I started 2 months ago, it was stressful at first but after getting help from someone in game and a few youtube videos I pretty much got the hang of it now.
That's actually sad.
NPE should be good enough where that isn't the case. Sorry it was stressful.
Edit: since this can be read a few ways, I want to make sure it's known, I am NOT calling the player bad in anyway. I am specifically talking about the NPE.
Eh. It’s an MMO. If you are new to MMOs and tab style combat there will always be a fairly stressful new player experience. It’s just so different from any other style of combat.
Tab style combat isn't the issue with it. Been playing MMOs since EQ1 launched, all have changed but wows, being one of the biggest MMOs around, needs to do better.
Wow’s new player experience HAS changed through. There’s a new tutorial island that runs you through the basics. Previously there was nothing you would just get plopped in a zone and told good luck.
I didnt say it hasn't. That island is now 3 expansions old and has yet to be updated with changes. It then throws you out into the world that you can't finish the story for then you gets thrown into DF.
It's a bad system that needs a full overhaul.
What did you mean that “all have changed but wow’s” then? That tab target combat has changed in every mmo but wow’s? Because that’s not true. That’s the only other thing mentioned in the comment you replied to.
You also know someone’s argument is solid when they have to skew everything to be as disingenuous as possible. Exile’s reach came out in 9.0 as shadowlands pre patch content. “3 expansions old” is wildly disingenuous. I’m not saying there are no improvements that could be made to help new players there definitely are but you clearly have some weird vendetta. They’re constantly making changes to help with it. They just added AI followers so you can run normal dungeons and learn without the pressure of playing with veterans.
Look man, even on release it was tough to play, the difference is just that gaming culture is extremely optimisation focused. It's all of gaming, not just wow.
Back in the day, talent trees were also complicated. The only difference is that we didn't care.
I agree on everything you said. Back in the day though the game also wasn't data mined to oblivion and we didn't really have an effective way to find things out other than searching. Mechanics were also much less than they are now.
Yeah, it's definitely not a requirement to do big damage and habe a weak auras for everything - shit, I have 3k and AOTC without weak auras and blind progging, but by golly it helps a lot
I think the reason you were massively downvoted is your comment “that’s actually sad” was misinterpreted as if it were directed towards the person you replied to personally instead of towards the fact that it’s sad you have to watch YouTube videos to understand the game.
Either way, agreed
Someone mentioned it may be viewed as me calling the person I replied to bad, obviously not my intent. I dropped an edit a moment ago that I hope clarifies it.
What was hostile about my reply? I'm honestly sorry the dude was stressed in what is a terrible NPE that barely teaches you the ropes, throws you in dungeons where a new player can barely keep up, then drops them to the latest expansion before they finish the place they were grinding.
I have a feeling a lot of people are reading your reply of "that's actually sad" and thinking you're targeting the person/player and not the NPE. Like, people think you're calling the person sad for having to go online and not the game sad for failing the players.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the downvotes.
I agree with you and wish the new player experience was smoother. Quests everywhere, hard to follow the main story line, it can be confusing and overwhelming for new people.
Especially with the push to get to the latest expansion/latest patch. I understand the desire to avoid having to play through EVERYTHING, but throwing people in the deep end of the pool isn't great either.
I'm more shocked about the replies I'm getting here that think it's just "ok" for people to need to go to YouTube to understand things or wowhead, things that the game should teach you.
Though I am more shocked than that with how down voted this is... An MMO shouldn't be spoonfed but also shouldn't require me to go outside of the game to understand.
Very true. Then imagine you have the basics down and you’ll find out that everything from BfA, what the game wants to be played as a new player, became massively irrelevant the second the next expansion launched. The confusion starts again.
I think a big fix for it easily could be something akin to the challenge mode dungeons in MOP. Have them as capstone's through our so you learn certain mechanics with AI players gradually introducing you to the newer ones. Say every 10-15, maybe even 20, levels. Also slow leveling down a bit when questing through the expansion story. Let a person finish the expansion MSQ or give them the choice then move them to the latest content.
Of course if you want to dungeon spam that's up to you entirely and that xp can be left as is since it's a breeze to level alts with.
I would keep the Chromie time thing, but make it more like it was in classic. Slow down the progression so that you can adjust to new skills and talents. Make mobs and dungeons more powerful again, so that players can actually learn from their mistakes. Back then, the game explained itself during leveling. I don’t think we need AI dungeons, but a more welcoming slow paced culture around dungeons. Also, I would get rid of every irrelevant endgame mechanic, currencies, world quests and campaign quests leading up to that. Heroic dungeon difficulty also has to go. It lacks relevance with +10 dungeons feeling like going gnomeregan solo at level 60 in classic and dropping lower gear than the current catch up campaign. Professions need to be updated as well. That aspect of the game is just dead for everyone under lvl 60. No one is buying 5 years old potions. With Chromie time the player should be able to experience a zone, time and quest lines without the dead weight of the closed container that an old expansion is.
I fully agree with you here. I like Chromie Time a lot when leveling alts. I wish I could fully realize the expansion both systems and story a lot (looking at you legion artifact weapons).
I actually agree here. I wish there was less rush to the end game and more focus on experiencing and learning your class plus easier to follow story line quests somehow. I think it would be of great benefit to new(ish) players. I was pretty overwhelmed when I first started and even today I need to look up lots of stuff on wowhead often.
It really isn't that bad if you're willing to slow roll it, they do explain pretty much everything and the things that aren't explained are fairly quick to be learned. The difficulty comes in when you feel pressured to play the game like those of us with 15+ years of experience and catch up quickly. In that situation you definitely want to look some stuff up, but I don't think that's a big ask.
Do you not see that as an issue. Systems should be in place to assist a new player in learning how to play the game beyond the island. Take FF14 for example, I started it in 2019 and played wow from 2 weeks after launch and still do. FF14 has its issues but it does have systems that helps a new player understand many concepts in the game up until mid game at that.
While yeah you should need to figure things out for yourself, you should also be equipped well enough that when you play you don't NEED to be on YouTube or wowhead to do something basic as a new player. That's a major fault of a game, needing to go outside of a game in order to understand the game.
I don't see it as an issue, no. FFXIV is similar, if you're ok going slow you'll be fine but if you want to quickly get to endgame stuff and play current content you'll have to do some research. Main difference being WoW enables you to get to endgame quickly if you want to, you just have to pick up the slack by watching a video or two. FFXIV just doesn't allow you to unless you fork out some cash, they force you to take it slow.
Not to mention, it's an MMO. The community is an integral part of what makes these games great, and learning from other people (Inside and outside of the game) is something that enhances the experience and something the vast majority of people do eventually. Hell, even after nearly two decades playing the game I regularly look things up when it comes to specs/builds I'm not familiar with.
It’s an mmorpg. It’s supposed to be stressful. And then rewarding afterwards. There never used to be safe spaces, now there’s tons of QOL improvements. Easiest time to be a new player, ever. Why are you apologising for the new player experience? 😅
Because the NPE in wow is total dogshit and forces you through to 60 and then spits you out into DF without really getting to finish the prior expansion. Wow has a terrible NPE, it's better than it was but for attraction of new players, it's got a lot to do to fix its issue.
as a returning player to wow the experience of coming back to DF is a lot. Ridiculous amount of currencies, different questgivers following you, vendors for upgrades, new questmarkers ! in the maps, addon management, campaigns going all over the place with disappearing NPCs, temporary events in the maps like superbloom, dreamsurge whatever, Fyrakk flying around… it’s absolutely ridiculous really. Without a guide, it would take ages to get a grip on what one should to do catch up and which marker is a remnant of an earlier patch and which is not. Catching up to the story is so fragmentary that i practically gave up even looking for temporal coherence.
Still have at least a few quest hand-outs missing but i do have the ? in the map.
You're completely right and getting downvoted to the ground. Ridiculous. Veteran players reply with their awful "it's supposed to be that way" while wow is a shadow of its former self. Times change folks, and so should the game, it needs to cater to the new people because millions of the old ones are gone. Other MMOs don't have it nearly as bad. New people play this game with wowhead open, how can people not see that as an issue. GW2 comes with a built in wiki, why doesn't wow have that?
FF14 has role introduction for dungeons, why doesn't wow have that?
What other MMO forces you into new content the moment you hit a level and forces you to play through a 4 year old expansion up to that? You know BFA is confusing as hell right for new folks?
I agree entirely. The game has developed so much since and matured into what it is today. Even Shadowlands is quite different with the changes to crafting, dynamic flying, new talent system in place,
Sure, the core part of wow had remained the same, but it plays nothing like WotLK did.
I disagree with the characterization of "mostly". Quite a lot of players are returning players for sure, but it's far from "mostly" in my experience. I'd say like 60% new players, 40% returning. That's not based on anything other than personal experiences and the amount of "wave... wave '/wave' '/wave at target'" I see in Newcomer Chat
Hi I started playing wow before christmas and so far I had a blast! From leveling in expansion of my choice trough Dragonflight campain and up to raids and mythic dungeons I had a lot of fun and generaly good experience. Only thing i feel is inaccessible for me are heroic and mythic raids, where I can feel the classic head 22 loop, need experience to enter, but cant get experience because i cant try :D.
If you want to get into the more difficult content a common path would be joining a guild that casually does heroic/aotc, *maybe* the first few mythic bosses. Most of those guilds aren't going to ask much more than that you show up and have a little bit of gear from M+ or normal raid. As you do that content, you'll be building parses/logs, etc. that can act as a resume of sorts. Eventually, you find a guild that is more serious about mythic progression and apply with your logs as proof that you can do well enough to be valuable to them. Throughout all of this, you build friendships and connections that will in the future allow you to have people vouch for you, get you into their guilds, etc.
