What a strange time to return!

Guides Returning Player Help & Discussions
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I left the game just as Cataclysm was starting because my first daughter was born. I still hadn’t gotten used to the changes it had given us, and mainly was still just happy having a Death Knight that was close in level to my mage.

Fast forward to 2020. I saw that WoW classic was out and said to myself “I’m working under quarantine and really could use an escape, why not?” It was fun, a lot like I remember.

After a while, though, I started to think of some things added around the time of BC (And I’ve read the speculation of WoW Classic BC, we’ll see, I’d be very happy to have that). So I thought I’d login real quick to WoW and just look at what my characters look like.

HOLY. CRAP.

Here are just a few thoughts that went through my mind:

1.) What in the ever-loving world is with all the focus on Pandas?!

2.) Where are my characters? There are 150 servers or so, and not one of them is marked that I have existing characters.

3.) Okay here’s a server with characters, But why are my names all FUBAR to Half-Name-numbers?

4.) Okay, fine. Names got recycled, most of these can be renamed. However, This must be an alt server instead of one of my main servers… because the highest character here is in the 20s, and my last character was level 60.

5.) WHY IS MY DEATH KNIGHT A LEVEL 23?

6.) WHAT the HECK is a “Level Squish?!”

7.) Okay, Okay, I can handle this. Lets just take a look at my main charac-DEAR GOD WHY DOES HE STILL HAVE THAT HELMET ON I THOUGHT I HID THAT HIDEOUS THING.

8.) Transmogriwhatnow?

9.) What’s an ilvl?

10.) Okay, the first thing I’m doing with my Alliance characters is visiting Stormwind (I thought it was destroyed? Ah whatever) and visiting this guy with my main and… WHAT happened to my buttons bar? What in the heck are all these floating buttons about???

11.) I still haven’t figured out the buttons, but I got my hood transmogrified. Time to do the same to my Pala- Wait… Where is my mount? Wait WHERE ARE MY BUTTONS? WHY ARE ALL MY BUTTONS GONE?

12.) Okay… Signature Abilities… vs Covenant class… Oh wait those come out in a few weeks… then wait what? What’s a

13.) Maybe I’ll just figure out the storyline. …Seriously? We went back in time? Oh but we really didn’t? But we… did… Twice? No, we… My head hurts.

14.) I have no idea where this character is. Or where to go. Or… Wait, there’s a companion app?

15.) HOW DO I USE THIS THING?

16.) hides in Classic until Classic BC and Classic WotLK are released so he can slowly be introduced to changes again

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Welcome back to the insanity of the many changes involved with another expansion!!!
Pandas involve one of the expansions you missed (it was after Cataclysm).
The disappearing act and name changes - After so long away, the names are freed up for others and the active realm log is cleared for each player over time. For name release its after two expansions inactive, may be about the same for the realm listings.
Level squish - people were taking to long to get to endgame with the prepatch cap at 120. Now cap is 50 for a few more weeks, then it goes to 60. This means every one at 120 got squished to 50.
ilvl - also means Item Level, I think it replaced what you might remember as gear score (before my time). It also got squished quite a bit, my toon had around 400 item level and it is now around 100.
New appearance stuff: You can now transmogrify your gear to look like something else. Don’t like that ugly helmet? check out your wardrobe ui and see if another design is there you like better and get the transmog guy to change it. Think reforging for looks :).
Mounts are now mostly account wide with exceptions being class specific and I think the PVP ones (that may have changed tho). Faction specific ones tend unlock for both (that wintersaber cub you may have gotten, now has the horde ravasaur unlocked for you be default).

Storyline - way too much to cover there, check out Nobbel on youtube for lots of lore videos.
Companion app - don’t worry about it. Its only useful if you did a couple of the expansions and want to pretend to be in control of minions remotely. Battle.net app is better for communication with friends.

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You’re all over the place here but I’ll attempt to answer what I can.

