BFA is the worst choice for newbie players

[Nathanyel]

Did Timewalking yesterday on my Resto Shaman. This DH tank decided to just run ahead at full speed and pull everything.

We need to establish to just votekick tanks (or dps) who just braindead pull everything in casual content.

[Forteofgray]

I agree. BFA utilized a lot of silences, fears, interrupt sequences etc. Just that one boss encounter where you kill the giant undead troll, but everyone has to destroy all 3 totems relatively close together would confuse the hell out of a totally new player. There are too many "advanced" mechanics in BFA dungeons for new players. They should have just made it cataclysm or vanilla or whatever the closest equivalent is now. A new player who either doesn't know anything about WoW or isn't familiar with MMOs is not going to enjoy getting yelled at by the other people in the group because they didn't know you were supposed to run to the portals and kill the adds before returning to the center to kill the last boss in Atal'Dazar.

What about all the mob trash packs in Freehold? It's insane. Blizzard's managerial employees, the people in charge of creative decisions, have rarely known what they were doing.

[Mysterymask]

OP just has the worst takes

Pay them no mind

Second this..This guy makes the same take every expansion and patch without fail

he just wants the attention unless he's a dude literally autoattacking things with white gear and going "I just dont know what went wrong" then its a him problem

[Cosmic Janitor]

I'd argue the worst about BfA is that the story is utterly irrelevant and you have no chance to see the conclusion that leads to the current game state with it. Next item on the list would that one of the core features of the expansion is disabled now. Ideally I would let people level through legion for the story and lore, but class halls make no sense for newbies and the core feature issue is even worse here. SL is all kinds of awful for various reasons, so it's obvious why that didn't make it.. WoD suffers alot from Legion issues in regards to the players (non)role and the graphics aren't quite there with BfA. (Edit: One of the rare occcasions where I agree with Varadoc...)

Which kinda leaves us with BfA as the least awful choice with somewhat current graphics. Though even in that regard I think the art has degraded further towards fortshite since the last two patches of SL, so even the visuals of BfA don't really prepare you for what is to come. At the end of the day wow has the same issue as all the cheap asian MMOs, finding a good entrence point to the game is hard when you don't want to force people to play through 10+ years of previous expansions, but it obviously makes no sense system and story wise for people to start from the middle. In that regard WoW probably even did the right thing in constantly abadoning old systems, otherwise we'd be grinding 10+ different systems by now.

[Lolites]

giant undead troll, but everyone has to destroy all 3 totems relatively close together would confuse the hell out of a totally new player

pretty sure that (and other things you mentioned) is not a thing on normal...

[Ielenia]

It's simple game mechanic. There is no such thing, as being wounded and therefore dealing reduced DMG in this game. While mob is alive - it deals it's full damage.

... Except the poster did not say anything even remotely resembling "wounded mobs deal less damage"?

And there is threshold, after that may be you don't die, but game becomes simply unfun, as it becomes way TOO SLOW AND CLOGGY. And that's exact moment, when you say to yourself "F**k this s**t - I want to outlevel this mess", but you can't - because this game has scaling, that prevents you from doing it.

The leveling experience is supposed to help you get used to your class' strengths, weaknesses and rotations. Simply going around one- or two-shotting mobs wouldn't accomplish that, and would render leveling completely moot.

Another factor - newbie player usually doesn't have heirlooms. And that makes situation even worse.

Heirlooms stopped being this overpowered leveling gear a couple expansions ago. In fact, most quest rewards are around the same item level of your heirloom, and some are even higher level.

[Jester Joe]

My girlfriend started playing yesterday the first time ever and she had all the problems you mentioned OP. I also recognized the same problems as you.

I showed her how to get to pandaria and it got overall better for her experience

How? First time players aren't given access to Chromie time, that's what they said from day one when they introduced it.

[Accendor]

I decided to level via BFA recently and remembered why I had hated it immediately. As you know, currently newbies are directed to BFA content and being unable to pick other xpack via Chromie time. Bad mistake. While BFA has the most up to date graphics, it's also terribly overtuned xpack. Too high density of mobs. Mob routes are designed to overlap, so "accidental" pulls are inevitable, so player has to constantly deal with 3-4 mobs at the same time. Critters, having elephant's amount of XP, being aggroed via AOE, that is inevitable for some classes/specs. Mobs, having 30K HP, while player has only 1.5K DPS, so it takes up to 20 secs to kill every mob. And the worst thing - despite of being older than SL, BFA is scaled up to 60lvl, so player just can't drop out of Chromie time and outlevel this content without going to DF's zones.

I think it's terrible mistake. Providing so overtuned content as first game experience to newbie players. Chance, that they quit before getting to max level, is very high. Of course may be Blizzard want to re-educate their players, so they would get used to overtuned game and treat is as new norm. But I think, that it's counter-productive. Blizzard do such stupid things and then they wonder, why nobody plays their game and why they have to implement such things, as Trading Post, to keep existing playerbase subbed, instead of having persistent stream of new players.

It's also the worst expansion they have ever produced, so forcing players into it is completely insane.

[WowIsDead64]

It's also the worst expansion they have ever produced, so forcing players into it is completely insane.

It's not the worst. If I would need to choose between BFA and SL - I would choose BFA. So, SL is even worse. But it doesn't mean, BFA isn't terrible. Highland hare, that has 23K HP??? Exactly the same HP, Forsaken Keenblade has??? That's, what is truly insane.

