Should You Start Playing WoW in 2020? (World of Warcraft)

World of Warcraft is a very old game originally launching back in 2004 it's seen over 15 years of updates and expansions from its first iteration often just called vanilla Wow then on to the Burning Crusade wrath of the lich king cataclysm mists upend area warlords of draenor legion battle for a seraph and coming later this year shadow lands each one of these adding a significant amount of new content to the game typically including several new playable zones enemies dungeons raids and numerous new systems mechanics and ways to play the game with the sheer amount of content that's been added to WoW over the years I wouldn't blame someone if the idea of jumping in for the first time seemed like a bit much I myself have put a ton of time into WoW over these past 15 years and even for me there's a ton of things that I haven't seen and major systems that I don't understand like what is archeology you know what don't answer that I don't care so yeah I can totally imagine that after all these years of updates changes and additions that starting the game from scratch could be a daunting experience there's so much to learn and figure out and already establish player base and to make matters worse many of the introductory experiences are about 15 years old well I've got some good news for you if you've ever wanted to jump in and play Wow for the very first time it's about to be as good as it's ever been the upcoming shadow lens expansion among other things is bringing a total overhaul to the new player experience anyone just starting out will begin on what basically amounts to tutorial islands giving you a fairly detailed introduction to wow going over the basics of movement combat questing important systems and mechanics you need to know and wrapping it all up with a romp through a mini dungeon and a tour of your factions capital city now I got a chance to check out the new player experience in the Shadowlands alpha and I want to take you through it to kind of show you what it will be like for someone brand-new starting out Wow for the very first time after creating your very first character which now includes a wider variety of customization options you find yourself on a rescue mission looking for an alliance expedition lost at sea they start things out by assuming you've never played a computer before left hand on WASD right hand on the mouse look around walk and interact with your tour guide captain Garrick the first half she gives you is using the one ability you have to take down a combat dummy the entire experience aided by on-screen call to actions pointing out exactly where the thing you need is next it's time to spar with private Cole where they introduced you to the idea facing your targets and then you get your very first level up and are directed to your spell book the new skill that you learned and making sure you move it to your action bar a surprise storm results in the boat sinking and you washing up on shore and this is where your adventure really begins hunting down some merlocks healing a few injured crewmates and gathering meat to cook food a couple more levels and you get another combat test where they train you to use situational skills based on your distance to the target frostbolt when they're far away fire blasts when they get close although I was actually surprised that they didn't ask me to frost Nova and kite in this situation but the general idea that they're going for is more or less correct we then find out that a member of the expedition was captured by some quill boar and this is where players get their first introduction to an established enemy camp we encounter a mix of melee and caster enemies groups of enemies that you have to manage at the same time if there's a rare spawn presenting a more difficult challenge and rewarding a nice piece of gear nice and then there's a boss with a ton of health and a couple of abilities to avoid if you defeat the boss rescue the gnome and the camp is officially cleared so at this point we're about 20 minutes into the experience and what I really like here is that they've managed to condense down a lot of the different elements of playing the game and guide new players through what they should expect they've already covered the basics of movement combat using different abilities in different situations a mix of enemy types including a boss and rare spawn finding and equipping new abilities in gear as you level and all of this guided by these new UI notifications it really is a much smoother introduction to what playing WoW is like than any of the starter experiences that they've had before and basically the rest of your time on the island flows much in the same way with you being introduced to different aspects of WoW you get a look at quests that use unique item Mount Quest where you've trampled through hordes of enemies more fights against tougher boss creatures I got this dope staff about halfway through there's a side quest that rewards you with a 10-minute speed buff which was pretty cool a few more rare spawns to take down a quick tutorial on how to properly use crowd control abilities they even introduced you to a 5 player group quest which I was actually able to do solo but probably only because I was playing a mage which is a ranged character that has a ton of slowing and rooting abilities basically to keep the bear at a distance and even then it took quite a bit of work so you keep going on doing more quest killing more enemies and eventually saving the last member of the expedition then you're asked to step into your very first dungeon and this is where they show you the group finder tool and ask you to pick a role and queue up for the dark moss Citadel this is essentially baby's first dungeon a pair of NPCs joined be in clearing a few rooms of massive ogres presenting a good example of the different characters filling the different roles of a tank a healer and a damage dealer the first boss chunk was this large melee enemy that teaches you to avoid spell interrupting abilities along with dodging ground-based attacks like seismic slam he also gave me my very first blue weapon which you know getting nice rarity weapons always feels good in these games we then clear away up to this pavilion for a showdown with the final boss it starts off with us fighting Gorgoroth a caster who periodically summons unstable shadows forcing you to move and then sacrifices himself to resurrect Riven ear an undead dragon with a