The DF leveling experience is downright the best this game has ever offered, for nearly any variety of player.
Side quests, professions, and exploration not only provide decent XP gains, but also allow you to begin progression through systems (Renown, professions) that will be beneficial at max level, and to earn permanent account-wide perks such as pets, toys, and appearances. The music, zone design, quest design, story, voice acting, and cinematics are fantastic. The new talent system has a chance to shine by allowing you to tweak your gameplay and performance through 10 additional talent points.
However, the expansion creators have decided that there will be no meaningful endgame for solo players, to the greatest extent we have seen since the Cataclysm expansion.
Problem #1: World Content
The best reputation and gear rewards are only obtained through world quests, super rares, and PvP activities that are not designed for undergeared solo players.
- Outdoor elites and rares are tuned like dungeon enemies and it is a long, painful process for solo players to kill them slowly simply to collect a treasure, herb, or ore or earn a small amount of quest progress.
- Even if solo players find another group killing outdoor enemies, the tag limit is quickly reached and they end up dying for nothing.
- PvP quests are too frustrating due to grouped up, geared players (even from your own faction) who derive joy from making other players miserable.
Problem #2: Professions
The ease and functionality of the Auction House has largely been replaced with the crafting order system, leaving solo players with few means to progress their professions and no way to enjoy the most powerful crafted gear.
- Crafting reagents for better gear are soulbound, and the content that solo players can do only awards minimal amounts of it. In addition, the strongest gear will never be craftable for solo players due to the fact that the more powerful soulbound reagents are only obtainable through group content.
- Most crafting professions require crafting orders in order to earn skill and knowledge points.
- Weekly quests provide no skill gains and only miniscule knowledge gains, leaving solo players with a nearly infinite grind that cannot be avoided by simply persevering over time.
Problem #3: Renown
Renown in and of itself does not serve as a strong enough incentive structure to keep solo players engaged at max level the way that past expansion systems did, considering that solo players are already locked out of gear and profession progression.
- Renown offers no power benefits, the way that Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands did. (Note: This is not a bad thing per se, but leaves solo players with even less of an incentive to keep playing the game solely for Renown progress.)
- Renown has no catch-up mechanics in place to help solo players who have fallen behind, the way that Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands did for solo players who had slower progress though their respective systems.
- The weekly reputation objective provides only miniscule rewards. It would take nearly 4 years of doing the weekly quest to reach max renown through the weekly reward alone (500 reputation awarded when you need 100,000), leaving solo players with a nearly infinite grind that canât be avoided by simply persevering over time.
Problem #4: Gold
Many solo players have continued playing the game mainly because they enjoy earning gold, and (other than farming bind-on-equip items though raids) they have had access to the best gold-making activities. However, Dragonflight severely restricts solo players who enjoy gold-making as a part of their endgame experience.
- Daily raw gold sources such as emissaries or callings are no longer provided, and weekly raw gold sources have been reduced.
- Mission tables are not available.
- The best ways of earning gold through professions are restricted to personal crafting orders.
As a result of all of the above, solo players such as myself have little to no reason to keep playing the game at max level, as game creators clearly tried to implement ways to discourage players from staying solo in virtually every facet of the game. In particular, even weekly objectives do not seem rewarding enough to justify playing the game.
Proposed solutions to the above problems:
- Make outdoor elites and rares initially spawn at a difficulty appropriate for solo players and scale up only when tagged by multiple players.
- Increase the tag limit for outdoor elites and rares.
- Allow all world quests to award 50 Bloody Tokens when completed in War Mode even if they are not PvP-specific quests.
- Increase the quantity and quality of soulbound crafted gear reagents available through world content.
- Greatly increase skill and knowledge gains from weekly profession quests.
- Greatly increase reputation gains from weekly objectives.
- Greatly increase raw gold gains from world quests and weekly objectives.
Stop inventing new ways to make solo players feel like World of Warcraft is not for them. Stop wasting all the great assets and gameplay features Dragonflight offers because solo players have no way or no reason to enjoy them.
Make it feel like a privilege again for all varieties of players to stay after they have already enjoyed the expansionâs base leveling content. Give me a single reason to buy that 12-month subscription. (Even poorly received expansions such as Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands offered new features for solo players.)