Another problem, BFA has - is fact, that player can't experience it's endgame content solo without going to DF's content. I mean, all that quests, that lead player to dungeons or raids. In other xpacks I don't need to bother about accessibility of endgame content. Rares, elites, dungeons bosses, raid bosses - they aren't problem for me. They don't make content inaccessible, if I don't have 9-24 other players, who also want to do this content.

[Nathanyel]

How? First time players aren't given access to Chromie time, that's what they said from day one when they introduced it.

You can still just go to other expansion areas and quest there, they just don't scale up to 60, and stuff like Legion most likely requires finding the intro quest on the Warchief's Command / Hero's Call Board.

But most portals are active no matter your account status.

[Jester Joe]

You can still just go to other expansion areas and quest there, they just don't scale up to 60, and stuff like Legion most likely requires finding the intro quest on the Warchief's Command / Hero's Call Board.

But most portals are active no matter your account status.

That makes sense, but I can't imagine with the level squish that going up like 4 levels and being like "okay into WoD now!" is better to the point that a new player would enjoy that.

[exsanguinate]

How? First time players aren't given access to Chromie time, that's what they said from day one when they introduced it.

You can go everywhere without chromie time. You wont be guided.

[leorana]

Doesn't matter really, normal dungeons are just cancer at all levels because veterans are all about efficiency ... either skipping most of it or tanks just go ahead and pull half the instance at a time ... a new player will simply not have a chance to understand anything that's going on.
And if they dare to say a word .. insta kick

I'll take 'tank pulls half a dungeon' over 'dps aggro half a dungeon and flame tank for dying '

[Nathanyel]

That makes sense, but I can't imagine with the level squish that going up like 4 levels and being like "okay into WoD now!" is better to the point that a new player would enjoy that.

Oh, all old expansions are available at level 10 already, so you don't have to go in order, but yes, once you outlevel MoP (I think up to 30), it makes almost no sense to start WoD content (up to 35, maybe 40)

I'll take 'tank pulls half a dungeon' over 'dps aggro half a dungeon and flame tank for dying '

I've had a tank pull 3 or more packs in Vanilla dungeons several times without learning. While we only wiped twice, having 15+ mobs around is no fun without AoE abilities, and while it's technically still a bit faster than going one by one, the length of the time you're in combat is just no fun.
And even with AoE, those abilities are ground/enemy-targetted, or centered on yourself as melee, so mobs constantly running after the packs in several small groups doesn't help either.

[Pakheth]

We need to establish to just votekick tanks (or dps) who just braindead pull everything in casual content.

Agreed.

If I had had time to stop and think I definitely would have. When he tried to sign us up for more dungeons I promptly quit. F*** that stress.

Casual content shouldn't feel like a high M+ key.

[Tiwack]

I think BfA is fine as any exp for newbies but there's definitely gaps at points where you're better off just leveling in dungeons to obtain new gear to match the increased scaling you're encountering. Everytime newbies begin asking about heirloom gear, where and how to obtain it, I feel blizz has failed them by being too stingy with gear drops/rewards to make the leveling experience smooth. It's fine with the occasional mob to challenge them and their grip on their rotation but every mob shouldn't feel like that..

[loras]

I decided to level via BFA recently and remembered why I had hated it immediately. As you know, currently newbies are directed to BFA content and being unable to pick other xpack via Chromie time. Bad mistake. While BFA has the most up to date graphics, it's also terribly overtuned xpack. Too high density of mobs. Mob routes are designed to overlap, so "accidental" pulls are inevitable, so player has to constantly deal with 3-4 mobs at the same time. Critters, having elephant's amount of XP, being aggroed via AOE, that is inevitable for some classes/specs. Mobs, having 30K HP, while player has only 1.5K DPS, so it takes up to 20 secs to kill every mob. And the worst thing - despite of being older than SL, BFA is scaled up to 60lvl, so player just can't drop out of Chromie time and outlevel this content without going to DF's zones.

I think it's terrible mistake. Providing so overtuned content as first game experience to newbie players. Chance, that they quit before getting to max level, is very high. Of course may be Blizzard want to re-educate their players, so they would get used to overtuned game and treat is as new norm. But I think, that it's counter-productive. Blizzard do such stupid things and then they wonder, why nobody plays their game and why they have to implement such things, as Trading Post, to keep existing playerbase subbed, instead of having persistent stream of new players.

I agree,honestly by now it'd be best to just allow them full levelling on the DragonIsles.

Everything about it is noob friendly i'd say, even the theming is generically friendly to the point of being sugary.

BfA by contrast is pretty gritty, indeed with mechanics to match.
It's a shame the gameplay was so piss poor back then, because a lot of it could have been good if not for the various systems and the many downright poorly playing classes.

I think that going forward Dragon Isles will be the standard of levelling content, only issue at present is that it's also the current content, leading to dragon oversaturationn

And there is the downside of the older maps just being far worse designed than the honestly gorgeous and engaging lands of the dragon isles.
They're going to stand out like a sore thumb in comparison.

[Sting]

skill issue

[loras]

skill issue

That is pretty much what noob/newb is synonymous to, so yeah that is what we're discussing here.

[chrisisvacant]

We need to establish to just votekick tanks (or dps) who just braindead pull everything in casual content.

As if people need any more reason these days to impulsively kick people.