Why is this game so unfriendly for new or returning players?

[Happygaming2017]

because MMO games are evolving constantly

[infernity]

As others have said, try to find yourself a guild to join. As a GM myself, i can say with certainty that people who make an effort to be a part of our guild (chat in /g, ask people to join whatever, jump on discord with us) as faaaar more likely to be kept around. For the majority of places, fitting into the guild is more important.

Obviously, were you trying to join some mythic guild, the requirements would change.

While you're waiting to join that place that is right for you, try to do as much as you can in the time you have. For example, running old raids to increase the chance of getting bis leggos, doing whatever level m+ you can get into) as this will show any sensible GM that you're trying to do what you can.

[HuxNeva]

I've played a lot of MMOs starting with Guild Wars 1 back in the day and so far WoW is the only game I've played where the community has built up a brick wall preventing anyone except for the people who have stayed ahead of the curve from doing any relevant content. I've worked really hard to catch myself up, I did all the quests and I've been running around Argus for days now, every waking hour to put a piece of relinquished gear in every slot. As far as I know that is literally all I can do aside from getting into raiding guilds or groups, but everyone just turns their nose up at me for both of those.

I had a blast leveling up and doing all of the story related quests at 110 because I always felt as though I was progressing and getting stronger. But now i've essentially hit a brick wall where I can progress no further into the game without buying a carry. Because everyone requires me to already have gear and achievements for the content I'm trying to progress to. This "catch up" stuff on Argus was an absolute waste of time because its still not enough to get past this communal brick wall.

I either buy carries or quit the game, and I don't think I'm the only one who will end up choosing the latter. I'm not sure how this is okay with Blizzard or if they even care because the way things are I doubt this game will ever be able to attract and retain new players.

I'm going to add 1 more voice to the quire: finding a good guild is key to enjoying this game. Even if you somehow would get all the 'required' gear and achievements, living just in PUG world is never ever going to be fun.

[potis]

Cause gear is no longer the measure of a dedicated player.

The inflation is massive, therefor stupid requirements are required to exclude the majority of the people which also reduces the problems that arises with them.

Which is why i no longer quit the game and keep playing even when i get bored with it, its 4-5 hours a week, big deal, saves me the trouble of having to play x10 more hours a week for 1-2 months trying to catch up and RNG gods shitting on me.

Usually the boredom goes away and the interest in the game returns after a week or two, but its totally worth it.

[Halwyn]

(sigh) All those lads and lasses chanting "Classic was better because there were social interactions!", and yet we get those people who can't make a effort towards finding a guild nowadays, in the expansion where it's laughably easy to gear up and get your AotC, whining about it in process "it's Blizz' fault, thinking of unsubbing". Hypocrisy at its finest.

Get a goddamn guild for fresh 110. Then group up with 4 more people and spam M+ keys. Congratz, you have your gear to beat Normal Antorus, run it a couple more times, log your latest and best attempt and present it to the leader of the guild looking for HC progression raiders, along with an explanation of your situation and how commited you are to raiding. That's more than enough to get you a spot if your RL has any semblance of common sense, if you're actually making it an effort to up your game and follow tactics (which isn't hard to do, considering how easy HC Antorus is, save for the Coven), which isn't hard to do with the amount of guides floating around.

The only problem you're facing right now is the fact you choose to sit here and complain instead of trying doing something about it.

[Hctaz]

Thats all fine and dandy but from a business perspective its problematic. The "hardcore" player base of any game makes up a very small percentage and thus bring in the least amount of revenue. This "hardcore" player base in WoW is actively pushing away anyone else from the game. I've no doubt that Blizzard has taken steps to discourage this type of thing but there is more that could be done for sure.

You're definitely confusing "hardcore" and "elitist".

The hardcore players are pretty exclusive and you wouldn't see them pugging anyway.

The tier below them are actually super cool about carrying people. My guild will bring complete randoms in for our normal and heroic runs that we grab from trade chat just to guarantee more loot drops per boss.

The elitist groups are the actual majority of the game, sadly. They make up the most income. The hardcore players know better than anybody that score doesn't mean anything, and they also know that they can carry whoever they choose.

[Mekkle]

You do not control how the raid i make works. I made the raid with my rules. You could just as easily do the same.

[Cwimge]

Lie, Link somebody else's achievement or grab an addon from CURSE for it and cast a broad net of applications. Some groups will decline you, one in a thousand will follow through on their scary sounding threats of looking you up but you'll get where you want to go eventually

[Marrilaife]

easy =/= fast.
The only practical way to gear up is tied to a weekly reset. So before you can even get into a raid pug you need to wait and wait and wait... for that fucking weekly cache..

So imagine if there was no weekly cache. Two things would happen.
1. Non raiders would cry it's "raid or die" again.
2. People wouldn't have incentive to stay subbed week after week and many of them would unsub faster (especially those who don't play in guilds and stick around for social reasons).

