World of Warcraft

[pursuitsnail]

It's one of the things that really demonstrates to me that World of Warcraft is basically built around existing players only - there's not even a token effort to include new players in the story, any story, ever. The closest they get is through hero classes - with those classes having a somewhat accelerated "here's what's going on with your character" arc but everything they put into the game is built on the assumption that the player is familiar with everything that came before.

That's a fairly long-standing issue. I rolled a fresh character for WoD and power leveled it up over a week or so, and then NPCs, both major lore characters and literal nobodies, are fawning over this character's exploits and achievements, calling it commander and hero.

Prior to the level squish and shuffling leveling, assuming that new players got a passing knowledge of the plot while questing wasn't that off base. Just, you know, the guy who quested to cap should be treated differently in world than sweaty raiders. Honestly though? I don't want Blizzard recapping my character at me. Guild Wars 2 bothered me with the inconsistency of alternating between defining my character at me and encouraging me to make my own choices. The end result was 'my' character stopped being my character and became the someone else's sock puppet. I'll include myself in the story by interacting with the dude with the yellow exclamation point over his head and murdering his enemies for him.

 

[Retink Retunk]

That's a fairly long-standing issue. I rolled a fresh character for WoD and power leveled it up over a week or so, and then NPCs, both major lore characters and literal nobodies, are fawning over this character's exploits and achievements, calling it commander and hero.

Prior to the level squish and shuffling leveling, assuming that new players got a passing knowledge of the plot while questing wasn't that off base. Just, you know, the guy who quested to cap should be treated differently in world than sweaty raiders. Honestly though? I don't want Blizzard recapping my character at me. Guild Wars 2 bothered me with the inconsistency of alternating between defining my character at me and encouraging me to make my own choices. The end result was 'my' character stopped being my character and became the someone else's sock puppet. I'll include myself in the story by interacting with the dude with the yellow exclamation point over his head and murdering his enemies for him.

You know, this is probably incredibly easy to solve as you could do multiple dialogue tracks that check what achievements the character has. You don't even need to make them that complex, just refer to the guy with all the raid kill achieves as champion and the guy without them as something more mundane like soldier.

That would also make the world feel more real, as you see a ton of champions in most events who are veterans of the previous wars/escapades and you also have the newbies who are just starting to forge their story with this campaign. Hell, we even saw that very thing in a cinematic in Battle for Azeroth when Saurfang talks with Brokhan, you have that champion veteran and the skilled but not exceptionally experienced soldier that wishes to become important. God forbid you reflect that in the game, and not suck everyone's dick at all times.

 

[Kane Lives]

You know, this is probably incredibly easy to solve as you could do multiple dialogue tracks that check what achievements the character has. You don't even need to make them that complex, just refer to the guy with all the raid kill achieves as champion and the guy without them as something more mundane like soldier.

That would also make the world feel more real, as you see a ton of champions in most events who are veterans of the previous wars/escapades and you also have the newbies who are just starting to forge their story with this campaign. Hell, we even saw that very thing in a cinematic in Battle for Azeroth when Saurfang talks with Brokhan, you have that champion veteran and the skilled but not exceptionally experienced soldier that wishes to become important. God forbid you reflect that in the game, and not suck everyone's dick at all times.

And already done in contemporary MMOs, like XIV. (Usually seen with anything to do with the factions in the game. Your faction leader and faction members will always address you by faction rank, occasionally having a different line of dialogue, while other faction leaders and members will refer to you by the neutral term of adventurer or Warrior of Light, depending on how far into the game you are. Very shrewd bit of detail by SEnix, tbh.

Endwalker carries this one step further, and had a main story quest where the people that interacts with you in a scene is dependant on how many jobs you had carried to a certain level.)

Point being, it's definitely not at all hard to do, and I don't think WoW's cutscenes are even voiced so it's just text and some flags.

 

[Rommelbutt]

hey frens, just popping in to say there has been some discussion and we play on turtle-wow now. That one is really vanilla vanilla. If you wanna join -->

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

. Will be making a guild there too.

