Blizz support video from YouTube WTF

[zenga]

Rule number 1 of writing a tutorial is never overestimate the brain capacity of others.

A few months back I introduced an ex gf to wow. She is early 30s, has played games for the past 10y (from shooters over 2D muds, to puzzle games) and holds a university degree. I wouldn't say she has a lack of brain capacity the way I know her. Either way, I tried to explain the very basics of wow and it felt like mission impossible. It starts with the chat: i start to talk to her in whispers and in group, but she can only /say. We arrive in orgrimmar, my chat is very organized with all different tabs, and general/trade chat goes so fast that she has to scroll back all the time and misses 90% of what I say. Then I try to explain the way that you have to talk to your trainer to learn abilities, armor types, all the sites you have to use like wowhead, addons that make your life much easier, talent specs, what dungeons are. That you have to drag spells to your action bar, what a general cool down is. That you actually have to use spells, that you just can't melee a mob down. What pvp & pve is, ... and so on and so on. Oh and that starting out with a tank was a really bad idea because she would get shit on by other players, while she liked the idea of shielding her peers in an instance.

At that point I realized that WoW is far from an 'easy' game to begin with, despite popular belief. It takes actually a lot of adapting and a steep learning curve to get past the basic knowledge to start playing. My theory is that the average wow players is actually very knowledgeable, which is totally different from most of the other games I've played (non mmo's). And for people that don't read websites, follow the updates, this video is actually golden. I think the tone could be a bit different, but blizzard just decided to use another style (hence why they insist on getting feedback).

[Khatovar]

A few months back I introduced an ex gf to wow. She is early 30s, has played games for the past 10y (from shooters over 2D muds, to puzzle games) and holds a university degree. I wouldn't say she has a lack of brain capacity the way I know her. Either way, I tried to explain the very basics of wow and it felt like mission impossible.

Yup, it's not a matter of stupidity, it's a matter of how people are wired. I was in advanced classes for my entire education. Yet I took and failed algebra twice, and I still don't get it. With a lot of effort, I could probably get by, but I don't have the inherent capacity to understand math. When you're doing something like a tutorial, you cannot assume your audience has any understanding of what you consider basic concepts or things you just accept and give no thought to.

When I write up a tutorial, I always imagine a 2 year old over one shoulder going "Why? Why? Why? But Why?" and a 92 year old over my other one going "How? How? How? Ok, but how?"