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  1. #1
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    New Feature: Previously in the World of Warcraft...

    Today, someone starting up WoW would be thrown into the mix of their starting area, then they are thrown into the latest "leveling xpac" for new people (BFA, today).
    There's a lot going on, a lot that has happened, and a lot they wouldn't really understand in terms of "what to do" and "who are these people and why do I care about them".
    Even returning people who took an xpac or more off may wonder why they have to choose a leveling path and what Chromie Time even is or why it's relevant, let alone what's happened in the last couple of expansions that's now sending us to the afterlife (something just about no one saw coming as a possible expansion theme when WoD launched, for example).

    To alleviate this, WoW should add to the Adventurer's Journal a 'History of WoW' section.
    In this section, they would have each expansion broken out by major events (by Tier/Patch, for example) and explain the history of the game, covering all major narrative arcs, what caused them, and where they led.
    From Vanilla and talking about why Ragnaros and Nefarian were important, what they did, who the black dragonflight is, then moving on to the Gates of AQ, and ending with Naxx and who KT is/was.
    Move on to BC, through the rest of the expansions until you get to the latest expansion.

    In this guide, it would have written narratives to read, image slideshows to depict important/key locations, and even some short videos to tie in any in-game cinematics (or just new ones where they were lacking) to give a new person an optional, yet fairly comprehensive lookback of the last 18 years and what's gone down so they can have some semblance of an understanding of what happened and why they are where they are.
    Think of it like a "catch up mechanic" for narrative, if you will.
    We already have a "boss bestiary" of sorts in the journal today with dungeons and raids info, but nothing really tells someone what actually happened that has shaped where they are today.
    Even current and/or longtime players could get benefit from it by going back and refreshing on certain arcs.

    Sure, we have a lot of sites that do this, like wowpedia and wowwiki, that have a bunch of pages of info, but this would be more focused on each expansion with Blizzard-crafted cutscenes (both ingame and custom made) to really tie it into the game world itself.
    It's always kind of felt weird to me that the only way to really catch up on anything that's been going on is to refer to resources that are not part of the actual game itself.

    So, to the forum users: Do you think this could be something worthwhile to add to the game?
    What else would you add to this 'Previously in WoW' concept to make it better?
    Maybe there's a completely different way to implement this kind of feature altogether?

  2. #2
    A recap is no substitute. GW2 had a recap of the removed season 1 story for years and still led to a bad new player experience. At the start of this year, Anet wanted to prep GW2 for a Steam launch (their last chance to bring in a new wave of players) and realized they had to get their act together and get rid of the S1 recap and actually put the S1 story back into the game. FFXIV also streamlined their new player experience last year and consolidated the story. WoW needs to do the same thing. Bring back all removed questlines and make a streamlined story experience from beginning to end. The story stuff that happens in the books in between expansions also needs to be shown in game as well. But putting in such effort is beyond nuBlizzard so we can only dream.

  3. #3
    Seems like a helluva lot of development time to be spent on something that already exists through external resources. 99% of players would never even bother to engage with it to begin with.

  4. #4
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    They could make an interactive comic like Mass Effect did back in the day.


  5. #5
    This could be implemented as an archeology reward. The kind of players who are interested in the lore of the game but weren't around for previous expacs would probably go for this.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    A recap is no substitute. GW2 had a recap of the removed season 1 story for years and still led to a bad new player experience. At the start of this year, Anet wanted to prep GW2 for a Steam launch (their last chance to bring in a new wave of players) and realized they had to get their act together and get rid of the S1 recap and actually put the S1 story back into the game. FFXIV also streamlined their new player experience last year and consolidated the story. WoW needs to do the same thing. Bring back all removed questlines and make a streamlined story experience from beginning to end. The story stuff that happens in the books in between expansions also needs to be shown in game as well. But putting in such effort is beyond nuBlizzard so we can only dream.
    The problem with showing in-game stuff that only happened in books, now, is that its be an awful lot of effort to do flashback quests. Every event would need its own questline and thats just a massive undertaking.

