Thursday, January 3, 2013

Would You Recommend Warcraft?

If someone asked you about the game would you recommend it to them? 

If asked about the game I would say that I love it.  The game came from a recently horrible expansion that pushed me to the verge of quitting on multiple occasions to probably what might end up being the best expansion ever made.  The game is better than it has been in many years.

So that means I would recommend it?  Absolutely not.

I would never suggest warcraft to anyone. The game is not the type of game you can join in on now.  Too many levels, too many professions needed, too many details to learn, just too much crap to deal with that it is not worth it.  While you can, it is not exactly easy or fun to do so.  Unless you are going to get someone to hold your hand the entire time you are leveling and getting used to the game I don't see the game as being very new player friendly.

Starting at the beginning where new players start.

The leveling speed is way to fast that it would never allow people to get in touch with the characters, to get a real feel for how they play.  The actual challenges there are while leveling are few and far between and the few that are there can push even the most dedicated types off the cliff instantly. 

The speed you level at means you do not really learn how to play your character so those few moments you need to use all your abilities you won't know how to.  And because you are getting new abilities quicker as you are leveling quicker you might completely miss out on learning the important ones or even noticing you have them.

If you plan to join in on group content the dungeon finder system is not very new player friendly either.  You will constantly be paired with people that are probably heirloom geared and while it might be fine with most groups you will surely get many groups that will have someone picking on the new player for not having heirloom gear, if that makes any sense. 

You will be out classed, out played and out performed at every turn while leveling as a new player in group content which for some people can be a huge put off thinking that you can't compete.  You will never be placed with people that are like yourself and just learning with over powered gear. 

God forbid you attempt to PvP as a new player because that would bring the most hard core player vs player type of person to tears because there is no way a new player could ever beat someone with all their uber gear hand me downs.  And it is not like you would have the time to build up some gear because by the time you did you would be in a new PvP bracket and your gear would be useless again thanks to that super fast leveling.  So group content is unwelcoming to the new player.

And how about that wonderful warcraft community, or the lack of it more specifically.  Like I mentioned the people bashing the new player for not having heirloom gear.  How could they?  Doesn't matter to the warcraft community.   Our community thinks that everyone should have the best of everything all the times or they are a scrub.  Our community thinks everyone should know all their abilities and how to use them instantly even if they are new. 

Our community thinks that people should know the lay out of every dungeon like the back of their hand because they have been out of so many years and there is no excuse for anyone not knowing them.  How about this is someones first time there?  Nope, not a good enough excuse when talking with our wonderful community.  You are just a low life piece of shit scrub because you do not have gear you are incapable of having and do not have knowledge that someone that has been playing 8 years does, and have never done something that has been out for years even though you just started.  Yeap, piece of shit, that is you, so says the wonderful world of warcraft community.

Now on to the problems of professions for the new player and what quick leveling does to that.  First aid, if they decided to take it and level it, will always be behind.  You will be leveling so quickly that you will never be able to gather enough cloth to keep it up.  If you happened to be unlucky enough to be questing in an area with no humanoid mobs for a while it is entirely possible that you will have skipped over a type of cloth completely by the time you get to mobs that drop cloth again. 

So this means going to the auction house, if you have the gold, which you won't as a new player that had no previous knowledge of the game and you will be stuck looking at 40g stacks of the cloth you need, if you are lucky.  When you open your wallet and see the cobwebs and 3 gold sitting there you will realize you only have two options, abandon your quest to level first aid or find mobs that drop the cloth you need and grind them to catch up even if you are getting no experience for them. 

Same goes for cooking and the drops because you are leveling so fast.  And lets not forget fishing which back in the day would level with your level because you would spend some time fishing here and there and making food to eat for buffs because even those stupid small buffs helped because they were needed.  Now all of those are left behind because of speed leveling, even for the new player that does not know better, and the lack of need for any buffs when leveling anyway.

What about those main professions?  If you were a smart player you did one of two things as a first timer and that was take two gathering professions or one gathering profession with a crafting profession that went with it.  If you took two crafting professions don't ever expect to level them as a new player.  You will never be able to afford all the materials needed.  It is just completely impossible.  Not going to happen for a person with no experience in the game and no gold reserves to pick off of to level up those professions.

Lets go to those gathering ones and the wonderful addition of cross realm zones.  Thanks to the new CRZ you will have 5 or 6 or even 7 servers all competing for the materials that are only enough to support one server meaning your pickings will be slim to none. 