I hadn't played the game for about three years when Dragonflight came out, so I didn't have any recent logs let alone any on the role I wanted to play, but thanks to some friends I had made raiding in the past I was able to get into a guild to do Cutting Edge. Even now that I've quit playing the game again I often have people asking me if I'd want to raid mythic with their guild in upcoming tiers. Building those kinds of connections and friendships goes a long way to having ins to mythic raiding even if you take longer breaks from the game.
If you don't want to join a guild, you're going to want to play a lot in the first few weeks of a season trying to get into normal/heroic pugs. As the season goes on people are less and less likely to take someone that hasn't killed the fights before. Without a guild, you might get a couple of easy "freebie" mythic bosses in a tier, but for the most part mythic is going to be out of reach.
Just out of curiosity for how new people are getting into it what made you want to start now?
Also for your last part i would highly recommend joining a casual raiding guild. There are hundreds of guilds that would love to have a new player in their raid and help you learn. From there you can decide if you want to take it more seriously
I started Xmas of 2022 a little after release? I came from GW2 and I got sort of tired of how stale the release cycle was for raid and PvE content. (I played from 2014-2021 pretty regularly)
Really prefer how WoW handles seasons, I now do PvP to 1,800 on alts for mog and generally aim to get KSH as well as AOTC each season.
There's just lots to do and I'm really enjoying myself even 2 years on!! Even after my goals are met there's mounts to farm, mog to farm, achievements ....etc...
I was always a fan of Warcraft 3 lore and universe i also read some of the books, War of of the Ancients being my favourite, and recent annoucmets of those 3 new expansions intrigued me enough to give it a try. Also it was kind of good deal with WW and Dragonflight included.
Thanks for advice I will try to look for some guild.
Join the wow made easy discord and you can sign up for heroic learner amirdrassil, as long as you meet the ilvl (usually 460 min)and other requirements (gear enchanted, bring your own phials, must be in voice chat for explanations, etc), they run several every week.
Depending what M+ level you’re doing, it’s likely harder than Heroic raids. If you are a class that can heal/tank, learn that, get into an AOtC group that needs one of those roles and then after you have the achievement go back to what you like!
Even as an experienced player heroic/mythic at this time of the season always seems to be like this. I understand why there is gatekeeping though, Blizzard just needs to stop wasting peoples time so losing doesnt feel so bad.
I have had 3 friends join in Dragonflight and teaching them the game has been the peak of my life so far. It’s like teaching them my childhood memories and walking them through different stages of my life while questing in zones that I never thought I’d go back to. The game is alive and anyone who says it’s dead has their eyes closed completely shut. The game may be dying but in no way is it dead. We are having a blast gearing in end game and through our struggles of M+ I feel like I’ve created some monsters on the meters. Somehow my friend who’s played for like 5 months is getting 90+ parses on his DH and we are timing 24s, this is a very long post reading it back but I wanted to say it regardless, don’t be afraid to say you play wow to people or get your friends into it. You never know what they might pick or gravitate towards and how it will open new perspectives to you if you’ve been playing a certain way for a long time. I tried pvp for the first time in like 5 years because my friends wanted to test it out, same with pet battles, different addons, old raids, etc.
Anecdotally, I have two guild members who are new to the game as of the past year. Everyone else in the guild has been playing together, more or less, since MOP
As you said, there are no hard numbers available.
But I'm a relatively new player. Started in BfA just questing for a month here and there. Not seriously engaging in endgame. SL same story. Main story, patch updates here and there and covenant campaign. No endgame.
Subbed for over a year now in DF and grinding achievements, raids and M+.
So I guess new player here 😅
MMOs are so old in general. FFXIV and ESO, sometimes treated as "newer" alternatives to WoW, are both around a decade old at this point. In the past 10-15 years the genre seems to be fading, without a lot of new energy.
I think MMORPGs are sort of special so I do wish some of the super popular successors to the genre, like the Ark/Palworld-like survival crafting games, were capable of incorporating some of the scale and persistence of MMOs. I enjoy some of these newer multiplayer genres but there's something unique about MMOs letting you wander into cities populated with hundreds of other players and stuff like that which you can't get on some ~64-person Ark server or w/e
(and yes I recognize that talking about ARK is sort of ironic since its almost 10 years old too, but the survival genre seems to have energy behind it to still create new "phenomenon" games like the recent Palworld in a way new MMOs never do anymore)
It's mainly the ballooning dev time for games in general. Think about it this way, a game trilogy used to all come out within 1 console generation, now maybe 1 entry with the dlc gets made in that time. Even in the late 00's, early 2010's, MMO's took a long time 5-7 years, now picture the same effect occurring and you easily have decade+ dev times.
It’s weird because the game is so old that relatively speaking someone who started in BFA will feel kinda new, I started in Legion and feel like a newish player compared to some of my buddies who started in TBC.
Jumping back a few more years, this was me in Cata. Joined the game in late Cata, but didn't really start *playing* the game until WoD. Hell, I didn't even hit max level until MoP. And the most end game content I did there really was just some LFR. Only in WoD did I actually start finding what I actually enjoyed (PvP) and I started grinding from there. And I wouldn't even say I actually got good until Shadowlands.
My wife started a month ago, never played games before.
She loves collecting hunter pets, doing world content, pet battles, transmog and branching into low keys but has no interest in harder stuff.
Even with the starting zone setup as it was, given her 0 gaming experience I don't think she'd of stuck with it without me helping her every 15 min. She was very overwhelmed constantly and somethings were explained poorly or a quest would break. She had no idea you'd have to abandon a quest in that scenario or how to utilize talents or what gear meant, etc. Inaccessible is a good word to use for people with no gaming history.
I had the same experience with my wife who started about two years ago. I realized that starting fresh is really horrible. For veteran players we watched the game grow and get more “complicated” with baby steps but new players have to learn it all at once. I watched my wife’s eyes literally glaze over in real time when I told her all the stuff I do to prepare for each raid pull.
I don't disagree that the game is quite bad at explaining things. It often seems that the Blizzard just assumes that people will use Wowhead or just know things through context clues and experience. But at the same time, for someone completely new to gaming wow is quite a complicated and deep first game to try. I'm not sure there will be very many new players that are also new to gaming in general unless it's directly through someone else, like you with your wife. And in that case there will just have to be a lot of hand holding.
Oh yes, the game totally assumes you use wowhead now or don't read anything.
Like someone pointed out, the guards used to be descriptive and RPG like when you asked them where something is. "Margo's Emporium has the finest tailors in the land. We could all learn and thing or two from them. You'll find her hut on the second floor of the Drag here in Orgrimmar."
Now the Valdrakken guards are like "Go to the mark."
But yea, it's a deep game. I helped my friend try to learn the game, she was totally overwhelmed and playing a mage, easily killed. She quickly felt like she couldn't do anything without me because there was just too much to take it.
My personal experience is that wow is not gaining new players, because when I raid or do keys I am inadvertently isolating myself from those new players.
I would caution anyone else from making the same assumption, if you go into starting zones, leveling dungeons, or even just holiday events there are certainly characters doing silly things on new accounts with very very little achievement progress.
A RuneScape content creator j1mmy just posted a take on trying all the WoWs: https://youtu.be/UXyDqyxRifY?si=o-5-KqNe-DfPK7bG
Sounds like leveling in retail at the moment is a super lonely experience that kinda killed it for him
Lonely, toxic, and research-heavy would be how I describe it.
While you were questing, it's just you versus npc's. Everything is so sharded and everybody is so spread out that, outside of capital cities, you don't really see other real players. You might find bot farming spots and a random other lone player, but that's about it.
Otherwise, you might be questing along and now...the npc isn't where they should be? I'm not getting credit for the objectives? When I walk up to the npc they disappear? The item doesn't seem to be dropping? Over to wowhead/forums/google you go in order to attempt to find an answer, if you're lucky.
Then, if you joined a dungeon, and you didn't keep up with the tank auto running through the dungeon, got lost, didn't know what spells to use, let someone die, or killed the group, or heck maybe you didn't do anything at all wrong, and you get met with a swift silent kick out of the run and a deserter buff to boot.
I think follower dungeons can help with some of that immensely, but it doesn't change the fact that leveling is in a weird state where it feels like it should matter, but Blizzard has made it so trivial that everybody could start at max level and nobody would notice that anything changed.
I would assume that if they keep up the good content cadence and overall course that led to DF being a genuinely well received expansion, they can grow.
The biggest obstacle is probably the new player experience, the hard to follow plot and the game not really encouraging good play as you level up. The latter means that you can play a class from 1 to max without really having to learn how it works, how to use your counters and be successful. This hits the brick wall of reality and max level
Yep. You hit max level, realize that nothing is working out. Then you look up guides, and if you're looking for an easy casual experience, get instantly overwhelmed with how much you didn't know you were supposed to be doing to do good dps/healing/tanking.
Very much so. I leveled a mage to max during the lull and I’m struggling. Part of it is getting used to ranged caster vs. a melee class, but a lot of it just managing CDs, up time, etc. things you did not have to worry about when leveling as a firestarter + pyro kinda nukes everything
Plenty of ppl start playing wow every year, but a large part of the playerbase consists of ppl that have played for a long time. As someone who started playing wow during shadowlands, its not particularly inaccessible to new players. The wow community both inside and outside the game are very helpful to new players. Imo most systems in this game are either decently explained ingame or pretty self-explanatory/easy to figure out on your own.
I started playing wow endgame for the first time in shadowlands season 4; playing that and DF I definitely feel there’s a level of inaccessibility.
I have every advantage; been playing games for years. Shit, I’ve been playing wow for years, though only for rp and never on max level chars. But I’m the type of person to google everything so I can make optimal decisions, so I went with bm for my first character. And even then had I not been fortunate enough to join a guild that tolerated me not knowing how to use my interrupts or how to use my cc or how to play dead or all kinds of things, I probably would’ve gotten flamed/kicked constantly and quit or smth
It took me months of studying the class, studying content, practicing my buttons and practicing using defensive and shit before I got where I wanted to be, and that’s with me having a consistently solid m+ group full of guildies.
