Hi! I’ve played on and off (~a week or so at a time) around Shadowlands. I am the kind of gamer that really likes MMOs and gets super invested in them. I really want to dive into this game and make it my new main/home; however, every time I try, I end up leaving after a week or two. I think without friends who play the game, I eventually get overwhelmed and/or tired of the solo play aspect.
Even if I play solo, but am part of a friendly guild, I at least know I can try to group up or get help when needed. I’ve joined guilds before, who were initially helpful, but didn’t have anyone truly wanting to just make friends with a noob and/or chill while helping me level (though, I never have entitlement that I should be helped or expect anyone to devote that time to me).
Additionally, I’m a dad (two young kids <4 yrs), have a somewhat demanding full time job, and therefore only get on at nights typically, or whenever I am able to.
My main question is - is this game worth getting into for a casual player looking to just have fun messing around in PvE and making new friends?
Other questions include - how streamlined is the leveling process and how does it work? Any recommendations for casual, friendly (and noob friendly) social guilds? I’m a little concerned about toxic players in dungeons or eventually raids; I have avoided these activities in the past because I had one bad experience. Is it possible for a super casual player to enjoy dungeons and potentially raids here and there? Any other tips, suggestions, etc. are welcomed and appreciated!
*I’m interested in class recommendations too! I usually stick with PvE and typically am more oriented towards ranged playstyle.
Levelling is a joke now. That is the one question I can answer clearly and unambiguously. The world record for levelling is under 5 hours. You can do regular zones to level 10, or the new Island to level 10, and you can then level 10-60 in any expansion or combination of expansions you want with “Chromie Time”.
Further, next month we expect MoP Remix, which will allow you to take a character to level 70 in a version of Pandaria with accelerated levelling and power boosts. Sounds like a romp. So if you want multiple characters at max really quickly, that will be available.
So levelling whatever you want is not even a thing any more.
As for the rest - finding friends in a guild in WoW is not easy. This is WoW’s biggest weakness as a game - it pushes group content as its main pillar while not supporting a casual experience there. Nowadays, a lot of the social end has moved to Discords rather than guilds, and there are a couple of Discords that specialise in friendly M+ runs. I don’t know how active that scene will be in the upcoming Season, though, when competing with MoP Remix. But maybe MoP Remix itself will provide an opportunity.
Hi! I was in the same boat. As someone in college who plays a lot but not really more of a hardcore player, its been nothing but a blast. My personal recommendations is to focus on the content you want to do, want to be a player who mainly collects things? Focus on that, casual dungeons? lots of people for that, casual pvp? even guilds for that! With the new expac I believe they will even have cross realm guilds so that opens more doors for you to find people to play with. Finally I also think finding a group of people that you can relate to outside of purely wow can help, for me that was personally finding a lgbt guild. Ive seen some guilds that are mainly parents who dont have time to be super hardcore, so if I were you I would maybe look for some of those and see if you can roll on their server or join when the cross realm guilds hit.
I really hope you enjoy your time in this game like I have and hope you find people to play with
While leveling up, it’s going to be very difficult to find friends to level up alongside you. Leveling is relatively fast these days that trying to naturally level “together” with someone almost has to be a planned activity outside the game.
That being said, once you hit max level, there is a ton to do. And you can pretty easily find people who are playing the game you want to play. Your intuition about guilds is a good one. There are a LOT of guilds out there and with different game focus, vibes, play hours, sizes, etc. You do need to do the groundwork to find one.
As Gráinne pointed out, these days, guild communication is not done through the in game client much in most guilds. In my guild, I would say 95% of the communication is done through our guild discord and the last 5% is in actual /g chat or in /ra raid chat during raids. If you count voice coms, it’s probably closer to 99%.
The other advantage of Discord is that it’s very low-commitment for someone ‘shopping’ for a guild. When people are interested in joining our guild, we give them discord access more or less right away. They are usually invited to raid with us as a guest as well. In that time, I invite potential recruits to browse back through our discord general chat and raid discussion channels to see if our vibes are good. I’d recommend you do that. You can tell a lot about the type of guild you’re getting into by what the members post to discord.
As far as getting overwhelmed is concerned, some of the large discords (like the “World of Warcraft” discord) has a new-players questions area. I’ve found that even as close to 20 veteran of the game, that channel can be useful to help untangle the messines of WOW.
So If I were writing a prescription for you, it would look something like this:
Take a look at some big wow discords.
Play through the campaign while reaching max level - largely solo
If you have any questions, be quick to ask them in discord.
Hit max level - start shopping for a guild.
Figure out what facets of wow interest you most: Raiding, 5-man dungeons, pvp, lore, collecting.
Find a guild that share your interest, and try to be active in that guild’s discord.
Totally feel you, started sod classic in february for my first ever wow experience. Just moved to retail yesterday in hopes to find a decent grp of ppl to play with! Gimme a shout maybe we can grp?
For the main question up to you if its worth it or not, guild will help a lot.
Leveling process will be pretty straight forward if you start in the basic starter zones. The quests chain to the next areas usually. Map will show quests you can pick up if you missed one. If you started in BFA (battle for azeroth) I have no clue how starting out their works.
LFG feature (looking for group / dungeon search feature) is right now real nerfed down, old dungeons you’ll run across wont be accessible. You would have to manually setup groups for them or more than likely skip them. With Premade Group finder being locked off at 50 makes it even worse.
You’ll run into battle pet quests while leveling those are pokemon-ish leveling system for vanity pets.
Recommend Hunter or Warlock both classes have pets and are generally easier.
If you want to play with other players Battle for azeroth (bfa) did seem to have more traffic than basic starter zones. Like I said though not sure how leveling is at start their.
At your main towns (stormwind city and orgrimar) there will be a npc named cromie that’ll have a quest. She will let you pick the expansion you want to play in and have it match your level. That is if you know what expansion you want to play in.
