Yeah I wish I had played for vanilla too
I had a wonderful time in hardcore mode on classic. season of discovery is hopping, but it started to feel a bit more like retail to me. but in classic there is great story, and it feels like actually being in a world vs some kind of game lobby half the time as I feel in retail.
The other nice thing is that the dungeons and raids are quite approachable … except in hardcore, you might want to avoid them if you try hardcore 
I can’t even do any of the new raids. No one is playing them anymore and i never got to join because work. I still want to do the season 2 raid but no one hosting it. Im a casual player to.
What qualifies are more friendly? I guess thats the issue here. Because with this statement…
What makes a dungeon and raid approachable?
Here I feel like you are comparing end game actions of retail with leveling actions of Classic.
You definitely have the option to level slowly and enjoy the story in Retail.
Leveling in retail feels very different than leveling in classic. The main reason – scaling. I find leveling in retail to be decidedly un-fun, but leveling in classic to be quite fun simply because in classic you get more powerful as you level, and in retail you get less powerful as you level.
For one thing, seeing what is going on is very difficult in this game and you tend to need addons. Most new player won’t have addons or even know what good ones to get. For example, in many games if someone is suffering from a poison they will glow a pretty obvious green. Good luck looking at a character model in WoW in a dungeon to see they are suffering from a poison spell.
Now, I am not anti-addon and am a weakauras author (I have made some tiny addons as well). But I do wish that the game itself provided more information so that addons wouldn’t be as necessary still. If I can see something without an addon I won’t make/use one for it.
Again, having clear mechanics that people can see and understand on their own. Having to watch a video on how a fight works because it isn’t obvious after seeing it the 10th time is not something new players will by and large be prepared to do. I remember protesting this myself – that everything has to be looked up from external websites.
While there should be many hard things in the game to find, figuring out that the boss is, to use the same example, putting a poison on someone with no in-game feedback is rough.
Even after watching videos, and reading guides, sometimes I still have moments where I have no idea why I just died without essentially looking at a log (usually Details! is OK).
Classic has a cohesive story built into everything. If you go into a dungeon chances are you know why you’re in there.
In Retail I have no idea what’s going on. I didn’t know who Arthas was for quite a while, when I asked a friend about it they laughed at me! haha
In classic you can get an item in the open world that is useful in a dungeon and even raid, in retail the open world items are basically useless in group content.
There’s a lot more going on in retail, however most TV shows have a catchup segment where “last week on x show” gives a quick recap. I think for big story points a catchup would be helpful. A library could be nice to show cut scenes a player might have missed
Since I “started” in BFA … who is Sargeras anyways? I get he was really tall and went against the titans or whatever. The old gods? very vague on them. I got AOTC from N’Zoth but I didn’t know what was going on. One lady in my guild thought Wrathion was hot haha – I only recently learned about his origins from a Bellular video.
The game relies far too much on external sources for lore. But in Classic era? You get the whole story. It feels complete. And there are many mini stories that also feel complete but separate.
BTW I did eventually learn who Arthas was by watching a youtube video
The fact that you need addons to do end-game high level content like +20’s or hc/mythic raiding is just crap design choices from blizz. and ive heard people say oh nah you dont need them theyre just helpful, lets face it; if you are mythic raiding or doing high keys and not using addons you might aswell just ask to get reported.
alright so, as a new player. heres what you need to do.
first, you gotta download a program.
then, that program will download some other programs.
those programs will allow you to play the game at a high level
make sure you tweak those programs that were downloaded from the other program so you can have maximize efficency. good luck
By far the #1 thing that makes this game difficult for new players is that it’s difficult to play with your friends and other guildmates right away. Chances are that your friends are playing on max level characters, and you are starting a new one. Unless someone starts an alt to level with you, they won’t be able to join you on their max-level mains even if they wanted to. So many quests are phased and scripted, it breaks very often. It’s just not a fun experience.
Honestly the entire leveling process is pointless. The entire relevant game occurs at max level. Just let people start at max level. The quicker that a new player can get to the point where they are playing in relevant group content with others, the better. No one wants to join an MMO just to grind a new character alone for extended periods of time before even being able to play with others.
As long as that is optional, I have no issue with that. I do not do dungeons or raids and enjoy the leveling experience and I don’t think I’m alone in that, so having two paths works for me. The End Game path or the Questing path.
Might cost money, but there is already a character boost feature to start at max, or almost max, level.
Wait, what?
Not to cherry pick one thing. Just taking a break from work and this statement jumped out at me.
The status quo right now is that every single dungeon is related to the story in that zone with a quest that directs you specifically to that dungeon and tells you why.
You’re not doing mythic raid and+20s anyway. Everything a new player does doesn’t require add-ons.
Oh yeah but then when you do content that the game is centralized around you better download a program for some other programs and then get a 4 year college degree to play the game.
the whole point of the argument is that these things are not easily accessible to the new player, you have to go out of your way and research each and everything and its such a massive timesink chore to DO THE ENDGAME CONTENT!
Yeah, makes it confusing when you purposefully cut off the last half of my sentence.
People want to be able to jump in and play with their friends. Of course there should still be things that they need to grind, but not as a prerequisite to being able to play the game at all (as is the case with leveling).
For example, we are doing Darkheart Thicket this season in M+. I did actually do the quests to go into that dungeon at one point really far back. The problem was … WHO is Malfurion Stormrage? I was so confused when doing the questline because I didn’t know who this guy was that everyone was talking about.
Now I know he’s a powerful druid married to Tyrande who I met in wow classic, so obviously he’s important but he’s still a bit of a mystery to me. And he’s supposed to be a central character.
So I didn’t personally feel like I got a full background of that zone from doing the quests in the zone. To get a full background I would have needed to go earlier, or watch a video … or I don’t know frankly.
Even in the modern new dungeon, dawn of the infinite – and the campaign quests – Malygos is another name I had to look up. I ended up reading some wiki articles about him because he was mentioned so much in the campaign and was a total mystery.
TV shows do a great job doing a recap. I don’t get why wow can’t?
Yeah I’m sure a lot of people would love to play the game but then you see the barrier for entry and you realize the true meaning of sunk cost fallacy. People just resort to the argument that MMO’s have lost their novelty or appeal to this generation, but its not the case. Everyone got hyped when riot announced they were making an MMO, and palworld seems to be popping off with viewership too. its the game issue, not the genre 
while true, I’m sure, this post doesn’t help blizz fix anything for new players. they need info. what is hard for you? what is annoying? any idea how any of that could be made easier for new players? what would help you?
What barrier?
Is a survival game, not an MMORPG.
Ok. So you are comparing end game activities to leveling.
The dungeons associated with dragonflight all have those tie ins. The dungeons associated with leveling all have those tie ins.
M+ is a break from the norm for very specific reasons.
You don’t run m+ for the story. It’s not a story mode.
But all of those dungeons were definitely introduced to us through quest lines and the story. So implying that doesn’t happen anymore is not quite right.
This game has been like since half way thru original…
People used to make new player guilds to help guide people. Then they realized they could make gold off them and started empty guild vaults of all the stuff those new players would put in there.
That’s when things started to get bad as the social scene goes.
I mean just the fact that a new player appears in a city…and is just bombarded with trade and services scrolling so fast they can see anything. How default isn’t just separate windows for them is beyond me. It’s the first thing I do on a new character.
Those dungeons also now have a story mode for people, called Follower Dungeons.