Do You Think WoW's Lore Through Leveling/Questing is Hard To Follow For New Players?

[Orby]

Despite the fact Blizzard has made multiple attempts to try and restructure how levelling works, the way they went about it in regards to Chromie, while not a bad way of doing things is a horrible attempt to try and bring in new players, especially with regardless to the lore.

Now with that said the new level 1- 10 starting area introduced with Shadowlands was a good start I enjoyed it. But once you come out of that starting area, you are thrown into this jumbled mess of a narrative, there's no point A to point B, the story being told doesn't flow that well at all.

And I know you have Chromie and it does kind of help but regardless of Chromie, you never finish the story you wanted to start, you are pretty forced out and into the current game, and I understand that Blizzard maybe want to not want to leave you out of the new content and get you there as fast as possible, but personally I feel if the levelling experience and storytelling is good, then it shouldn't matter how long it takes to get there. You want to get people to the now. But how cool would it be to have a storyline or path that flows through all the expansions smoothly so a player can see all the story and play through it in a way that doesn't leave your brain coming out the other end looking like a jumbled rubric cube.

WoW today, more so in the later expansions seems to give us a structure with the main story quest tracker in the quests tab, but a lot of the stories are locked behind reputation grinds, I would much prefer that Blizzard not do that, let everyone who wants to experience the story do just that. Not saying get rid of the grind, for those that want to do that they can still do that too, just make sure you separate it from the story, they can have time after they have experienced the story to go back to that when they have caught up.

It would be good to separate this new levelling with route

You have :-
Story Path - A questing experience that takes you through the game to experience the story, you wont miss anything you will hit every beat and it will flow well enough to get you to the current expansion while knowing what happened before and how we got there.
The Side Quests - The stuff that isnt needed in part of the story but can be returned to to finish later. Or if you want to finish them as you quest you can if like but will take you a lot longer to get through the content if you decide to do both, but at the same time maybe you enjoy it so much you want to take longer. The option is there.
The Grind - When every thing is done you can go back and grind your reps, get the rewards and stuff you want from them.

Now that WoW is 17 years old, I understand that Blizzard would need a lot of time and recourses to probably do this. You will need to restructure the questing from top to bottom. Its just sad that you need to look for the story on WoWpedia these days, because the story in game is so hard to follow.

Better yet I would love to know if there are any new players who started playing WoW post Legion, who wants to like WoW's lore, and give us your opinion on the levelling structure regards to following the story how did you feel, did you like it? Am I talking out of my butt? Maybe the levelling structure is fine. Would love to know your opinion too.

[Blackmist]

WoW has a continuous underlying story?

I honestly can't remember when it ever had one. It's all these little fragmented bits that are relevant for one zone and then forgotten about.

The only expansion that's forced you to do the whole storyline is Shadowlands, and look how well that's going.

[Rexosaurus]

Yeah, following the story has been an absolute catastrophe ever since Cata came out and it scrambled the chronological order. It only got worse with time as leveling sped up and players basically just did like half of each expansion's leveling zones before moving on.

But I think that it's been abundantly clear that Blizzard cares far more about gameplay mechanics than they do about presenting a coherent story experience. Plus almost all of the expansion stories are only nominally connected (if at all). So from that point of view, the new leveling system is a big improvement. But you're correct that it did nothing to improve the delivery of the overall story or of WoW, or its flow.

If they could somehow put together a "story path" that makes sense out of it then yeah, that'd be great. I just wouldn't hold my breath because like you also said, that would take a lot of work on their part. Not to mention that a lot of the story is tied up in post-launch patch content like raids or public events and added zones. So they would have to figure that into the questing too.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

For a first 1-50 character no not really the bfa leveling Zones do a pretty good job keeping every thing in order.

Past 50 absolutely is a shit show

Second character using cromie Time i would imagination is a night mare if you don’t know what order they came out in.

[Multitorix Davlen]

For the most part, leveling role play experience is mostly contained within the zones. Very few quests and npcs will extend past it. If you wanted new players to be able to learn the whole lore from leveling, you're not going to get that. A lot of the lore is outside of world of warcraft (previous games and books).

[Beefhammer]

Despite the fact Blizzard has made multiple attempts to try and restructure how levelling works, the way they went about it in regards to Chromie, while not a bad way of doing things is a horrible attempt to try and bring in new players, especially with regardless to the lore.

Now with that said the new level 1- 10 starting area introduced with Shadowlands was a good start I enjoyed it. But once you come out of that starting area, you are thrown into this jumbled mess of a narrative, there's no point A to point B, the story being told doesn't flow that well at all.

