New 90 issuesFollow

I have to wonder what the NA/EU servers must be like. There's certainly a segment of the community who tend to complain loudly about anyone they perceive as less hardcore then they are. I'm not sure if the crash course is a response to an actual need or a step to prop up the confidence of returning players and set the stage for new players. If the trash talk in chat is anything like I see in some forum posts, they may need something to shore up their confidence as they're being berated for pulling less than 100K DPS with an iL450 weapon and no legendaries.

I've recently returned to an old server, on toons that had been mothballed since WotLK. I've ground out the levels to get three of them to 90, and I've done a lot of LFD/LFR here. I haven't seen the kind of rampant ineptitude that I imagine when I read posts from NA/EU players.

I don't think the level boost has had much of an impact over here. We haven't gotten a free one and the paid boost is comparatively pricey. On the other hand, we've had alphabet soup toons for years. When you see Xqmghppga in the group, you know there is a good chance he bought the character from one of the power levelers.

They chose a DPS spec for each class, and it seems in so choosing a DPS spec based upon 'which does the best DPS?' along with 'Which is the easiest for new players to learn?'

Feral is hardly something you want to try and teach someone who has never touched a Druid before.

The spec is just horrible for newbies because of how much attention to detail is required to keep Savage Roar -and- Rip up, as well as Rake, and not letting either of those 3 wear off and worrying about keeping yourself alive, keeping track of how many CP you have, cooldowns on two self-buff cooldowns (Tiger's Fury, and that other one I forget the name of).

The spec is too complicated for newbies. You could do things like omit Rip/Savage Roar, but your DPS will suffer hard for it.

Meanwhile, Guardian and Resto are obviously tank/healer; those are more "advanced" roles, not really something a newbie who is new to WoW should be jumping into at Endgame level.

I'd have to wonder, though, why they chose _survival_ hunter instead of BM. BM is far easier from what I hear.

RE:Mazra:

Well, the idea behind giving Free 90s to newbies, is that they know how much it sucks to start a game and be standing in Northshire or the Valley of Trials at Lv1, meanwhile everybody you know is in Pandaria doing "interesting" stuff.

You obviously don't want to "waste" large amounts of resources trying to make 1-85 "more interesting" because those levels go by in a flash (but yet there's enough of them that it feels like a drag to level up).

Blizzard wants to keep new players; they know that forcing them to level in ghost towns (even with CRZ) on their first character is a huge turn-off to a lot of people.

Also, the whole "OMG you didn't level from Level 1, you don't know how to play your character!" is... just absolutely ridiculous, because while leveling, you don't even need to use a fourth of your abilities. If you're Feral, you can easily level till Lv90 and never, ever, ever touch Rip or Savage Roar.

But yet, try going into a dungeon and not using Rip, Savage Roar, or Tiger's Fury and see what happens. Your DPS will utterly suck.

The leveling path does not teach you much of anything at all about playing at max level in groups, so the Lv1-90 path is nothing more than a time-gated roadblock between starting and "the good stuff" that everybody else is currently enjoying.

They could speed leveling up (again) but it still wouldn't fix this problem. A veteran might go "But you can get Lv90 in a week!" ...... yeah if you know exactly where to go and what to do, sure. And that's assuming you've got the funds and the know-how to get enough money to afford, say, your flying ability at Lv60, or Cold Weather Flying, or Flight Master's License, or Wisdom of the Four Winds. But a newbie might not know some of this stuff and might not know that wowhead is a thing. They might not have any clue whatsoever on how to actually make any decent gold in the game. They might (mistakenly) think they should be buying gear off the AH and might be blowing all of their money and be completely unprepared for Lv60 flying costs (what is that again, like 300g? plus another 250g for the FML?).

So Blizz is now giving a Free Lv90 to anybody who buys WoD. That way a newbie can "jump right into the action". From what I've read, there's already an in-game tutorial (not sure why that isn't sufficient, but then I haven't seen said tutorial so I can't say), and I'm sure that the game probably tells you to go to the Timeless Isle first.

Other than that, and a small in-game tutorial, I'm not sure what else the player should possibly need. The videos that Lore posted... no offense to Lore... but are incredibly basic at best. Going into a dungeon doing what he says to do in the videos will not win you any friends or good reputation. He says "check your spellbook, talents, and glyphs" but surely he could have done a little more in-depth than that.

Look up Mikepreachwow for example. HE does class videos RIGHT. He tells you exactly how you should be playing your class in Single-target or AoE situations, he shows you what talents you should take for 5mans And Raids, and he shows you what Glyphs are good and which aren't.

He goes through the whole schbang. That's what Lore should have done.



Whaaaaat? They didn't mention Obliterate? You know, the one ability the whole spec is built around? *blinks* That's like trying to explain Ret Paladin without mentioning Templar's Verdict. Jeez.

Edited, May 25th 2014 6:07pm by Lyrailis

Maz has a point. There's a difference between someone who has leveled through to 90 on their very first character and someone who has no experience with MMOs or video games who bought all expansions and boosted up to current endgame.

I would so love if WoW had a "mentor down" system. Nothing like friends joining or rolling new classes to have to wait before they catch back up. Sure we run each other through dungeons, but you know..that takes away from our play time. I'd rather run with my 87 Hunter and be level down to still run with lowered level people, but at the same time earn EXP to my next level.

FFXI does this. Last time I checked you could go from like 20 to cap in one zone (had a guide for this, but I've not resubbed yet so it is lost in my journal). It made helping funnier, instead of just being ran through stuff.