 

[Tanner Glass]

That's a fairly long-standing issue. I rolled a fresh character for WoD and power leveled it up over a week or so, and then NPCs, both major lore characters and literal nobodies, are fawning over this character's exploits and achievements, calling it commander and hero.

Prior to the level squish and shuffling leveling, assuming that new players got a passing knowledge of the plot while questing wasn't that off base. Just, you know, the guy who quested to cap should be treated differently in world than sweaty raiders. Honestly though? I don't want Blizzard recapping my character at me. Guild Wars 2 bothered me with the inconsistency of alternating between defining my character at me and encouraging me to make my own choices. The end result was 'my' character stopped being my character and became the someone else's sock puppet. I'll include myself in the story by interacting with the dude with the yellow exclamation point over his head and murdering his enemies for him.

I'm not suggesting they rework WoW's entire quest system - just that they trim a lot of the shitty parts and put the "good" parts in a more cohesive order. Let the people who care about the story engage with it in a sensical way.

Currently (Exile's Reach to BFA) it's 10 levels of "Hey let's get off this island" and then instantly "You are the Horde/Alliance's greatest soldier and we need you to be our diplomat and secure an alliance with <FACTION>" - I'd suggest they just make a better 11-30 version of Exile's Reach that's a touch more story focused and positions you a lot better in your own faction.

I don't think WoW players would ever like anything other than "!" -> Quest Objective -> Do Quest -> Return to "!"

You know, this is probably incredibly easy to solve as you could do multiple dialogue tracks that check what achievements the character has. You don't even need to make them that complex, just refer to the guy with all the raid kill achieves as champion and the guy without them as something more mundane like soldier.

That would also make the world feel more real, as you see a ton of champions in most events who are veterans of the previous wars/escapades and you also have the newbies who are just starting to forge their story with this campaign. Hell, we even saw that very thing in a cinematic in Battle for Azeroth when Saurfang talks with Brokhan, you have that champion veteran and the skilled but not exceptionally experienced soldier that wishes to become important. God forbid you reflect that in the game, and not suck everyone's dick at all times.

You can't really use achievements because that system is a mess. The most obvious one would be if you raid on a character (because of raid balance, lacking roles, being melee) that isn't your actual "main". I "main" a rogue but spent a lot of time raiding HPal/HPriest because my guild sucked shit at finding competent healers. WoW forces (by it's design) a lot of "sweatier" players into playing alts for any number of reasons (achivements, titles, viablity in content (aka Arena, BGs, Raids, M+), tradeskills, transmogs, mission tables, etc) so it's not so cut and dry as it would seem on the surface.

And already done in contemporary MMOs, like XIV. (Usually seen with anything to do with the factions in the game. Your faction leader and faction members will always address you by faction rank, occasionally having a different line of dialogue, while other faction leaders and members will refer to you by the neutral term of adventurer or Warrior of Light, depending on how far into the game you are. Very shrewd bit of detail by SEnix, tbh.

Endwalker carries this one step further, and had a main story quest where the people that interacts with you in a scene is dependant on how many jobs you had carried to a certain level.)

Point being, it's definitely not at all hard to do, and I don't think WoW's cutscenes are even voiced so it's just text and some flags.

FFXIV gets away with this a lot easier by not having the same Alt-Centric design that WoW does. For 99.5% of all players, no alts. The amount of "You have done X" references are insane in that game as a result and they're constant. You can be introduced to a noble family and one of them will just go "Holy shit you're that famous blacksmith! You made me that kick ass sword for the tournament! It's a family treasure now!".

The one thing they -could- do in WoW that FFXIV does is have a lot more of your <Faction>/<Person> doing stuff with you. In FFXIV - if you're getting into a huge battle, your squad is going to be there. There are some single player duties/raids that are you and 7 NPCs of all people you recognize and this is constantly reinforced through the story.

The closest that WoW got to this would be WOTLK Tirion Fordring - He inherited the Ashbringer, he makes the Scarlet Verdict, he solidifies the Knights of the Ebon Blade, he makes the training camp, etc - he's someone besides you who is actively trying to fight the lich king. From then on it's just NPCs stealing killing blows in cutscenes after doing nothing of value - with Thrall shooting a Kahmaheha at Deathwing being the worst offender.

