I mean, come on… you can click a little eye button and randomly join a group of strangers. Don’t need to talk to em, even look at them. Is it technically group play? I guess… but it’s about as solo friendly as it gets.
Are you asking for “full power” Mythic raid level gear as a solo?
They need to keep working on the Profession system - will give you this one, but “mission tables” made me cringe. No thank you. I despise those with a passion.
Ok but the former shouldn’t exist.
Justifying outrage.
Standing afk and letting others do stuff happens in group content too lol. Anyways my post was more about the gear you actually catalyze and the quests you gain credit from are more or less group content, just without the formal grouping. As the hunt rares usually take about 2-3 people to kill minimum if you aren’t a tank spec. The catalyst mostly is for turning group content gear into something better. Even the invasion gear is world content gear which is multiplayer. Heck many of the rep farms are better done in groups. IF you play group content the instances give way better stuff then the world content stuff.
You can claim world content isn’t group content but it sort of is since the tuning requires more then one person to usually do. And devs say that elite zones are tuned usually with 2-5 players to get done.
If your complaint is “content that can be done better/faster in a group”, then the only content that doesn’t fit that complaint is the mage tower.
Mage tower was nice but it had some bad rng mechanics since it was tuned around doing it once.
But you can’t deny its easy to get gear after reaching lvl 70 and starting on mythics then going on and farming elemental invasions by yourself.
Right now I level a character, get defence matrix lvl 1, craft 6 pieces to 343 while above 64. And get world quests /rares to get that ilvl. Craft 343 gear once you reach 70 or buy from the AH, then go straight into mythics.
Not that hard since group content drops a bunch of stuff.
In comparison you are gated by how much upgrades you can do with the invasions, the invasions themselves aren’t really fun or engaging, and most of the world content has timers which is very annoying imo. Imagine waiting 3 hours for you to be able to do dungeon. It’s not so fun. They can do better. In the solo game department. Hoping the solo dungeon coming out next patch is a good sign that those devs that worked on torgast and visions can make a more solo oriented game mode and ilvl progression path.
“Solo participate” is an oxymoron.
If you need other players, it’s not solo content.
Some servers are pretty empty at certain times, especially when the Hunt is not required for the weekly quest.
You say something is impossible that literally happened to me yesterday. I started a fresh hunt then sat there and ate my breakfast waiting for someone to come, but no one did.
A 100% game design issue. I soloed elite world quests in Legion. I soloed world bosses in BfA and SL. But some of the rares and Hunt bosses in DF are designed to not be soloable by DPS toons in typical gear. You are denying facts.
A certain poster was trying to make me look inconsistent about what solo content is and brought up something I had said about LFD.
I stand by my statement that some Hunt bosses are not tuned for solo players.
I stand by my statement that dungeons are not technically solo content, but features like LFD are certainly more solo friendly.
Of course you can create a custom group in Group Finder to get help with a Hunt if there is no one around. But it would be better if the Hunts were actually tuned to be soloable,
I want to see you solo the bear Hunt boss on a 360 iLvl DPS toon with no pet tank and tell me it’s a skill issue.
It’s a GRAND hunt, not a solo hunt. How dare blizz try to encourage you to be social xD
Blizzard has continually tried Ai, Islands in BFA and Southshore PVP from what I remember at least. It is very possible Blizzard can make formed parties and you simply assume one of the roles in the raid.
You can get an item from the centaur rep to summon your bakaar and solo some stuff after some serious rep grinding. But those rares usually have some cheesy mechanic that does a bunch of damage or fear. So unless your class has some good burst, or health sustain/tankyness I would say it’s hard to solo those.
As an enh shaman I was sorta trying to solo at the start, but at that low ilvl it was better to just have a tank or pet soak the damage.
I don’t think you are really being fair to what you are calling try-hards, which is pretty demeaning actually but whatever. Since the dawn of MMORPGs the best loot has come from the hardest content and the hardest content has always been group content.
Having multiple people available to deal with Tank/DPS/Healing checks and mechanics means you can develop more challenging and interesting content. There is of course diminishing returns to HOW many people is too many people which is why we’ve seen MMOs go from huge raids like 40 mans or even bigger down to the current Mythic standard of 20., but I digress.
This DOES NOT mean that challenging and meaningful solo content can not exist, in fact quite the opposite. This game SHOULD have meaningful and even in some cases (a la Mage Tower) very challenging solo content. This is a boon for ALL players, solo-only or as you call everyone else “try-hards”. More content of different varieties = better for everyone, even those who don’t like some of that content and don’t partake because the more people who play the game the better for all of us.
I don’t think it’s unfair at all that the best loot, specifically loot, comes from group content gated behind difficulty as long as sufficient level loot is available to ALL players regardless of skill and commitment. But if there is no unicorn to pursue there is no incentive to group up, socialize, and work together to beat the most challenging content.
I also don’t think it’s a tall ask for consistent character progression through alternate means than group content, but it CAN NOT come at the expense of invalidating other forms of content. So there needs to be some compromise, for instance we have PvP gear now that scales up IN PvP so that PvE only players don’t HAVE to get high rating in PvP for the best PvE gear and PvP players can progress their characters meaningfully in the content they want to do.
There is even WORLD PvP gear that scales up in PvP with set bonuses that only work in the world, this is fun. What is stopping Blizzard from doing the same in world PvE content so you CAN solo that rare much more easily? I think that was the intent of the storms gear, and you can see that intent with them adding another upgrade to the storms gear to bring it up to 395 in 10.0.7, the system just needs more work and to be fleshed out more and, honestly, to not be so damn boring.