You can go from level 15 to level 25 without seeing one herb to pick, I know because I have done it, all thanks to the CRZ.  And if you are lucky enough to see an herb or a mine one of two things usually happens.  You are either too low of a level to pick/mine it because of your speed leveling putting you in an area well past your gathering professions now, or while you are fighting your way there to get it someone lands on it with a flying mount and takes it.  Yeap, been there too myself.

So you need to find lesser played areas if you want to have any chance of gathering materials but as a new player you will not know that would you?  Unless you were lucky enough to roll a gnome or dwarf, you are basically shit out of luck when it comes to leveling mining or herbalism and lets face it, look at the numbers, not many roll dwarves or gnomes.

So to the auction house again, to offset your lack of being able to gather stuff thanks to the cross realm zones and speed leveling, so you can level your associated profession.  Lets say you are doing alchemy and want to get that up some, you look at the herbs on the auction house and see 50g a stack and that same wallet that was filled with cobwebs before is still not any better. 

Looks like you are not leveling your main crafting professions either, not right now at least.  So your gathering profession has been left behind because of the lack of herbs to keep you leveled with your leveling movement and the cross realm zones making the few herbs that are out there even harder to find leaves you, just like with the cloth, in the position to make the choice to stay behind killing mobs you get no experience for while trying to find a needle in a haystack, or better yet, a herb that you can get to before someone on a flying mount from another server gets to it first.

Lets say you do happen to grin and bear it and deal with all that crap.  With the cross realm zones meaning massive amounts of high levels taking all the resources you need to level.  Jerks in randoms telling you that you suck because you do not have heirlooms even if it is impossible for you to have them.  Speed leveling where you do not get a chance to ever get comfortable with an area or your spells and abilities.  All that junk, you dealt with it and now you finally get sent to BC content.

I don't know about you but one of the questions I get the most from new players, and I have helped a ton of them, is the "how do I get to..." question.  Usually this is how do I get to BC or Northrend.  To me, you and the other people that have played the game it is a no brainer but to a new person they get lost all the time.

Funny side story.  I was in my horde guild when someone hit level 68 and asked how to get to northrend.  I told him how to get there, simple enough right?  He said this was his first horde character and he had only done it on alliance before.  I said my standard line, no big deal, we all have to learn some time, and told him where to go once again.  A few minutes later he says in guild that the people in stormwind are not all that friendly to him.  I laughed and said that is because you are a horde now, why are you there?  He said, he was going to take the boat because he knew where that was.  I really thought that was funny.  He made it to northrend, but he had to fight his way thought the alliance port once he did.  He was cursing like a sailor in guild chat because he was dying every 3 seconds but it was fun for me thinking about it.

He is not the only one that gets lost with things like that, most new players and even new to a side players get lost like that.  It is more common than you and I think.  Just because we know where everything is doesn't mean everyone else knows and it surely means someone brand spanking new to the game won't know.

At least BC content, even if it blows by too fast now, and northrend content, which always blew past way to fast, is a lot better than vanilla content.  You will not be finding much in the way of gathering nodes in abundance in BC areas at all, never had, and it is even worse now with the cross realm zones.  There are some BC ores that sell on my server for 1000g a stack now thanks to the cross realm zones and blizzard never modifying the repawn rate to ore and herbs.  Typical blizzard stupidity of course, but it just means a little more hell for the first timer and it also means with those high prices a lot more 90s farming the herbs and ores you need to level just to make some quick gold making the pickings even slimmer.  Now multiply that by 7 realms worth of 90s doing that for gold and you can just feel the nightmare of leveling gathering professions in BC.

Their professions will still be taking a beating in BC but at least the questing does slow down a bit to allow the person to start to get comfortable with their character.  Dungeons will be the same, lots of people that will all think that everyone knows everything and if you don't you suck.  PvP again is the same, you will continue to be brutalized by people in gear you are not even capable of getting and even if you were by the time you get it, you out grew it. 

The saddest part here is that BC has some of the absolute best PvP objective areas in the game and you can not participate in them.  Not because of the previously mentioned gear thing but because the fights are for level 90s there, not you, the new player, level 63 in crap gear, and learning how your abilities really work for the first time since you started because this is the first time you stayed at a level long enough to notice, oh shit I have a new ability.  Game play for you will start to get a lot better here, but is it too little to late?