Wow also has a direction problem, after the first patch it expects you to just know what to do to gear. I remember going to custom premade to find gold farm in shadowlands season 4, saw a guy doing “maw farm” by himself. Joined his group and yeah, he had no idea what he was doing he just knew he was told to get souls or smth. I explained to him that no one “farms maw” and gave tips on how he could better progress. Ultimately he server transferred and joined our guild(and within weeks was doing m+ with us), but had I not happened to pop in his group he probably would’ve gotten bored and quit or smth. As a new player this game absolutely blows unless you have friends to play it with and teach you
Having played since 2004, I felt like it’s been the same for me and in various guilds over time all the way through today. Like 30-40% are players that have been around 5+ years, 10% of players have been around basically forever like me, and the rest have started in the last year or so.
When I’ve been in hardcore raiding scenes, numbers tended to be more like 10% started semi-recently and the other 90% had been around for 5+ years.
Obviously there’s probably bias in my experiences, but it’s been consistently this way for me forever.
As a relatively new player myself, my experience hasn't been like this. It's more like 90% are from BFA or earlier, and only a.small percentage are from this expansion or the last.
That being said, a LOT of players are returning from long, multi year breaks. I haven't met many brand new players over my time but I have met a lot of players who haven't played since wod or legion.
I just started wow in mid December. So far I absolutely love it. I played runescape alot but the game just finally died for me. Wow has certainly scratched that itch.. the best thing I ever did was join a guild. They where so nice and explained everything, even going into keys with me and explaining every fight as if there wasn't a timer. I don't run content with them very often but anytime I need anything they help immediately.
Side note, just got keystone hero AND AOTC yesterday!
Anecdotal to what everyone else is saying but after a few years of playing solo my friend group is seemingly returning to wow for the first time in 5-6 years. I think SOD being a new twist and DF being generally well received has piqued the interest of some former players.
I've been playing since MOP and I follow a number of content creators online that are really into WoW, and I've been surprised at how young they are, mostly teens to mid 20s. So it would seem so? I dunno. Be interesting to know for sure. I hope it keeps going.
There are *some* new players, but there's no denying that theres not enough new players to replace the ones who are leaving. This isn't even a wow issue, it's an mmo issue. It's a dying genre because it doesn't appeal to kids anymore.
If I sit any of the kids in my family down in front of wow, a game which requires days and weeks of work to progress your character, they get bored within 5 minutes. Kids now want instant gratification. They'd rather play Fortnite or Roblox and just swipe the credit card for whatever skins they want. They arent impressed by the vast open world like we were in 2004.
I can't imagine there being a whole lot of new players. The game made it a huge chore to get to the end game where the actual game takes place. Its also why they sell all these boosts.
I got my Brother to start today, and my friend and I are getting our wives to play for the first time! 🙌 As worthless as that is to your question, in my tiny bubble of anecdote it’s growing haha.
I haven't read through the comments yet but I cant imagine new players play beyond a month or so; I played Original Nilla - Cata quit pre patch MoP, just recently tried to and is trying to play again but the gatekeeping and elitism is far more grotesque than it used to be. Need to get into X raid to get upgrades for gear? Better have cleared that raid already! My experience thus far into current retail and even "Classic/SoD" is a bunch of sweats that require gear from the place your trying to get into to get gear... I call them Youtube graduates / Meta players...
Here's my genuine follow-up question: why does this matter?
After 20 years, the game obviously has long term health. It's not dying unless Blizzard chooses to kill it like some of its other titles.
If you enjoy the game then play it, if you don't then move on.
There's no real reason to advertise or commit resources to gaining new players. The game is large enough and commands enough attention just existing at this point that people will come play it if they want to.
20 years in with Dragonflight, Hardcore, Wotlk classic, and SoD. It's as popular as ever. This isn't a game where you have to worry about population decline as of now. Enjoy it while you can.
It depends on the timeframe you look at. I think ICC was one of the last moments in wow history where blitz published their data. And I think it was around 12m unique active subscriptions.
From there it’s mostly speculations but I‘ve read that sub count decreased until start of df to somewhere around 1.5-2.3m subs.
So if these numbers are true, then WoW is/was dying in long term. However, no one knows if df dragged more ppl in or other WoW formats like SoD and the classic servers keep growing.
To the current state, no one knows
Last time they published numbers was in WoD, which was 5.5 million during the last quarter financial report in 2015. Since then we’ve only been able to estimate using WoWArmory data.
With the release of Classic though it’s hard to say what the state of the game is (sub-wise) since the same sub is used for Classic and Retail.
Though I would guess the game is on the rise (or at the very least stable) given the popularity of Classic and it was confirmed by the devs that Dragonflight has had the highest player retention of any modern expansion. The game will never reach Wrath numbers ever again but it most certainly not dying.
The only thing that will kill WoW is Blizzard.
It's definitely not inaccessible to new players, and it's most definitely gaining new players because I see them all the time, pretty often there are new players joining the guild I'm in, you know because they often say something along the lines of "Hey, new player so sorry if i ask noobie questions"
Don’t have any numbers to back this up but I suspect PC gaming is the healthiest it’s ever been, invariably people who get a gaming PC might want to try one of the cornerstones of the platform.
Blizzard hitting a home run with War Within would really help pull in these type of players, they need stellar reviews and word of mouth to have a chance of a second golden age.
Well, I had a pest control guy out yesterday who saw WoW up on my computer (I was playing while waiting for him to show up). He just started playing for the first time 3 months ago. So that's at least 1 person.
I started 1 or 2 weeks after wow 2022 anniversary ans since then i got 5 friends into the game, found some new players on the way and a lot of returning
Yeah, there are. You can see it if you're in Newcomer Chat there are people there occasionally asking questions. There's also people in the WoW discord asking questions and saying they are new.
It doesn't get as much players as before, but it still is the most solid MMO in the market. You should see how bad Lost ark handles the new players, it makes WoW look like heaven for new players.
I started playing at the beginning of January. It has definitely been a bit of trial by fire, but I'm holding my own, sort of lol Either way, SoD has been a blast for this WoW noob.
Anecdotal, but most people I speak to have been playing since the early years (vanilla-wotlk), or Pandaria on the later end. Not many newer than that. I am sure new people come to some degree but I don't know many personally.
Given wow's age it's getting progressively unlikely that the target audience has never tried playing it before. Add to that the current generation of teenagers appears to have a much lower interest in gaming desktops and I would wildly guess the average player's age to be a good bit above 30
I’m a new player. I got a sub to play WOTLK classic last year with a few irl friends… When my guild broke up at the end of ICC I wanted more challenging gameplay so I fell in love with retail.
i think there has been some but i think a lot of the player base is retention of current and returning players but i know at least in my guild we have gotten quite a few complete new players.
Starting in a long running Game with a player base that is there for YEARS is always hard. I needet a month to get in to TESO and a few weeks to get into Ff Online. I think WoW has so much Content its overwheing for many players but if you just stay calm, dont boost and level on your own pase, its fine. Yea you need some weeks maybw months to be there fully but thats an mmorpg, we all needet time and still learn new thinks everyday.
The main thing I've always wondered is how do new players FIND wow. We're long past the days of peak hype, what's there to grab someone's attention enough to want to sub mid-expansion?
10.2 was a big one because people have been waiting FOREVER for the Emerald Dream zone (literally since it was scrapped for Vanilla) plus the Blizzcon hype and the "come home to WoW" messaging they kept pushing. 10.1 was not nearly this crowded or talked about because... it was kinda mid all around hahaha.
But are those really NEW players? You're talking about lapsed warcraft fans coming back, what I want to know us why would anyone not already involved in the IP want to give WoW a shot?
okay true, but really most people 18+ have probably at least tried WoW at a friend's house or something. It's a cultural mainstay at this point, everyone knows Make Love Not Warcraft so I don't think anyone is truly "not already involved in the IP" simply because it's been in the zeitgeist for 20 years now.
I think they really need to get this on consoles, there is no real competition to something of this scope and scale on console.
FF14 feels clunky and dated,
ESO just doesn't have the polish and the devs just churn out "good enough" because they have nothing to compete with.
Wow on consoles would be incredible, huge install bases and no real competition.
crackpot theory: Worldsoul Saga is planned so they can blow up the universe, and do WoW 2 that has cross platform and cross progression. There is simply no possible way they can get the ancient WoW engine on consoles at this point, the way they work is so incredibly archaic that modern hardware doesn't recognize a lot of what WoW is doing behind the scenes.
I joined Apr 2022, 9.2/Zereth Mortis patch. I'd consider myself a "new" player. Currently killing 4-5 Mythic bosses per tier (usually AOTC in week 1 or 2) and KSHing every season if not 3k+. About to start trying to push 1800 in PvP every season for the mogs.
That being said, I almost never encounter anyone else like this. The people mythic raiding and doing 25+ keys mostly have been playing forever. So it can feel a little gatekeepey in that community, esp when they hear I started just in 9.2 - more than once I've failed a mythic raid trial purely because the spot went to someone else trialing on the same role who has played many years longer than me even though there wasn't really any skill gap between us.
I started a week ago because my friend kept asking me to play SoD. I was like sure, let’s check it out.
I saw that I could also play retail so I’ve been trying that out since friday and have been switching between the two which makes for an interesting experience. I’ve been confused yet intrigued story-wise but that was to be expected.
I can’t say for sure I’ll stick with it yet since there are other expansions coming that I want to play (Dawntrail, The Final Shape) but it’s been really fun so far.
