Shadowlands leveling and new players

Community General Discussion
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I am somewhat excited for Shadowlands, mainly for customizations and it’s new leveling revamp. Sure, their still going on with the dumb little scaling to make this happen (and too be far, a lot of RPGs does this scaling nowadays but still manage to make you feel weaker or stronger then without making the stuff irrelevant, Skyrim anybody?), but now at least we can pick which expansion to go level though, and Blizzard is updating the zones (while also allowing us to go back and forth in times) so it will make some modicum of sense story wise ( i say that, i actually don’t know how well it will work out), along with giving us a new starting zone where everybody can start in, acting as a huge and beautiful but boring tutorial zone. And also speed up the leveling up to an insane degree, which i don’t find that as a particularly good thing. Honestly, the leveling speed is just fine enough as it is, but i digress.

Let’s get into my main problem here, and i’l quote this little tidbit from WoWhead.

New Players:

  • 1-10: Exile’s Reach (new newbie zone for all players)

  • 10-50: Battle for Azeroth

  • 50-60: Shadowlands

Experienced Players:

  • 1-10: New modern/existing racial/class Starting zones, Exile’s Reach (this wasn’t in the official thing, i added this here.)

  • 10-50: Any choice of the 8 expansions

  • 50-60: Shadowlands

The choice to level up where you want to go doesn’t happen until after you stopped being a new player… eeeeeyeah… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I’m not the one to care or focus primarily on new players, since a lot of them wouldn’t care too much of this sort of thing, but it does rubs me the wrong way they have to level though the new starting zone/Battle for Azeroth first before they get a chance to do a different expansion. Shouldn’t they have a choice from the getgo? What if some of the New players look at the racial/class starting zones and think “oh cool, i want to go though that!” or Mop, TBC, Wrath, Legion, even WoD and want to go though that, but they can’t and can only go though BFA?

I mean, if i were in charge, i would do something like this.

All Players

  • 1-10: New modern/existing racial/class Starting zones, Exile’s Reach

  • 10-50: Any choice of the 8 expansions

  • 50-60: Shadowlands

Maybe there’s a good reason for this? Is it to ease the players into the game? … Well Classic exists, and that eased players into the game no problem without railroading new players into a set linear path until level 60.

Is it to catch players up to speed on the story? could be, but BFA really is one of the more weaker expansions in terms of story, especially if you never played or see anything Warcraft related. Could non-fans or people who aren’t familar with warcraft play WoW? absolutely. Could they get a good idea of what has happened so far from just leveling though BFA? i don’t know.

Is it to show off the idea of WoW and what you will be doing during leveling? again, why BFA? BFA is also isn’t particularly the strongest in leveling either, it does have it’s usualy assort from Legion and WoD, with bonus objectives, treasures, rares and so on, but it’s nothing particularly exciting, especially with the mission tables which unless Legion and WoD, doesn’t reward XP for your PC, and the Islands doesn’t really hold up in comparison to MoP’s scenarios which are story-driven, but instead a mad dash collectathon to raise your artifact power’s level.

Is it just a test to pass before seeing the rest of the game?
a redundant question, but i do see this inevitability bought up from time to time, and it has to be questioned. I don’t have a problem with this too much if the test itself is pretty good, or at least decent. And again… why pick only BFA? :man_shrugging:

Let me throw a speedtrap: you can level up in BFA if you really want to, i apologize if i sound like i’m discouraging you from it. That’s not the main issue i have, my main issue is they are locking new players to one expansion until they become “experienced”, and this wouldn’t be any different if it’s Legion, WoD, MoP, Cata, Wrath, TBC, or even Vanilla, when one of the features of shadowlands is you can level wherever you wish to be.

Rant over, i hope Blizzard, if you ever read it, make it so all players, new or old gets a choice to level up where they want. For the rest of you, sound off in the posts, giving your own thoughts, ideas, opinions, disagreements, agreements, midagreements, all that.

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New players should maybe just be forced to do BFA for 40-50 or even 45-50 if they want them to know the story. There’s just too much to explore to restrict them to BFA for 40 levels.

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I think BFA is preferable for new players. I don’t want to see other zones again. The quests in BFA make more sense in getting current lore, even though some of that lore is subpar, the quests are better. I play every class, so have hit every zone many times. If I do end up deciding to level for heritage armor. I would probably do Cata or vanilla. I got really tired of the quests in all other zones.

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Pigeon-holing new players into BFA quests 10-50 is straight up asinine. BFA quests sucked. I’m trying to get my wife into playing, and she will for sure quit if she has to level in the sh*thole zones that are BFA.

The new starter zones sound wonderful. Don’t restrict new players to BFA 10-50.
Retarded idea.

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I like that it teaches new players to interrupt in the tutorial. Hope they learn it.

Restricting players to BFA makes them understand why they are in shadowlands. Also the zones are super cool and unique if you read the story.

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I heard the total leveling time is like 12 hours. Does BFA have enough content for that?

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That’s what i’m unsure of.

BFA has island expeditions, questing, dungeons and pet battles. But what about it’s end game stuff exactly? :thinking:

Would they be all available during leveling?

Also, did you accidentally replied to me? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Yes, mis-click. Someone was saying that they don’t think BFA has enough content for 40 levels, I was pointing out that you level through that in 12 hours. I’m guessing there is enough content for that.

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None of what you mentioned is necessary but questing. You can completely avoid war campaign, Dungeons, islands, rep grind, azerite, pet battles, essences whatever.(I know you didn’t mention some)

I read someone on the alpha forums say it took 11hs from 1-50 and he said it was a pretty pleasant experience. I for one agree I think it’s a good place for new players so they won’t think the games as horrible as running across the map multiple times for a quest in nether storm or how spread out northrend is, or God forbid level in the water zone in Cata.