There was an expansion in which they were the protagonists. If you get a chance to play through the storyline at some point, I’d recommend it. There hasn’t been any focus on them in over 6 years since it ended though.

Over the years there have been updates to the servers which require manually logging into the servers to get them to show a populated list. If you don’t know which server you had characters on, you could try inquiring in the Customer Support Forum.

Name lists are sometimes freed up from characters that haven’t logged on in years so that somebody else can claim them if they want to.

Skipped 4 and 5 because you seem to have found the answer. The level squish happened because of the inflation of levels was getting clunky for the game design. A few weeks ago, max level was reduced to 50 (to be 60 when Shadowlands launches). The aim of this is to make it less daunting for people to get to the end game content, as well as to be able to speed up the leveling process without making it seem like you’re getting a level every 2 or 3 quests.

I mean… you haven’t logged on in years. Some settings will have reset themselves.

Most items that you equip will give you their appearance that you can then apply to any piece of armor of that type by paying a small gold fee to a transmogrifier NPC. You can view your available transmogs by visiting the transmog NPC, or by viewing your collection tab in the (shift + J) menu.

If you remember the gearscore addon that was popular back in Lich King and Cataclysm, it simply viewed a hidden attribute of gear that has always been in the game since day one, and assigned it a separate number value based on their own modifiers in the addon. This hidden attribute was item level, or ilvl. Blizzard simply did away with the need for the addon once it became popular and started showing the item level they already had assigned to the items in the tooltip interface.

Stormwind wasn’t completely destroyed by Deathwing, it just took a pretty big hit. It actually didn’t get finished with it’s redesign until 4 years ago when Legion came along.

Spells and abilities have changed a lot over the years, so things are often moved or replaced on your bar when the abilities change. All of your current abilities can still be found in the spellbook, and any extra abilities will be found in your talent menu, if you choose to take that talent.

Mounts are also in the collections menu (Shift + J). They are no longer separate items that you carry with you. Your paladin mount will also be found in this menu opposed to your spellbook.

Don’t worry about covenant abilities yet, you will be introduced to them with the rest of us when Shadowlands launches.

We’ve gone back in time many times, even dating back to burning crusade and cataclysm via the caverns of time. If you’re talking about the warlords of draenor storyline though, we didn’t go back in time technically. We went to an alternate pocket universe. :slight_smile:

These are way too vague to answer.

Oh… I guess I just wasted 20 minutes replying. :expressionless:

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Thank you for the replies. Honestly I was figuring things out as I went along, a lot of what I said was meant to be tongue-in-cheek as to what was going through my head, rather than actual questions I was posing. (Props to Zipster for replying line-by-line though!)

I did actually consider hiding in Classic until Classic-BC comes out, but I was thwarted in that endeavor by my five-year-old daughter, who saw daddy playing and wanted to make a “pretty” character. I of course had to roll a blood elf.

But walking through as a new character turned out to actually be extremely helpful. I skipped that isle nonesense and went straight to the elven homecity, and was glad I did. Walking through eastern plaguelands as easily as the starting area is a little weird still to me, but whatever. I can roll with it. Especially since compared to classic, I’ve been leveling and making gold at a ludicrous rate.

The cataclysm tailoring threw me for a loop, but once I figured out I couldn’t actually GET anywhere that provided that cloth yet, I felt a bit better about it.

One thing that is strange, getting your new character to about the same level as your old main character has been squished to, then realizing your main character has a flying mount already and a crap ton of high level items, while you’re still running around with your old starting gloves and cloak on your new character.

The only thing that still perplexes me is why I’m receiving mage quests to go into dungeons that don’t populate on my dungeonfinder. I’ve only got 2 dungeons available. Is it because I don’t have crap for gear yet and my ilvl is half of my actual level? I certainly can’t get through those levels by myself, but if I can’t join a group, how am I supposed to get through those quests?

I’m sure I’ll figure it out as I go along, but I’m grateful my kid wanted a pretty character. Daddy’s having more fun with her than she is.

