(Apologies to Planet Fitness for co-opting their slogan.)
Here's a question that I've been wondering about lately:
Can you even play Retail these days without an external guide?
Or maybe a better question is whether you can play either Retail or the current iteration of Classic without external guides, but the Retail version of the question came out when I began contemplating what it would take to begin playing again before Dragonflight.
I'm still on the fence about it, especially given the experience this YouTuber had picking up the game.
"With that being said, I plan to talk about my adventures through the story as the narrative is very important to me in video games such as World of Warcraft. I'd expect the story itself would keep a hold on me, but what I found out while playing through Shadowlands and BfA was something I can personally compare to was jumping in the middle of new playing film which is on its fifth sequel."
And I thought, "Uh oh."
Apparently he had the extremely bad luck to choose the three class/race combos that don't start in Exile's Reach, but that's on Blizzard for making those decisions. If you want a new player to start in Exile's Reach, don't give an out for a few class/race options. That's a huge mistake.
The Blizzard Forums thread about WoW and casual players where I found the YouTube video shown above began with this YouTube video being posted,
and reading through set of forum comments that was enough to make me wonder whether it was worth it to try to catch up in Retail at all. I mean, Shintar was able to pick up Retail fairly easily after having been away even longer than I have, and she is enjoying the game as a casual player, but she also wasn't fazed by all of the systems that had sprung up since, well, Cataclysm. (Mists doesn't count, since I'd kind of mailed it in on PvE content --and especially group content-- at that point.) She also has the advantage of being a long time raider and officer in a raiding guild on SWTOR, so she's far more used to picking up the complex end of MMOs than I am.
Which is when I realized that I'd need to do a ton of out-of-game reading to try to figure everything out.
Hence the question.
***
I suppose that the question itself is a bit of a bait and switch, since I'm about 95% confident that the answer is "no".
As I mentioned in a comment on one of Kamalia's recent posts, I was helping my questing buddy make the transition from Enchanting to Tailoring and so I hit Wowhead to see if my memory was correct in where the best places to farm Silk and Mageweave were. That was when it hit me: I already had done this for Neve (and Cardwyn before her) by memory and educated guesses, confirmed by Wowhead, just a month or two ago. I've also been playing Classic since launch --and then the pre-Cata Retail back in the day-- so why should I feel the need to look it up?
But I did anyway, approaching the question like I do most other research topics.
That experience does beg the question I asked in the comment: why should we feel the need to do this in the first place? Have we been conditioned to look at guides for the meta on various things in MMOs so much that we never realize that we're basically utilizing unofficial third party documentation as manuals?
And how on earth did we let game companies get away with letting their fans write the manuals for their games without the game companies paying them?
After all, that's what Wowhead and Icy Veins and other websites are: the game manuals and reference manuals for WoW. The meta that I beat on quite frequently is basically the "how to do it" manual for WoW.*
***
I'm old enough to have PC video games in storage that not only came with a real manual, but a manual filled with historical details, such as the Lawrence Holland developed video games from LucasArts.
Those manuals were more like a textbook, complete with references, and developers spent a ton of time working on them.
And for popular games, there were also the third party "how to do it" manuals, like this:
I have a copy around somewhere. From eBay. |
Given that --comparatively speaking-- the manual for Civ was pretty thin, having a guide along from people who loved the game** was a godsend.
And I suppose these sort of manuals were the genesis of the current phenomenon of requiring a visit to Wowhead before you can do pretty much anything in game.
***
So I guess it's not a matter of these external guides being a requirement to play the game, because you can try to play without any guides at all, but if you want to do any form of decent group content you're pretty much going to have to follow said guides.
And you thought peer pressure was merely part of your growing up.
For example***, one of the most recent times I was in an instance on the Alliance side, our guild group was joined by an unguilded Warlock. More than once, one of the guildies commented on his rotation, wondering why the Lock was doing some of the things they were doing.
"They could have learned to do this out in the field, where you do things differently than in group content," I posited. "When you're a Fire Mage in group content, you lead with different spells than when you're out questing where survival is more important."
"Maybe."
"You could provide some guidance," another guildie added. "If they joined the guild they could find out how things worked in group content."
"....Nah. Not worth the trouble."