I am in my own guild. I am now a solo player based on the definition that i don’t raid anymore nor enter a M+ because I can’t commit anymore to raid schedules and M+ are no longer fun to me.
I just collect stuffs when i can play. My main is 396 iL with Storms, Sparks, Infusions from Renown, Rares. That’s normal raid iL roughly.
In SL, Zereth Mortis had those tokens that allowed players to buy gear with LFR item level and get tier sets.
In DF, the iL from Storms once upgraded is on par with most Normal raid bosses.
My 396 iL main can get more upgrades in 4 slots when i get more sparks.
I found people harsh saying DF forget about us. Normal raid iL is a progress to me compared to SL LFR iL.
For professions, i have always loved them and invested myself again in DF. I am draconic master of all, and what the OP says about not progressing without crafting orders has the simple solution of personal orders. Of course with one character only this is impossible.
Now I will admit also i mainly play tank specs or pets classes outside and my priest and my mage are the two classes falling behind for now. Mostly because i don’t like those classes 
PS: Reading all those threads lately, i find some people being absolutely contemptuous with us people that don’t do instance contents anymore for XYZ reasons. We can have an adult conversation about a topic without showing all the disdain possible.
The big different that makes it almost impossible for “solo play” to become one of WoW’s “pillars” is the following:
Right now there are 3 “pillars” for end game content:
All 3 of those require time, skill and dedication. They’re competitive to some degree, and have different levels of difficulty tied to a progressive system of reward.
Most players can’t become masters of all 3. There is some overlap (specially between M+ and raiding, as both are PvE), but the higher you go in one of those stairs, the more you need to invest in it.
Now, solo play, unlike those 3, doesn’t really require special dedication or skill. All it requires is some time, but not too much. Unlike the 3 pillars, you don’t sacrifice anything in order to play the solo content, other than a bit of time. This means that basically everyone engages in solo content. From raiders to M+ players to PvPers, all 3 of them participate in solo content.
In other words, solo content is a base, a common ground, a kind of foundation upon which the players start to participate in the game.
It’s the entrance upon which you’re supposed to engage in more difficult content.
If they give the best rewards to people just engaging in the bare minimum, it’s like shooting in your own feet. You would basically remove the progression from the 3 pillars (everyone would just get their BiS gear from solo content, whether they like it or not, because it would be far easier), which would severely hurt the game.
I’m all for they including stuff like mounts, cosmetics and catch up gear in solo content. But mythic level gear? nope.
I don’t really disagree with any of this. As I said the best gear should come from the most challenging content which means not everyone will or should be able to get it. I think that’s fine.
I also don’t believe that very many people, especially solo players, are asking for solo play to reward mythic level gear. That’s kind of a weird argument that everyone goes to whenever a solo-only player (that’s not me btw, this is just my observation) mentions that they would like something more than what they have, in the same ways the rest of us ask. I guess maybe it’s just easier to shout people down this way than listening to them, I don’t know.
What solo-only players are REALLY asking for is progression that lasts longer and goes farther than just mindlessly (seriously it’s so boring) grinding storms for like 2 hours total to get their “BiS” gear. I personally agree with them, we can do better, we can make things fun and rewarding without invalidating the mythic challenge and loot.
And, like you said, regardless of player we all participate in solo content, and if there was more and higher quality FUN solo content the majority of us would partake and it would be better for the game. Mage tower for instance is fairly universally loved, so much so they brought it back in SL and DF, so why haven’t we gotten more content like that?
I think there is a very easy middle ground we can find between Mythic level loot and making sure solo players have meaningful character progression.
Like how it already exists?
Not even that. For me I just want the ability to solo old content to farm it for transmogs, mounts, etc. If the only gear I can get is not very good then I can’t begin to solo stuff on many classes from two expacs ago until late in the expansion. As a casual and RPer, waiting 4-5 years to be able to get some cool items that are long past any relevancy is torture.
Stating that you need a group for something to be more solo friendly makes your point so far fetched, nearly worth automatic dismissal.
I dont care if its a consistent point. Its a contradictory one.
The game was always designed around group content…
When you do what you are supposed to do, and then some idiot causes the wipe, or takes the stuff you earned isn’t good. Solo is just reliant on yourself.
And gear makes it easier, which is what EVERYONE wants to do in this game. How does casuals getting good gear affect you if they won’t even be in your area.
The existence of better gear from trivial sources undermines the carrot of getting a reward from more challenging content. If a rabbit and Ragnaros both drop the same stuff, then you don’t feel anything special about getting loot from Ragnaros because it just as well could have come from the rabbit.
Again, this is typical RPG stuff.
No need to read further : No content in WoW is Solo content by that definition.
AKA : this isn’t the game for you, more than proven. Imagine now considering the fact that players are in your vicinity being bad and turning a solo activity into group content you won’t do.
And this is how we know you don’t play the game.
Cross realm has been enabled in current content zones since about 3 expansions ago.
You’re just trolling at this point if you claim hunts can’t be soloed. Because hunts can be AFK’ed right through. If you can afk it, you can solo it.
“Stuff you earned”. He earned it just as much as you if he was in on the kill pal, isn’t that what all you casuals always say ?
But since it’s trivial, the rewards are lesser.
Working as intended.