World of Warcraft is the Worst Game I Have Ever Played As a New Player

Community General Discussion
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Dragonflight was my first expansion and let me tell you this game is IMPENETRABLE to those who haven’t played WoW before. Get ready for some WILD TAKES. As a FIRST TIME WOW PLAYER Let me give you guys some respect.

BUTTON BLOAT
You all are beasts at gaming, most of you could probably wipe your butt with me in PvP and probably PvE content too. I have never struggled to keep up with a game like this in 20+ years of gaming. You guys push more buttons in a raid than I have my entire life, it is WILD. I am getting better, but it took nearly a YEAR. Here is what I struggled with.

I played a Warlock because Warlocks are by far my Favorite class and when I tell you, I had 25-30 Buttons on my screen within 3 HOURS of playing for the very first time in my life is ASININE. How are you going to garnish new players when you are having them operate a literal Space Shuttle. It is beyond to much to maintain a younger audience because it feels like playing a PIANO that took years to master.

ADD-ONS
This simple concept has coagulated and morphed into a beasts that takes weeks to months to fully understand. EVERYTIME people have to adjust settings in an add-on for the very first time they usually have to watch a Youtube video or even several to understand ONE ADD-ON sometimes. Most just plug them in and HOPE they work correctly.

This is simple unsustainable guys. YOU can handle it and be amazing but that’s only because you have been at it for years most likely. Barely any other games have this and if you don’t in this game you are simply at mercy to any higher content because the game is HEAVILY designed around these Add-ons. If you don’t have certain Add-ons in PvP you will just lose straight up. These Add-ons allow a player to go beyond what a normal human brain could handle and we are MOCKING players who don’t use them because lets be honest, they won’t be able to handle most upper end content with them. Period. Add-ons for PvE and PvP are ruining this game.

GETTING LOST AS A NEW PLAYER
My god, this game is a MAZE for those who don’t know what’s going on. The portal room in Stormwind is a literal MINE FIELD for new players. The first time I was so excited to go throw all the portals and explore the WoRLd Of WArcRaft or so I hoped. Went through a portal, looked back… No portal. I was stuck in the middle of NOWHERE with my hearthstone on a 25m cd just fighting basic mobs to pass the time until it was back up. I never looked at the portal room the same way again.

You can literally start a whole new expansion by accident just by accepting quests. The quests that begin expansions or Major parts of Expansions should be a different color quests sign. Because the questing in this game is beyond a mess and relies on Add-ons to make sense of it.

LEVELING IS WAY TOO FAST
It should have taken me WEEKS to get a character to MAX Level. Nope, about 20-30 hours of just playing dungeons and questing will get you max level. THAT IS ISANITY. NO new player that plays WoW for the very first time will understand the intricacies of it in 20-30 hours of gameplay. I would argue it should take someone 40-60 hours to get a character to Max Level.

You know nothing and can contribute basically nothing but being a body in Raids and Mythic+. 90% of people cannot just playing for two weeks for the first time and even do a NORMAL RAID. With the amount of buttons, signals, mechanics, and possible teammates shouting and fighting you have no IDEA what’s going on. I didn’t know how to properly interrupt for 3 months until I go more into in a Mythic+ setting and I’m still trash at it.

ABSOLUTELY ZERO SOLO CONTENT
This one truly aggravates me because I play most games solo and will group when I need to. The fact there is NOT AN ENDGAME SYSTEM AROUND SOLO CONTENT IS WILD. I literally could not get better for the first two months after reaching max level because Open World Content does not equal Mythic+/Raiding. I wanted so bad a system like Mythic+ for solo content SO I AS A NEW PLAYER CAN GET BETTER ON MY OWN.

This is the most frustrating part to me in this entire game. They give you literal toddler pressing 2 keys type content for 70 levels only to hit you with the HAMMER when you enter a Raid or Mythic+. I WAS NOT PREPARED. PLEASE GIVE NEW PLAYERS SOME TOOLS TO GET BETTER AT THE GAME. SOLO PLAYERS NEED INFINTE OR AT LEAST VERY CHALLENGING CONTENT SO WE CAN GET BETTER AT THE GAME BEFORE GOING INTO A RAID OR MYTHIC+.

P.S.

The game doesn’t teach you ANYTHING about endgame content or how to Raid/Mythic+. The very first time I entered a normal raid as a Warlock they asked me to open my closet for TP and I didn’t even know what they were talking about. They kicked me. GJ BLIZZARD.

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They wanted some toilet paper.

Yeah, I have no clue lol.

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This one makes me think you aren’t actually new. a new player would be absolutely overwhelmed with how many quests there are.

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He’s talking about actual content, not babys first MMO quests.

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I am a new player. Dragonflight was the first Expansion I ever leveled 1-70. Quests do not equal Solo Endgame Content.

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“This is my view of Dragonflight as a completely new and first time player”

has achievement for leveling 5 toons to max level 3 years ago

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Lmao

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Why even lie about being new mr played in BFA

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Now time for the totally believeable narrative that this is their cousins account or something.

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I Played BFA and used the boosts to get Max Character. I did one raid and quit. Check my Achievements.

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You boosted 5 different characters?