When you reach northrend things start to get even better still.  If you went through the hell of getting your gathering professions up at least to the point where you can gather stuff in the basin when you get there you will experience your first time ever as a new player were gathering material is all over the place even with the cross realm zones and you will love it. 

The leveling speed is still a little faster than it should be but it is not as horrible quick as it was 1-60 at least.  You will also, for the first time, really start to experience some great story telling but the sad part is, as a new player, you will probably reach 80 before you get to the best story lines in that expansion and you will miss them completely.  At least northrend seems to be a lot better balanced profession wise, flow wise and story wise.

Then you take a step backwards.  Think it was bad asking once an expansion "how do I get too..."?  Get ready for asking it a million and one times because the 80 to 85 experience will throw you all over the world with no rhyme or reason what so ever.  What was a tight game with some problems with speed leveling and profession leveling before becomes unwound and a hell of a lot harder to figure out where you are going thanks to bad expansion design. 

The stories are all over the place, the speed of leveling is too slow compared to what you have become used to and there is no real flow to anything you do.  The one good thing is that it seems gathering, while not over plentiful, will be enough.  So while the speed of leveling and the gathering of resources has gotten better since you left original content the flow of the game will seem to be off, to a new person at least, because the expansions do not really flow from one to another all that well and did not flow to this one well at all.  At least the other two were single areas, this one is all over the place and it is really easy for a new person to feel a bit lost and disconnected from the game in a big world because of it. 

Also at this point you should have all types of flying but a new player might not.  While it is possible they can fly it is nearly sure they do not have fast flying because how does someone that has never played the game before and does not know how to work the auction house come up with all the gold needed for that.  Even more so when you did not ever have many extra gathering materials to sell unless you took two gathering professions.  In truth, the only way in hell you will have any money as a new player is if you had taken two gathering professions and used the auction house as often as possible to sell them and even at that, you would have still been sort of screwed because you would have been slowed down trying to play catch up on two gathering professions back in original content instead of just one thanks to the cross realm zone.

When moving to the current expansion you will feel, thanks to the blazing speed of leveling before hand, that you are getting absolutely no where leveling wise which will be a shock to the system of any new player who had gotten used to the feeling of personal progression as fast because they were always getting new gear, new levels, new skills and now they are getting levels much slower and skills not at all.  At least there will be lots of new gear for them.

While I love the mists leveling model and think it is the best to date, fast enough to get there without much work but slow enough to get to know the zones and where we will be spending the next couple of years, to a new player it would be a nightmare.  It will take them longer to do 85-86 than it took them to do 1-40 most likely and this could be a huge turn off for many.  At least they will no longer be caught in the worst addition ever made to the game, the cross realm zone.  They will finally be playing the game on their own server as they should have been since day one.

Most gamers, even if new, as long as they played any type of leveling system game before will understand that those last levels are the hardest so a great many new players will just grin and bear it and do what they have to do.

Then they ding 90 and are excited to finally made it to end game.  They are most likely broke, with just quest gear, extremely limited knowledge of their class but at least will have learned something because mists leveling is harder than anything they had ever experienced up to that point and they will want to play the game as they believe it was intended to be played, at end game.

Then they get hit in the face with more leveling.  Leveling reputations to buy gear.  Level item level to get into dungeons.  Leveling item level to get into the LFR.  Finding a guild that does raiding.  And even harder, finding a guild that is willing to accept people that are completely and totally new to the game and are willing to teach them while actually getting bosses down. 

Usually casual guilds of the lower end go two ways when it comes to new players.  They either let them in and let them raid and down nothing, or they let them in and do not let them raid until stuff is on farm and they just need a body to fill a space and down stuff.  One means you start right away and get nowhere and the other means you wait until you get lucky enough to get into something but at least get some experience downing things.  The choice is yours but either way, you will be lucky to find yourself in either situation as someone that knows nothing being new to the game.

If you finally want to move into something more steady you will need to learn a little about your class and gemming and enchanting and so forth and so on.  If you do not have anyone in that lower level casual guild that held your hand and taught you it is off to the internet where you get the shock of your life, learning you need a hell of a lot more than just that character you leveled to play at max level, but you need a ton of other things.

Now when you do start reading and seeing what you need to do and notice that your wallet is still filled with cobwebs you might start thinking you need to level some other characters for profession purposes, just to take care of yourself being you have no gold to buy all those things you need.

