Yes. This has been a thing since Legion, or even arguably WoD depending on the stuff you consider “skips.” There weren’t much stuff one could skip back in the day prior to Legion but you could, for some stuff, say “I have heard this before” and one could skip ahead to stuff.
I have some faint memory of this being a thing during WoD to some quests or the like, although it would just skip the story you would still have to play the game. Ya’ know, the thing you are still expected to do to this day.
I sincerely don’t understand why “playing the game” is a high bar of yours.
And then it was do these things, then go to the place the expedition set up, talk with a dragon, get more campaign quests, go do some more things, go move with dragon to help some babies… then more campaign questing…
You talked to either Ebonhorn or Wrathion. You were given two quests to talk to three people to get them to go on the expedition. They didn’t ask you to do anything. You went to the dock, turned it in, skipped the cinematic and hopped on the boat/zeppelin.
If I read what the OP wants correctly, they just want the first intro sequence (Dalaran questline) to be skippable to the first Isle of Dorn chain once you’ve done that once. That much should have been allowed once you’ve done the intro. The other niceties such as world quests and events would still need you to complete the campaign to access. If I remember correctly, there weren’t any world quests even at 80 for me until I completed the campaign on at least one character.
They may be remembering the initial chain of quests once you got to the Dragon Isles. The intro itself was thankfully brief. But as with this expansion, Dragonflight didn’t open up things like world quests at all (at least not in full) even at LV 70 unless you had done the campaign.
I found out the hard way for both DF/TWW that just getting to max level doesn’t unlock anything for other characters, and keeps many things locked even for your max level character(s) if the campaign isn’t done. The reason I ended up in the “find out” phase was because my first character through both expansions was my second rogue, which is a dual gatherer, which is how I leveled.
I doubt the OP wants everything opened up for alts for free, just the intro questline in Dalaran. That much is reasonable to ask for since it’s both rather boring, but also if you aren’t swimming in AH bought gear on your characters or aren’t wearing high end gear from the previous expansion, a couple parts of the Dalaran chain are excruciatingly overtuned, especially the final “boss” fight. The only saving grace for that fight is that if you die, and you will if you aren’t able to heal through the damage due to not having high iLV gear and your class not having any real healing ability (like mages), is that the final “boss” doesn’t return to full health when you die. It retains the damage you already inflicted. But the Dalaran chain is rather tedious, especially if a lot of other players are in your shard and are killing things before you can tag them yourself.
If you already completed the campaign once you can skip it. AFAIK wow always been like this and I started in 2005. Of course I enjoy the campaigns so I always complete them once.
But of people don’t even want to play the campaign even once . That’s weird. It’s just weird. You are playing a game for fun right ? You paid money for it right ? Not playing the campaign is wasting some of your money. But hey you do you.
Finishing the content you want to skip at least once before you can skip it has been standard yes. There is a single exception where technically you don’t need to do the wod intro in tanaan, but the skip is also so obscure and out of the way that most people don’t know it existed unless specifically told by someone who knows.
I really miss the simplicity of how WoW used to be.
When it first came out, you logged onto your level one toon with one quest in front of you, and then you could go anywhere and do anything. The only thing stopping you was your level. Now you have to do A, B, and C, to do X,Y, and Z.
I’m not even speaking from nostalgia, it was just so much more relaxing. Truly felt like I was part of the world doing whatever I wanted. Now you have all the NPC’s yelling at you to do stuff…feels like a mall kiosk. Those NPC’s are chasing me down and wanting me to buy their cell phone cases.
Then why are you even complaining. Don’t do it then, nobody cares. You still get access to M+. You still get access to raids. If you don’t care for the solo content then congratulations, you’ve already skipped it.
You don’t even need to “finish the campaign” you need to finish the story through all the zones that were in at release.
That’s four zones of just the main storyline quests, which might sound like a lot but it’s really not. You can even do them while leveling another character and it’ll count.