    Counter suggestion: Use ingame books! Put them in a collection like toys. Find them ingame. They give TLDR summaries of important events. Treat them like Skyrim treats them. Bonus points if they work that in to Archaeology or a new History profession.
    Last edited by Amnaught; 2022-08-01 at 10:00 PM.

  7. #7
    really there IS some charm in classic WoW and a lot of it is due to the characters totally not apologizing for who they are. a pirate is a pirate. a kul tiras guard watching for pirates is doing it to his absolute fullest. Quentin Tarantino writes like this to great effect. its easy to care about characters when they do this. you dont want an Adventurers Journal TELLING you why this character is important. you should be SHOWN why.

    By the time we get to SL, every hero is gazing into their navel wondering if they are doing the right thing. thats really BORING.
    TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.

  8. #8
    Does this really matter?

    There's barely any overarching storylines in WoW to begin with. Expansions are designed to be self-contained story units, so you don't really need to know what happened in TBC to understand what's happening in BFA or whatever. Sure it gives more context to some details, but it's hardly required reading to follow the plot, such as there is.

    This just seems like a colossal waste of development resources to fix a problem that's either not really there, or affects a minute amount of people.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    A recap is no substitute. GW2 had a recap of the removed season 1 story for years and still led to a bad new player experience. At the start of this year, Anet wanted to prep GW2 for a Steam launch (their last chance to bring in a new wave of players) and realized they had to get their act together and get rid of the S1 recap and actually put the S1 story back into the game. FFXIV also streamlined their new player experience last year and consolidated the story. WoW needs to do the same thing. Bring back all removed questlines and make a streamlined story experience from beginning to end. The story stuff that happens in the books in between expansions also needs to be shown in game as well. But putting in such effort is beyond nuBlizzard so we can only dream.
    wow classic is taking care of this in a way that I'm fine with.
    I would like for chromie to be extended in a way that also covers zidormi's job though. And maybe make it so that you can upscale the zones of an expansion and story difficulty just for the fun of it.

  10. #10
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    Does this really matter?

    There's barely any overarching storylines in WoW to begin with. Expansions are designed to be self-contained story units, so you don't really need to know what happened in TBC to understand what's happening in BFA or whatever. Sure it gives more context to some details, but it's hardly required reading to follow the plot, such as there is.

    This just seems like a colossal waste of development resources to fix a problem that's either not really there, or affects a minute amount of people.
    I'm not sure how you can say that given Dragonflight is practically tied into everything we did over the years. Nozdormu/Murazond, Kalecgos and Jaina, Ysera + Merithra + Tyrande with her taking the seed to Dragon Isles, Wrathion. Infinite Dragonflight. Cataclysm outro. There is at least few expansions of tie ins right there.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    I'm not sure how you can say that given Dragonflight is practically tied into everything we did over the years. Nozdormu/Murazond, Kalecgos and Jaina, Ysera + Merithra + Tyrande with her taking the seed to Dragon Isles, Wrathion. Infinite Dragonflight. Cataclysm outro. There is at least few expansions of tie ins right there.
    I addressed that - sure it helps to know more to get all the little references, but someone who doesn't know the background will STILL be able to go in and experience the story and not be totally confused about what's going on.

    Yes it's nice to have all the info but it's not REQUIRED to have an understanding of the current plot.

  12. #12
    It wouldn't be too difficult to create a 'Chromie warpspeed' where a player levels through the key plot beats of every expansion from level 10 to 50.

    The quests are already there after all. The only thing Blizzard has to do is chain them together just like they do the campaign quests in the modern expansions. A player could even 'stray' and do some side quests as long as the 'campaign' quests are easily identifiable. But the campaign quest themselves would be enough for max level.

    Then finally, and this requires way more development resources; it would be cool to guide the player through the raid-instanced story points through instanced scenarios. A bit like a Christmas Carol where the player sees through a dream state important scenarios. Like Marshall Windsor being freed from Blackrock Depths and confronting Onyxia. And I deliberately used this example because it's not extremely important for the story but it's a vital part of the original WoW experience and it's something the community refers to a lot still.