Okay, maybe not all guilds have those sorts of discussions when running group content, but having seen how the sausage is made in both these sorts of runs --or in reviewing personnel to join a raiding team-- you can't unsee it. The lead team examines gear, raiding logs, and rotation before they make a decision to give someone a tryout. Sentiment and emotion aren't allowed into the review process when you're trying to stay on current content.
From the movie Invincible (2006).**** |
It can be soul crushing at times, and it frequently feels like the managing by spreadsheet crap which I rail about at work all the time.***** There's no room for hunches or for how well people fit into a group environment; if they don't follow the meta why should you take a chance on them?
***
I guess the answer to the overarcing question as to why we use these third party guides all the time is because of the age old problem of peer pressure. It may not be obvious to the uninitiated, especially if you've been steeped in the game for so long, but the pressure to conform if you want to do anything beyond solo content and some basic group content is a constant. The desire to not look like an idiot can be a big motivator to conform to what the guides tell you to do, especially if content in those guides are what the team/raid leaders for high end content are looking for.
For a non-conformist, who zigs when everybody else zags******, that can be the death knell of interest in a game.
Does it mean that I'm going to set aside my interest in Retail? Not yet, but I'll admit that my interest is dimming somewhat when I realize just how much work I'd have to do just to get current with things. Because I'd like to do some group content, and realizing that I've just as much work ahead of me as if I were going progression raiding does not endear me that much to the process. Add to that I'm apparently supposed to do BfA content to get to Dragonflight isn't a favorite topic of mine, either.
From Blizzplanet's interview with Jackie Wiley and Tina Wang. |
*For all those posts in forums and elsewhere about how "casuals don't even know Wowhead exists", I call bullshit. If you play the game for any length of time and look at in game chat channels, you'll see people told to look at Wowhead, typically in a condescending fashion. Or if you have a question about the game and do a quick search, Wowhead inevitably comes up. It's not like other games --especially RPGs and MMOs-- don't have their Wowhead equivalents. So I'm not buying that crappy "casuals don't know" excuse. It's just that people who say that about casuals have their heads in the sand; people know about Wowhead, they just don't really care about slavishly following everything it suggests.
**And with an official imprimatur from Microprose, too.
***Again, paraphrasing. I don't have all the conversation written down, and I don't turn on recordings while on Discord.
****Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) noted his name was spelled wrong in his locker after being granted a tryout as a walk-on with the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team. The equipment manager wasn't exactly concerned about that, given he believed Vince was going to be cut from the team in a week or two.
*****Part of the reason why this is bugging me so much is that I noted that --in pursuit of the meta-- the 2x/week raid team began putting one of their two Mages on the bench in favor of pulling in an extra Warlock, who used to be a Warrior but then changed to a Ret Pally before they had a Ret Pally join their team. So nothing personal, buddy, but we only need one Mage now and you're out of luck. Which drives me bananas, because I wanted so much to make sure that all of the Mage crew from Classic had a landing spot for TBC, and despite all that one of them is getting put on the bench for Sunwell.
******Guilty as charged. I still haven't regularly done any of the dailies in TBC Classic aside from the occasional PvP daily, and for the dailies from places like Ogri'la, Terokk, and Quel'Danas, I haven't even picked up the seed quest for them. The easiest way to get me to NOT do something is to be loudly told by everybody in every single channel I'm in --guild, global, or whatever-- to DO YOUR DAILIES.
I am fine with winging unfamiliar content (forgotten) and it doesn't bother me but then I don't get upset if I've forgotten what came before. I do remember the good old days of keeping up and knowing everything that's coming but those days are over for sure!
ReplyDeleteTrue dat. There's so much to keep track of now that if you don't have spreadsheets of your own you'll lose track of it all.
DeleteAwesomesauce Red, I had that Civilization book, loved the game so much. Still play Civ II during Tuesday maintenance.
DeleteThe meta, yes, the meta. I had a struggle this past week myself over the meta. I have a 64 blood elf Paladin, who I'd been levelling as prot (as usual). I'd teamed him up with my 70 priest and boogied along fairly decently. I'd been working on a 63 enh shaman/druid combo and wanted to build up some rest.
