I realised this morning that of all the races I have made a toon with, I only have one Goblin, and that was my original one.
And the reason for that is - the length of the starter quests.
Out of curiosity, in order to test it out, I created one earlier, equipped it with heirlooms and set out while the experience buff is active. At this point I am approximately half way through the questline and I’m already level 17.
Now, a lot of the questing is fun - extremely goblin-centric with the use of lots of mechanical doodads and explosive items and some cute interactive stuff - but the main issue is the inability to get back to Kalimdor so I can quest with a friend.
With partysynch and the ease of cross realm questing, that makes creating a goblin very frustrating. The leveling rate is fine, the quests are fine - but I’m forced to do them alone unless I do it with someone else who is making a goblin.
So if anyone from Blizz is watching (which is probably a forlorn hope) could we get some option so that, at a certain level, we can skip through to the last series of quests that allow us to board the boat and head off to the mainland. At this stage of the game (since these have been available since Cataclysm) it’s not that much to ask.
PS: take a look at the quest list. Its rather mindboggling.
Personally, I’d like to have an option on character creation to choose not only what race your character is, but where they start in the world. There’s really not a need to require a given race to complete a given quest outside of faction, so I think at a certain point one needs to just give people the option to go through whichever starting experience they want.
That wouldn’t be so much skipping the Goblin intro stuff so much as it would be opting to do a different intro. There are a few cases where that wouldn’t really be feasible (for example, the Blood Elf starting area calls for a character to use Arcane Torrent), but it gives a player just a little more agency, and I think that’s a good thing.
In the case of Goblins, that might be a tough sell. Their remote banking option is actually built into the questline, both in its lore and how one obtains it. They’ve have to build some functionality to get around that, which although not challenging might be more time spent on content that already exists than they might want to commit to.
So many people were skipping out of the Worgen starting zone and growing up to be human druids that they had to automatically give worgen forms to characters when they reached the appropriate level even if they hadn’t done those quests.
I was under the impression all races will get a chance to choose how they level in shadowlands, either the standard way or via the new shared starting zone. I guess we’ll know more soon
Isn’t that supposed to be one of the changes the leveling revamp is going to bring (at least in part)? We can do the racial start zones, or the new starting area they’re adding in Shadowlands.
I mean, personally, I love the Pandaren start zone and don’t want to skip it, but I readily admit that the quest to guard the healers while they heal Shen-Zin Su doesn’t work as well when you’re the only person there. If I were in a rush to get a new panda to the mainland, I might be tempted to do a different area.
Worgen and goblins were introduced together, and both have an agonizingly long starting zone. I was desperate to escape Gilneas by level ten, but I still had to go through to the end. (speaking of which, I remember worgen smashing through the windows but the hunter who caught me said I killed everyone there. The windows aren’t broken…did I ?)
I wish it just took you to Orgrimmar after you leave Kezan. Did not mind the quests in Kezan but man is that island boring. At least Worgen starter area is kinda neat.
Take a look at the link I put in and compare it to the Pandaren starter zone. I think you will find its nowhere near as huge. I’ve been working on this goblin for about 2 hours now (with a break for lunch) and I’m still going.
Goblin and pandaren have the longest most drawn out quest zones. Worgen aren’t so bad. Wish Blizzard would let you start at level 20 if you choose to on core races and skip starting zones.
This feels like a pretty direct result of our anemic spellbooks. For all the problems Classic has, you earn a lot of stuff leveling from 1 up through 20, making the process feel rewarding and somewhat addicting. Modern WoW should be like that too, except without Classic’s various rough spots in the 1-20 experience.
Agreed. I don’t even play Classic, but I do wish people were less black and white about it, specifically because of stuff like this.
While parts of it are dated and clunky, there are things it did really well, also - if there weren’t it wouldn’t have an audience. I hope they’ll take a look back and use that to inform their design in the future.
I’m not saying we need to bring Classic into Retail, warts and all, that’d be silly, just take a look at what it did well, and adapt the spirit of that design into the modern game.
I kinda wish instead of a level squish they just started everyone at level 60 and balanced the game around our first level being 60. Then they could make levels matter, talents matter, etc.
Yeah, the last Worgen I made I did the graveyard glitch to get him out at lvl 1. Too bad Goblins don’t have a similar glitch, I just can’t bring myself to do that starter zone again.
I recently started a belf paladin, and I had one ability with a 6 second CD. Then I got a second ability, with a 12 second CD. And I honestly wondered how I initially stuck around long enough to get enough abilities for an actual rotation.