While there is a need for catch up mechanisms, there is also need to reward loyal player who is subbed every month and wants to be rewarded for continuous play. If a guy spent weeks farming gear (from weekly caches or something else), and then comes the "tourist" and gets "caught up" to the same level, the loyal player will ask "what's the point? might as well join the big crowd of cyclical players". This is bad for Blizzard because more and more people will be incentivized to play few weeks when a big patch hits then insta unsub until another batch of content.

Even worse would be if there was no weekly cache AND m+ rewarded higher gear to match current weekly cache - nolifers would nolife it all during first few weeks and then shun everyone else who is below their ilvl. Trickling high gear piece by piece over long period of time means that casuals don't stay too far back behind nolifers. Not everyone has time to spam m+ 40h a week, but nearly everyone can afford running 1-2 dungeons a week.

Anyway, if you have time on your hands and want to get caught up - m+ awards up to 940 ilvl before titanforge happens. You can spam it all day. If at start your gear is too low to do 15s, then start at lower threshold until you catch up to that. Keys don't deplete and can be recycled endlessly. Some dungeons are crappier than others but most of them are doable and they all reward gear even if you don't make it in time. You can always downrank key too, if you have troubles with that +15 tyrannical HOV or upper kara just lower the key and do it at manageable levels, next dungeon will probably be a different one. Now if you have most items 940+ and artifact and 2 lvl 1000 legendaries, I'm pretty sure you'll be at least 945 total. There is a crafted legendary, one for killing normal Argus (not even hc), and then there are 2-3 crafted pieces that go to 935.

Yep, this requires time to farm up but catch up is about providing avenues, not making everything effort free.

[Soon-TM]

Tbh, it's not OP's fault if the game gave him 109 levels of solo play (no, LFD doesn't count as social) and then BANG, it expects you to have a full net of friends/acquaintances at 110 so that you can fully enjoy the game. It's one of the reasons that the levelling experience needs to encourage social gameplay, but oh well...

[david0925]

So basically the 'advice' I'm reading here is to make friends and join a raiding guild.

I'd like to see the people recommending these things to log into WoW right now and try to befriend a random stranger in the game. You'll find that most people will just flat out not respond to you because they're talking with their already established circle of friends in discord. And the ones that do respond will have no interest in becoming some random person's friend. You people who think that forming the type of friendship that is really only beneficial to one party is so easy are seriously delusional. Also I've sat looking at trade chat for hours and the guilds I do see recruiting are either social/leveling guilds or hardcore mythic guilds that want 960 ilvl people with insane parses. There was actually one that seemed to look promising and when I explained to them my situation I got no response.

I'm guessing that most of the people who are responding are people who are part of the problem and are just getting defensive about it. So i'll be leaving now, whoever the mod is can go ahead and write this off as a troll or bait or whatever and delete the thread. I'm done with WoW.

Intentionally or not, you are trolling because you are defensive about opinions you don't like.

The gear/experience/whatever gap you have is created by supply and demand. There are players that are much more than you are because you played while you didn't, so when a pure pug is looking for players to fill, why should they pick you over others when they know nothing about either of you. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but you just need to slowly climb the ladder and work on your social network, especially when you are trying to leapfrog into content. This is true for both games and real life, and applies even more to established games like this.

You're not at fault here for feeling frustrated, but neither are people who are still 20 ilvl or higher above you choose to not take you into contents because they have others to do so.

[Zulatomten]

865s from random heroics in the group finder, 880 from unsullied tokens, and a couple 910 pieces a day from relinquished isn't enough of a catchup?

When groups require you to have better gear than you get from heroic difficulty for a Normal Run and Curve Achivement after less than a week of the raid being released. Doesn't matter how much catchup you try to do, you are always lacking behind.

If you only pug, you got a maybe two days after a new content patch to get a curve achivement, if you don't get it you are effectivly wasting the next few months.

[david0925]

When groups require you to have better gear than you get from heroic difficulty for a Normal Run and Curve Achivement after less than a week of the raid being released. Doesn't matter how much catchup you try to do, you are always lacking behind.

If you only pug, you got a maybe two days after a new content patch to get a curve achivement, if you don't get it you are effectivly wasting the next few months.

That's also not true. Most pugs right now want 930-940 for normal, which you can get with just argunite gear with minimal forging. 2 Legendaries at 1000 and Artifact weapon that starts at 750 inflates your ilevel a lot. I already did the math before and if you have 2 legendaries at 1000 and full argunite gear with zero forging, you will be around 926. With a little bit of forging and some luck with Invasion World boss, that will easily put you over 930.

The core issue here is still supply and demand, when I don't know anyone, why should I choose you at 930 when 5 applicants are at 940? So if you want to overcome this barrier you need to make connections or just grind/buy your way to higher ilvl.

