The new player experience. (Lore / Story)

Community General Discussion
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Was watching a video of Zepla’s lately (about FFXIV) and she responded to a viewer who said that they were having a lot of fun with WoW, but as a new player felt like they went to the starter isle (Exile’s Reach), then To BFA’s isle/Boralus, and then to Dragon isles. They remarked how they had no connection to the rest of the game or it’s wider narrative.

Blizzard has recognized they need to improve the new player experience and stated as such in the past. Hazzikostas I believe also discussed this.

I think 20 years of lore is going to be hard to parse for any newcomer to the game. Naturally, someone could go and watch a Nobbel video which is a good few hours to cover everything. But I feel like there could be something done that offers engaging gameplay while also allowing newcomers to experience the story of Warcraft in maybe an abbreviated fashion. Chromie time is there and is a great option. But there is such a breadth of content that the player would essentially have to do multiple instances of Chromie time to get the various events of the last few expansions. And these may likely be out of context.

There have been bits and pieces here and there that highlight past events. I think about the 20th-anniversary event with lorewalker Cho. It would be a bit boring if you just listened to Cho give one long exposition dump. But there has to be some way they could deliver an overarching view of the key story beats in a way that is engaging for new players. I am not suggesting something as extensive as a cataclysm overhaul.

But maybe something that guides the player on a linear/guided tour of Warcraft past? Maybe even having Lorewalker Cho/Chromie guide the player. We saw the gates of Ahn Qiraj again in the 20th anniversary event (which could have been better than collecting orbs). Could go something like this…

Warcraft 3 - Invasion of Burning Legion / Scourge and rise of the lich king and invasion of Quel Thalas and resurrection of Sylvanas as a Banshee / Conclude with a scripted scenario at Hyjal. Introduce characters like Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan, Thrall, Medivh, etc.

WoW: Vanilla - (Vanilla had a lot of disparate elements. I am not sure how best to handle those (Maybe opt in vignettes like the stuff with Onyxia?). You could see the founding of Durotar.

Burning Crusade - The major element to highlight would be the dark portal and 2nd invasion of the burning legion (not counting the well of eternity saga). Illidan and what he is up to in black temple.

Wrath of the Lich King - You would again encounter Arthas as you journey to Northrend which ties back to the WCIII events the player witnessed.

And so on… Focus on a few central characters that serve as a lynchpin for the player to become attached too. You simply cannot cover everything.

But ideally going through this sort of guided experience through Warcraft past would introduce new abilities to the player. I don’t think you’d want it to be so long that they end up at the current expansion level. But maybe 10 levels or so (Same as Exiles reach). You could keep it brief and then direct the player to appropriate zones for content they want to learn more about. That way the current zones and quests can still serve to deliver more nuance. Plus you would still want to encourage the social aspect of the game rather than just shunt new players off on their own.

I may not have explained it the best. But what do you all think? What are some ideas you have that could improve the connection the player has to the world in game? Just telling someone to play another game outside of WoW or to Watch a video I don’t feel is ideal either because it’s passive and takes you out of the game you want them to become engaged in.

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That is fabrication, new players are automatically sent to the DF campaign.

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Maybe they started back in DF as a new player. We don’t know.

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I wouldn’t say that helps matters much - if anything, it further muddies the waters because Exile’s Reach implements Horde vs. the Alliance to a large extent, and suddenly in DF, they’re both at peace.

To OP, yeah, the only real solution here is for Blizzard to do a whole lot more work on this issue than they are clearly going to bother with… so might as well do nothing, I guess.

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Attempting to teach new players the entire history of World of Warcraft is a fools errand.

The development team should double-down on story arcs that last 2-3 expansions to give new players story entry points.

Each new entry point should also receive at least one new starting experience that acts as both a tutorial for the game and also an introduction to the most important existing story elements and most relevant characters.

Chromie Time is a really cool way to let players experience past stories, and I think it absolutely needs improvements (like Campaign Quests and story mode raids), but throwing new players into it immediately won’t fix anything.

The truth is that Arthas and the Lich King basically don’t matter anymore. Even remnants of the Scourge can be quickly explained without talking about the origins. New players don’t need to know until their ready to dive deeper.

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The problem with that as I see it is that War Within itself has plot and story beats that directly hinge upon existing knowledge that was set up a few expansions ago. Like Magni being stone/Speaker of Azeroth etc.

You also have Anduin and why he is feeling down in the dumps. If you are a new player that is just coming into the game? And you end up starting in Dragonflight? You miss a ton of stuff that is relevant to the current expansion. Let alone know who these characters are. The only connection the new player may have then is that they know Xalatath is the big bad but they don’t know what led up to her being a threat. There’s a lot of missing context.

I don’t think there is any easy answer. If there were Blizz may have addressed it already. But I do think there has to be a better way of presenting the story and narrative context. They do it a bit where you can ‘rewatch’ the relevant cinematics or what have you and even that feels a bit passive and like a bandaid. But Beyond that there isn’t much for new players to latch onto. I think they may see these characters and understand that they are supposed to be important. But they don’t have a lot of context why. Telling someone to watch a 3 hour lore video which is an exposition dump itself isn’t ideal either IMO.