 

[Gravemind]

FFXIV gets away with this a lot easier by not having the same Alt-Centric design that WoW does. For 99.5% of all players, no alts.

The rest of your points stand, but I think you seriously underestimate the number of people who make alts in XIV. Most people I can throw a rock at on average usually have at least ONE alt on XIV.

In fact, most people I know actually make SEVERAL alts, and it's not because they don't realize that you can multiclass without changing characters. The slightly more sensical reasons I've seen (at least in the past) was pure character creation autism, and that at least a couple of people have wanted to experiment and see what a lot of the new leveling and story progression changes have become ever since they first suffered through their original incarnations.

Granted, there's that subset of people that I still find difficult to comprehend as to why they have this compulsion to make fucktons of alts. They tend to be the biggest complainers about the amount of content there is in the game, and I question how they haven't driven themselves insane by this point playing and replaying the game over and over like they do.

 

[Retink Retunk]

You can't really use achievements because that system is a mess. The most obvious one would be if you raid on a character (because of raid balance, lacking roles, being melee) that isn't your actual "main". I "main" a rogue but spent a lot of time raiding HPal/HPriest because my guild sucked shit at finding competent healers. WoW forces (by it's design) a lot of "sweatier" players into playing alts for any number of reasons (achivements, titles, viablity in content (aka Arena, BGs, Raids, M+), tradeskills, transmogs, mission tables, etc) so it's not so cut and dry as it would seem on the surface.

@Tanner Glass That's not amazingly hard to solve either, you could always make it so that it checks things on an account wide level, as many achievements already do have that cross capability when running characters and things like pet, heirloom, and mount tabs are all account wide. Hell, you can even set a toggle switch for those who want to treat every character individually, or to pretend every character on their account is a different interpretation of their main.

Or you know, go even simpler and just have the quest text be "Equipped Title + Character Name", most titles are account wide and can be made account wide, instead of "Maw Walker, Champion of the Champions, High Commander, Champion! I'm so excited you have come and can save us like only you could ever hope to do! Now please go gather 6 boar asses from the boar plane of existence."

 

[Next Task]

I really don't like it when MMOs encourage you to skip content, and take it as a bad sign. Classic WoW at least has a variety of places you could level; each race had their own parts, but you could send your human off to do all the dwarf, or night elf, or gnome quests if you wanted to have a different leveling experience but without playing that race. There are even quests you could complete in enemy zones if you wanted - Alliance members still have quests they can complete in whatever the Orc starting area is, or all the stuff in the Barrens you can do, though less feasible on a PvP server. Each race had a streamlined path, but that didn't mean you had to stick to it.

But when a game is all about getting you to max level to get to the 'good stuff', it suggests they don't give a shit about anything that comes before, even though they're the story bits that are meant to get you invested. The more focus there is in helping players skip content - through passes, boosts, whatever - the more it feels like the designers are pointing to big raids and the like and saying, 'This is the only thing that's important in the game.' Also, moving through content as a new character gives you a far better feel for how the class/race/skills play than just jumping in at the end.

Maybe I'm just a storyfag - I did love The Secret World, after all. I'm also someone who likes having reasons to go to out of the way places or explore the world I'm in, preferably with an option to not just come back to it when I'm 50 levels above it and every quest is a cakewalk. But there comes a point where it's not about giving you the option to skip to the end, but starts really discouraging you from actually playing through content again, or exploring the other content at your level. And in the case of WoW, there's so much content that they're just saying, 'None of this has value, just do some of it once and then you can avoid 95% of the content we've created for the rest of your playtime.' It's certainly not newbie-friendly, because it cuts down severely on the number of people running around at lower levels.

I guess I just think if the game is fun, you should enjoy the leveling experience rather than wanting to skip it every time. After all, it's not a grind if you enjoy it. But they seem to want to get you straight on that 'farm for the good stuff' treadmill as fast as possible.

