Returning Player with Concerns and Suggestions

Guides Returning Player Help & Discussions
1

Like many other posters, I played WoW religiously for many many years, left, came back, left again, came back again, etc.

Now I’m back and while I can say the game is gorgeous and full of so many fun new mechanics, it’s also overwhelming and confusing for folks who are returning and having to navigate all these new systems and mechanics. Sadly, it seems like the game doesn’t really take any of that into account, which really is a shame.

What I’d love to see is something in the game that has some sort of running tally of what mechanics and systems you’ve unlocked and the ability to target whatever your goal is and then have the game very clearly indicate where to go, who to talk to, and what quests are required to achieve that goal.

For example, I loved the Garrison system and want to go back and unlock that for my new character, but I have no idea where to even go or how to start that questline. Sure, I can “Google it”, but IMO, the game should offer at least a little help. Currently, I’ve done something related to that questline because I have a hearthstone toy that is supposed to take me to my Garrison, but when I click it, it says I’m not eligible to go there, but gives no way for me to know HOW to get eligible or what I need to do to unlock eligibility.

The game clearly keeps track of your quests, so it would be really helpful for the game to tell me what systems and features I’m missing out on and how to go about unlocking them. Having to constantly alt-tab out and go to WoWHead and type in those /commands to show true or false on quests until I figure out which one in a line I’m stuck on is kind of preposterous.

Likewise, with all these low-level quests I seem to be required to do to progress certain storylines, it really seems like it would make sense to offer a cash payout option as a quest reward (especially if/when your level is dramatically higher than the level of the quest you’re turning in) so that I’m not stuck toting around my new 8-slot bag reward until I get to a place where I can sell it.

Also, there really needs to be an in-game walkthrough of these new crafting systems. I’ve tried watching videos on YouTube and I think I’m more confused now about how Engineering works than I was when I first opened up the new crafting menu interface.

I guess I just don’t understand why there’s not an NPC that will ask me “What are you trying to do?”, give me a list of things I haven’t activated or unlocked yet, and let me focus on that one thing and highlight those quests I need to complete until I finish it.

2

Never gonna happen. Blizzard outsourced the provision of information to the playing community long ago, and it’s far too late to take it back now.

There was a time when this made sense. Looking things up was part of the challenge, and when you looked things up, you got a definite answer, provided by another player.

Now, the systems are so overlapped and overgrown, and abandoned by Blizzard, that the Titans themselves couldn’t figure it all out. Blizzard are really good at abandoning things when the devs don’t want to deal with them any more.

And you haven’t even mentioned phasing yet. Wait till you hit some trouble with THAT!

I find that AIs are often, but not always, good for answers, if you explain all the elements of your current situation in your prompt. But you do need to give them all the info. Try Perplexity AI or Lumo AI or Grok AI if you don’t have an account with Claude or ChatGPT. Where they go wrong, mostly, is when they look up information that was correct in a previous expansion, but has changed.

It would be nice if Blizzard trained an AI to do the same and connected it to an in-game character with knowledge of your quest and achievement history, but it’s never gonna happen. Huge job, and would need constant updates every patch.

In the case of your Garrison Hearthstone, you got the Toy on another character, and your current character inherited it, since Toys are account-wide. But this character can’t use it, because it has never been there. To open your Garrison, go see Chromie in front of Stormwind Embassy by Stormwind Lake, and ask her to send you to Warlords of Draenor expansion. Then just follow the quests.

In the case of doing low level quests, there is also a small gold reward, but people often want the pieces of gear, so that they can use the appearances for transmog.

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3

That’s so unfortunate. The Game Dev in me weeps a little.

I appreciate your comments, though!

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4

I feel ya..
I’m on the same boat.. played for years, left, came back, left..etc.

Now when I log on it’s very overwhelming.

There is an addon that may help somewhat called BTWQuests. You’ll have to download the individual expansion packs, but it shows every zone for that expansion, then once you select the expansion then zone, it shows every quest story line and “tree” of every story line and if I’m not mistaken it shows where each quests start.

It won’t completely relieve you of the overwhelming monstrosity that retail has become, but it at least gives you an idea of where to start or what quests keep to the main story line of a zone.

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