Ion himself also said he doesn’t understand why anyone would play more than a single toon.
He’s not exactly in tune with players.
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Then they really should work on making that content fun and not at all what they’re doing now. The issue, of course, is they don’t really know what is fun in a way that appeals to a wide section of the player base in a way that generates the same kind of revenue as their chasing WoW as an eSport does.
Their focus is on Mythic+ and Raiding as a first, and foremost pillar of their game.
in what world lol
The one we have been living in for the past 8 years.
The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s a vicious cycle.
People want gear and crests, M+ gives them the most gear and crests for the effort required by not even close, so it becomes instantly the most popular mode, which causes blizzard to keep catering towards it as it’s popular, repeat.
So we don’t actually know for sure if the mode is popular because people find the content itself fun, or if it’s just the path of least resistance to get the loot they want, and they’d do other things if they offered comparable amounts of reward for the same effort. But the bit of data we do have suggests that participation universally trends downward as the season goes on.
the world where usually the best weapons and trinkets and rare items are only in raid? 
Don’t matter if you can’t get them to drop, which has been the problem with raid.
But whether raid or dungeon weapons/trinkets are better will vary spec by spec and season to season.
so just like m+…lol
Except that with M+ you can just keep running it over and over again until you get the drop.
Raid lockout says hard no to that.
So the comparison with M+ is Myth or Hero, which version do I get?
VS with raids, it’s Any version or no item at all?
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Also, to note, I think 18 a week is fine to start. But the cap from delves should increase steadily as the season goes on, eventually becoming unlimited (up to the season cap, I mean) around the 3 month mark - which is about halfway through the tier.
Delves are an endgame pillar. But if you could max your gilded crests from them week 1, M+ would effectively cease to exist, as players would just do delves cause they don’t have to suffer through Pugs.
An endgame pillar shouldn’t kill off another endgame pillar, but compete with it.
Limiting the crests at the start makes them workable, but it doesn’t kill off delves as a gear progression like lack of gilded crests did in season 1.
However, around the 3 month mark (as seasons are around 6 months with Blizzard since SL), Gilded Crests should become unlimited from Delves (up to the current season cap), provided you want to do enough delves.
3 months in, a delver has started to get mostly hero quality gear, and they need gilded crests as the last thing to upgrade their gear. The season is halfway over, and raiders/M+ers are mostly geared by this point too.
This is why Siren Isle is pretty much just catchup halfway through. Because that’s what people do halfway through.
Uncapping the crests from delves (up to season cap) around the 3 month mark reinforces the ENDGAME part of endgame pillar, while also giving M+ and Raiders a viable way to catch up to their guild/friends in their own time, if they took a break and missed part of the first 3 months.
Like, if a raider coming in at the 3 month mark to their guild wants to do the NINENTY Tier 11 delves in their free time that would be required to get the 540 Gilded Crests they missed, to help catch up to their guild for AotC/etc. why stop them?
Did you even do challenge modes? You skipped almost all of the trash with corpse skips, invis pots, and/or smeld cheese. It was not a count down timer, it was an ascending timer to see how fast you could do the dungeon. Literally nothing you said was correct.
At the 3 month mark they usually uncap crests. At that point, you can just farm runed crests and convert. The buff to runed crest drops from t9 and t10 are significant.
I think they announced it as a new endgame pillar.
Now they should treat it the same as raids and m+.
If not enough people want to play m+ anymore, thats another problem!
But do not start cutting off delves in chance of better crests or items. Thats the wrong way!
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I think it’s fine it’s meant to give you a reward to upgrade your heroic gear a bit to help you progress smoother each week.
Blizzards gear rewards tuning for the past 5 years has been a cross between “if you aren’t doing M+, you’re doing it wrong”, and “you will grind M+ and you will like it”.
It has its place as an option, but when all other options are so severely handicapped in their ability to accomplish the same goal by comparison, it stops becoming just an option.
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WOD challenge modes were absolutely a count down and had required trash clear %. Mop challenge modes were barely harder than heroic and were and absolute joke.
This, 100%.
If they’re afraid hardcore players will feel forced into doing delves for gilded crests, having a weekly cap that’s the same for everyone will fix this. You can get your crests however you want to play: raiding, m+, or delves. And once you get your weekly cap, you can keep doing content you enjoy or not.
Why on earth are solo players penalized? I hate m+. Hate, hate, hate.
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the dude has been out of touch for so many years now. i do wish that delve gear had better stats and trinkets cause atm it feels like all its good for is getting ilvl so i can then raid and run keys to get the proper stats and trinkets
i doubt there worried about that. im willing to bet its more their worried people will gear up quick and get bored and leave wow. which is funny cause that will happen regardless. there are so many guilds/keys groups/random people who just play get aotc/ksm and then go ok seasons done and leave till the next season. slowing down gearing isnt going to change that for those people.
DF season 3 proved this wrong though. The amount of time it took to fully gear up that season was probably the fastest ever in WoW’s history and that season also had some of the highest player retainment.
I do agree with Rannveig they want you to run other forms of content which is contradictory to what an end game pillar is supposed to be.
I don’t necessarily hate M+ but after 8 years of spamming it to gear up for mythic raid I just want an alternative and Delves is the closest we seem to be getting.
Your content is easier and quicker, therefore it has to be penalized somehow, it cant be the easiest, quickest and most effective way to get gear ever. When they uncap crests just farm 10s for runeds and upgrade them through the crest exchange.
You could also just buy gold runs for mythic+ and raids if you truly want the best gear for no effort.
It isn’t a penalty, its a tradeoff. We have far more flexibility than m+ or raid. We can run whatever delves we want, whenever we want, with whomever we want. The tradeoff is that the gearing process is slower and has a slightly lower ceiling.
When they uncap crests around the 3rd month of the season, farming t10s for runed and converting to gilded will be just as efficient as a dps pugging m+8 for gilded crests. At that point, we’ll be able to upgrade our tier hero gear and craft as much myth gear as we have sparks. If my sleep deprived napkin math is correct, our theoretical ilvl ceiling will be between Myth 4 and Myth 5. It will take time, planning, and effort to pull off but it’ll be possible. It’s honestly looking better than I had hoped for.
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