[Spookysheep]

Look anywhere on the internet and you will see droves of people admitting that WoW is one of the worst MMO communities out there. The sense of smug elitism started back in vanilla wow when blizzard allowed some old Everquest raiders to design the game and ensure that only a very small percentage of the player base got to see the end game content (Blizzard ADMITTED to this).

So over the years blizzard figure out who actually pays the bills, which are casual players and they made the game "easier" in the minds of the smug elitists. Since then it has been a never ending war of elitist trolls bashing casual trolls counter-bashing the elitist trolls and it is a never end cycle of vitriol. It has been that way since day 1 of vanilla and it is only going to get worse as the game gets older and millenials start bringing their own horrific behavior into the game.

[Deleted]

thing is even though you are 100% playerbase has changed during last 15 years.

nowadays playrs do not want to be parts of guilds or raiding on schedule

that why wow endgame is so unappealing to them.

its natural they want those easy-acces systems in game - why ? because all other games out there do provide them so people are used to them

WoW is just really old outdated game with old outdated system at this point - thats why those people are dissapointed.

imagine you were used to using lets say iphone 7 and suddenly you have to use nokia 3310 for a week - yes its timeless phone with amazing battery can call and send text but overall ... its utter junk compared to iphone

and that how people who have comparison to other games feel when they "return" to wow

the only ones who do not feel it are people who never left wow - and dont even imagine that there could be better alternatives out there for game systems.

Which other games offer easily quee-able higher difficulty modes? Which one is the "iphone 7" in this comparison?

So what is the better alternative? I've tried a lot of MMOs out there and none even comes close to the functionality of our current "premade Group-finder".

You either put it in the hands of users and see chaos ensue on their end before they enter the raid, OR
you put in a quee-system and look at the chaos that ensues once they step (in this case are ported) into the instance.

[davesurfer]

I've played a lot of MMOs starting with Guild Wars 1 back in the day and so far WoW is the only game I've played where the community has built up a brick wall preventing anyone except for the people who have stayed ahead of the curve from doing any relevant content. I've worked really hard to catch myself up, I did all the quests and I've been running around Argus for days now, every waking hour to put a piece of relinquished gear in every slot. As far as I know that is literally all I can do aside from getting into raiding guilds or groups, but everyone just turns their nose up at me for both of those.

I had a blast leveling up and doing all of the story related quests at 110 because I always felt as though I was progressing and getting stronger. But now i've essentially hit a brick wall where I can progress no further into the game without buying a carry. Because everyone requires me to already have gear and achievements for the content I'm trying to progress to. This "catch up" stuff on Argus was an absolute waste of time because its still not enough to get past this communal brick wall.

I either buy carries or quit the game, and I don't think I'm the only one who will end up choosing the latter. I'm not sure how this is okay with Blizzard or if they even care because the way things are I doubt this game will ever be able to attract and retain new players.

I actually find the opposite. My hunter I leveled when Argus came out and is like 932 and I have never raided with him, not even LFR. I haven’t logged on him for a few weeks.

Now I don’t think it is too much to make a returning player or new toon work a few weeks to get gear up to par to raid. Just get the 910s from Argus (and many titan forge), do the greater invasions, do lfr etc. We have a 920 requirement for our heroic raid, and we had 3 returning players qualify for our raid in week 1 or week 2

But seriously find a casual raiding guild. Content is so easy that most guilds should take a person to R/HC as long as they come gemmed, enchanted, flasked and food. We only raid one day a week for 3 hours and clear Heroic every tier and bring all sorts of random guildies who come prepared.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh I completely agree, people can do whatever.

I'm just saying there's a point to be made in the OP's favor that it can feel hard to get groups when a lot of PUGs are asking for item levels in the 920-930 range and you're looking at i910 from relinquished tokens and 915 from LFR.

Don’t forget your Legos are 1000 and you weapon is most likely higher

[Stormbornsham]

I've played a lot of MMOs starting with Guild Wars 1 back in the day and so far WoW is the only game I've played where the community has built up a brick wall preventing anyone except for the people who have stayed ahead of the curve from doing any relevant content. I've worked really hard to catch myself up, I did all the quests and I've been running around Argus for days now, every waking hour to put a piece of relinquished gear in every slot. As far as I know that is literally all I can do aside from getting into raiding guilds or groups, but everyone just turns their nose up at me for both of those.

I had a blast leveling up and doing all of the story related quests at 110 because I always felt as though I was progressing and getting stronger. But now i've essentially hit a brick wall where I can progress no further into the game without buying a carry. Because everyone requires me to already have gear and achievements for the content I'm trying to progress to. This "catch up" stuff on Argus was an absolute waste of time because its still not enough to get past this communal brick wall.

I either buy carries or quit the game, and I don't think I'm the only one who will end up choosing the latter. I'm not sure how this is okay with Blizzard or if they even care because the way things are I doubt this game will ever be able to attract and retain new players.

Just git gud and you will be invited, dont expect to be carried out because almost no one likes to carry people, unless they are on your same guild.