When I switched over, the Prot paladin just seemed so slow and sluggish, and even mass pulling didn't seem to help the situation. Enhancement shamans kill things so damn quick the paladin seemed glacial by comparison.
The thought of switching to ret, however, kept bumping against the 'meta' that prot is way better. I'd just run a few instances with a ret paladin, who was way down on the recount chart.
Arguing with myself for a while, concluding that 'screwit, it's only 25 gold or so to switch and switch back if I don't like it' led me to change to Ret spec.
Sure enough, I'm having a great time. Killing is quick enough, and have even duo'd Torgos and Big Bone Worm. Course, having the 70 priest out of party healing is great, but there's some tricky moments when those guys hit hard.
Thing is, the meta is correct, and not correct. If I were soloing, I'd probably be sitting and drinking a hell of a lot. Yet, with the Priest healing, all the mana is going to offense.
Situational, for sure.
Bill
You know, Bill, I'd gotten so used to leveling as a Mage and a Rogue that Ret feels glacial by comparison. Even when comparing Enhanced Shamans to Mages, the Mages simply blitzkrieg through enemies. (Unless they can close, that is, then the legendary squishiness of Mages comes out.) Prot must be really bad compared to Ret if you switched to Ret for leveling.
DeleteHaha Red, you're kind of overselling my understanding of retail. Didn't you just read my post about struggling to find a way to just get from Kalimdor to Stormwind? I look up stuff on Wowhead and Google all the time - just playing through those older expansions with the hubby is endlessly confusing as for some reason things like professions work completely differently in several expansions and there's no way to know what's what other than to look it up.
ReplyDeleteThough in terms of worrying about metas and stuff, I just don't care. I simply look at my abilities while levelling up, try to work out what works best while soloing/duoing and that's good enough. I've never looked anything up in regards to "how to play", nor have I ever stepped into a mythic dungeon at level. My only experience with raiding have been those LFRs I wrote about not long ago, but even there the one person who complained about numbers was actually scoffed at. I don't think you have anything to worry about on that front.
Oh, and on the subject of those videos you linked... I saw the one from the FFXIV guy before and thought it was very good. The other one was also not bad, but I don't think it really lived up to its title because it seemed to be more about raiding, with the premise being: "Hardcore players raid, and casuals wish they could raid!" (He keeps calling raiding "the best content in the game" and talks as if there's nothing else of value to do.) It's quite possible to extract fun out of the game without raiding. Probably not for 12 months a year, but if you just wanna check out the new expansion for some fun, that shouldn't stress you!
DeleteI think you underestimate your ability, Shintar. Of course you look stuff up all the time, because it's what we do. You can't play an MMO and not do that. And yes, I did read it, but you're still enjoying yourself despite the maddening issues trying to bridge across all the expacs.
DeleteAnd as for the meta, your ability to wing it is amplified because you have so much experience playing MMOs you know what to look for without even realizing it. I liken it to how I was at my old job; for 20 years I did the same thing in various capacities, so while some people could take about 3-4 hours trying to figure a problem out I could fix it in 10 minutes. That's because all of my experience at my job meant I knew what to look for and how to adapt as necessary. With MMOs, you have that ability as well without realizing that you do. It's the critical eye you can bring in such a casual manner to looking at something and getting a really good feel for how something works (or doesn't), when to look something up, and how to analyze boss mechanics (or general enemy/quest/whatever mechanics) that allows you to maintain your ability to simply kind of shrug and wing it.
Not everybody who can do what you do is a hardcore progression raider who does all sorts of things typically associated with the bleeding edge; you're proof that isn't needed because your experience will get you about 80% of the way there without having to try hard.
As for the lack of stress... Ha, good luck with that. It isn't the stress about trying Dragonflight itself, it's about having to deal with the crap that came before that I'd have to go through in order to get to Dragonflight. I have absolutely no desire to see Warlords, Legion, BfA, or Shadowlands. At all. I mean, I never bothered at all to unlock a post-destruction Theramore, because I refused to do it. (Last I checked it was totally devoid of any players, because duh, but it was nice to see Theramore as it used to be before Classic came along.) And since it wasn't part of Blizzard forcing me to do so if I wanted to get to Pandaria, that worked for me. But unless I want to pony up some cash, I have to if I want to see Dragonflight, because the paradigm has changed and Blizzard is going to make me do so. Unless, of course, I go the Cardwyn route and simply grind my way to L60 in zones without questing at all.
