Comments on: Tutorial zones, and experienced players

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:00:43 +0000

My experience was that if I was roughly the right level for a quest and it wasn’t marked for a group only, then if I died a lot it was probably down to me not using good tactics. It’s actually rather more tactical than you’d think at first.

I can’t really say more without knowing the specific quest ;/

By: Gravity

Gravity — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:55:32 +0000

I’m finding Pirates of Burning Sea pretty tough to learn. The tutorials don’t really cover everything you need to know, but are definitely good enough in that you’re thrown into the ‘real’ game quickly.
On the other hand, at L5 I’m dying in a few of the quests, and I swear I’m not doing anything terribly wrong, so I just don’t know what the problem is. That’s frustrating and an issue with perhaps learning difficulty, poor scaling or me not knowing the game, but I don’t know which.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:00:56 +0000

I think 1-10 is fine (if rather dull if you know how to play these games) – it has to teach people basic stuff like ASWD to move, how to loot, get used to the UI, etc etc. It’s 11-80 that fail

By: JW

JW — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:07:29 +0000

The tutorial still fails.

The 1-10 game is a mini-game that lasts for one hour. In this mini-game, you do a lot of fun stuff, things die easily and its near impossible to die (unless you roll a priest or mage).

Why did it fail?

Because nowhere in 1-80 does it ever tell you why you need dodge, hit, what AP or how this converts to damage. For a system thats designed to take 36 hours to get to end game, and spend 1000s of hours on end game, people are still not prepared to CC, interrupt, move out of fire, turn the boss around, etc.

In short, even if you ace the 1-10 minigame, I don’t see how it teaches you anything of value. You still have to go to websites or elitistjerks where real geniuses have to use mods and number crunching to explain what the formulas are.

By: Kring

Kring — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:14:17 +0000

I think you can answer whispers with a trial account, can’t you?

Anyway, it took me days to figure out how to whisper back when I started with WoW and there won’t be anyone in those zones anyway. I doubt that’s really a disadvantage.

By: Kring

Kring — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:12:36 +0000

It was 70% not reaching level 10 on new accounts, IIRC.

But I always wonder who starts to play WoW these days anyway? Did those people live under a rock for the last 6 years? Or why didn’t they start WoW before?

Why does someone. who did not buy a game for 6 years, buy it now? What triggered that?

Blizzard charges:
15.- for vanilly
15.- for TBC
35.- for WotLK
35.- for Cataclysm

That’s Euro 100.- for a 6 years old game which comes with a monthly subscribtion fee. WTF?

Would you pay Euro 100.- for a 6 year old game? Which comes with additional subscription fee?

By: Azaael

Azaael — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:31:34 +0000

It’s kinda funny-one of the big complaints people had was that the starting zones were boring. Apparently blowing up and remaking the world didn’t do much to help that.

What I’m curious about is this-One reason, I know, they decided to blow up/remake the world was that something like…70%? of the people quit before level 15 or 20 or something, if I remember the reports. Due to being, well, dull. I mean, in Vanilla, 1-20 REALLY wasn’t that bad(okay okay, being om nom nom’d by Sons of Arugal in Silverpine was pre 20…). For me the ‘worst’ part of Vanilla was probably…30-40, BUT keep in mind this is after I’ve done it a few times.

Back to my point; I’m wondering how the numbers look now? Are only half of who quit before 20 quitting? Is it roughly the same amount? Granted, Cataclysm is only hitting it’s 5 month mark soon so it might be a little early to tell, but I’m actually wondering just how much of a differences exploderating the zones actually made.

Understandably they’d have to look at new accounts only for this; I know I had plenty of lowbies I started to tinker with and axed, throughout the years. (From what i understood that super high number of people quitting before 20 WAS from brand new accounts.)

Part of me is willing to actually bet that in the end, all of those changes probably reduced the starting people quitting by not as much as they thought. Maybe it did though.

By: depizan

depizan — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 01:49:06 +0000

That’s what I’ve heard as well. However, at least if WoW is any indication, it doesn’t hamper the gold sellers (at least not sufficiently) but it may well turn people off who would otherwise enjoy the game. There must be a better way to handle the gold seller issue – without driving away potential customers. Especially if we’re talking about new(er) MMOs and those with smaller populations – WoW can survive turning away potential customers a new MMO might not.

By: Night

Night — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:37:35 +0000

I always was under the impression that the limited trial accounts were set up that way as a poor way to limit spam/botting/gold sellers etc.

By: depizan

depizan — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:07:17 +0000

I think limiting trial accounts is a terrible mistake (and it’s not one just made by WoW) because the limited game really isn’t the same game anymore. Hell, I’d even say that the social aspects, like being able to whisper people and join guilds, are some of the last things you’d want to remove, because the social aspect of a game can keep people playing even if the game itself is only so-so.

The starting zone problem is an interesting one – I know there are starting zones in WoW that I quickly found boring and one’s I’ve enjoyed repeating. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you why that is. (Perhaps if I went back through them again focusing on why a zone works for me, or fails to work for me.) However, in WoW, there are a lot of starter zones, so I can always run a new character off to a fun one. Granted, that doesn’t help someone brand new to WoW who happens to pick the wrong starter zone for them.

I’ve been trying to remember what the first MMO I played (City of Heroes) did for it’s starter zones and making the hows clear to newbies, since I at least remember picking it up quite quickly. Now, I had seen people play it, just as I’d seen people play WoW before I started, but that’s still not the same as actually playing it. I think there was information in the dialogue boxes – which means you could read them as needed, or not – if I’m remembering correctly.

The idea of having new player starting zones isn’t a bad idea, actually, especially since – assuming my experience is typical – it doesn’t take long for a person to get used to game mechanics. You have a few simple quests/missions that cover the basics of game play and then you send the characters to to non-new-player starting zones. Just make sure there are zones. The more zones there are at any level, the more replayable the game is, and the better for people like me who make lots of alts.