t care about the game lore or were willing to give it much of a chance.

Also, news flash, classic also has those same exact lore issues. You are a glorified errand boy but still end up meeting with both your racial and faction leader way early on in your adventures with no real proper introduction to them.

In fact, I’m actually pretty sure when you make a new toon you are given a quick cutscene on why you exist and your origins. I’m guessing you skipped it. Blizzard can’t lore dump well over 15 years worth of Warcraft history before you even get a chance to do your first quest.

39 Likes
5

I like the part where the OP complained about a meeting with the warchief when you get a quest from Thrall at like level 9 in Classic.

34 Likes
6

It’s not the same, not by a long shot. It takes well over an hour just to even get out of the valley of noobs, then slowly progress to the troll hub where you quest for another hour or two.

THEN you eventually get to Org and meet the Warchief.

I’m not saying Classic didn’t have its foibles too, but noobs weren’t tasked with international diplomacy and meeting faction leaders and kings within six minutes of making their toons.

And @ Galabris no, you don’t get an intro scene when you click on the tutorial level. That cutscene you get in Classic Wow, it’s a decent minute-long cutscene explaining who the Tauren are and how they became allied with the horde, and who you are (something like “as a new recruit you must help your tribe” or something, been too long so I can’t remember).

Every time I try to “give retail a chance” I’m disappointed, I’m not going to fall for it again. I’ve been in about 200 combats already and not once did my HP or mana bar drop below 90%. It’s truly sad what WoW has become.

7

WoW classic, best in show traditional RPG leveling experience, up to your 40’s.

But retail end game is so much better. Heroic TBC maybe comes close in different ways, more role based teamwork with CC.

2 Likes
8

Been that way for 16 years. Did you think it would magically change? Also, to your story/lore points. How do you suggest they fit 26 years of lore into a 30 min to an hour long intro questline?

Yea, auto running for 30 minutes to get to quest mobs is definitely active engagement. Bravo.

15 Likes
9

It made my butt itch

10

Still better than any MMO on the market, like it leave bro, just don’t let that door hit your asson the way out :wink:

3 Likes
11

@Thequixote You’re right for sure, but I don’t care about end game, nor did the vast majority of WoW Classic players back in the day.

12

I am kinda scared to start a new toon to see how the leveling is just by reading the first post.

13

Time spent questing is irrelevant. In classic, you essentially do fetch quests and handle such minor issues and somehow this warrants you to literally walk straight up to your racial and faction leader, without an escort of guards or any kind of check or anything since obviously you can be trusted 100% to not be a spy or anything, and converse with them.

It’s fine if you dont like retail and aren’t “challenged” by it. Classic isn’t hard either…it’s just mind numbing tedious. There is no “skill” in auto attacking or wanding things down and hoping you dont miss or get parried.

17 Likes
14

BfA is pretty straight forward in regards to the story. It’s not a good story, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to see what’s going on.

Exile’s Reach tends to put things into perspective a bit better instead of walking in blindly through a regular starter zone. After that…the world is your oyster. Just go wherever looks most appealing.

15

@Voxplaga Not sure why people like you who disagree with people like me feel the need to be so sarcastic and dis classic wow. There are reasons people like me prefer Classic, it isn’t just because you had to run farther. I’m not going to get into all the specifics, because you’re not going to listen to me and this is already going to turn into one of those arguments where both sides just plug their ears.

I’m giving my honest opinion on why retail doesn’t interest me or others like me (I can guarantee you that my little gang of peeps won’t come back to this nonsense).

16

That’s because there was no real end game back in the day…and when there was, it was literally such mechanically easy content that the bosses wouldn’t even qualify as normal dungeon challenge level today.

So what do you actually get out of this game if you aren’t into it for end game and aren’t into it for story?

1 Like
17

“The community”

18

itd be cool if they did somehow tho.

19

And that’s fine. I can guarantee you that I wont play classic again either. So…this post was kind of pointless at the end of it all. Classic is 16 year old game design. It is a lifeless world that takes forever to traverse. The “great” classic community is possibly the most toxic thing I’ve seen. And the gameplay is boring, slow, and clunky (just my opinion on why classic doesn’t interest me). You enjoy, I’ll just be enjoying retail, or I guess current, since both versions are “retail”.

7 Likes
20

Even people in classic are buying dungeon boosts now, no one gives a sh$t about leveling anymore.

2 Likes