A Casual Misconception

New players are still having trouble with the first 30 minutes and five levels of the game, more hand holding is coming for very basic concepts like moving, questing, fighting, and looting.

Personally I think anyone that is having trouble with WoW in the first 30 minutes of the game is not the type of person this game is meant for to being with.  So what is the real issue here?  I say leave it be, or better yet, change it back to the way it was.

When I first started the game, knowing nothing about it except what my friends had told me trying to get me to join them playing, I had no clue how to move, quest, fight or loot.  It did not stop me from playing.  Even back then the starting areas where easy enough to ease into slowly even for someone that had no idea what they where doing.  Now, they are 100 times easier as is.

My first death came shortly after the game began when I was given a quest to go up to the top of the tree in the night elf starting area.  Nothing hard about that right?  Coming down however was a little faster then I would have liked and I fell to my death.  It taught me how to find my dead body.  It taught me to watch where I was going.  It taught me that I could die even when I was not fighting.  I learned.

Some deaths later I ran into three furbolg that did not wish to be separated from each other so they three manned me basically beating the snot out of me.  It taught me about pathing, it taught me about pulling and relative distance between mobs and I died a few more times trying to figure out how that all worked together.  I learned.

My first adventure into a cave ended up being an all day event.  I made my way down and through no problem but got lost down there and could not find my way out.  I would guess I spent nearly an hour and a half in there fighting my way out.  It taught me that all paths are not always clear and to remember my way out.  It taught me that I should have enough food and drink before venturing anywhere that I might not be able to get back to a vendor soon.  It taught me the value of bag space.  It taught me that things respawn.  I learned.

I got abilities such as concussive shot which I immediately looked at and thought what is this piece of crap, I need abilities that do damage.  What use is slowing a mob if you can not kill it.  The day came where I got my brains splattered all over the place over and over trying to defeat a mob that was just to strong for me and I thought that if I only had a few more seconds I might be able to beat it.  I then learned the use of concussive shot while looking over my skills again for anything that could help me.  I learned.

I remember my first ever dungeon quest but I did not know exactly what that meant when I got it.  I made my way to blackfathom deeps to do this new quest and walked into a room filled with elite creatures, ones I had already known would be stronger then normal mobs because I had seen a few but they where all over the place here.  I used my previous learning to work my way through the dungeon.  Slowly pulling mobs one at a time, working my way through there as best I could.  It took me a total of maybe 6 hours, leveling 2 levels, over a couple of days, but I finished my quest there, solo.  Like I said, I was a total noob.  I did not know this was meant for 5 people.  I did not know I was not supposed to be doing it on my own.  I did not know I could just skip these quests.  I thought this was just an extreme challenge for those that wanted to do it and I liked the challenge.  It took me a while but I got it done and guess what, I learned a lot in there.

I ran into a few mobs here and there that became a personal bane.  I spent what seemed like hours trying to figure out ways to beat them.  I learned how to do the run and jump shot to kite mobs.  I would kite them back to a road, where I knew nothing else would join because I had kited them into other mobs before.  I learned not to do that again.   It taught me how to kite.  It taught me how to better make use of my pet.  It taught me how to mix slows with damage.  It taught me how to be aware of my environment. I learned.

There were hard pulls.  Deadly mobs.  Pathing mobs that would sneak up on you.  Elites that would take every bit of skill you could muster up to beat.  It was fun, it was exciting, it was a challenge.

There were also those ?? dragonkin just outside of forest song that murdered me, repeatedly, because their aggro range was huge.  The bears in felwood that I was not quite ready for when I wandered the wrong way one day.  There where dangers every step of the way.  It was filled with excitement, it was filled with challenge, even if some of the challenge I created myself like being stupid enough to do a dungeon quest alone.  I played, I learned.

The redesigned old world has dumbed down everything to the point of it being a joke and now they are talking about making it even easier?

Some people say that it is catering to casuals.  I call that a casual misconception.  I am a casual and I do not want that done.  I want the old old world back.  I want leveling that takes time and leveling that brings a challenge.  I want leveling that does not tell you where to go.  I want leveling where you accidentally walk into bears 10 levels higher then you because you strayed into a place where you did not belong.  I want to be afraid of the possibility of those dragonkin outside of forest song that are long since gone or be afraid of swimming to that cool island off of Theramore Island because there are some seriously scary ?? things in the water over there.

Making leveling easier is not about catering to casuals.  It is about catering to people that are not interested in this type of game.  Making it easier for them is not going to make them play the game.  Making it easier for them would mean making it easier for me.  If I where to start now there would be no challenges, there would be no experiences the way I experienced them, there would be nothing left of what made me love the game.

People think easy means casual and they are wrong.  Easy means trying to get people that do not play this type of game into this type of game.  That can only end one way, badly.   People that do not play this type of game will not get involved in this type of game for long.  It will pass some time for them and they will move along to the next game that grabs their interest.  They will not stay and play this game just because they made leveling easier.

They are not the casuals, they are the passerbys, they should not be catered to because they have no intention of playing for long and even if they do play long enough to reach max level they move from the everything being handed to them leveling experience to the I have to work for things by grinding and doing dungeons that might actually require them knowing their class sort of game and then they will leave.

Making the leveling content faster and faster and easier and easier is bad for the game.  It needs to stop and it needs to stop now or they will create a new generation of players that think everything should be instant.  You can't basically gift people with the easy path to 85 and then expect them to know anything about their class, about how to handle real tasks, or be able to group with people for content that is not merely a task to pass the time like the entire leveling experience is now.

I am a casual, I leveled slowly with my first ever character, I died 100s of times and most of them where my own fault.  I had fun, I enjoyed the challenges.  I did not find it hard back then to get a hold of the game and how to move, quest, fight and loot.  I did not have a problem because I wanted to play the game.  I liked the concept of the game so I took the 1.5 seconds it would take any normal person to go check out what the sparkling thing on the mob I just killed was.

The concept of WoW and what is done in game is not hard to understand for a beginner and even more so for a beginner in this day and age.  WoW is not unique in any way, shape or form.  The movement is the same as 1000s of other games out there.  Looting is a concept that many games have and I am sure every person that has ever played WoW played a game where they looted mobs before they ever looted a mob in WoW.  Questing is not a new concept by any means and fighting is as simple as it gets to begin with.  All classes start with something in the 1 spot that does damage.  All classes walk up to something and press one (or click on it).  Fighting is not hard either to start out with.

There is nothing wrong with the leveling and learning process for new players.  Except for the fact that the leveling process no longer requires people to learn anything about their class.

Welcome to a world where a hunter now reaches 85 and knows nothing about anything I learned early on because I had to.  He will not know how to pull mobs, kite, slow, plan, etc.

If anything, WoW needs to slow down leveling and add back harder quests with elite mobs so people actually learn their class even a tiny bit while leveling instead of just basically granting brand new players to the game an 85 just for logging in.

Please, do not think they are making things easier for the casual player because they are not.  They are making it easier to try and get people that normally would not play this type of game to play this game.

Thinking they are making it easier for casuals is a casual misconception.