A Dream of a Beginner Friendly WoW

I have many dreams in this game. To summon the Eredar Twins, to one day see a shivarra pet dropping from Mother Shahraz, to beat Kanrethad within 2 expansions, to see the hunter t3 pants on my realm's BMAH, et cetera.

But I'm here to talk about an specific dream. A dream of a day where my non-gamer IRL friends won't decide WoW is too complicated for them after playing the first 10 levels. A dream where the game itself, and not some third party website, will teach players how to play, and even how to be pro.

Give me a few moments, and let me share with you my dream:

Tank? Does that mean I get a huge gun that can take down helicopters? - No, you don't get a huge gun.

Yeah, the game tells you more or less what your specialization and your role do, but beginners at MMOs aren't always conditioned to read through every text they see.

Ideally, we should get an AutoAccepted quest at level 10, taking us to our trainer. Our trainer would than give us one quest for each specialization, with the spec's name on it. The quests should be easy to understand and 100% related to your role and how to execute it. For instance, an Affliction quest should be based on multi-DoTing, while a tank quest should be all about protecting a meek NPC from a hard hitting mob.

The reward for this quest should be too good for players to pass on it, while not being overpowered. My favorite idea on this one is a trinket, related to your specialization, that scales until level 60. We don't get too many trinkets on those levels, anyway. More often than not, I reach outlands with Rhea's Last Egg and Lunk's Special Gear equipped.

Monk Quests for ALL! - In my Humble Opinion, monks are the only class that's currently fun to level up. Why? Because of their Quests.

Monk Quests all happen in the same place, which gives you a sense of a place you belong to and a feeling of immersion and kinship with your fellow monks (who also go quest in the same place), not to mention that they give you something new to do while you level, instead of just getting to make one choice every 15 levels.

But the best thing about them is that they teach you all about your class mechanics and some general basics. here's what they teach and require you to do:

20 - Getting out of the Fire;
30 - Target Focusing and Burst;
40 - Snares and Roots;
50 - Interrupts;
60 - Stuns;
70 - Knockback;
80 - Disarming and Removing Debuffs;
90 - Everything together!

Knowing how to do those things is half of the way to becoming a decent raider or PvP player. And the Experience buff is too good to pass on it, and it makes leveling faster and less boring. A win-win situation, if I've every seen one.

Path of Leetness - Ok, that teaches new players the basics of their class, spec, maybe teamwork as well. But what about the Advanced Stuff? What about being pro?

That's pretty much the easiest part for blizzard. Have a space within the Official Website for Theorycrafting, run by the community and watched closely by the Community Managers, and make it easy to notice and reach with the In-Game Help Browser. This way, you can learn the advanced stuff without ever needing to alt tab, or even know of third party websites!

Isn't that too much handholding? - WoW can be a very complex game. You may not believe me, but many people that have never played this game before have no idea that WoW warriors aren't supposed to have agility equipment! Real Life logic doesn't always apply to this game, and there are reasons for that, but things aren't always obvious or intuitive for the untrained eye.

Beginners at the MMO gender are to the game what children are to real life, and we have to treat them as children, not by humiliating them because of their lack of knowledge, but by guiding them step by step until they can guide themselves.

TL;DR:

1 - The game needs to teach us to play not by words, but by actions. A few medium difficult quests in a controlled ambient can teach us way more than a few lines of text on the talent choice screen;

2 - The in-game Help browser could be used for info on theorycrafting, instead of having players need to discover third party websites for that;