Make sure you haven't missed any of the Shadowlands announcement this week!


Shadowlands: Adventure Awaits in the New Starting Experience
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Adventure awaits in Azeroth in an all-new starting experience arriving with Shadowlands. Available to both veteran players and new, this introductory excursion is a great way to begin forging your path through the world.


An expedition has gone missing, and you have been called to be a part of a new crew of novice adventurers charged with discovering what’s become of them. As with many such journeys, you’ll find yourself as part of a crew aboard a ship bound to their last known location. When things take a turn for the worse, you’ll make landfall on the island of Exile’s Reach.


It’s here that you’ll begin to face the challenges the island presents, each increasing in difficulty as you work your way through your first 10 levels. As you progress, you’ll begin to learn more about using the new skills and abilities at your disposal.

At the culmination of your adventure, you’ll face two new bosses in a “mini-dungeon” designed for 1 to 5 players.


Learning New Skills

This new experience is carefully crafted to teach you a variety of skills needed to be successful in Azeroth and beyond.

As you make your way through Exile's Reach, you’ll learn all about the fundamentals of playing World of Warcraft, while also diving into some of the most important mechanics for your chosen class. Warriors will learn the essentials of a good Charge; Rogues will go through the gauntlet of proper use of combo points; while Hunters will learn how to tame and stable their pets.

Along the way, you’ll encounter new allies in Exile's Reach who are willing to teach you more abilities for your class. Paladins will encounter the ghost of a former paladin willing to teach them Divine Shield, while Monks will receive guidance through meditation to learn Touch of Death.

These fundamentals are the building blocks you’ll need to take on the many challenges waiting in Azeroth, and will help you along the path to success—wherever your adventure takes you.

For New Players

If you’re new to World of Warcraft and have never created or leveled a character, you will automatically begin your journey into Azeroth with the starting experience—helping you learn the basics of your class and the fundamentals of interacting with the world you’ve become a part of.

After completing the adventure, you’ll move into Battle for Azeroth, where you’ll be able to level through the expansion to level 50 before moving on into the Shadowlands.

For Veteran Players

If you’re a veteran player or you’ve leveled a character before, you can choose to opt out of the starting experience and begin instead at level 1 in the starting area for your race. Upon reaching level 10, you can either continue into Battle for Azeroth or speak with Chromie to choose the expansion that you’d like to continue leveling in before you enter Shadowlands at level 50. Players with Allied race characters will begin at level 10. Non-Allied race Death Knights, and Demon Hunters will automatically begin at level 8 and play through their own starting experience before moving on around level 10.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Shadowlands: Adventure Awaits in the New Starting Experience started by Lumy View original post
Comments 65 Comments
  1. Jetstream's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyphael View Post
    I understand why they're doing it perfectly, to try to increase player retention with a stupid easy generic zone that dumbs the game down even further. The problem is, Blizzard is forgetting they are in the MMO business, so even if they manage to retain players a little longer because the new starting zones makes the game seem easy, as soon as said players run into anything even remotely more complicated than that starting zone, they're going to leave anyway. Only players who are interested in playing an MMO will ever stick along over the long haul, anyway.
    Calling this starting experience stupid easy suggests that you think there’s even the slightest challenge in the current ones. You kidding?
  1. Queen of Hamsters's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jetstream View Post
    Calling this starting experience stupid easy suggests that you think there’s even the slightest challenge in the current ones. You kidding?
    Yeah I don't know what he's smoking. The leveling experience (Cata or pre-Cata) didn't do shit in teaching players how to be good at the game.
  1. Kyphael's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Queen of Hamsters View Post
    Lol'd.

    If the current leveling experience taught players how to be good at the game, we wouldn't have about 90% people unable to handle anything above LFR in the game. The leveling experience was piss easy when I first started. My interest in getting better = what made me a good player. The same goes for everyone else. You even have people fail at the most basic-ass rotations in Classic ffs.

    You're making a hen out of a feather, a feather that doesn't even exist to begin with.
    So your argument is that your own ability and interest in gaming made you a better WoW player, not any in-game tools or features from WOW itself, including these so-called flawed racial starting zones, and yet this new generic starting zone is the problem solver to making great WoW players who will perform exponentially well because of this new generic starting zone? Even though apparently they can't even learn the game themselves by navigating a stupid easy racial starting zone?