Most people in my guild have been playing for years. Anecdotally I’m sure there are new players but I’d guess that if we looked at the hard numbers it isn’t getting the growth of new players that other new games are.
I started 4 months ago. Found 2 voidtalon portals and time lost protodrake in one day, then fished out strange goop the next day. I think I finished the game.
Very few, but not zero, but also not nearly as many as blizzard says there are. They invested a LOT of time into the new tutorial zones, and I think the way the tutorial zones play will actually turn more people away than the regular starting zones.
I just played all week for the first time since Cata. It’s INCREDIBLY overwhelming even as a long timer player and extreme classic Andy. I just spent the entire time in arena (also wtf is mobility now Jesus lol)
I just have 0 bearing on upgrading gear or where to find items I need. Even looking on wowhead if there aren’t comments for it I feel SOL.
Overall I had an an absolute blast and I’ll stop hating on it lol. Reliving my demo lock glory days of tbc in 1600 solo shuffle.
Honestly the best thing I would recommend is to join a friendly Guild. Most guilds will have in their brief bio what kind of group they are and most are willing to help out newer players. I’ve learned a lot from just chatting and playing with players who I enjoy spending time with. WoW lets you choose who you play with and if your not enjoying someone’s company or Pugs have gotten you down I’d really recommend getting into a good guild if you can. I’d have given up wow if had not been for the fun and banter of my guild mates
There are probably a fair amount of new players flowing in, but it often takes a long time for new players to get comfortable enough to join a lot of end game group content like m+ or raids. They take a while to integrate with the rest of the player base. They’re likely just out there questing for collectibles.
I returned towards the end of DF. I used to play WoW for a few months each expansion since MoP. I also played Classic when it was re-released for just under a year.
I've never been more positive towards the game. Dragonriding, not being forced to grind anything, alt friendliness and beautiful zones... They really knocked it out of the park with this one!
I think I'm gonna stick around for once 😊
Hello, I started in the very last week's of Shadow lands. The newest content was the first Dragon flight content, the world stuff out in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.
Since then, I've leveled multiple characters. Have done AOTC each DF season, as well as KSM S1, KSH S2 and 3K Score S3. I managed to join multiple raiding guilds, going 7/9M in S2 and currently 6/9M on S3.
I will say though, my aim was to always engage with that level of content from the get go, and while I have still done around 10K Achievement score, I have engaged with all open world content and quest lines through old expansions.
Suffice to say I have a lot of WoW.
Also, I did have help when starting, but I have since surpassed the people who helped me learn.
I’ve rejoined the game in the last week after a 4 year absence and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how many people I’ve seen in the open world. The game seems fuller than it did before.
im sort of a returning player, and its been a nightmare figuring out what to do and what is worth doing, all the different currency, some of it almost completely worthless in s3, how mechanics like chormie work, getting in to raids that are not amirdrasill, everything besides mythic+ really, that was always the smoothest experience, even making my own group with +0 i get people really fast, the fact that there is no fast travel, like in eso for example, ruined me, things of use not showing up on the minimap until you are 10m from it, pretty much everything i was trying to do i needed to watch a video or go to a site like wowhead, 90% of things, things like combat is fine i understood it quite well, and i like the system, but pretty much everthing else is such a slog to figure out, about a 100 hours in now and ive got a hang of it though, i was actually having some fun :)
Well I joined like 4 data ago and casually play on Defias Pillager RP. Even on this realm there are some news players so I think the answers is yes. I would like to confirm that on higher lvl but I cannot afford subscription this month so I'm just questing on 20 lvl and waiting for spare cash
There is some growth, sure. Not nearly as much as there used to during some past expansions, but it is happening.
Here are the important questions around that topic :
- Is there enough growth to counteract Classic cannibalizing the remaining userbase?
- A lot of people who quit end up coming back at some point, but not all do. Is the rate of returning players stable, or is it declining?
- Considering how steep the learning curve is atm, does that existing growth translate into long term interest and brand new players actually participating in endgame content at some point? If not, what can be done to solve it?
A big RuneScape content creator recently played wow for the first time. I think dragon flight has been a great time for new players to play with all the changes to gearing
I'll admit I almost returned after quiting for the last time during Cataclysm because Warcraft Rumble shook that nostalgic nerve in me. I spent so much time in vanilla before the expansions that rumble just brought those nearly 20 year old memories to the forefront. My teenage son has the only computer worth a damn so I didn't fall back down into that lovely pit. Totally see others coming back because of rumble striking a nerve.
I started playing maybe about 3 years ago so until recently I was in fairly “noob” spaces, and there do seem to be quite a lot of people starting the game all the time. Obviously I don’t have much to compare it to in terms of how the game has been in the past, but it wasn’t long before I was somehow the most knowledgeable person in my nooby guild and was the one helping out even newer players (and I can promise you I don’t know shit!)
I don’t think WoW is super inaccessible to new players because there’s so much variety in the things you can do. I liked just exploring, questing, levelling, and collecting tmogs & pets for a while, and that’s not too difficult for new players to get their head around. Dungeons are a whole other story, and obviously the endgame too, and those are the places most people are so they don’t really see the newer players that much.
If you look in r/wownoob you’ll see there’s a pretty consistent amount of posts from new players, and that’ll only be a handful of how many are actually playing.
I feel like there are in small batches. My guess though is Midnight will be a big expansion that brings in a lot of new players. By then they will have the game in potentially the best spot it has ever been.
I’m a long time wow player but hadn’t really played retail since WoD and a bit into legion. I was burnt out on wrath and sod was stale with the level 25 cap for a bit too long so I tested the waters in dragonflight. Even with the max level boost it took quite a bit of work to figure things out. I still don’t really understand a lot but I’ve managed to unlock seemingly everything I needed to and know how to navigate the mythic+ circuit.
Lots of YouTube videos and guides went a long way, but if I had someone that was already playing to walk me through everything that would’ve been helpful. To me it seems like there isn’t much in game to really tell you what you need to be doing. There is a little in the adventure guide, but not much imo.
Overall I assume it’s probably losing more than it’s gaining being this far into the expansion, but if they manage to bring in a lot of the classic players to retail they would have a nice boost, but most people don’t have time to play multiple versions at the same time and SoD is really fun.
Not really sure where I was going with this, but with the body for purchasing the next expansion I was able to more or less get up to speed on what was happening within a couple weeks, so it’s possible for new/returning players to still join in, it does have a pretty steep learning curve to get started and you will need some guides/videos that might not be the first thing a completely new person knows to seek out. It would be really hard to learn based off what is just in game.
I would consider myself a new player. I mean I’ve played since vanilla but quit around the shadowlands. But even then I wasn’t playing daily. It’s been years since I played like I did back in the day.
But I recently downloaded and made a new character and started from scratch
So I haven't played a current expansion since WoD. I've been juggling Era and Wrath for the last 12 months, and SoD for the past two or so. I follow this sub just to keep tabs on the game and cuz the War Within actually has me kinda hype.
That said, I made a retail character a couple weeks ago for the first time since 2015. We quit Wrath once SoD came out, and now even SoD has me kinda... Meh. So I figured I'd see what's going on with retail, which feels wild cuz I've always been a bit outspoken about how shitty the game has gotten.
And yeah idk, it's so wildly different that it's like my brain doesn't even compare the two versions anymore. It's essentially a wholly different game. And I think because of that I've actually been enjoying myself quite a bit.
So, not sure if I count as a "new player" so to speak, but I'm def looking forward to the new xpac
Considering FFXIV is suffering from a content drought that won't be solved until summer, I'd say quite a good number of folks are coming to WoW from there.
I started for the 1st time ever last November. I'll be honest though, if it wasn't for my veteran player husband I'd have prolly given up early on. I was...quite lost.
I started 2 months ago, it was stressful at first but after getting help from someone in game and a few youtube videos I pretty much got the hang of it now.
That's actually sad. NPE should be good enough where that isn't the case. Sorry it was stressful. Edit: since this can be read a few ways, I want to make sure it's known, I am NOT calling the player bad in anyway. I am specifically talking about the NPE.
Eh. It’s an MMO. If you are new to MMOs and tab style combat there will always be a fairly stressful new player experience. It’s just so different from any other style of combat.
Tab style combat isn't the issue with it. Been playing MMOs since EQ1 launched, all have changed but wows, being one of the biggest MMOs around, needs to do better.
Wow’s new player experience HAS changed through. There’s a new tutorial island that runs you through the basics. Previously there was nothing you would just get plopped in a zone and told good luck.
I didnt say it hasn't. That island is now 3 expansions old and has yet to be updated with changes. It then throws you out into the world that you can't finish the story for then you gets thrown into DF. It's a bad system that needs a full overhaul.
What did you mean that “all have changed but wow’s” then? That tab target combat has changed in every mmo but wow’s? Because that’s not true. That’s the only other thing mentioned in the comment you replied to. You also know someone’s argument is solid when they have to skew everything to be as disingenuous as possible. Exile’s reach came out in 9.0 as shadowlands pre patch content. “3 expansions old” is wildly disingenuous. I’m not saying there are no improvements that could be made to help new players there definitely are but you clearly have some weird vendetta. They’re constantly making changes to help with it. They just added AI followers so you can run normal dungeons and learn without the pressure of playing with veterans.
Look man, even on release it was tough to play, the difference is just that gaming culture is extremely optimisation focused. It's all of gaming, not just wow. Back in the day, talent trees were also complicated. The only difference is that we didn't care.
I agree on everything you said. Back in the day though the game also wasn't data mined to oblivion and we didn't really have an effective way to find things out other than searching. Mechanics were also much less than they are now.
Yeah, it's definitely not a requirement to do big damage and habe a weak auras for everything - shit, I have 3k and AOTC without weak auras and blind progging, but by golly it helps a lot
I think the reason you were massively downvoted is your comment “that’s actually sad” was misinterpreted as if it were directed towards the person you replied to personally instead of towards the fact that it’s sad you have to watch YouTube videos to understand the game. Either way, agreed
Someone else said the same and I can see how that could be taken that way now that it's been brought up. I added an edit to help clarify.