 

[Kier Starmer]

Continuing the most ehhhh advertising for an 18 year old game, this TV Spot was just released.

I thought they were thirsty but goddamn they are literally shitting money and bricks all at once.

 

[std::string]

And in the case of WoW, there's so much content that they're just saying, 'None of this has value, just do some of it once and then you can avoid 95% of the content we've created for the rest of your playtime.' It's certainly not newbie-friendly, because it cuts down severely on the number of people running around at lower levels.

There's a pretty easy way to solve this if Blizz even wanted to. There's already a semi-working level scaling system in place. They could have an option where you could lock your character to a zone-appropriate level and then get cosmetics as a reward for completing the zone's whole storyline.

If someone was completely new to the game that'd be a way they could see all the old zone storylines with an appropriate challenge and they'd get to pick up some cosmetics along the way.

 

[GenociderSyo]

They made a big deal about white/grey item transmog in dragonflight...guess what isn't in dragonflight.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Continuing the most ehhhh advertising for an 18 year old game, this TV Spot was just released.

Man, that just seems so bland to me. How do you make dragons bland? Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Remember Four Wheels of Fury?

I miss stuff like that.

 

[Retink Retunk]

Continuing the most ehhhh advertising for an 18 year old game, this TV Spot was just released.

I thought they were thirsty but goddamn they are literally shitting money and bricks all at once.

The dragon in their shitty commercial that already looks like rather poor CGI:


The dragon you get in game that's even worse and probably wants to rape you:

guess what isn't in dragonflight.

Fun and engaging content?

 

[Rommelbutt]

join us in turtle-wow.org! No tranny dragons, no gay frogs. Just true and honest vanilla WoW!

 

[Kittehclaws]

I attempted the dracthyr opening chain. I didn’t get far as I play on a laptop and the learn to fly quests were made as a total fuck you to anyone who plays on a laptop but the part I did complete was such a lazy ripoff of the demon hunter starting zone.

At any rate it was so bland that after getting annoyed with the ring quest I deleted the thing and went back to farming old content.

The preexpansion event is also so lackluster this time around. At least they made the currency account bound and I can farm it on my main this time.

 

[Tanner Glass]

There's a pretty easy way to solve this if Blizz even wanted to. There's already a semi-working level scaling system in place. They could have an option where you could lock your character to a zone-appropriate level and then get cosmetics as a reward for completing the zone's whole storyline.

If someone was completely new to the game that'd be a way they could see all the old zone storylines with an appropriate challenge and they'd get to pick up some cosmetics along the way.

The problem with that is that a lot of the leveling content is garbage/samey quests spread out over a gigantic landmass without any real focus. They tweaked the "Loremaster" achievements but I think it's something upwards of like 8,000 quests for it? Maybe over 12 now?

Having a really unfun time with a reward at the end of it is one of the major issues in WoW - no need to trick newer players into the same thing.

They've been doing something similar to that with Chromie Time - but maybe they actually develop something from the ground up instead of just throwing a math scaler on some old stuff and considering it "completely done".

 

[DrearyDoomguy]

Man, that just seems so bland to me. How do you make dragons bland? Maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Remember Four Wheels of Fury?

I remember those videos of celebrities who didn't really understand the game badly describing the classes. They were pretty fun and charming in their own way. They even managed to get Mr. T to do one. The Night Elf Mohawk meme was pretty funny.

 

[King Dead]

I remember those videos of celebrities who didn't really understand the game badly describing the classes. They were pretty fun and charming in their own way. They even managed to get Mr. T to do one. The Night Elf Mohawk meme was pretty funny.

Considering how based Shatner continues to be, I feel I made the right choice maining a tauren shaman when I was playing.

 

[ZMOT]

I don't know if you are LITERALLY retarded or just pretending to be retarded. Every expansion since Legion has fucked over long-term players to cater to newbies.

>since legion
lmao, try WOTLK with it's welfare epics. fuck, you can consider ZG in vanilla one too since it fulfilled the same purpose.
if you wanna complain about this shit you're 12 if not 17 years too late.

