Not really, no.
My point was in classic they tie into each other in many ways – for example the gear that you can get in the open world can be useful while in dungeons and even raids.
I’m not really sure how you got that from what I wrote frankly
You can use the gear in the openworld for dungeons and raids in retail too lol.
This has been the case since the end of WotLK / start of Cata. We’re 14 years beyond that now, so it’s not too surprising that the game basically survives based on long-term players rather than fresh blood.
I’m sure Blizzard would love to get a surge of new players again, but frankly I don’t think anything they could do would accomplish that in meaningful numbers. It doesn’t really matter how much they do - this is a game from 2004. It’s ROUGH to get a new generation to dive into a 2 decade old video game. It’s old as hell, but not old enough to be “retro”, and that’s not a good place to be.
That isn’t to say they shouldn’t try to clean up the new player / leveling experience. It’s a mess. But it won’t magically put subs on the rise again.
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I thought they had a good oppurtunity to attract new players if they made classic free 2 play back when that came out.
It was so popular on twitch I’m sure lots of fortnite kids woulda checked it out.
How do you do fellow younglings?
There is, but from what I have seen, a lot of people in Newcomer chat, are not new new, but returning players. A lot of players from TBC or Wrath who, for some reason or another, returned to the game. Not all of them, maybe not most of them, but many of the new players are really returning players.
A lot of them are Classic peeps checking out retail.
I had an epiphany about this the other day. Wow is designed specifically for players with 20 years of experience and nostalgia.
That’s why we keep rehashing old dungeons.
That’s why class designs are so complex.
That’s why private auras exist.
That’s why they never back off on adding new systems to learn.
It’s all incremental design.
This game isn’t for new players. I would not recommend this game to a new player.
Old game is old. Getting people into WoW now is like getting people into Super Mario Bros when WoW had first come out in 2004.
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I disagree, unless you’re talking about LFR or very low keys. this is gear that is replaced immediately
In classic there are certain options for different specs that are quite viable in raid
Pretty sure you can get Heroic level gear from open world stuff, or at the very least Normal level gear. The open world stuff will pretty much let you completely skip entire difficulties in the game.
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I didn’t even know you could separate those. I looked it up a few days ago and people said to just install a , yep you guessed it an ADDON 
to block the spam advertising post/chinese sellers etc.
You can get champion level gear from outdoor content. I don’t think higher than that. Whereas I think certain pieces on classic are worth a lot more than champion level. For example mages use Robe of the Archmage well into raid. Another example, rogues are still wearing blues in some slots and even hold onto a trinket until AQ40 (Ahn’Qiraj)
More like trying to get new people to play original Nintendo back in the 80’s. Most people don’t even know what Pacman is anymore. Who here even knows what original Metroid is?
I was referring to Super Mario Bros from the NES (released 1985).
The game is overwhelming for truly new players. I’ve played since 2005 and even I agree with that.
Blizzard has done some good in this game but to be frank … they suck at new game experience and even returning player experience.
They just don’t know how to do it it’s terrible. One of their answers was exile rise or whatever it’s called.
That was an improvement but more should be done.
And honestly I think it’s worse on the opposite end of experience- if you level cap but then leave the game for a few months and come back…yikes!
Fifty three quest markers will overwhelm you, story quests aren’t marked to indicate order you should do them if you want to make sense out of the story.
Like why? Blizzard can’t do better than a bomb of quests splatters all over your map? Then there’s no guidance on any order for them just “boom do this stuff - have fun - later!”
Because you made this statement.
The only way that happens with retail is if you ignore dungeons while you level and when you initially hit max level and ONLY focus on m+. The end game activity.
Where as classic is all about leveling. Nearly all dungeons in Classic are designed for leveling purposes. So its not a fair comparison.
You are ignoring all of dragonflight’s dungeons that exist while leveling through dragonflight, to only focus on the end game pillar of M+.
If you wanted to say “sometimes I dont know why I am there in a dragonflight dungeon” that would at least be more accurate. But to imply none of retail dungeons ever give you a reason why you are there, thats just silly.
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I don’t recommend wow to people anymore. Even with someone who knows what to do coaching you the barrier to entry is too high.
Problem 1: The leveling is a hot mess. I sit you down and I tell you “ok you can play through these zones from these expansions in this order, or you can talk to the gnome and just do 1 of these 8 expansions, or you can spam dungeons, or battlegrounds.” Right there I just gave you a dozen options that all lead to the same end result, with more or less similar effectiveness, and all the choices are equally meaningless because no matter which one you chose you will not be prepared for how wow plays at max level at all. It’s just a 10 hour long speedbump to enjoying the game and if I tell you to use the boost you get 1 shot to pick a class and hope you like it, otherwise you get to do the grind.
Problem 2: PVE content at max level does not adequately prepare you for the next stage of PVE content. LFR does not prepare you for normal and normal does not prepare you for heroic. This goes down to the dungeons too where normal heroic and even low level mythic+ do not prepare you at all for doing higher keys. You start running into trash or bosses that will do a thing you used to just ignore and heal through but now it 1shots you.
Problem 3: the things you need to do to prepare for endgame just, aren’t enjoyable. There’s nothing fun about looking up your class, copypasting the top spec and simming all your gear options, it’s just a timegate. Pugging your 8 m+ a week is awful just by the nature of pugs and raiding requires you permanently book out 1-3 evenings of your week every week until you decide to quit. PvP is absolutely full of the worst of the worst of the players you can encounter in this game and even if you get past that the actual PvP experience is entirely subpar to basically any other game that lets you fight another player.
Problem 4: The things which aren’t the endgame also aren’t that enjoyable. Pet battles is incredibly stripped down pokemon where everything just happens way too slowly since you can’t skip the animations, questing relies on a good story which wow just doesn’t have anymore, dragonracing is ok if that’s your cup of tea but you’re still better served playing something else if it is, and collecting things from old content is the most overwhelming checklist of things to do you could imagine, an absolute sisyphean task.
Basically, there are many other games you can get now that don’t come bundled with all this nonsense entrenched players already got past because it got dripfed to us over the past 18 years, and that don’t cost over $100 or an extra $10 a month to play either. WoW will eventually run out of players as it cannot onboard new ones, not today or tomorrow, maybe not even for another 18 years but it will happen someday, and I am perfectly ok with this reality.
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no, they can’t.
new players can’t access Chromie time.
that would be terrible advice for a new player.
hahaha wut?
that is probably the most bizarre use of “timegate” i’ve ever encountered.
how many of those can you walk away from, and they’re still active 5, 10, 20 years later when you get the itch to return?