    Can we just admit that a player becomes good or bad at this game whether they have the interest and passion for the game (in this case, an MMO which in today's market is considering a dying brand because of how time consuming and challenging and might be?) and not because we're lacking some kind of even more dumbed down starting zone that will automatically churn out better new players?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Jetstream View Post
    Calling this starting experience stupid easy suggests that you think there’s even the slightest challenge in the current ones. You kidding?
    I meant the current ones are already stupid easy. This one dumbs it down to dunce level.
  1. Queen of Hamsters's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyphael View Post
    So your argument is that your own ability and interest in gaming made you a better WoW player, not any in-game tools or features from WOW itself, including these so-called flawed racial starting zones, and yet this new generic starting zone is the problem solver to making great WoW players who will perform exponentially well because of this new generic starting zone? Even though apparently they can't even learn the game themselves by navigating a stupid easy racial starting zone?

    Can we just admit that a player becomes good or bad at this game whether they have the interest and passion for the game (in this case, an MMO which in today's market is considering a dying brand because of how time consuming and challenging and might be?) and not because we're lacking some kind of even more dumbed down starting zone that will automatically churn out better new players?

    - - - Updated - - -

    l.
    Lol, no that's not at all my argument.

    My argument is that no leveling experience ever in the history of this game created good players, thus your outrage is inane at best.
    The new experience won't be any more or less difficult than the current experience, since it will first and foremost be tailored for new players. Same as always. Yes, even in Vanilla, the casual MMORPG of its time. As such, it won't have anymore or less of an impact on whether or not a player becomes good at the game than any leveling experience before it.

    Which brings us right back to how inane the outrage is.
  1. melzas's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Hextor View Post
    Forcing people to level thru BfA is garbage.
    BFA has the best leveling zones and quests in the game. Hating on bfa blindly is garbage.
  1. TigTone's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by melzas View Post
    BFA has the best leveling zones and quests in the game. Hating on bfa blindly is garbage.
    Not to mention it makes sense lore wise to level through it. A first in WoW history.
  1. Kyphael's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Queen of Hamsters View Post
    Lol, no that's not at all my argument.

    My argument is that no leveling experience ever in the history of this game created good players, thus your outrage is inane at best.
    The new experience won't be any more or less difficult than the current experience, since it will first and foremost be tailored for new players. Same as always. Yes, even in Vanilla, the casual MMORPG of its time. As such, it won't have anymore or less of an impact on whether or not a player becomes good at the game than any leveling experience before it.

    Which brings us right back to how inane the outrage is.
    I'm not really outraged, I'm just pointing out as you just solidified that it's a new starting zone tailored for brand new players that doesn't focus on race, but rather the WoW questing experience and really hammers home what they feel are fundamentals in what is essentially a grade school level tutorial that ultimately likely won't increase player retention outside the norm anyway because the nature of the game will remain a semi-challenging MMO. Now if 2 years from now, there is substantial data indicating that Shadowlands players perform much better in LFR and end game content versus any previous expansion's, I'd eat that crow, but what are the odds that'll happen?
  1. Frontenac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Taurous View Post
    Curious how mount training will work. If I decide to go to Northrend at LVL 10, probably gunna need to be able to fly at some point. Also you're supposed to level from 10-50 in one expansion?? Jesus that would be like leveling every 10 quests
    So? It's about 5 levels by area. Not much different from Vanilla.

    And another thing. I was real goddamn confused last night when I went to get some medium leather for a friend and was like uhh, everything is scaled up to 60, what drops medium... Now you'll have every mob in the game minus Shadowlands scaled up to 50 with them dropping dozens of different mats. That's confusing.
    Hmm... I was dismissing that point at first, but it is a problem. If you want to help a friend (or an alt), that is. Since the professions revamp, we level up our profs by expansion: Outland Skinning, Northrend Skinning, Shadowland Skinning, etc. So you personnaly won't need any medium leather to level up Leatherworking if you're playing in Outland or Draenor. Or they could just simplify the profession leveling system in Vanilla zones. Instead of having light, medium, heavy leather, let's only have leather and hides. Same with other professions, although it's not that much of a problem when the mats are coming from farming nodes, like Mining or Herbalism.
  1. Sorshen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by melzas View Post
    BFA has the best leveling zones and quests in the game. Hating on bfa blindly is garbage.
    Good leveling zones that have nothing to do with the Shadowlands intro.

    Quote Originally Posted by TigTone View Post
    Not to mention it makes sense lore wise to level through it. A first in WoW history.
    Actually it makes no sense for it to be the introduction, jumping from battle of Undercity to proxy troll-kultiran war to Azshara to Old God to Chronicle retconned afterlife. Nazjatar and N'Zoth probably won't even be part of the leveling process since they're power creep content patches.
  1. TigTone's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Hextor View Post
    Actually it makes no sense for it to be the introduction, jumping from battle of Undercity to proxy troll-kultiran war to Azshara to Old God to Chronicle retconned afterlife. Nazjatar and N'Zoth probably won't even be part of the leveling process since they're power creep content patches.