So you level an engineer for a scope, a blacksmith for a belt buckle, a jewelcrafter for gems, an enchanter for enchants, a scribe for shoulder enchants, a leatherworker for leg enchants, and an alchemist to make flasks and it starts all over again.  Leveling another character having a hard time finding materials, blowing through content too fast to really learn your class, etc.  All so you can play with that one class you leveled at the max level the appropriate way.

With all the things you need to do at end game and all the the other things you need to do and dealing with a crappy server economy, a horrible cross realm zone design, a horrible community that will blast you every step you take just because you are new, and the feeling like you need to do 101 things just to catch up to where everyone else is all while having to think about all the crap you now need to do with every single piece of gear and you have no money to do it, it just is not worth the effort for a new player to even attempt to play catch up in this game.  Can it be done, yes?  Is it worth it?  No, not at all.  The game is great yes, but it is not wroth starting from the beginning, not at all.

So would I recommend warcraft to someone else?  Never in a million years.  As much as I love the game, it is not new player friendly at all.

16 comments:

  1. Well, I must say I totally disagree with you here, except maybe on the point "how to go to northrend?" and maybe the community (but that vary a lot between servers, and I play in EU)

    But most of all the leveling process. if you don't read tooltip, blame yourself for not understanding your skills. for not knowing how to go to outlnad or where to go in cata : READ YOUR DAMN QUEST, all is written there.

    Now for the the profession part. after 5.0 hit and before the actuall rellease I have leveled 3 characters for profession. Classes I never played before. with CRZ and all I NEVER had to use AH to get mats (prof were enchant/tailoring, mining/jewelcrafting and mining/engeneering). In fact I even ended vendoring mats because I had too much of them.
    By the time I hit levl 80 I had overs 8k gold from questing/vendoring ONLY which is more than enough to buy 280% flight speed.

    So yes, I would definitely recommend Wow to someone, providing he is willing to do the so-difficult effort to READ tooltip and quests. (and if you're not a jerk I hope you're there to give him a hand if needed)

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    1. If someone is willing to read and learn as they go, as if someone was provided with a link to wowhead and told to use it, they will do just fine. I do not think a person without any outside help would enjoy the game enough with the leveling process as it is. My opinion only of course.

      I have leveled 4 since CRZ and always have issues getting gathering materials. Mostly the starting one for that first 150 points. I always have to stay behind and gather while I greatly out level an area.

      As a matter of fact, my double gathering panda can not even do any quests any more. I am leveling completely through gathering because if I quest I out level my professions. It is still only in its 40s, I expect that to change later as leveling starts to slow down soon. But those starting levels suck. Perhaps you just play at a different time then I do. I play prime time and prime time I can never find a node for the life of me.

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  2. As I was reading this post I was struck by two things 1) It was extremely negative. 2) How do you know what a new player would feel? Have you talked with a lot of new players recently? Or are you trying to put yourself in their position?

    I would recommend warcraft. Would I recommend it to someone who wouldn't know anyone in game when they started? I probably still would but that situation would never happen. If I recommend it to someone then they would know someone in game - me.

    Also I don't know if CRZ is worse in the US, or if you just have the worst luck in the world, but in my experience at least it's not the evil you make it out to be. People are jerks whether they are technically on your server or not. Resources aren't as scarce as you suggest, at least not that I've found. Besides you don't level professions while levelling, you do it at cap. Gathering is good for extra xp and to get you started with what you need for profession levelling, or to sell, that's all.

    I started playing towards the end of wrath. So I had a different experience to what a new player would today. The original vanilla quests for one, levelling was to 80 not 90 so the time to get to 80 was slower than today. Yes there was also no CRZ. However, I was still two expansions behind, the problems of level cap that you listed were there then as well. New players are always playing catchup. I did it, and without any help, and there's no reason why people can't do it who join tomorrow, especially if they've been recruited by someone who can point them in the right direction.

    The community as a whole might have a mob mentality and be not very nice. However, I've met some truly amazing people in game, really genuinely nice people. So the warcraft community isn't all bad, even if it seems like it sometimes.

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    1. I don't know how a new player would feel. I only know how I would feel if I where new to the game and knew nothing. I would feel behind all the time.

      New players level professions as they go. I did when I was new, and I do it now even, if they are gathering ones at least. Only an experienced player with a sugar daddy does not level professions as they go. Any server I start new on I always level as I go, as it should be.