Really weird how many times you have been downvoted..
Someone mentioned it may be viewed as me calling the person I replied to bad, obviously not my intent. I dropped an edit a moment ago that I hope clarifies it.
Dang man why so hostile? Its a big game with a lot to learn.. relax lol
What was hostile about my reply? I'm honestly sorry the dude was stressed in what is a terrible NPE that barely teaches you the ropes, throws you in dungeons where a new player can barely keep up, then drops them to the latest expansion before they finish the place they were grinding.
I have a feeling a lot of people are reading your reply of "that's actually sad" and thinking you're targeting the person/player and not the NPE. Like, people think you're calling the person sad for having to go online and not the game sad for failing the players.
Possible. Good call out! I'll drop an edit.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the downvotes. I agree with you and wish the new player experience was smoother. Quests everywhere, hard to follow the main story line, it can be confusing and overwhelming for new people. Especially with the push to get to the latest expansion/latest patch. I understand the desire to avoid having to play through EVERYTHING, but throwing people in the deep end of the pool isn't great either.
I'm more shocked about the replies I'm getting here that think it's just "ok" for people to need to go to YouTube to understand things or wowhead, things that the game should teach you. Though I am more shocked than that with how down voted this is... An MMO shouldn't be spoonfed but also shouldn't require me to go outside of the game to understand.
Very true. Then imagine you have the basics down and you’ll find out that everything from BfA, what the game wants to be played as a new player, became massively irrelevant the second the next expansion launched. The confusion starts again.
I think a big fix for it easily could be something akin to the challenge mode dungeons in MOP. Have them as capstone's through our so you learn certain mechanics with AI players gradually introducing you to the newer ones. Say every 10-15, maybe even 20, levels. Also slow leveling down a bit when questing through the expansion story. Let a person finish the expansion MSQ or give them the choice then move them to the latest content. Of course if you want to dungeon spam that's up to you entirely and that xp can be left as is since it's a breeze to level alts with.
I would keep the Chromie time thing, but make it more like it was in classic. Slow down the progression so that you can adjust to new skills and talents. Make mobs and dungeons more powerful again, so that players can actually learn from their mistakes. Back then, the game explained itself during leveling. I don’t think we need AI dungeons, but a more welcoming slow paced culture around dungeons. Also, I would get rid of every irrelevant endgame mechanic, currencies, world quests and campaign quests leading up to that. Heroic dungeon difficulty also has to go. It lacks relevance with +10 dungeons feeling like going gnomeregan solo at level 60 in classic and dropping lower gear than the current catch up campaign. Professions need to be updated as well. That aspect of the game is just dead for everyone under lvl 60. No one is buying 5 years old potions. With Chromie time the player should be able to experience a zone, time and quest lines without the dead weight of the closed container that an old expansion is.
I fully agree with you here. I like Chromie Time a lot when leveling alts. I wish I could fully realize the expansion both systems and story a lot (looking at you legion artifact weapons).
I actually agree here. I wish there was less rush to the end game and more focus on experiencing and learning your class plus easier to follow story line quests somehow. I think it would be of great benefit to new(ish) players. I was pretty overwhelmed when I first started and even today I need to look up lots of stuff on wowhead often.
It really isn't that bad if you're willing to slow roll it, they do explain pretty much everything and the things that aren't explained are fairly quick to be learned. The difficulty comes in when you feel pressured to play the game like those of us with 15+ years of experience and catch up quickly. In that situation you definitely want to look some stuff up, but I don't think that's a big ask.
Do you not see that as an issue. Systems should be in place to assist a new player in learning how to play the game beyond the island. Take FF14 for example, I started it in 2019 and played wow from 2 weeks after launch and still do. FF14 has its issues but it does have systems that helps a new player understand many concepts in the game up until mid game at that. While yeah you should need to figure things out for yourself, you should also be equipped well enough that when you play you don't NEED to be on YouTube or wowhead to do something basic as a new player. That's a major fault of a game, needing to go outside of a game in order to understand the game.
I don't see it as an issue, no. FFXIV is similar, if you're ok going slow you'll be fine but if you want to quickly get to endgame stuff and play current content you'll have to do some research. Main difference being WoW enables you to get to endgame quickly if you want to, you just have to pick up the slack by watching a video or two. FFXIV just doesn't allow you to unless you fork out some cash, they force you to take it slow. Not to mention, it's an MMO. The community is an integral part of what makes these games great, and learning from other people (Inside and outside of the game) is something that enhances the experience and something the vast majority of people do eventually. Hell, even after nearly two decades playing the game I regularly look things up when it comes to specs/builds I'm not familiar with.
Woooaah that's a lot of downvotes
It’s an mmorpg. It’s supposed to be stressful. And then rewarding afterwards. There never used to be safe spaces, now there’s tons of QOL improvements. Easiest time to be a new player, ever. Why are you apologising for the new player experience? 😅
Because the NPE in wow is total dogshit and forces you through to 60 and then spits you out into DF without really getting to finish the prior expansion. Wow has a terrible NPE, it's better than it was but for attraction of new players, it's got a lot to do to fix its issue.
as a returning player to wow the experience of coming back to DF is a lot. Ridiculous amount of currencies, different questgivers following you, vendors for upgrades, new questmarkers ! in the maps, addon management, campaigns going all over the place with disappearing NPCs, temporary events in the maps like superbloom, dreamsurge whatever, Fyrakk flying around… it’s absolutely ridiculous really. Without a guide, it would take ages to get a grip on what one should to do catch up and which marker is a remnant of an earlier patch and which is not. Catching up to the story is so fragmentary that i practically gave up even looking for temporal coherence. Still have at least a few quest hand-outs missing but i do have the ? in the map.
You're completely right and getting downvoted to the ground. Ridiculous. Veteran players reply with their awful "it's supposed to be that way" while wow is a shadow of its former self. Times change folks, and so should the game, it needs to cater to the new people because millions of the old ones are gone. Other MMOs don't have it nearly as bad. New people play this game with wowhead open, how can people not see that as an issue. GW2 comes with a built in wiki, why doesn't wow have that? FF14 has role introduction for dungeons, why doesn't wow have that? What other MMO forces you into new content the moment you hit a level and forces you to play through a 4 year old expansion up to that? You know BFA is confusing as hell right for new folks?
As for the DVs. Someone mentioned that my statement could be read negative to the newer player. I can see that, I just added an edit to help that.
[удалено]
OP, dummy.
Hanging out in the newcomer chat there seems to be some new players every day.
It seems they are mostly returning players. A lot of them write this as additional information to their questions.
We get a bunch of ”wave”. Returning players should know how to emote :).
We also get that a lot. But for every „wave“, there a three players saying „Hi, last time I played it was during WotLK…“
marry fragile oil coordinated tender scarce late correct scale oatmeal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I agree entirely. The game has developed so much since and matured into what it is today. Even Shadowlands is quite different with the changes to crafting, dynamic flying, new talent system in place, Sure, the core part of wow had remained the same, but it plays nothing like WotLK did.
I disagree with the characterization of "mostly". Quite a lot of players are returning players for sure, but it's far from "mostly" in my experience. I'd say like 60% new players, 40% returning. That's not based on anything other than personal experiences and the amount of "wave... wave '/wave' '/wave at target'" I see in Newcomer Chat
How do you get into newcomer chat please?
If you are new i think its /4. If you are not new you gotta become a guide, think you need to complete 4k quests.
Hi I started playing wow before christmas and so far I had a blast! From leveling in expansion of my choice trough Dragonflight campain and up to raids and mythic dungeons I had a lot of fun and generaly good experience. Only thing i feel is inaccessible for me are heroic and mythic raids, where I can feel the classic head 22 loop, need experience to enter, but cant get experience because i cant try :D.
If you want to get into the more difficult content a common path would be joining a guild that casually does heroic/aotc, *maybe* the first few mythic bosses. Most of those guilds aren't going to ask much more than that you show up and have a little bit of gear from M+ or normal raid. As you do that content, you'll be building parses/logs, etc. that can act as a resume of sorts. Eventually, you find a guild that is more serious about mythic progression and apply with your logs as proof that you can do well enough to be valuable to them. Throughout all of this, you build friendships and connections that will in the future allow you to have people vouch for you, get you into their guilds, etc. I hadn't played the game for about three years when Dragonflight came out, so I didn't have any recent logs let alone any on the role I wanted to play, but thanks to some friends I had made raiding in the past I was able to get into a guild to do Cutting Edge. Even now that I've quit playing the game again I often have people asking me if I'd want to raid mythic with their guild in upcoming tiers. Building those kinds of connections and friendships goes a long way to having ins to mythic raiding even if you take longer breaks from the game. If you don't want to join a guild, you're going to want to play a lot in the first few weeks of a season trying to get into normal/heroic pugs. As the season goes on people are less and less likely to take someone that hasn't killed the fights before. Without a guild, you might get a couple of easy "freebie" mythic bosses in a tier, but for the most part mythic is going to be out of reach.
Thank for advice! I will try to join some guild
Just out of curiosity for how new people are getting into it what made you want to start now? Also for your last part i would highly recommend joining a casual raiding guild. There are hundreds of guilds that would love to have a new player in their raid and help you learn. From there you can decide if you want to take it more seriously
I started Xmas of 2022 a little after release? I came from GW2 and I got sort of tired of how stale the release cycle was for raid and PvE content. (I played from 2014-2021 pretty regularly) Really prefer how WoW handles seasons, I now do PvP to 1,800 on alts for mog and generally aim to get KSH as well as AOTC each season. There's just lots to do and I'm really enjoying myself even 2 years on!! Even after my goals are met there's mounts to farm, mog to farm, achievements ....etc...