…Now if they’ll only bring the regular servers back online… I logged into classic for now because the rest of the servers are down, and frankly, going back after 2 days learning new WoW is bizarre.

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I think that if you go to Chromie outside the Embassy in Orgrimmar and set the timewalking to Cataclysm, you can queue up for the “Classic” dungeons. (Cataclsym timewalking includes the revamped old 1-60 zones.)

Some things slipped through the cracks with the squish, so there will be some weirdness. (I haven’t looked if they’ve fixed it, but you could get the druid quest that sends you to moonglade long before you get the teleport Moonglade spell.)

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Udiza that was exactly it. I went to visit Chromie (I hadn’t even visited that zone before) and sure enough, setting the time to Cataclysm showed all the zones back up.

I’m guessing it has something to do with my having been gone for a long time. Thanks again.

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Why would you walk through Eastern Plaguelands? From Silvermoon there are portals directly to both Undercity and Orgrimmamonar (or however you spell it).
Also, next new character you make, I’d recommend doing the island thingie. It’s a fairly good introduction and you get some useful stuff. Except for boots, for some reason.

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I like the plaguelands. =p

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Wait until you find out about Vulpera, friend.

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I’m a returning TBC-Cata player. This is SO familiar. My vanilla priest is at level 51. :smiley:

The thing that’s freaking me out is all the unfamiliar dungeons and raids. I haven’t run anything from MoP, Legion, BFA, or WoD. It’s all new to me. It’s so many boss mechanics it feels like going back to school. I know there are cheat sheets in game but people blaze through dungeons so I can’t exactly say “hey hold on while I look this up”.

And who thought it was a good idea to have two Dalarans?!? I still can’t keep which zone belongs to which expansion straight. I have a Garrison that seems largely useless, a druid dream world that also seems largely useless, and a barely leveled Heart of Azeroth…

I usually play a healer and I’m genuinely afraid I’ll try raid finder and just wipe the group. As much as I’d like to see Ny’alotha in the scourge gear I just ground out, I’m probably going to just wait until Shadowlands and hope it starts to make sense.

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im so happy i saw some of the tongue in cheek before i pulled a super lengthy reply like the other person did haha

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the 2 dalarans are because of the “timing”. its confusing, but its the most direct answer lol.

garrisons are largely useless unless you want some achieves, a couple a pet/mounts/heirlooms.

raid finders come out now a couple weeks AFTER the raid was released, and theyre always on the PTR first, so people get to make videos for the rest of us haha.

go run ny’alotha raid finder. you’ll just blend in as a healer (there are 5 of you) and 3/4’s of the group will be people like you. seriously. I ran one last night and a pugged normal and i was literally teaching the whole time.

i wouldnt beat myself up to much, trail and error is a good way to learn.

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Healing LFR generally isn’t too bad. The system generally puts more healers in than needed, which takes the pressure off. (And if things go wrong and they decide to go after healers, the wrath is generally directed at the one or two jerks who signed up as a healer for the fast queue and are in dps specs hoping no one notices.)

You will need to do the cloak questline to queue for the last couple bosses, which may not be worth the effort right now. But, still, if you want to see the earlier ones, I’d say to go for it.

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Thank you, that’s helpful! It’s also great to hear that people like you are willing to teach returning players. Much appreciated.

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Good to know they stack extra healers. Raid finder came out after I stopped playing.

My concern was more around screwing up on targeted mechanics like “if you are the bomb get out of the raid”. A little reading should turn those up though.

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Thanks for the encouragement. I zoned in, got the first three bosses down. A quick glance on Icy Veins ahead of the raid was plenty of info and it turns out I can still raid heal fine even after quite a few years not playing. It was fun to see the fights and I see why LFR isn’t too bad. Mistakes didn’t kill me (usually).

I tried on the shaman too but ran her totally OOM despite having slightly better gear. Oops. Resto shaman healing has changed a lot more than druid. That one will take practice.

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