There are hardly any new players in World of Warcraft. There are many reasons for this, but primarily the rather poor entry experience.
If you listen to the community of World of Warcraft, Blizzard is on the right track with “Dragonflight”. Many of the overhauls of old systems and the introduction of new “evergreen” content are well received by the players. The latest information about subscription numbers also clearly shows that WoW is good at keeping its players engaged.
But there is one group that hardly exists in WoW: new players.
That is where a lot of work lies for the developers.
The Problems for Newcomers: Lore, Logic, RPG Feel
World of Warcraft has a whole range of issues when it comes to the experience of new heroes. On the one hand, there is the lore from nearly 20 years of World of Warcraft – with different timelines, plenty of villains, and political changes. Here, they tried to remedy the situation with the “Chromie time”, allowing players to choose a timeline and play through that adventure in one go. However, this only works to a limited extent and does not help in presenting the 20 years of story in any digestible way.
Anyone who wants to understand the story has to spend many hours flipping through the wiki (or reading our lore summary for WoW).
The second problem is the “Exile’s Reach”. This was introduced with Shadowlands to create a new, cohesive starting area for newcomers. The area has a few advantages:
- Various entertaining quests
- A cohesive story
- Modern quest design
- Many characters that you get to know
The problem is: the island doesn’t tell you who you are. If you play a Night Elf, you learn nothing about the Kaldorei culture or their place in the world. If you choose a Blood Elf, you learn nothing about the Sunwell, the addiction to magic, or the problems with the Scourge.
World of Warcraft throws all new players into a uniform tutorial that is the same for everyone – even though you can create so many different characters. No one is told what an undead is in World of Warcraft. A problem that Holly Longdale also admits in an interview with Windows Central:
There are some challenges. How do we tell 20 years of story? In a way that players get a really healthy introduction. I think this idea of player fantasy with the race you choose… I loved logging in and still do now, as a Night Elf, running through Teldrassil and doing all those things. Without that, it feels to me like I’m not as connected to the world and don’t have a place. I think we will explore that more. There’s work ahead of us. And that is one of our goals for the future.
Worse still is that the normal story progression is missing. After the Exile’s Reach, it seamlessly transitions into “Battle for Azeroth”. Suddenly, you are already the great hero that all NPCs somehow know and who has saved the world multiple times.
This makes sense for players who have been playing for 15 or 20 years – for newcomers, it just feels wrong.
Blizzard is openly addressing the fact that there is a big problem here. Holly Longdale said:
We have looked at data that shows us how well we serve different player groups. We looked at the new players who came to WoW. And then they left again. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us in terms of attracting new players, but we didn’t focus on that, we were focused on retaining [existing players].
Or in other words: Newcomers may occasionally check out World of Warcraft, but they feel unloved by the intro experience and soon after are overwhelmed by the world and the game.
We concluded a few months ago: WoW is too hard for newcomers.
Because World of Warcraft is also an extremely complex game with its countless systems, even if veterans often overlook that. Anyone who has ever tried to understand the mechanics and subtleties of a “Mythic+” dungeon as a fresh player and found a group without knowledge will know what is meant.
WoW needs fresh players, now that the existing ones are mostly satisfied. This is likely to be the next major project, which hopefully will not only be tackled after the end of the Worldsoul saga.
How would you approach this problem?