few cone attacks to dodge and an AoE knock back effect overall the whole dungeon took about seven minutes in length which is pretty short but like everything else in this experience it was a nice basic introduction to the games mechanics from here you jump on a Griffon and make your way to the Alliance capital city of Stormwind this is where they show you how to interact with guards to find the things you need you're given your first mount and talked about combat specializations as well as setting your horse tone and then you're officially done with the introduction and are asked to jump straight into battle for Azeroth now this is a really interesting points because typically in the past if you were a new player you'd make your character if you'd go through the basic introduction of whatever race and faction that you picked and then at a certain point you'd get to pick wherever you want it to level through all of the different expansions that have ever existed and Wow like you could just level a bunch of different locations essentially but with this method now you're going straight into battle for Azeroth which is interesting because overall it is considered a fairly bad expansion like that seems to be the general consensus however I will say that most of those complaints are really focused around the end game progression systems things like as a rights and reputation farming the corruption gear stuff like that and it has less to do with how like the leveling experience was and I think that BFA being the most recent expansion is the most up to date in terms of its graphics and animations the most recent questing and exploration systems and I think that having new players go from level ten to fifty in battle for Azeroth is also going to be good because it keeps the storyline consistent for their first playthrough rather than just getting like these little bits of story from the prior six expansions and none of it being coherent or flowing very well because you never saw the entire thing new players will do one to ten experience all of the battle for Azeroth storyline and then go straight into shadow lands so this kind of seems like a good idea because it's a much smoother transition so overall I would say that I think this was a great addition to the game Blizzard streamlining and focusing this new player introduction is gonna be a much better way for people who have never touched while before to get to experience the game for the very first time of course I don't know how good shadow lens is gonna turn out to be and I'm not saying you should jump into Wow because shadow lens is gonna be great I have no clue but people do seem excited for it even though this is the case prior to most expansions it's gonna take a few weeks or months for us to figure out how like the long-term players feel about the end game systems and progression that are in shadow lens that's usually where most of the complaints come from and Wow but there are some pretty cool stuff that they're talking about of course we're gonna get all the regular things like some new zones enemies dungeons and raids there's tour gassed a procedurally generated scalable dungeon that gets harder the further you progress the forge of domination where we get the ability to craft specific Legendary's that we want there's the New Covenant system which is just basically a new faction that lets you unlock unique class abilities they're bringing back some favorite class abilities that have been removed over the years there's new character customization options if you care about that and I also think that the level and number squish that they're doing is pretty nice I just hate it when numbers get out of hands and into the hundreds of thousands and millions but whatever the final verdict ends up being on shadow limbs I think that this new player experience means that now is as good a time as ever to jump into wow if you have never played the game before after all of these years of playing countless MMOs I can safely say that while remains the number one it is my favorite MMO it is the one I constantly come back to and no it's not just because it's the game all my friends are playing because frankly I don't have a lot of friends and I don't have any friends who consistently play wow I constantly move in and out of checking out all of the different MMOs and while I still need to admittedly put more time into Final Fantasy 14 I have put significant time into pretty much every other major MMO on the market and wow it's just the best I mean there's a good reason why it is often considered the number one MMO that's out there tastes vary opinions vary but if it's not number one it's definitely a top 5 it's a good game so to wrap everything up I would say this if you like mmo's but you've never honestly given wow a shot and you've never jumped in the Shadowlands update is going to be the time to do so this new player experience I think it's an amazing introduction for new players not only to the game but new players to the genre if you've never played MMOs and you've considered it this is gonna be a great opportunity and then just moving straight into battle for Azeroth I think will be a nice leveling experience and Shadowlands is looking nice even though we don't know how it's gonna turn out I think the consensus so far is it's looking pretty good but regardless WoW is a good game there's 15 years of updates and content which I know can seem intimidating but Blizzard with this update is doing a pretty good job of trying to segue people into the monstrosity of a game that Wow is really so there you go that's what I think I do think you should check out wow in 2020 if you've never played before give it a shot it's a good game now I'm gonna go back to spending all my time playing wow as always this is the story of my life I'm tired of constant getting complaints about my hat all right they people keep saying force you look like a hobo get rid of that hat why is all that lint first of all it's not lanten just little balls of is that lint I don't know but fine you know what you know what this hat anymore fine there you happy

Channel: Force Gaming

Views: 895,647

Rating: 4.8730421 out of 5

Keywords: Force, RPG, role playing game, Blizzard, mmorpg, massive multiplayer online role playing game, MMO, World of Warcraft, Classic WoW, Vanilla WoW, PvP, WoW, The World of Warcraft, noob, new player, just starting, shadowlands, expansion

Id: nN8ZBSObdQQ

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020