And I know you have Chromie and it does kind of help but regardless of Chromie, you never finish the story you wanted to start, you are pretty forced out and into the current game, and I understand that Blizzard maybe want to not want to leave you out of the new content and get you there as fast as possible, but personally I feel if the levelling experience and storytelling is good, then it shouldn't matter how long it takes to get there. You want to get people to the now. But how cool would it be to have a storyline or path that flows through all the expansions smoothly so a player can see all the story and play through it in a way that doesn't leave your brain coming out the other end looking like a jumbled rubric cube.

WoW today, more so in the later expansions seems to give us a structure with the main story quest tracker in the quests tab, but a lot of the stories are locked behind reputation grinds, I would much prefer that Blizzard not do that, let everyone who wants to experience the story do just that. Not saying get rid of the grind, for those that want to do that they can still do that too, just make sure you separate it from the story, they can have time after they have experienced the story to go back to that when they have caught up.

It would be good to separate this new levelling with route

You have :-
Story Path - A questing experience that takes you through the game to experience the story, you wont miss anything you will hit every beat and it will flow well enough to get you to the current expansion while knowing what happened before and how we got there.
The Side Quests - The stuff that isnt needed in part of the story but can be returned to to finish later. Or if you want to finish them as you quest you can if like but will take you a lot longer to get through the content if you decide to do both, but at the same time maybe you enjoy it so much you want to take longer. The option is there.
The Grind - When every thing is done you can go back and grind your reps, get the rewards and stuff you want from them.

Now that WoW is 17 years old, I understand that Blizzard would need a lot of time and recourses to probably do this. You will need to restructure the questing from top to bottom. Its just sad that you need to look for the story on WoWpedia these days, because the story in game is so hard to follow.

Better yet I would love to know if there are any new players who started playing WoW post Legion, who wants to like WoW's lore, and give us your opinion on the levelling structure regards to following the story how did you feel, did you like it? Am I talking out of my butt? Maybe the levelling structure is fine. Would love to know your opinion too.

No. It's apparently hard to follow for vets. I see so many that claim this or that wasn't explained or they don't understand how such and such happened, despite it all being available through quest text.

But to your question in really don't outside of the time traveling aspect of leveling through Azeroth then hitting OL or NR. But Chromie time sort of fixed that.

[Myradin]

Most lore that you get in game that is relevant to the expansion is explained during its quests during leveling or its end game quests.

Each expansion tends to take place somewhere else, and follows the basic structure of "X attacked us so we went to Y place to go fight them". The main story is always extremely shallow so i don't think a new player could get too lost. Of course we still have some characters moaning and crying about WC3 20 years later.

Sure some of the minutia might be hard to follow, but for the most part the plot's really simple.

[mrgreenthump]

It's hard to follow for veterans if you don't read the books. Even if you read the books.. Let me ask a question: What are the motives of the Jailer?

I know it's a popular question amongst the youtuber community, but honestly it's a valid point. Storytelling in the game is poor at best currently.

[CalamityHeart]

If you ask me, WoW is probably better off doing what it's doing now, allowing a more focused experience for very new players on their first character to experience Battle for Azeroth and then Shadowlands, and allowing subsequent alts to go through Chromie Time and experience whatever expansion they want to that they haven't seen yet.

WoW's narrative doesn't really benefit all that much from being experienced sequentially. It's not like FFXIV, where the world invests itself in your character as much as you're expected to invest yourself in the world and its characters, and the interactions you have with this world and its characters are significant and lasting. You're Azeroth's champion, but no one actually cares about you, and the feeling is mutual. You're a nodding puppet with a big hammer, everything else is a nail, and the narrative treats you as such at-large. Anything that you've missed, prior to... well, prior to the current expansion you're compelled to experience as a given... you're not missing much, except for like the most recent and significant happenings brought about at the end of Legion up to now. If you want to get invested into WoW's lore, the best thing you can do is probably just hit up the wiki and read about it. The leveling experience in and of itself, I think is basically fine.

[MoanaLisa]

"Gameplay over story" they say.

Clearly yes, it's nearly impossible to follow and the treatment of story as a near irrelevance makes the game less attractive.

[roboscorcher]

Honestly, I think WoW should actually take a step back from forced storytelling. The majority of players simply do not care about it, and those that do probably discovered the lore by doing their own research. It would be nice to put more lore into the game instead of books, but it should be optional for players that like it.

I've been playing FF14 in my spare time, doing the main story, as that is the "proper" way. I am bored to tears at level 35. I hear the story gets good later, but right now I feel like I'm watching a bland anime. I barely ever get to play with my friends and the current content is boooooring.

WoW Classic was more fun IMO. It was janky and unbalanced, but it was open. The story wasn't forced at all. The game was less on-the-rails and communities formed to push the game to its max. It was more of a sandbox in this way, and prominent community members were known across the server. I wish retail was this way. Build systems to allow the community to tell the story, rather than telling another episode of "Thrall, Anduin and Friends".