    I should rephrase it makes the most sense compared to the alternatives and since it’s for new players it’s a new adventurer!

    Who probably didn’t make the cut for the raid on N’zoth.
  1. Brocksley's Avatar
    All other classes-Learn how to use real abilities for combat!
    Hunters-Learn how to tame more pokemon

    Wish hunters were more than just pet collectors in the devs eyes.
  1. Queen of Hamsters's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Brocksley View Post
    All other classes-Learn how to use real abilities for combat!
    Hunters-Learn how to tame more pokemon

    Wish hunters were more than just pet collectors in the devs eyes.
    I sincerely doubt that's all that Hunters will learn.

    And I'd reckon that the "considering hunters pet collectors" comes chiefly from the playerbase. The casual majority of Hunters.
  1. anubisdark's Avatar
    So they can make a dungeon for 1-5 players. I am hopeful they can apply this design to all current expansion dungeons.
  1. Dervrak's Avatar
    It's good to see that Blizz is finally reworking the early leveling process (about 10 years overdue in my opinion). They appear to be taking the path of Elder Scrolls Online and making leveling more integrating into a larger story arc as opposed to the utterly disconnected way the older zones feel now. I mean seriously about the only connection most of the old vanilla leveling zones have now is at some point some some NPC in Zone A will say "take this letter to some other NPC in Zone B" and that's about it.
  1. taishar68's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Hextor View Post
    Forcing people to level thru BfA is garbage.
    Why? New players don’t have a reference point, so what’s the difference?
  1. Naitsade's Avatar
    I dont like the "larger the life" storytelling (big bad bosses whit powerful magics and evil master plans), especially right from the start. Early levels should be about exploring and learning about your class.
  1. Cæli's Avatar
    uhm, this looks so bad ahah
    hopefully new players gets interested in wow through better zones screenshots, having someone not knowing wow appearing right here will certainly make him leave after less than an hour, to never come back
    starting zones like teldrassil, tirisfal glades, elwynn, are a reason why the game started off as a major success, zones with clear identification and soul. maybe they're just making a wow 2.
  1. Darkeon's Avatar
    In the words of a fresh player, that is currently leveling up in my guild: "What is Garrosh doing here?".

    Any attempt to straighten up the levelling experience, especially from a storytelling point, is a good change in my book. Was looking forward to it even before this information dump.
  1. Villager720's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by taishar68 View Post
    Why? New players don’t have a reference point, so what’s the difference?
    Because some people hate BfA endgame so much that they can't see anything else.
    BFA leveling has great zone stories that are somewhat interconnected (rare for WoW), fantastic art, and is the most relevant storywise/characterwise to Shadowlands.
    It also helps them start working on allied race unlocks. 5 of 6 of the allied races you can unlock from BFA come from leveling reps.
  1. taishar68's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cæli View Post
    uhm, this looks so bad ahah
    hopefully new players gets interested in wow through better zones screenshots, having someone not knowing wow appearing right here will certainly make him leave after less than an hour, to never come back
    starting zones like teldrassil, tirisfal glades, elwynn, are a reason why the game started off as a major success, zones with clear identification and soul. maybe they're just making a wow 2.
    It is impossible to know what players who have never played WoW will think. They have no reference point to compare against what they are experiencing. You can't empirically assume everyone's reaction. And to wit-Blizzard may get criticized heavily (here especially) for how they handle end game systems and the like, but they have always done a great job in creating games and creating great experiences. I'm just happy that current players don't have to level alts through BfA only. for new players, as I said above, that doesn't matter since they don't know the difference.

    And to add an even more salient point...how many new players is a 16 year old game that is launching its 8th expansion going to get anyway? I would wager not enough to merit a lot of concern, I can tell you that.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Villager720 View Post
    Because some people hate BfA endgame so much that they can't see anything else.
    BFA leveling has great zone stories that are somewhat interconnected (rare for WoW), fantastic art, and is the most relevant storywise/characterwise to Shadowlands.
    It also helps them start working on allied race unlocks. 5 of 6 of the allied races you can unlock from BFA come from leveling reps.
    That's true. I personally favor Wrath leveling to all else, so it will be interesting to see how they rework the leveling curve for each expansion.

Site Navigation