The quest log has a journal that shows you the order in which to experience the main campaign. The campaigns are even separated
They are, but there’s a lot of patch specific side quests for minor features that aren’t listed as campaigns which just all get lumped together.
so this is about side quests?
are any of them even relevant to the “main story” to the point where they need to be done in any specific order?
Not necessarily, but they do fit chronologically into the world building.
the quests from Tarjin are only one per week, so it’s going to be a long wait if they want to do them “in order” 
Valdrakken in particular is a mess. The moment you step foot there you’re barraged with a billion quests.
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I truly think main story quests should be like how FFXIV does it. You have to do them in order, and doing so unlocks dungeons along the way. It’s such a better system.
Logging into an alt that you’ve boosted now is like omg all these ! I can’t even
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One solution to this problem would be for story quests to have a mark to show which season they are from. The normal [!] could have one bar on top for the 1st season, two bars on top for 2nd season and so forth.
That way anyone coming in late could easily do the season in order if they chose to do so.
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Not just side quests, some story quests like the Hidden Reach, Blue DF, Bronze DF, Tyr quests aren’t marked in order
Chromie time lets you do this quite well.
WoW has always tried to expedite the leveling process because leveling was only ever the focus in Vanilla/Classic. The best way to experience all the WoW expansions chronologically is through alts.
Unfortunately, there’s just no realistic way to create a satisfying narrative the spans 20 years of content unless you literally forego any hope of endgame. There was a level squish not too long ago and this was done because the shear number of levels was becoming both daunting and meaningless. (Smaller numbers are easier to read, and more inviting.)
This would be amazing. Though if they went this route I’d want them to clean up the quest log UI a bit. I might be alone here, but even having the chapters with dropdown boxes showing starter campaign quests can be a little visually overwhelming. Maybe having something like a “Dragonflight Quest Log” for miscellaneous side quests, with little tabs on the side for every campaign?
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I strongly disagree.
FFXIV is a single-player game parading as an MMO. The story is the main focus of the game and your character is effectively Jesus (and sometimes Jesus is a bunny boy).
WoW’s main story realistically ended with WOTLK, and everything since WOTLK has been “Who’s the next big bad we kill?” WoW was already heavily focused on endgame activities in WOTLK. It’s become more seasonal over time, but the fact remains that WoW caters to an endgame audience with a wide variety of playstyles in each of the trinity (tank, healer, dps).
Both games are exceptional in their primary focus. Both games should learn from each other, but shouldn’t try to be the other.
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Yeah that’s true. I get that it can be a bit confusing, but it also feels wrong to complain about such large amounts of content
And a majority of the leveling and questing experience in wow is done solo, so I’m not sure why that’s different. It’s the system I’m talking about, not the story. Having a clear progression even if you log off for a few patches is preferable over coming back and being overwhelmed with story quests all over the place
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The majority of leveling is solo for you, perhaps. But a huge number of players will simply jump into LFG and dungeon grind to max level – even with a new expansions. There’s a strong push to group up for quests at times, and many world events are group-oriented. Blizzard has supported solo and group play, but your path to max level is largely up to the player.
In FFXIV, the path to max level is almost exclusively through the MSQ, a predominantly solo experience. While grouping is certainly possible, and some dungeons were mandtory, those mandatory dungeons are now satisfied by bots. (WoW will do this in the future too, but it’s not the same – it’s more of an accessibility feature, less of a common practice.)
In short, the main difference is in perception. WoW is heavily focused on group content. FFXIV is not.
Quick Edit:
- FFXIV is “I finished the campaign, I beat the game!”
- WoW is “I finished the campaign, I can finally play the game!”
Yeah, and adding onto that one of the core reasons FF14 is considered so unfriendly to alts is because of the massive barrier between story and content.
I do think Chromie Time could be more expository for new players, at least. Maybe have an option where she takes you aside and shows you key events related to the time period you want to quest in. WoW’s story and timeline seems like it would be really jarring for new people to get into.
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This doesn’t change the fact that there is still a story narrative and it can be confusing when leaving the game for a bit. When you boost a toon and go to Valdrakken, there are multiple story quests to pick up that don’t care chronologically where you stopped playing. Some people may not care, but it is confusing. I’m not even here to say unlocking dungeons should be done like this, I’m saying that the questing structure with patch quests should be streamlined.
Yeah for me, I think the best idea I think would be still let players see all of them, but you can toggle/filter certain quests by patch release and this would affect what you see in the game.
Technically, if you join late, your chronological order is what is current as the past is technically solved and done with.
Honestly though, I feel like speedleveling is a legitimately appealing part of WoW’s alt cycle, and a part of that is being able to hop between expansions and such.
Though now that I’m thinking about it, a “recommended/story route” in Chromie Time where the XP is redesigned to chronologically take you through each of the expansions’ main stories in order would be a really cool feature.
I just experienced this yesterday, so I 100% get where you’re coming from with this. I think this is mostly a UI thing. Being able to select what quests you see by patch/campaign or cycling through the main story in separate tabs in the quest log would be really great, since right now it is definitely overwhelming and visually cluttered.
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