I really don't like it when MMOs encourage you to skip content, and take it as a bad sign. Classic WoW at least has a variety of places you could level; each race had their own parts, but you could send your human off to do all the dwarf, or night elf, or gnome quests if you wanted to have a different leveling experience but without playing that race. There are even quests you could complete in enemy zones if you wanted - Alliance members still have quests they can complete in whatever the Orc starting area is, or all the stuff in the Barrens you can do, though less feasible on a PvP server. Each race had a streamlined path, but that didn't mean you had to stick to it.

But when a game is all about getting you to max level to get to the 'good stuff', it suggests they don't give a shit about anything that comes before, even though they're the story bits that are meant to get you invested. The more focus there is in helping players skip content - through passes, boosts, whatever - the more it feels like the designers are pointing to big raids and the like and saying, 'This is the only thing that's important in the game.' Also, moving through content as a new character gives you a far better feel for how the class/race/skills play than just jumping in at the end.

Maybe I'm just a storyfag - I did love The Secret World, after all. I'm also someone who likes having reasons to go to out of the way places or explore the world I'm in, preferably with an option to not just come back to it when I'm 50 levels above it and every quest is a cakewalk. But there comes a point where it's not about giving you the option to skip to the end, but starts really discouraging you from actually playing through content again, or exploring the other content at your level. And in the case of WoW, there's so much content that they're just saying, 'None of this has value, just do some of it once and then you can avoid 95% of the content we've created for the rest of your playtime.' It's certainly not newbie-friendly, because it cuts down severely on the number of people running around at lower levels.

I guess I just think if the game is fun, you should enjoy the leveling experience rather than wanting to skip it every time. After all, it's not a grind if you enjoy it. But they seem to want to get you straight on that 'farm for the good stuff' treadmill as fast as possible.

the problem with that, it's a MMO. meaning even a storyfag like you and me wants to play with other people at some point. and then imagine if you aren't a storyfag to begin with.

so even if you magically end up on the same server in the same faction ("bro, you didn't tell me there's a difference!"), you got 2 options: have your friend oneshot all the grey shit in your path while questing and getting carried through instances or powerlevel to cap as hard as you can so you can grind the same shit as your friend while sitting in vent discord.
and the longer the game runs, the worse this is gonna get to the point devs have to constantly establish shortcuts and jumps - because the prospect to having to play through years of old content, taking months until everyone can properly play together isn't very appealing. and now imagine the game FORCES you do play through all the story first to even be able to access content.
another thing is new players don't jump into the game to play content from 2004 (j/k, cata came out 2010 and revamped everything), they want to play the shit they see in the advertisements. imagine getting told "oh, to get your dragon you have to play through 5+ expansions. see you in 3 months".
you can also only ever play together at the same time, unless you like repeating content. mate is away for the weekend? better play something else so you don't outlevel and outquest him.

that's why linear MMOs like WoW or FF14 are inevitably shit if they run longer than a year and don't change progression. after that point devs have to constantly fight and change the game, content they already spend time and money on, which is fully completed, and doesn't make them any more money doing so - and you have to shit out new content to replace the "old" one constantly. meanwhile gw1 showed everyone in 2005 how it's done, and the game didn't even ask for a subscription. there's a reason all the WoWclones imploded at some point.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I attempted the dracthyr opening chain. I didn’t get far as I play on a laptop and the learn to fly quests were made as a total fuck you to anyone who plays on a laptop but the part I did complete was such a lazy ripoff of the demon hunter starting zone.

At any rate it was so bland that after getting annoyed with the ring quest I deleted the thing and went back to farming old content.

The preexpansion event is also so lackluster this time around. At least they made the currency account bound and I can farm it on my main this time.

I play on a laptop and had no issues with them. I find flying is like paragliding in old 90s games.

The heirloom is actually worth getting. It's also a quick way to level alts. Other than that it's been rather meh.
This expansion and the last two are what you get when you hire based on Twitter pronouns instead of resumes and only listen to less than 1% of the player base. It's no wonder why ESO and FF14 are doing better than it.