  13. #13
    how was it different in the past for people who started playing wow without playing w3?

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Lolites View Post
    how was it different in the past for people who started playing wow without playing w3?
    Vanilla overlapped surprisingly little with WC3. The first major villain (ignoring Timmy...) was Kel'thuzad, all the way at the end. Onyxia, Ragnaros and C'Thun had nothing to do with the WC3 lore.

    So what's left is Ashenvale and Lordaeron from WC3 and Durator/the Barrens and from The Frozen Throne. Everything else was either new or referencing WC1 and WC2.

    So unless a player picked Forsaken, Orc or Troll, they would play a huge amount of content while the WC3 lore remains faint references occasionally appearing in quest text.

    Even the Burning Crusade doesn't pick up much from the lore except with the final raid bosses indeed being major characters in The Frozen Throne, and the Stratholme caverns of time. Up to the Archimonde raid. Then it becomes incredibly relevant.

    It's only in WotL where the story becomes important again. And indeed people who didn't play TFT by that point are missing out. They'll get most of the story but it's nothing compared to playing the whole Warcraft campaign.
    Last edited by Iain; 2022-08-02 at 12:00 PM.

  15. #15
    They have a "The story so far" on their site, that puts a description for every patch. I guess they could add that ingame, wouldn't be much of an effort.

  16. #16
    This is great idea.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Iain View Post
    Even the Burning Crusade doesn't pick up much from the lore except with the final raid bosses indeed being major characters in The Frozen Throne, and the Stratholme caverns of time. Up to the Archimonde raid. Then it becomes incredibly relevant.

    It's only in WotL where the story becomes important again. And indeed people who didn't play TFT by that point are missing out. They'll get most of the story but it's nothing compared to playing the whole Warcraft campaign.
    CoT's Stratholme was WotLK, not TBC. SPECIFICALLY to let people who missed WC3 experience a key moment.

    But honestly, what of WC3 was really relevant to understanding WotLK? Big evil dude bad. Undead bad. His entire history with Lordaeron wasn't relevant to WotLK's plot. His betrayal of Muradin wasn't relevant to WotLK's plot. His razing of Quel'Thalas wasn't relevant to WotLK's plot.

    It's as I said earlier: sure, you get more context and extra info if you know all this, but if you DON'T then you still have no problem following what's going on.

  18. #18
    Mechagnome Mr. Smith's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lolites View Post
    how was it different in the past for people who started playing wow without playing w3?
    Vanilla WoW starts you off as a nobody adventurer that slowly and naturally gets introduced to its world, characters and threats over time. Even if you're new to the universe, you're still immersed in the story because you know exactly as much as your PC does.

    n modern WoW, you start off as a nobody adventurer for like five minutes in Exile's Reach, then you immediately get catapulted in to BfA where you're suddenly a decorated commander fighting in a war you know nothing about, and interacting on equal terms with multiple highly respected faction leaders and Baine. There's a way bigger disconnect there.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    CoT's Stratholme was WotLK, not TBC. SPECIFICALLY to let people who missed WC3 experience a key moment.
    Oh thanks. How embarrassing. My memory blended all Caverns of Time with TBC.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Smith View Post
    Vanilla WoW starts you off as a nobody adventurer that slowly and naturally gets introduced to its world, characters and threats over time. Even if you're new to the universe, you're still immersed in the story because you know exactly as much as your PC does.
    I miss this so much. BfA at least gave a quick jolt at its beginning because neither the Kul'Tiran nor the Zandalari couldn't give a fuck about who you were. Alas even that expansion quickly reverted back into champion of the universe mode.

  20. #20
    Not an old feature; but one ive always wanted: allowing 2 characters from one account to play at the same time. My daughter and i could then group.
    Even if it was a seasonal or holiday thing, it would be good.

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