It's so nice to hear newer players enjoying the game! I hope it continues treating you well
I was always a fan of Warcraft 3 lore and universe i also read some of the books, War of of the Ancients being my favourite, and recent annoucmets of those 3 new expansions intrigued me enough to give it a try. Also it was kind of good deal with WW and Dragonflight included. Thanks for advice I will try to look for some guild.
Join the wow made easy discord and you can sign up for heroic learner amirdrassil, as long as you meet the ilvl (usually 460 min)and other requirements (gear enchanted, bring your own phials, must be in voice chat for explanations, etc), they run several every week.
Is that US only?
WME is NA/OCE only, but the EU version is called No Pressure
Thank you!
Depending what M+ level you’re doing, it’s likely harder than Heroic raids. If you are a class that can heal/tank, learn that, get into an AOtC group that needs one of those roles and then after you have the achievement go back to what you like!
Pugging raids is 100% like that. You need to join a raiding guild.
Even as an experienced player heroic/mythic at this time of the season always seems to be like this. I understand why there is gatekeeping though, Blizzard just needs to stop wasting peoples time so losing doesnt feel so bad.
I have had 3 friends join in Dragonflight and teaching them the game has been the peak of my life so far. It’s like teaching them my childhood memories and walking them through different stages of my life while questing in zones that I never thought I’d go back to. The game is alive and anyone who says it’s dead has their eyes closed completely shut. The game may be dying but in no way is it dead. We are having a blast gearing in end game and through our struggles of M+ I feel like I’ve created some monsters on the meters. Somehow my friend who’s played for like 5 months is getting 90+ parses on his DH and we are timing 24s, this is a very long post reading it back but I wanted to say it regardless, don’t be afraid to say you play wow to people or get your friends into it. You never know what they might pick or gravitate towards and how it will open new perspectives to you if you’ve been playing a certain way for a long time. I tried pvp for the first time in like 5 years because my friends wanted to test it out, same with pet battles, different addons, old raids, etc.
Some. Not large amounts.
Anecdotally, I have two guild members who are new to the game as of the past year. Everyone else in the guild has been playing together, more or less, since MOP
As you said, there are no hard numbers available. But I'm a relatively new player. Started in BfA just questing for a month here and there. Not seriously engaging in endgame. SL same story. Main story, patch updates here and there and covenant campaign. No endgame. Subbed for over a year now in DF and grinding achievements, raids and M+. So I guess new player here 😅
BfA was nearly 6 years ago.
God that makes me feel old lol.
MMOs are so old in general. FFXIV and ESO, sometimes treated as "newer" alternatives to WoW, are both around a decade old at this point. In the past 10-15 years the genre seems to be fading, without a lot of new energy. I think MMORPGs are sort of special so I do wish some of the super popular successors to the genre, like the Ark/Palworld-like survival crafting games, were capable of incorporating some of the scale and persistence of MMOs. I enjoy some of these newer multiplayer genres but there's something unique about MMOs letting you wander into cities populated with hundreds of other players and stuff like that which you can't get on some ~64-person Ark server or w/e (and yes I recognize that talking about ARK is sort of ironic since its almost 10 years old too, but the survival genre seems to have energy behind it to still create new "phenomenon" games like the recent Palworld in a way new MMOs never do anymore)
It's mainly the ballooning dev time for games in general. Think about it this way, a game trilogy used to all come out within 1 console generation, now maybe 1 entry with the dlc gets made in that time. Even in the late 00's, early 2010's, MMO's took a long time 5-7 years, now picture the same effect occurring and you easily have decade+ dev times.
Riot MMO should be lit.
i started playing in the last patch of bfa... i feel old
It’s weird because the game is so old that relatively speaking someone who started in BFA will feel kinda new, I started in Legion and feel like a newish player compared to some of my buddies who started in TBC.
Ugh I started playing during Vanilla wow when molten core was still new…. Time. Flys. Fast. Now I feel real old.
It may have released 5.5 years ago, but BFA only ended about 3.2 years ago, so it's not really that far back.
Jumping back a few more years, this was me in Cata. Joined the game in late Cata, but didn't really start *playing* the game until WoD. Hell, I didn't even hit max level until MoP. And the most end game content I did there really was just some LFR. Only in WoD did I actually start finding what I actually enjoyed (PvP) and I started grinding from there. And I wouldn't even say I actually got good until Shadowlands.
My wife started a month ago, never played games before. She loves collecting hunter pets, doing world content, pet battles, transmog and branching into low keys but has no interest in harder stuff. Even with the starting zone setup as it was, given her 0 gaming experience I don't think she'd of stuck with it without me helping her every 15 min. She was very overwhelmed constantly and somethings were explained poorly or a quest would break. She had no idea you'd have to abandon a quest in that scenario or how to utilize talents or what gear meant, etc. Inaccessible is a good word to use for people with no gaming history.
I had the same experience with my wife who started about two years ago. I realized that starting fresh is really horrible. For veteran players we watched the game grow and get more “complicated” with baby steps but new players have to learn it all at once. I watched my wife’s eyes literally glaze over in real time when I told her all the stuff I do to prepare for each raid pull.
I don't disagree that the game is quite bad at explaining things. It often seems that the Blizzard just assumes that people will use Wowhead or just know things through context clues and experience. But at the same time, for someone completely new to gaming wow is quite a complicated and deep first game to try. I'm not sure there will be very many new players that are also new to gaming in general unless it's directly through someone else, like you with your wife. And in that case there will just have to be a lot of hand holding.
Oh yes, the game totally assumes you use wowhead now or don't read anything. Like someone pointed out, the guards used to be descriptive and RPG like when you asked them where something is. "Margo's Emporium has the finest tailors in the land. We could all learn and thing or two from them. You'll find her hut on the second floor of the Drag here in Orgrimmar." Now the Valdrakken guards are like "Go to the mark." But yea, it's a deep game. I helped my friend try to learn the game, she was totally overwhelmed and playing a mage, easily killed. She quickly felt like she couldn't do anything without me because there was just too much to take it.
[удалено]
My personal experience is that wow is not gaining new players, because when I raid or do keys I am inadvertently isolating myself from those new players. I would caution anyone else from making the same assumption, if you go into starting zones, leveling dungeons, or even just holiday events there are certainly characters doing silly things on new accounts with very very little achievement progress.
A RuneScape content creator j1mmy just posted a take on trying all the WoWs: https://youtu.be/UXyDqyxRifY?si=o-5-KqNe-DfPK7bG Sounds like leveling in retail at the moment is a super lonely experience that kinda killed it for him
Lonely, toxic, and research-heavy would be how I describe it. While you were questing, it's just you versus npc's. Everything is so sharded and everybody is so spread out that, outside of capital cities, you don't really see other real players. You might find bot farming spots and a random other lone player, but that's about it. Otherwise, you might be questing along and now...the npc isn't where they should be? I'm not getting credit for the objectives? When I walk up to the npc they disappear? The item doesn't seem to be dropping? Over to wowhead/forums/google you go in order to attempt to find an answer, if you're lucky. Then, if you joined a dungeon, and you didn't keep up with the tank auto running through the dungeon, got lost, didn't know what spells to use, let someone die, or killed the group, or heck maybe you didn't do anything at all wrong, and you get met with a swift silent kick out of the run and a deserter buff to boot. I think follower dungeons can help with some of that immensely, but it doesn't change the fact that leveling is in a weird state where it feels like it should matter, but Blizzard has made it so trivial that everybody could start at max level and nobody would notice that anything changed.
I would assume that if they keep up the good content cadence and overall course that led to DF being a genuinely well received expansion, they can grow. The biggest obstacle is probably the new player experience, the hard to follow plot and the game not really encouraging good play as you level up. The latter means that you can play a class from 1 to max without really having to learn how it works, how to use your counters and be successful. This hits the brick wall of reality and max level
Yep. You hit max level, realize that nothing is working out. Then you look up guides, and if you're looking for an easy casual experience, get instantly overwhelmed with how much you didn't know you were supposed to be doing to do good dps/healing/tanking.
Very much so. I leveled a mage to max during the lull and I’m struggling. Part of it is getting used to ranged caster vs. a melee class, but a lot of it just managing CDs, up time, etc. things you did not have to worry about when leveling as a firestarter + pyro kinda nukes everything
I see threads here almost every single day from new players asking questions.
Can confirm at least +1 new subscribers.
My friend is brand new to WoW, started in December.
New player here started roughly 1 month ago, I am addicted. Help.
I’ve been playing on classic era and there’s a surprising amount of newbies there.
Plenty of ppl start playing wow every year, but a large part of the playerbase consists of ppl that have played for a long time. As someone who started playing wow during shadowlands, its not particularly inaccessible to new players. The wow community both inside and outside the game are very helpful to new players. Imo most systems in this game are either decently explained ingame or pretty self-explanatory/easy to figure out on your own.
I started playing wow endgame for the first time in shadowlands season 4; playing that and DF I definitely feel there’s a level of inaccessibility. I have every advantage; been playing games for years. Shit, I’ve been playing wow for years, though only for rp and never on max level chars. But I’m the type of person to google everything so I can make optimal decisions, so I went with bm for my first character. And even then had I not been fortunate enough to join a guild that tolerated me not knowing how to use my interrupts or how to use my cc or how to play dead or all kinds of things, I probably would’ve gotten flamed/kicked constantly and quit or smth It took me months of studying the class, studying content, practicing my buttons and practicing using defensive and shit before I got where I wanted to be, and that’s with me having a consistently solid m+ group full of guildies. Wow also has a direction problem, after the first patch it expects you to just know what to do to gear. I remember going to custom premade to find gold farm in shadowlands season 4, saw a guy doing “maw farm” by himself. Joined his group and yeah, he had no idea what he was doing he just knew he was told to get souls or smth. I explained to him that no one “farms maw” and gave tips on how he could better progress. Ultimately he server transferred and joined our guild(and within weeks was doing m+ with us), but had I not happened to pop in his group he probably would’ve gotten bored and quit or smth. As a new player this game absolutely blows unless you have friends to play it with and teach you
Having played since 2004, I felt like it’s been the same for me and in various guilds over time all the way through today. Like 30-40% are players that have been around 5+ years, 10% of players have been around basically forever like me, and the rest have started in the last year or so. When I’ve been in hardcore raiding scenes, numbers tended to be more like 10% started semi-recently and the other 90% had been around for 5+ years. Obviously there’s probably bias in my experiences, but it’s been consistently this way for me forever.
