It’s not a game for people that care about story or even the setting past the visuals and superficial vibes.
Comment on World of Warcraft Subscription Numbers Are Higher Now Than at Expansion Launch in a Franchise First
VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 3 months ago
First time I played WoW I liked that you were given a guided tour of your races homeland as it explained the world. The last time I played WoW I had to to a tutorial island that explained nothing about the world and then dumped me in an expansion with characters I had no fucking idea who they were and why I should care about them. Even ESO doesn’t prevent new players from playing the base storyline and FFXIV still requires you to complete ARR before moving to the first expansion. I dropped WoW pretty quickly again because I felt too lost.
lorty@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Trashboat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
I started playing recently ish having never played WoW before, and good god the intro feels practically designed to drive new players away. The tutorial was so tedious and boring and taught me so little about how to actually play that I’m still not even entirely sure what I’m really supposed to do or how to even begin to understand the story/timeline. The game as a whole just feels so needlessly difficult and obtuse, I’ve ended up really just logging on every once in awhile for events to grab any cute pets or whatever mounts the game will graciously allow me to get without buying a sub
Anticorp@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Wait, they just give you mounts now? You used to have to wait until level 20 to buy a mount. Level 20 took forever, and then you could only buy the slow mount for your race. You didn’t get a fast mount until level 40, which took a very long time. Then you had to grind reputation for different factions to buy their expensive mounts. Some rare mounts could be found through seasonal events or in raids. I ran Tempest Keep every week for 2.5 years before I finally got Ashes of Al’ar to drop for me.
Aganim@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You used to have to wait until level 20 to buy a mount. Level 20 took forever, and then you could only buy the slow mount for your race. You didn’t get a fast mount until level 40, which took a very long time.
Ha, rookie numbers. In my time you had to wait for level 40 to buy your slow mount. Fast mounts were bound to level 60 I believe and were insanely expensive (I sold much crap in the auction house to get the money together in those days). Around level 20 or 30 Hunters got an aspect which increased their running speed before that and druids could shapeshift to travel form.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yeah, I started playing at the beginning of Lich King. I started with a mage, but my first level capped player was a hunter.
Aradina@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Holidays and events have mounts available as rewards and have for quite a long time. The headless horseman mount for example.
Cybersteel@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You seem to be knowledgeable about FF so I ask, is it a good time to start playing? I feel like there’s a lot to get through before I can get current in time for the new expansion. Is there something I can boost like in wow to get current. Without that then while I can afford it, it still feels bad to pay a sub for old content ya know.
VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No. No way to skip the story as far as I’m aware and it’d be a bad idea honestly as the story continues right from ARR to all the expansions, endwalker has a lot of callbacks to everything before it as it’s a swansong of something like 8 years. Dawntrail is the first new major story arc since FFXIV’s release. Leveling isn’t so bad currently because it’s boosted to get as many people to 90 as much as possible but there’s no max level item either as far as I’m aware as you pick a class then that class becomes a specialisation so you’re constantly getting new abilities to learn for your rotation. It would defeat the point of learning your specialisation if you skipped the leveling and quests of it to max level and had everything unlocked.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Same for me, I wanted to introduce someone into WoW during COVID and for nostalgia reasons only to see that they took away the adventure and exploration and transformed it into a soulless husk and I dropped it immediately.
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Correction: final fantasy xiv requires you to play ALL of the story to get to the rest of the playerbase, which is, and I’m not exaggerating, probably 700 hours
snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Oh yeah it’s a slog, the great divider that everyone has to overcome. They need to do another pass on reducing the amount of stuff and one of the problems is that buried in the trivial ARR stuff is some important information for later. It’s sadly in a state of “just wait, it gets good after the first season”.
VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I know. It’s the only MMO I stay actively subscribed too. I pre-ordered endwalker digital collectors edition and will be doing the same for dawntrail. It’s one of my favorite games.
asmoranomar@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You are exaggerating. You can complete the entire MSQ up to SHB in less than 3 days in-game playtime. Source: You can find raiders with alts that have sprout icons, and I’ve done it myself twice.
But I get it, you need to know exactly what to do and skip cutscenes. You also can’t do any side questing and once you leave an area, never look back. Which most would rightly criticize me for suggesting. The story is good.
Honestly, if the concern is anything other than the story, it’s probably not the game for you anyways.
I’d also like to point out that most content is built to be relevant, so you’ll be doing content with the rest of the player base in just a few hours of playtime. We have the opposite queue problem in contrast to other games: You aren’t waiting for other new players to show up to complete content; you are waiting for the servers to fit you into a party that hundreds of other players of various levels want to also do.
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
I’m not because it took me that long to compete the msq
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
You are exaggerating, I played it all and it took somewhere between 200 and 300 hours (including side content and most raids at least once).
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Did you skip the cutscenes? Some of them are 15-30 minutes
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
No