Have you lost your joy for World of Warcraft? Cortyn has a method to fix that – if you want.
If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for almost two decades, at some point the air can run out. Somehow you’ve seen everything and no matter what the developers come up with, it has been there in some modified form before. You become a bit numb, everything turns into a routine, and often you catch yourself thinking: Why was it so much more fun before? Was the game just better? Or is it really just you?
A pretty healing remedy for this fatigue is the “Newcomer” channel in World of Warcraft, or in German, the “Einsteigerchat”.
Because engaging with the joys and problems of complete newcomers as a veteran is actually a lot of fun.
After almost 20 years, you lose sight of the details
Since the possibility exists, I have been in the “Newcomer” channel with my characters. This is the channel where new players are automatically thrown when they start with World of Warcraft. Veterans who have completed a series of achievements can offer themselves as “mentors” to help newcomers with tips and simply answer any questions that arise.
And what kind of questions those can be is hard to imagine if you’ve been so deep into World of Warcraft for 18 years that you wouldn’t even recognize the problems anymore.
Most of you have probably played the “Isle of Exiles” by now. This is the latest starting area that was implemented with Shadowlands to provide a unified game start. The quests there are quite linear, relatively simple, and serve as a tutorial. No one should have major difficulties there – or?
Not at all.
One of the most common things you see in the “Newcomer” channel are chat messages from newcomers posting something like:
- “wave”
- “wave to gorgroth”
- “type /wave to gor’groth”
The reason for this is one quest on the island where the character disguises as an ogre and supposedly leads captives through the ogres’ camp. As a step in this quest, you have to wave to one of the ogres to signal that you are bringing fresh prisoners.
And this quest step turns out to be a significant barrier.
Elitist veterans might roll their eyes here and think: “Anyone who is too stupid to type an emote, I don’t want to see in the endgame either.”
But you have to keep reminding yourself that there are simply an extremely large number of newcomers who may have never played another MMORPG before or have had no contact with video games on this dimension.
And from my own experience in the Newcomer channel, I can say that this quest line represents quite a barrier, which is not particularly well explained by the game either. Because for the quest, you not only have to enter a chat command for the first time (“/wave”), but you also need to have targeted the corresponding NPC. Both are poorly explained by the game and, when you think about it, is quite a break from the previous missions.
But if you’ve learned to use emotes here and there for teasing each other, thanking someone for an enchantment, or threatening the nasty rogue in PvP with a swinging fist for over 18 years, then the quest is a complete triviality.
It is incredibly hard to imagine that you might have not been able to complete the quest on your first attempt.
It’s difficult to help these players who may not even be paying much attention to the chat yet. But if you succeed, you get the nice feeling of having helped a fellow player who doesn’t have to end the game in frustration because he can’t solve this quest line.
That’s just one of the reasons why I think that WoW is too hard for newcomers.
Absurd joy over the smallest things is contagious
But by far the greatest fun is experiencing the joy of other players who are excited about the smallest things that you might only smile tiredly at.
It often happens that a beginner enthusiastically asks in the Newcomer channel:
“How do you get this black unicorn as a mount?! It’s so cool!!!”
This then leads to conversations where you tell about the big puzzles that ultimately reward with mounts like the Lucid Nightmare.
I also vividly remember a druid player who apparently experienced his personal Christmas in the middle of summer when he proclaimed in the Newcomer channel (in all caps):
“I CAN TURN INTO A CAT!!! THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!”
It’s such a banal basic ability of every druid, but for someone who hasn’t played MMORPGs before, this was apparently the best thing that could happen. This almost childishly exaggerated joy is simply contagious, and you can’t help but smile a little.
This always reminds me of my own beginnings in World of Warcraft. I remembered that back in the day, during “Vanilla” times, my mage took on a quest in Ashenvale where you could transform into a Furbolg with a quest item. That was the first quest of this kind for me, and I was so excited about this transformation that I never finished the quest.
I kept the quest item because, unlike many other quest items, you could use it anywhere in the game world. Whether later in the Molten Core while raiding or in the battleground of Warsong Gulch. I could show up as a Furbolg mage everywhere and thought that was really grand at the time.
So my advice to you, if you are a long-time WoW veteran and perhaps have lost a bit of your enthusiasm, sign up as a mentor to help newcomers with advice and assistance. But only if you truly intend to help the newcomers a bit.
This innocent joy is simply contagious – and at the latest when someone writes “wave to gorgroth” in the chat channel again, you have to smile a bit again.