I feel like its hard to get new players invested in the new current story when they feel as though they are disconnected from the world and broader story and characters. Worse is that some of it is kind of sequestered off into books and external media. Some of that they have worked in; in some capacity. And others have raised the point that if you are just coming into the game? Major characters will start calling you champion and the new player is probably thinking “But I haven’t done anything yet?”

To your point about New Campaign Quests and story mode raids? I think that kind of echoes a comment I saw in another thread and I like that avenue.

What they could do is have a new Chromie Time leveling option where she takes you through all the zones from beginning to end with a few quests in each. It would be set up so a new player could see the history while learning the mechanics of their class.

Make it opt in. The dev team could curate a series of quests that guide you through key points in time across various zones. I think that would be an approach that makes it engaging where the player is learning as they play and it would then feel more organic. Some quests are designed a part of a chain, but Blizzard could “break those chains” and allow the player to do them out of their original sequence and as part of a new player experience. I am not sure what coding that would require.

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The difficulty of WoW’s story lies in the fact that it is not a story told like many other games. For most of this game’s life, there has been no overarching narrative. In some ways it has been an organic world, where events happen, often interconnected, but sometimes not.

There is no throughline. And it would probably be more effort than it’s worth trying to set up a throughline.

WoW is not FF14. It does not have an overarching narrative and is not structured like a single player visual novel interspersed with occasional combat elements. It is structured as an organic world and you are an adventurer plopped into it.

I think WoW could benefit from something like the unending codex that FF14 has, more. WoW already has the Adventurer Guide. I think adding in lore bits and wiki-style keywords inside the game would be more helpful for those who want to learn about a character or what events they might be tied to.

WoW’s strength is its wealth of history and worldbuilding. It does not, and likely never will, have a narrative that is as good as FF14’s. In FF14 you can legitimately say “It gets better 300 hours in”, and it does, and it is worth it even though that is an actually insane thing to say. Meanwhile forcing a new player to play through several hundred hours of WoW would not answer most of their questions or give them a profound sense of having completed a long journey.

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The biggest problem for a new player in my opinion isn’t that they don’t get the full story because that’s just how RPGs work. I didn’t complain that I didn’t know the backstory of the Absolute in BG3 for instance right from the gate, or who Dagoth Ur was in Morrowind. You learn the story as you go.

In my opinion the problem is that so much of the story is tied behind end game content that you skip while leveling. So, starting at DF is good because it ties into TWW but you don’t see ALL of DF so you jump around in time within your own character progression which is odd.

What I think they should do is somehow incorporate the story beats of the raids and .1 .2 storylines into the leveling experience. And with Storymode/follower dungeons I don’t see why they can’t do this. And that gives a new player a great jumping off point for the rest of the story and they get to treat it like any other RPG without getting bogged down in the 20 or 30 years of the past. They learn that through osmosis like they do in any other RPG.

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They need to improve current player experience before they can move onto new player experience

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The game needs to have a new MSQ that goes from start to finish across every installment of the game and it should be 1 to (max lvl -10) and keep the last 10 for the current xpack. It should send the player to basically every zone or almost, I believe we get flying super early now so that would work, or put in some teleportation, and the goal would be to spend about 1 lvl in each zone doing ONLY a MSQ that talks about the role of this area in the story. Some areas have way less to talk about, if something has to be skipped for a smooth experience that’s what it should be.

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If they can force me to do every patch of every expansion in FFXIV, then new players can parse 8 hours of leveling just fine.

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They should integrate Class Order Halls into the New Player Experience when/if they bring Class Halls back.

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I wonder how they’re going to handle the “new player experience” when Midnight goes live.

If we’re in a Saga, it would make sense for the first expansion of the Saga to be the leveling experience 1-80, then have 81-90 be Midnight. So I wonder if they’ll change the default experience to the War Within, or continue with Dragonflight.

Also makes me wonder how they’ll handle it when the Last Titan is the latest expansion.

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Chromie Time should scale to 80. Players should be able to go to the different expansions and experience past events at level 80. Important events like unlocking Ahn Qiraj and the Burning of Teldrassil should be Story-Mode scenarios.

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I always thought that Chromie time would be a condensed path that boils down each expansion to only the most important story chapters. Player should be able to advance through the expansion in half a day and have advanced 9 to 10 levels (exploring five zones, completing the key story point quests, as well as any required dungeon with a team of followers).

It would look something like this:

Starting zone levels 1 to 10
Meeting Chromie at capital and start your path through expansions.
BC 10 to 18
Wrath. 18 to 27
Cata. 27 to 36
MOP 36 to 45
Legion. 45 to 53
BoA. 53 to 61
Dragon. 62 to 70
TWW. 70 to 80

Note we have more expansions than increments so I skipped those not as vital to the lore ( WoD, and Shadow ) but they can be added as I have given each expansion about 9 levels and some might be able to be done in less.

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