Good for you., I guess.

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Because I used the boost to get max level and did one raid. That’s not playing WoW IMO. At the time everyone told me leveling and BFA was bad so I just used the boost.

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I have to admit that WoW is not very friendly to new players if they have no other person to explain the game and class mechanics to them. But there is Wowhead and other websites which will do that.

There is solo content, but not a huge amount. Will change in the next expansion.

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Hated the game so much he payed hundreds of dollars to not play it

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I agree the game is awful for new players, but this literally comes with time played.

I have 1 addon and it’s the talking head addon. You don’t need them friend!

100% agree. Any not NEW is an absolute abomination or implemented abominably. It’s a terrible experience for new players.

That’s the end game PvE crowd for you. There’s a general lack of people having balls to stand up to a-holes in the game and it’s sickening.

I 100% agree, there should be a full on tutorial experience for players to get them from level 1-60. It should explain their class, their role, other player roles, and maybe even the stupid PvE lingo, on top of explaining “the story so far”.

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depends on the spec, affi has a lot of buttons, destro has like 4. Not every spec is approachable to new players and thats fine. League of legends has champs for new and experienced players, so does WoW

for a new player, not one single add-on is required. LFR is an afk, clown fiesta and a add-on wont change that. As a new player, just don’t download them. Even normal doesn’t require them

this is fair, WoWs new player experience is a 1/10 IMO. The starting zone is great, but then it drops you into a massive world with a quest marker telling you to go to the last expansion. Nothing is explained and its easy to get lost if you stray off the path a bit

This makes me think you’re not a new player. How would you know what leveling “should” be? Leveling isn’t the core gameplay loop of wow anymore so why should you spend a ton of time doing it? blasting out dungeons is the best way to teach you how to play wow nowadays

WoW’s solo content is weak yes, but the new Xpac is addressing that and its not like there’s 0 things to do. WQ, collections and the mage tower are all waiting for you. It’s not a mountain of things but its way more then nothing

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Prefer vulpera for that :crazy_face: :beer:

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Does anyone ever buy the “I am new” crap? New players probably don’t even realize the forums exist since every thing comes through twitter and most people use reddit.

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Regardless of how “new” the OP is, I think it makes some good points. I’ve played for 18 years and I get frustrated with things being unexplained, miss a lot of things – I still have never done a dragonkeep assault or whatever it’s called because I had zero idea where it was without looking it up. Having to go to an external site and look up things just to understand wtf is going on is awful.

I would have never played this game if I came into it new lately, especially not now. I would’ve fumbled through it, become frustrated with not knowing or understanding what was going on and left. I picked up Ark when it was fairly new, stumbled around for an hour having zero clue of what to do besides throw my feces and die and just refunded it. I would’ve done the same here – including the feces throwing – if I was brand new.

Way back when, you got things slowly, and even though dungeons and raids didn’t have a primer, most people were new, and we all stumbled along. Now most of the vets like me are impatient with new people, unsure whether they are actually new or just trying to get a free carry. But the instant toxicity from everyone (myself included at times) doesn’t help at all.

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I been playing for years (18 I think?)

I still have the following criticisms of it if I imagine myself as a new player

  1. The game’s UI has gotten MILES better over time but I’ve never felt like people SHOULD have to invest time and energy into UI addons just because the base UI can’t manage to communicate to ppl. Prime example? BM Monk stagger requires a different UI to manage effectively.
  2. On the topic of add-ons; we still need too many to play this game efficiently and that’s just dumb. I accept it as a necessary evil; but I don’t agree that it should HAVE to be this way.
  3. Everything costs too much gold, period. And this problem has only gotten worse as the game has gotten older. Players don’t make enough gold from world quests/dailies to pay for anything that is crafted or mats to level their own professions. You either have to get super lucky with the AH and continue to play the AH as a mini-game or you have to spend IRL money to buy gold, which always seemed a bit scummy to me.
  4. While I am one of those ppl who like to blast through TW dungeons during event weeks; I can sympathize with newer players NOT liking this playstyle as I’m sure it’s confusing to them and doesnt really teach them how to play.
  5. If you WANT to try and follow the plot (good luck); there is too much “homework” one has to do to understand the story. This has ALWAYS bothered me. Just tell the damned story in the game, that’s what we’re paying a sub for. I’m not interested in reading YA fiction to figure out why this character did that …etc
  6. There is a lot of inconsistency in the ruleset at a basic level that I think can be confusing and annoying for new players in general
  • Too many enemies are immune to stuns/snares. I’m not talking about “boss” mobs in instances, I’m talking about lots of open world stuff while leveling. Why give us all these CC abilities if you make half the enemies people encounter immune to them? WTF
  • Mobs can cast through walls (but we can’t); and they chase you from here to eternity if you get low HP (this is even worse in Classic so I guess it’s been toned down a bit in retail over the years, but its annoying)
  • Mobs can just “evade” when they decide they don’t want to play anymore. This is esp. annoying for leveling tanks or anyone with AoE dps who are trying to round things up
  • Dazed – Stupid AF out of date mechanic that needs to go away as it also creates issues with rounding up mobs for quests. Why is this still in the game?
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