      There are more than a few great people but those people are usually the quiet ones and you do not get the experience good people. Hence the reason I usually go out of my way to try and help people when I can. A little bit can go a long way and maybe if I help someone they will return the favor for someone else one day. Sadly there are too few people like that.

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    2. "Any server I start new on I always level as I go, as it should be"

      As it should be? Why should it be? Would it be more efficient? Possibly. Does that matter especially to a new player? No. I don't usually call you on your "as it should be" judgements as we're all entitled to believe what we want. However as this is a "let's pretend" post as we try to imagine what being new now would be like I will. New players will dabble with lots of things, will ask stupid questions like "should I tank?" when they're on say a Mage and keep ripping aggro in a dungeon. I swaped professions around and releveled several times before I was happy. I'd put leatherworking on a plate wearer as I didn't know better. Some people still have LW on plate as they didn't bother to change if, I met one in a raid once. I didn't really level professions as I went, I dabbled but mostly had levelling sessions and then profession sessions. Sometimes I quested, other times I gathered or whatever, going back to lower level zones. I preferred it that way, I could fly (at least once I reached Outland) and the mobs didn't take so long to kill if I was attacked. As I had gathering on my warrior and till Mists hated it Ievelled through gathering, barely did a single quest level 60-85. New players don't all level professions as they go as everyone is different. Some do, some don't I'd imagine.

      "As it should be" is a value judgement that new players won't even know exists, and some old players would disagree anyway. I levelled professions independent of character level, got them all now, a couple more than once and all done pretty much max level.

      As for "behind all the time" I do sort of agree with that. I didn't feel worthy of playing alongside my friends for a longtime given the experience gap. I've gone further than caught up now compared to them; more achievements, more characters, all professions etc. but I sometimes still feel it for what I missed. The stuff you can go back and get/do later I have done, am doing or will do. The stuff that's gone forever, that I will never see, that I feel behind on. I feel like it marks me as a new player that I missed it. That I feel behind on. Everything else you can work on.

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  3. I disagree with you wholeheartedly.

    The new player is not likely going to be a "rush to end-game" player.

    The new player is not likely to engage in the social aspects of the game for a long time after starting to play.

    The new player is most likely playing to enjoy exploring and adventuring - and these are the things that likely drew them to the game in the first place.

    The new player most likely sees a world of possibility - not an overwhelming pile of crap.

    The new player is going to love the game and discovering all of the amazing little parts of it....until they run into jaded, spoiled, bored raiders who really should just move on and find other hobbies if they are so very unhappy all the time.

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    1. You might very well be right. As I can never be "new" again I can only guess what it would be like just the same as you are guessing they would be more interested in exploring. We could both be wrong and it could be somewhere in between.

      In the end blizzard has completely ignored making any content for less than max level characters as the game is designed for end game only and no matter what you believe, even a new player will notice there is nothing there for them to do. So yes, I do believe that even a brand new player would try to rush to the end game because they know that is when the game really begins.

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  4. A Night Elf chats to her Dwarf boyfriend (before anyone says anything , there’s a reason why our noses are big) and says, "Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get it started."

    The Dwarf asks her, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?"

    The Night Elf says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a tiger."

    The Dwarf decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table.
    He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, "First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger. Second, I'd advise you to relax. Let's have a cup of coffee, then let's put all these Frosty flakes back in the box."

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  5. Hi Grumpster. WOW, something has a bug in your ear, huh. Ok, Would I recomend this game to new players, you bet your ass I would. But I would caution them about jerks, asshats, the hard-core, etc, first.

    IMHO the game has become better and easier from vanilla to BC to LK to Cata and now MoP.
    Remember when a hunter had to use "Beast Lore" and it really had a purpose to show you if the pet you wanted to captured could teach you the next +1 or +2 whatever for your pet? Or the "Dead Zone" between melee and range weapon that Mages loved to death. Yup, easier and better I believe. Or naked rogues ruling, LOL.

    But I believe it's the players (i.e. the people who play the game) who have gotten worse over the years.

    And thats where those of us who are not jerks can shine and help the new person out and hopefully, one can help them grow into the game.

    -Roo

    Two Night Elves fell down a hole. One said, "It's dark in here isn't it?" The other replied, "I don't know,I can't see."

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    1. Over all I would agree that the number 1 thing bad about the game is the people who play it. If they would just moderate the game it would be leaps and bounds better.

      I hated the dead zone. Funny part is that they said they got rid of it a long time ago but they never did, they just made it smaller. Even last expansion when it was supposed to be gone I would get in spots where all I heard was click, click, click. Oh joy, dead zone again.