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These are choices to partake in, even questing. If you just want to grind and kill mobs or farm mats all day then that’s cool by you. Heck, the latter is how doubleagent leveled to level 120.

Kinda odd and a bit skeptical that it takes 12 hours to get to 1 - 50.

BFA and Legion haven’t completely eliminated backtracking. And there’s nothing inherently wrong about Backtracking. Especially to get themselves familiar with a zone their in. I would say that backtracking should be more rewarding cause you are sending them all over the zone.

As for Vashj’r, well, never too late to design the controls to work in the air and underwater… :goggles:

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“Super cool” is very subjective and of coarse the zones look pretty, but that’s every zone… and once you get past the “it’s so unique” phase, what is exactly good about it, if i may ask? Cause i never heard of this used for justifying the restriction.

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The leveling speed might be to the fact he wasn’t new to the game, new player would take longer. Maybe 15-20h? The tester wasn’t in any heirlooms or anything and had no xp boost. But he also wasn’t new to the zones (I’d imagine)

I agree, but it’s definetly not nearly as bad as you do a quest in Outland and have to go to shattrath just to return to Outland. BFA and legions back tracking actually led to more quests. Mostly.

Rip Vashjr I honestly think it was a great idea I jsut didn’t like the execution, still a beautiful zone.

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Even then, i would be skeptical of that.

I just think it’s more of a “wait and see” kind of thing so we can see what’s the average leveling speed from these new players. Cause 20 hours is still very short for this kind of game and leveling up.

I don’t want 6 months either, i just want a happy middleground where it’s just the right speed. …Well right speed with a smogaboard of content on display, but i digress.

I honestly quite like the zone, but i understand the player’s frustrations with it, cause well… trying to AoE underwater is actually non existent until you get down to the ocean ground, and taking a part in the Z Axis is a bit of a mess for a game that mostly takes X and Y Axis into account.

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Are they really going to force new players to go through the worse leveling zone in the entire game, for real?
Damn, poor newbies :frowning:

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Well, whether or not BFA is good or not is subjective. What’s the expansion name is they have to go though first, whether it be Wrath, Legion, Cata and so on, that’s not the issue i have.

The issue i have is they are forcing new players to go though one leveling zone (expansion but… Potatoes, Pah-tacos) in the entire game instead of having a choice to pick any of the 8 they have from the get-go.

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In the case of 1-10, it’s a matter of teaching value and polish. The cata-revamp starting zones have very little value in terms of teaching newbies how to play. In the case of the Worgen and Goblin zones specifically, both are absolutely dripping in old scripted gimmicks in various states of brokenness. Gilneas especially is shockingly broken at times, and that’s not what you want new players seeing.

In the case of 10-50, it’s simple polish. While I prefer Outland and Northrend myself and will be leveling most alts through them, the older xpacs pale when compared to the newer ones in this aspect. Arguably that polish isn’t fully there until WoD/Legion – MoP was like near-release beta of the current mode of outdoor content.

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i wouldint wanna be a new player in wow right now tbh or shadowlands for that matter. both because of the listed reasons and anyone who has been playing long enough and or reads these forums knows the second reason

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And to elaborate on this some more, requiring Exile’s Reach for new players has one other advantage: because it’s a single zone used by all races and classes on both factions, time spent on keeping it up to date with class changes, bug fixes, improvements on rough spots, etc is easily justified and well worth it.

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Fair enough, but i still believe the players should have an option to opt out of the tutorial or not taking it if they don’t want to.

Considering how shockingly glitchy and buggy BFA and almost everything else has become since the 7.2 update, i don’t think any players want to see any of that. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I do agree that Blizzard needs to well… fix the starting areas and polish pretty much everything.

Well i’m going to tell you right now, over the coarse of 8 years of playing WoW, i never once seen missing water squares and buildings flickering in and out when i stand near an important place in WoW ever until BFA. Obviously somebody fixed the missing water squares by 8.2, but the flickering buildings near island table are still there, not to mention the camera glitch from 7.2 is still in the game, and animations constantly freeze up at random, which has been happening since Legion first began and all the other junk i have noticed from Legion, BFA and even WoD.

The Newer areas they look better, but they are only a step or two up from Cata in terms of polish from going gameplay glitches to graphical glitches, which neither are good.

Will it? i mean isn’t Exile Reach, lorewise, takes place somewhere during at the start of Shadowlands? What will it become after Shadowlands? would their be a new Exile Reach taking it’s place?

Or is it just one of these weird situations where it takes place outside of the main lore and can be placed whenever you want it to be? I mean, theirs a few races that wouldn’t fit anywhere down the line of the past until they were introduced in their respective expansion. I mean, sure. Vulpera, Zandalari Troll, Kul’tiran, Dark Iron, Blood elves, Goblins and Pandaren. Fine, we can accept they have been here since Warcraft 1. But what about Void Elves? Draenei? Gilnean Worgen? Mechagnomes? Mag’har Orcs?

I apologize if i skipped straight to the story aspect, but (to me) it does seem to tie in the other aspects your talking about, being kept up to date with all class changes, bug fixes and such.

I would like you to elaborate on that point though, if it’s not too much trouble.

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Outside of the camera bug, that sounds setup-specific. I’ve played BfA under both Windows and macOS with two different CPUs, one Nvidia GPU and two different AMD GPUs and haven’t seen anything like that. The most I’ve seen was very early on during 8.0 when certain weather effects could trigger a hard lockup under macOS, but that was fixed and it’s been gravy for me ever since.

IIRC it’s currently positioned to take place some time during late Legion, but since it’s an island without any hard ties to any specific timeline (not unlike pre-cata EK/Kalimdor zones) that’s pretty easily changed.