Exile's Reach->Battle For Azeroth->Dragonflight?

[Khaza-R]

It makes sense. They removed the War of Thorns completely and Battle for Lordaeron you can only re-play in some obscure NPC. Not to mention the Sylvanas betrayal storyline is locked at max level so most new players wouldn't even experience it.

Shadowlands is already poorly conceived and implemented. For a new player its even worse. Best it gets hidden in basement like some shameful red-headed step child.

[Wylyth1992]

That is a player choice, you can play both at a casual pace or rush to max level.

I mean more that WoW encourages getting to max level and doing endgame content as soon as possible.

[Nathanyel]

Shadowlands is already poorly conceived and implemented.

I'd like to stress that the decision to keep BfA as the default newbie experience was very likely made during the development of 9.0/Shadowlands, before there was any feedback on the expansion.

This isn't some knee-jerk reaction to poor player reception. Shadowlands as a story doesn't fit as the default levelling experience for new players.

Shadowlands levelling on the other hand is great (post 9.1.5 buff of bonus objectives) and I expect Threads of Fate to be one of the fastest methods to level 10-60 in 10.0

[shadowmatrix]

I mean more that WoW encourages getting to max level and doing endgame content as soon as possible.

Nah, that is a player thing. Even the current pace of leveling in WOW is based on player feedback, it's a different playstyle for a different playerbase.

[Selah]

Hot take incoming. Legion should be the expansion new players level through. I say this for two reasons.

Reason one: Legion has so much better content to offer, including class order halls and artifact quest lines. It's a wider breadth of content and they could even work the Suramar story experience into it. They could even rework the Argus zone and Sargeras story line into the leveling experience to help explain the giant ass sword.

Reason two: BfA story will be more confusing to people when they hit dragon Isles. Assuming the new players complete the full story of BfA, nothing is going to make sense when you go from being at a tense armastice to suddenly working with the opposite faction in DI.

But, on the whole, SL being skipped is a really good move. Makes sense.

[Kiria]

Hot take incoming. Legion should be the expansion new players level through. I say this for two reasons.

Reason one: Legion has so much better content to offer, including class order halls and artifact quest lines. It's a wider breadth of content and they could even work the Suramar story experience into it. They could even rework the Argus zone and Sargeras story line into the leveling experience to help explain the giant ass sword.

Reason two: BfA story will be more confusing to people when they hit dragon Isles. Assuming the new players complete the full story of BfA, nothing is going to make sense when you go from being at a tense armastice to suddenly working with the opposite faction in DI.

But, on the whole, SL being skipped is a really good move. Makes sense.

I actually agree with you, while BFA has a nice up to date experience with the story Legion was just amazing in concept.

[Goat7]

will be interesting to see how many copies it sells before launch day. as was well documented, Shadowlands set a record for first day sales which I assumed included pre-purchases. no reason to think that Dragonflight will be any different

It will be interesting but I can think of a lot of reasons why it may not sell.

A lot of people hated BFA, esp the failures at launch and that was followed up by maybe the worst expac ever in shadowlands, so nobody trusts blizzard at this point, you gotta be a fool to pre order or you just dont care or maybe your a die hard fan.

Dragonflight reveal brings nothing exciting to the table:
Old talent tree is now new talent tree.
Dragonriding is just a shit "game controlled" version of Guild Wars 2 mounts.
Profession updates are MUCH NEEDED, however should we really be paying for it? This needed to be in a patch awhile ago.
Your getting UI feature that you can just do with a mod for the last 20 years, pathetic.
New race that can only be 1 class, the 1 class is new, cool but thats about it.
The new race looks like a copy n paste job then altered on adobe photoshop.
The new zones and leveling experience are cool, but this is in every expansion and the new zones also look like copy n pasted with slight changes from WOTLK.

Also it is gonna be what another 14 months to it is released? So you may see RIOT release their MMORPG, and I guess we will see but I have a feeling this one is gonna be great! I base that off what they did with Valorant, they just took CSGO and made it better. I feel like they will just take WoW, make it better in the world of Runterra. Lets be honest as well the show Arcane on netflix was freaking amazing. Riot MMORPG will take way more WoW players from WoW then Final Fantasy did, the game will be more relatable to WoW.

[rhorle]

A lot of people hated BFA, esp the failures at launch and that was followed up by maybe the worst expac ever in shadowlands, so nobody trusts blizzard at this point, you gotta be a fool to pre order or you just dont care or maybe your a die hard fan.

It is always amusing when people try to talk bad about those who pre-order or "die hard fans" when discussing things on a fan site. If you are talking about WoW, even if not playing/subscribing you are still a die hard fan. Plenty of people still "trust blizzard". If you don't then there is little point to hang around a fan site let alone be interested in a future expansion.

Not to mention you are basing a brand MMO as great when you've seen nothing about the actual game. It just shows that your list about Dragonflight is arbitrary. You've created it to try and justify your dislike and hate of Blizzard. While blindly showing devotion to a different companies MMO

[Nathanyel]

Reason two: BfA story will be more confusing to people when they hit dragon Isles. Assuming the new players complete the full story of BfA, nothing is going to make sense when you go from being at a tense armastice to suddenly working with the opposite faction in DI.

You assume that the Cross-Faction Play coming in 9.2.5 will be explained ingame.
It's not related to story at all, it's just allowing players to form groups regardless of faction, as had happened in the lore various times, even during WoW's timeline.

That the Explorer's League and the Reliquary "work together" on the Dragon Isles will probably mostly mean some overlap and no quests to kill NPCs of the other faction.
Either way, they are explorer/scientist organizations, not necessarily bound to whatever the military situation is between Horde and Alliance.

Also, I kinda expect an ingame cinematic or at least NPC dialog to explain the situation, at least as it pertains to these expeditions, as both a bridge for new players and to bring the Mawwalker up to speed on developments they might've missed while fighting in the realm of Death.
It might also be something more meta than straight up telling your character "alright, here's what happened", but either way, don't assume there's nothing going on in Azeroth between "Sylvanas ditches the Horde and yeets off to the Shadowlands" and "you're on a ship to the Dragon Isles".

Let's wait at least for the Beta, although I would assume this'd rather be pre-patch content found in the 10.0 PTR, which of course comes months after the Beta.