A Bit Late to the Party

Mike Bell dropped a YouTube video today about his coworker and buddy Matt's experience with a new toon on a fresh Retail WoW account. 

The TL;DR is Matt found that approaching the game as a brand new player --without knowing the ins and outs of the game itself-- the leveling experience pretty quickly becomes unbearable due to the level scaling.

To which I say...

From The Ballad of Busker Skruggs and really
from all over the internet.

I know, I know, people may not internalize things if they don't experience it themselves, but this is not a new event. In fact, problems with the new Retail WoW experience have been around for quite a while. I tend to focus on the story problems, but when your gameplay starts to break down, then WoW finds itself in a precarious position. 

For all the problems with the story, WoW has always --always-- been able to lean on its gameplay as its strength.* But now, Matt found himself where he'd outleveled the content but didn't have commensurate gear to match with the content he was facing. Since your ability to kill mobs in Retail WoW is so dependent on gear**, he found himself having to pull off every trick in the book to kill mobs, something your average new player won't know. Returning players have certain advantages, with heirloom gear that automatically scales with you, and they can also have friends drop by to help them kill things in the same way that people are boosted in Classic WoW.

How to fix the problem? 

Matt eventually used his knowledge of crafting to craft some cloth gear (he played a Tauren Mage) and then he could keep playing, but again, that's something the average new player won't know. Among the suggestions he was given but rejected include the tip to simply logoff and not play for two months, then Blizz will automatically provide you with a set of catch-up gear. Given that buying the game then NOT playing it seemed nonsensical, Matt passed on that one.

I guess my reaction to this video is better late than never, but at least they did make an honest attempt at trying things out.

*I'm including raiding and other instanced content here.

**I'd argue even more so than in Classic WoW, where you can get away with being undergeared while being out in the wild for quite a while. Hell, I'm proof of that.