But the thing is, no matter what anybody else says, the public perception --encouraged by Blizzard's dev team-- is that "the game begins at endgame". Which means raiding, speed running (Mythic+), and PvP. If you want to see the end of the expac's story you have to raid, and that would mean LFR. Having dealt with pugs in Classic for Molten Core that couldn't even down the first boss, and being frustrated when you have an advantage over LFR in that people are in Discord and you are able to tell them what to do ("Okay, Mages Decurse!") and watching only 1 or 2 out of 6 Mages actually Decurse people... Oof, I'm not sure I'm meant for LFR.
Uhh.... Sorry about the wall of text. It kind of got away from me.
DeleteYou won't have to go to any expansion you don't want to in order to play Dragonflight. It's right in that interview you linked... but I guess it wasn't explicit enough there, so I double-checked and found Ion talking about it here. Dragonflight starts at 60 and Chromie Time will be extended to 60, so you can level up to that point by revisiting old haunts in Wrath or whatever if you prefer that over seeing content that would be new to you.
DeleteAnd as for seeing the end of the story, that's what YouTube is for. 😛 Much easier than bothering with raiding... and watching it outside the game doesn't feel like a major loss to me when it's just a generic cinematic anyway - it's not like in SWTOR where your character is a central part of the action.
That's good if you qualify for Chromie Time. And I don't believe I do qualify, since I've not been at max level in 8 years. And if I don't and I decide to create Cardwyn on a server, well... It's BfA time.
DeleteI think you inadvertantly hit on a major problem with WoW in genreral: you aren't central to the action. It's the faction leads' story, and we're just living in it. You do all the hard work, and they basically take over for the cutscene and deliver the ending. So yeah, unlike SWTOR or LOTRO, you're not the central character in the action, so I guess it's kind of okay to see the ending via YouTube. But to me, that's a huge cop-out on Blizzard's part by screwing that up so badly.
According to the published info on Blizz's site, since I don't have an L50 (or presumably an L60 when Dragonflight drops) I'm not eligible for Chromie Time, so if I don't care to do BfA --which I would be forced into doing otherwise-- I have to just go out in the world and grind.
DeleteChromie Doesn't Offer Timewalking Campaign Choice
That's not what I get from that help article. In fact it's the opposite... you have plenty of existing characters that will be low- to midbies again after the squish and who haven't gone through Exile's Reach, so you should be fine.
DeleteBut why all the dithering? You have an active WoW sub. Just log into any of your old chars and walk up to Chromie in Stormwind or Ironforge to see for yourself. :)
Err, that should have been Orgrimmar instead of Ironforge, lol. WTB edit button.
DeleteWell, any new toons I create won't be sent to Exile's Reach --I have it as an option as opposed to starting in the normal starting zone, because I almost created a new toon and discovered that-- but yeah, I can go check Chromie now.
DeleteOkay, I went and visited Chromie in Org with Quintalan, and it seems timewalking does work. Or at least it's not grayed out when I select an option. That's.... very interesting as it contradicts the webpage I linked. I could probably then use BC as a launching pad, since I know my way around fairly well.
Still not sure if I want to do Retail, however. That's the biggest part of the dithering: just how different the two games are now.
It's not a contradiction - I know the article is a bit convoluted, but what it says in a nutshell is that there are only four scenarios in which you're ineligible for Chromie Time:
Delete1) You're new to the game and on your literal very first character (in which case you'll be funnelled through Exile's Reach and BfA).
2) You're on an alt that has gone through Exile's Reach but your main isn't 50 yet.
3) You've started BfA but not completed the intro quest line and are therefore caught in some kind of phasing.
4) You've hit level 50 or already started Shadowlands early (I think the intro is available at 48).
I feel I need to write a blog post about this... 😅
Anywho, I think you have little to lose by giving it a try at least. If you just want to quest and see the sights, there's plenty of that in retail still.
Hmm... I wonder if the fact that I've not bought Shadowlands has an impact on those options.
Delete