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  6. PVP anon here:

    I wouldn't recommend WoW to new players either, for exactly the same reason you describe: there is simply too much stuff to learn and the learning process is not going to be pleasant.

    An off-topic question, if I can:

    I am thinking about getting a break from PVP and doing some casual PVE for a change, on a new soon-to-be-90. What levels of DPS you'd consider "fair" and "great" for (a) heroics, (b) LFR, (c) normal raids? Just so I have an idea of when I am ready for what.

    Thanks in advance.

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    1. Just starting heroics? 25K.
      460 LFR? 40K.
      470 LFR? 50K.
      Entering the real raids? 60K.

      Some might disagree but I think these are very easy numbers to attain and someone that plays a class often enough should be able to get them. On my rogue I was a hair under 25K when I first entered, at 22-23ish but I suck on my rogue so that seems reasonable.

      If you can pull those numbers you are at least doing your fair share.

      You will run into asshats in dungeons or raids doing 100K and thinking everyone should be doing that. Screw them. Everyone plays at their own skill level. As long as your skill level is not skill=0 you are fine.

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  7. PVP anon again:

    Just read the comments above me and it's amazing to me that the majority seem to disagree with you. I guess some kind of clarification might be in order:

    Noone is saying WoW is a bad game or that WoW's community is the worst there is, etc. The point is that WoW is so large, that you need exorbitant amounts of time to learn how to perform in it just so that other players don't hate you (if WoW was a single-player game, things would have been different, but it isn't). That's not very good news if you are starting fresh. The size and the complexity of the game is the ultimate barrier. We, oldies, might like the depth, but it is strange to deny that this very depth is exactly the thing that stands in the way of new players.

    Yes, WoW got much easier. No, it didn't get much *simpler*. There've been steps towards simplifying things (eg, quest rewards are now pre-selected for your current spec), but there are lots of caveats (the same pre-selecting of quest rewards made gearing for an alt spec harder), and there've been plenty of steps in the other direction (*cough* reforging *cough*). And all the while the game was getting larger and larger and larger...

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    1. I did say in the post I love the game. I even said I think this expansion could end up being better than anything before it. So I did not say the game was bad, not in the slightest. I just said it is not new player friendly. People will only read what they want to read and ignore everything else.

      I actually think warcraft has gotten harder, not easier. I am not even sure why people think it has gotten easier. We have just gotten better so it is easier to us. To a new player, they have it way harder than we did when we started. The game is not easier. Not even close to easier.

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    2. The depth is what gives the game longevity, what keeps a lot of people playing. As a new player I remember knowing nothing about most of the game but I still played. You start by scratching the surface, get a foothold and then you dig deeper. What makes the game great is the depth and that there's always more if you go looking for it.

      Would that put off some new players? Yes likely so. Would it interest other new players? I think so. Some people might like to get a game and complete it in a few hours. Others like a game that you can keep coming back too and Warcraft is the latter. When you think you're done, then actually you're not, and that's true for old and new players alike.

      Everyone has to start somewhere and there is no shame at being at different stages. Everyone is different and will enjoy the game in different ways. Which is another reason why Warcraft is so great, it's diverse and can support a lot of different play styles. I'd recommend Warcraft to any gaming friend. I'd give them a little 101 advice, point them in the direction of wowhead, give them a little gold and some bags to start, welcome them into my guild so they'd have a friendly community around them, then I'd leave them to explore. Games are no fun if people do stuff for you.

      I'm not arguing that this game wouldn't be intimidating to a new player on their own. I think it would. However if you recommend it then that player wouldn't be on their own.

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  8. I agree. As I mentioned in a comment on another post, I wouldn't recommend the game. If it was a really close friend that I was going to level with, mentor/guide, bank roll, etc and they were really interested in the game; I'd help them get going but I wouldn't try to "convince" someone new they should play WoW. Honestly, I'm trying to convince myself to stop playing but I've got so much invested in the game it's not that easy to just stop.

    I think it'd be very interesting to get statistics on the subscriber base. When they first started playing, length of subscription, playtime, number of max level characters, number of max level professions, achievement points, raid progression, pvp rankings, gear levels, number of times they've quit/taken breaks and for how long, etc. Blizz has all of this information of course but I don't know how much they utilize it and they'll never publish it anyway since it'll probably make them look bad.

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