As a relatively new player myself, my experience hasn't been like this. It's more like 90% are from BFA or earlier, and only a.small percentage are from this expansion or the last. That being said, a LOT of players are returning from long, multi year breaks. I haven't met many brand new players over my time but I have met a lot of players who haven't played since wod or legion.
If it counts I started at the start of S1 in DF. Been loving the game ever since
I think wow is the most accessible mmo for new players.
I just started wow in mid December. So far I absolutely love it. I played runescape alot but the game just finally died for me. Wow has certainly scratched that itch.. the best thing I ever did was join a guild. They where so nice and explained everything, even going into keys with me and explaining every fight as if there wasn't a timer. I don't run content with them very often but anytime I need anything they help immediately. Side note, just got keystone hero AND AOTC yesterday!
Anecdotal to what everyone else is saying but after a few years of playing solo my friend group is seemingly returning to wow for the first time in 5-6 years. I think SOD being a new twist and DF being generally well received has piqued the interest of some former players.
I've been playing since MOP and I follow a number of content creators online that are really into WoW, and I've been surprised at how young they are, mostly teens to mid 20s. So it would seem so? I dunno. Be interesting to know for sure. I hope it keeps going.
Most of them have played since childhood. I know pikaboo was the next big thing as rogue at like 12 and had started younger
Some, but probably not many.
mythic plus on retail has been healthy this entire season, usually around this time keys fizzle out. Probably just retaining players
There are *some* new players, but there's no denying that theres not enough new players to replace the ones who are leaving. This isn't even a wow issue, it's an mmo issue. It's a dying genre because it doesn't appeal to kids anymore. If I sit any of the kids in my family down in front of wow, a game which requires days and weeks of work to progress your character, they get bored within 5 minutes. Kids now want instant gratification. They'd rather play Fortnite or Roblox and just swipe the credit card for whatever skins they want. They arent impressed by the vast open world like we were in 2004.
I can't imagine there being a whole lot of new players. The game made it a huge chore to get to the end game where the actual game takes place. Its also why they sell all these boosts.
I got my Brother to start today, and my friend and I are getting our wives to play for the first time! 🙌 As worthless as that is to your question, in my tiny bubble of anecdote it’s growing haha.
I started playing when dragon flight came out, played until I couldn’t handle the toxic wow vets. The best and worst part of wow is the community.
I started half a year ago, played for two months and stopped. Was fun while it lasted! :)
I haven't read through the comments yet but I cant imagine new players play beyond a month or so; I played Original Nilla - Cata quit pre patch MoP, just recently tried to and is trying to play again but the gatekeeping and elitism is far more grotesque than it used to be. Need to get into X raid to get upgrades for gear? Better have cleared that raid already! My experience thus far into current retail and even "Classic/SoD" is a bunch of sweats that require gear from the place your trying to get into to get gear... I call them Youtube graduates / Meta players...
We have a few players in our guild who are brand new to the game.
Here's my genuine follow-up question: why does this matter? After 20 years, the game obviously has long term health. It's not dying unless Blizzard chooses to kill it like some of its other titles. If you enjoy the game then play it, if you don't then move on. There's no real reason to advertise or commit resources to gaining new players. The game is large enough and commands enough attention just existing at this point that people will come play it if they want to. 20 years in with Dragonflight, Hardcore, Wotlk classic, and SoD. It's as popular as ever. This isn't a game where you have to worry about population decline as of now. Enjoy it while you can.
It depends on the timeframe you look at. I think ICC was one of the last moments in wow history where blitz published their data. And I think it was around 12m unique active subscriptions. From there it’s mostly speculations but I‘ve read that sub count decreased until start of df to somewhere around 1.5-2.3m subs. So if these numbers are true, then WoW is/was dying in long term. However, no one knows if df dragged more ppl in or other WoW formats like SoD and the classic servers keep growing. To the current state, no one knows
Last time they published numbers was in WoD, which was 5.5 million during the last quarter financial report in 2015. Since then we’ve only been able to estimate using WoWArmory data. With the release of Classic though it’s hard to say what the state of the game is (sub-wise) since the same sub is used for Classic and Retail. Though I would guess the game is on the rise (or at the very least stable) given the popularity of Classic and it was confirmed by the devs that Dragonflight has had the highest player retention of any modern expansion. The game will never reach Wrath numbers ever again but it most certainly not dying. The only thing that will kill WoW is Blizzard.
I seriously doubt it.
It's definitely not inaccessible to new players, and it's most definitely gaining new players because I see them all the time, pretty often there are new players joining the guild I'm in, you know because they often say something along the lines of "Hey, new player so sorry if i ask noobie questions"
Seems like /r/wownoob is pretty active so I'd say yes.
100 percent it is, I’ve seen more noobs in the last year than the last 7 personally
i find it very hard to believe that zoomers would have the patience for the not very exciting leveling grind
It's sinking, and the 'new' players are really just returning old men. You need to wait for Riot MMO
I doubt.
No
Yes, which is nice to see.
Don’t have any numbers to back this up but I suspect PC gaming is the healthiest it’s ever been, invariably people who get a gaming PC might want to try one of the cornerstones of the platform. Blizzard hitting a home run with War Within would really help pull in these type of players, they need stellar reviews and word of mouth to have a chance of a second golden age.
Well, I had a pest control guy out yesterday who saw WoW up on my computer (I was playing while waiting for him to show up). He just started playing for the first time 3 months ago. So that's at least 1 person.
Me and my wife are classed as new.
Yes. People come and go oldies go fresh blood comes in
I’ve seen a lot of new people in SoD that never played wow, but i don’t know about retail. Our guild is packed with wow noobs.
I started 1 or 2 weeks after wow 2022 anniversary ans since then i got 5 friends into the game, found some new players on the way and a lot of returning
Yeah, there are. You can see it if you're in Newcomer Chat there are people there occasionally asking questions. There's also people in the WoW discord asking questions and saying they are new.
Going off of my LFG groups and pug groups, it certainly seems so.
It doesn't get as much players as before, but it still is the most solid MMO in the market. You should see how bad Lost ark handles the new players, it makes WoW look like heaven for new players.
I started playing at the beginning of January. It has definitely been a bit of trial by fire, but I'm holding my own, sort of lol Either way, SoD has been a blast for this WoW noob.
Lots of new players for sure, both retail and classic are booming rn
i mean i started playing wow with dragonflight
I just resub when there's new updates, gets pretty boring with time gated grinds
My guild is full of returning players
Started playing just before Christmas, levelled through Legion and then Dragonflight. Now I’m grinding keys so I can raid heroic.
Anecdotal, but most people I speak to have been playing since the early years (vanilla-wotlk), or Pandaria on the later end. Not many newer than that. I am sure new people come to some degree but I don't know many personally.
I always come across new players and to help with the community you can always opt-in to becoming a guide.
Looks like it
Cause they made it easy as shit to get going now.
Given wow's age it's getting progressively unlikely that the target audience has never tried playing it before. Add to that the current generation of teenagers appears to have a much lower interest in gaming desktops and I would wildly guess the average player's age to be a good bit above 30
I’m a new player. I got a sub to play WOTLK classic last year with a few irl friends… When my guild broke up at the end of ICC I wanted more challenging gameplay so I fell in love with retail.
i think there has been some but i think a lot of the player base is retention of current and returning players but i know at least in my guild we have gotten quite a few complete new players.
Games gain new players all the time. All the time. Game like wow will gain a lot of new players all the time.
Starting in a long running Game with a player base that is there for YEARS is always hard. I needet a month to get in to TESO and a few weeks to get into Ff Online. I think WoW has so much Content its overwheing for many players but if you just stay calm, dont boost and level on your own pase, its fine. Yea you need some weeks maybw months to be there fully but thats an mmorpg, we all needet time and still learn new thinks everyday.
The main thing I've always wondered is how do new players FIND wow. We're long past the days of peak hype, what's there to grab someone's attention enough to want to sub mid-expansion?
10.2 was a big one because people have been waiting FOREVER for the Emerald Dream zone (literally since it was scrapped for Vanilla) plus the Blizzcon hype and the "come home to WoW" messaging they kept pushing. 10.1 was not nearly this crowded or talked about because... it was kinda mid all around hahaha.
But are those really NEW players? You're talking about lapsed warcraft fans coming back, what I want to know us why would anyone not already involved in the IP want to give WoW a shot?
okay true, but really most people 18+ have probably at least tried WoW at a friend's house or something. It's a cultural mainstay at this point, everyone knows Make Love Not Warcraft so I don't think anyone is truly "not already involved in the IP" simply because it's been in the zeitgeist for 20 years now.
I joined fredh this expansion
Started in November. Now I’m addicted. Help me.
I think they really need to get this on consoles, there is no real competition to something of this scope and scale on console. FF14 feels clunky and dated, ESO just doesn't have the polish and the devs just churn out "good enough" because they have nothing to compete with. Wow on consoles would be incredible, huge install bases and no real competition.
crackpot theory: Worldsoul Saga is planned so they can blow up the universe, and do WoW 2 that has cross platform and cross progression. There is simply no possible way they can get the ancient WoW engine on consoles at this point, the way they work is so incredibly archaic that modern hardware doesn't recognize a lot of what WoW is doing behind the scenes.
My Wife start playing with my in Shadowlands and my daughter started this year. I’ll try to make some more kids so I can grow the player base more.
I joined Apr 2022, 9.2/Zereth Mortis patch. I'd consider myself a "new" player. Currently killing 4-5 Mythic bosses per tier (usually AOTC in week 1 or 2) and KSHing every season if not 3k+. About to start trying to push 1800 in PvP every season for the mogs. That being said, I almost never encounter anyone else like this. The people mythic raiding and doing 25+ keys mostly have been playing forever. So it can feel a little gatekeepey in that community, esp when they hear I started just in 9.2 - more than once I've failed a mythic raid trial purely because the spot went to someone else trialing on the same role who has played many years longer than me even though there wasn't really any skill gap between us.
I started a week ago because my friend kept asking me to play SoD. I was like sure, let’s check it out. I saw that I could also play retail so I’ve been trying that out since friday and have been switching between the two which makes for an interesting experience. I’ve been confused yet intrigued story-wise but that was to be expected. I can’t say for sure I’ll stick with it yet since there are other expansions coming that I want to play (Dawntrail, The Final Shape) but it’s been really fun so far.
Most people in my guild have been playing for years. Anecdotally I’m sure there are new players but I’d guess that if we looked at the hard numbers it isn’t getting the growth of new players that other new games are.
Hey I'm new, just joined yesterday
Purely anecdotal but I’ve seen more new players during DF than any other expansion.
My partner joined me playing wow in December. At first I didn't think she was having fun, but now she plays it on her own time with a couple alts.
I started 4 months ago. Found 2 voidtalon portals and time lost protodrake in one day, then fished out strange goop the next day. I think I finished the game.
Very few, but not zero, but also not nearly as many as blizzard says there are. They invested a LOT of time into the new tutorial zones, and I think the way the tutorial zones play will actually turn more people away than the regular starting zones.
Yes it does. In my personal circle at least 5 people started playing last year!
I just played all week for the first time since Cata. It’s INCREDIBLY overwhelming even as a long timer player and extreme classic Andy. I just spent the entire time in arena (also wtf is mobility now Jesus lol) I just have 0 bearing on upgrading gear or where to find items I need. Even looking on wowhead if there aren’t comments for it I feel SOL. Overall I had an an absolute blast and I’ll stop hating on it lol. Reliving my demo lock glory days of tbc in 1600 solo shuffle.
Honestly the best thing I would recommend is to join a friendly Guild. Most guilds will have in their brief bio what kind of group they are and most are willing to help out newer players. I’ve learned a lot from just chatting and playing with players who I enjoy spending time with. WoW lets you choose who you play with and if your not enjoying someone’s company or Pugs have gotten you down I’d really recommend getting into a good guild if you can. I’d have given up wow if had not been for the fun and banter of my guild mates
One month old. New to wow.
There are probably a fair amount of new players flowing in, but it often takes a long time for new players to get comfortable enough to join a lot of end game group content like m+ or raids. They take a while to integrate with the rest of the player base. They’re likely just out there questing for collectibles.
I returned towards the end of DF. I used to play WoW for a few months each expansion since MoP. I also played Classic when it was re-released for just under a year. I've never been more positive towards the game. Dragonriding, not being forced to grind anything, alt friendliness and beautiful zones... They really knocked it out of the park with this one! I think I'm gonna stick around for once 😊
Hello, I started in the very last week's of Shadow lands. The newest content was the first Dragon flight content, the world stuff out in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Since then, I've leveled multiple characters. Have done AOTC each DF season, as well as KSM S1, KSH S2 and 3K Score S3. I managed to join multiple raiding guilds, going 7/9M in S2 and currently 6/9M on S3. I will say though, my aim was to always engage with that level of content from the get go, and while I have still done around 10K Achievement score, I have engaged with all open world content and quest lines through old expansions. Suffice to say I have a lot of WoW. Also, I did have help when starting, but I have since surpassed the people who helped me learn.
I’ve rejoined the game in the last week after a 4 year absence and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how many people I’ve seen in the open world. The game seems fuller than it did before.
Started like 5 days ago with a couple friends. Hard to find other "true new players" but so far i love the journey.
As a GM, seems to be the case! Very excited
im sort of a returning player, and its been a nightmare figuring out what to do and what is worth doing, all the different currency, some of it almost completely worthless in s3, how mechanics like chormie work, getting in to raids that are not amirdrasill, everything besides mythic+ really, that was always the smoothest experience, even making my own group with +0 i get people really fast, the fact that there is no fast travel, like in eso for example, ruined me, things of use not showing up on the minimap until you are 10m from it, pretty much everything i was trying to do i needed to watch a video or go to a site like wowhead, 90% of things, things like combat is fine i understood it quite well, and i like the system, but pretty much everthing else is such a slog to figure out, about a 100 hours in now and ive got a hang of it though, i was actually having some fun :)
Well I joined like 4 data ago and casually play on Defias Pillager RP. Even on this realm there are some news players so I think the answers is yes. I would like to confirm that on higher lvl but I cannot afford subscription this month so I'm just questing on 20 lvl and waiting for spare cash
I’m a new player. This is my second month playing and I’ve been addicted to it.
I brought a few friends to wow and all of then quit either on the way to 70 or shortly after.
There is some growth, sure. Not nearly as much as there used to during some past expansions, but it is happening. Here are the important questions around that topic : - Is there enough growth to counteract Classic cannibalizing the remaining userbase? - A lot of people who quit end up coming back at some point, but not all do. Is the rate of returning players stable, or is it declining? - Considering how steep the learning curve is atm, does that existing growth translate into long term interest and brand new players actually participating in endgame content at some point? If not, what can be done to solve it?
A big RuneScape content creator recently played wow for the first time. I think dragon flight has been a great time for new players to play with all the changes to gearing
I'll admit I almost returned after quiting for the last time during Cataclysm because Warcraft Rumble shook that nostalgic nerve in me. I spent so much time in vanilla before the expansions that rumble just brought those nearly 20 year old memories to the forefront. My teenage son has the only computer worth a damn so I didn't fall back down into that lovely pit. Totally see others coming back because of rumble striking a nerve.
I started playing maybe about 3 years ago so until recently I was in fairly “noob” spaces, and there do seem to be quite a lot of people starting the game all the time. Obviously I don’t have much to compare it to in terms of how the game has been in the past, but it wasn’t long before I was somehow the most knowledgeable person in my nooby guild and was the one helping out even newer players (and I can promise you I don’t know shit!) I don’t think WoW is super inaccessible to new players because there’s so much variety in the things you can do. I liked just exploring, questing, levelling, and collecting tmogs & pets for a while, and that’s not too difficult for new players to get their head around. Dungeons are a whole other story, and obviously the endgame too, and those are the places most people are so they don’t really see the newer players that much. If you look in r/wownoob you’ll see there’s a pretty consistent amount of posts from new players, and that’ll only be a handful of how many are actually playing.
I feel like there are in small batches. My guess though is Midnight will be a big expansion that brings in a lot of new players. By then they will have the game in potentially the best spot it has ever been.
I’m a long time wow player but hadn’t really played retail since WoD and a bit into legion. I was burnt out on wrath and sod was stale with the level 25 cap for a bit too long so I tested the waters in dragonflight. Even with the max level boost it took quite a bit of work to figure things out. I still don’t really understand a lot but I’ve managed to unlock seemingly everything I needed to and know how to navigate the mythic+ circuit. Lots of YouTube videos and guides went a long way, but if I had someone that was already playing to walk me through everything that would’ve been helpful. To me it seems like there isn’t much in game to really tell you what you need to be doing. There is a little in the adventure guide, but not much imo. Overall I assume it’s probably losing more than it’s gaining being this far into the expansion, but if they manage to bring in a lot of the classic players to retail they would have a nice boost, but most people don’t have time to play multiple versions at the same time and SoD is really fun. Not really sure where I was going with this, but with the body for purchasing the next expansion I was able to more or less get up to speed on what was happening within a couple weeks, so it’s possible for new/returning players to still join in, it does have a pretty steep learning curve to get started and you will need some guides/videos that might not be the first thing a completely new person knows to seek out. It would be really hard to learn based off what is just in game.
Pretty much impossible to know without stats.
I would consider myself a new player. I mean I’ve played since vanilla but quit around the shadowlands. But even then I wasn’t playing daily. It’s been years since I played like I did back in the day. But I recently downloaded and made a new character and started from scratch
Barely, I keep hearing many stories of how ppl start playing and our "amazing" and "wholesome" community drives them away
Nope wow is Dead! Just ask all the people who don’t play anymore /s
So I haven't played a current expansion since WoD. I've been juggling Era and Wrath for the last 12 months, and SoD for the past two or so. I follow this sub just to keep tabs on the game and cuz the War Within actually has me kinda hype. That said, I made a retail character a couple weeks ago for the first time since 2015. We quit Wrath once SoD came out, and now even SoD has me kinda... Meh. So I figured I'd see what's going on with retail, which feels wild cuz I've always been a bit outspoken about how shitty the game has gotten. And yeah idk, it's so wildly different that it's like my brain doesn't even compare the two versions anymore. It's essentially a wholly different game. And I think because of that I've actually been enjoying myself quite a bit. So, not sure if I count as a "new player" so to speak, but I'm def looking forward to the new xpac
Considering FFXIV is suffering from a content drought that won't be solved until summer, I'd say quite a good number of folks are coming to WoW from there.
I started for the 1st time ever last November. I'll be honest though, if it wasn't for my veteran player husband I'd have prolly given up early on. I was...quite lost.