UPDATED POST (September 14, 2022): The war on solo players rages on harder than ever.
Shadowlands Season 4 went live without a single update to solo player gear progression. Open world rewards and crafted gear are frozen at Season 3 iLvls, and Torghast still does not drop the gear that is required to complete it at the highest layers, despite scaling to single players.
Dragonflight will keep the gear-gatekeeping principles of Shadowlands. Heroic or Mythic raiding-quality gear will be craftable but require soulbound reagents from organized group content. The only known open world gearing system will only cover 11/16 gearing slots, be capped at an iLvl between LFR and Normal raiding, and involve months of grinding currencies.
Wrath Classic is going to launch without the Dungeon Finder feature, meaning that solo-minded players will have a far less accessible and rewarding endgame.
Letting the elitist armchair MMO experts dictate how WoW should be designed (with more friction and required manual grouping) will not miraculously restore the sub count and community this game had years ago. Those âexpertsâ are the ones that never left the hardcore MMO scene to begin with and fail to understand why so many millions of WoW players left the game, or leave the game soon after trying out the latest expac.
The real experts have realized that any ham-fisted attempt to return to the old daysâsuch as the miserably unsuccessful Warlords of Draenor or Shadowlands expansionsâonly results in reducing the gameâs population. The answer is to grow and evolve as an MMO that accepts and rewards solo-minded gameplay, even at a slightly inferior level and/or pacing of rewards.
A solo-oriented progression system needs to cover all 16 gear slots with at least a Normal raiding iLvl, without requiring manual grouping, an exorbitant amount of gold or profession materials, or soulbound currency that requires half a year to earn.
UPDATED POST (May 25, 2022):
As of 9.2, solo players (and casual players outside of the ordained âthree pillarsâ of endgame) may obtain 252 item level Cypher gear in all armor slots and 246 trinkets and weapons through Zereth Mortis outdoor content.
As of 9.2.5 PTR, it seems as though the Cypher system will be expanded to include weapons and trinkets that will scale to 252. (Torghast will still not drop any gear despite being tuned for Mythic item levels.)
However, as far as we know, Shadowlands Season 4 will offer no new content or progression system for solo and/or casual players, leaving them an even further 26 item levels behind players in premade groups.
WoW developers are taking the time to revamp, rescale, and add affixes to 3 raids in 4 difficulties and 8 dungeons in infinitely scaling difficulty for season 4, but do they not have the time to scale up the enemies and gear rewards from even one older zone, especially considering that enemies and their abilities do not need to be as finely tuned as competitive raids?
This is all despite the fact that based on achievement, raid boss, Mythic dungeon, key completion, and PvP rating tracking, less than half of the playerbase consistently raids at Normal or above, or does Mythic dungeons or PvP at a competitive level, while a silent majority of players achieve power progression mainly through open world or queued content.
Are game developers trying to see if they can get by with transitioning WoW away from being an MMORPG? Or are they trying to force solo and casual players to either leave the game or join LFR and be 39 item levels behind the hardcore players?
ORIGINAL POST (February 8, 2022)
The gear rewards for solo and queued gameplay on 9.2 PTR are expected to be the worst that this game has ever seen in its long history.
Gear from outdoor zones will be capped out at 246 iLvl (the equivalent of 194 iLvl in 9.0 and 220 iLvl in 9.1), and gear rewards from outdoor zones and unrated PvP will be ineligible to be converted to tier pieces.
These historically low iLvls for world content and unrated PvP are bad enough, but the exclusion from tier pieces is an insult to millions of average gamers that will have no reason to play the final, and probably longest, patch of an expansion for the game that used to be the undisputed top MMO, even during the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
The war on solo gameplay needs to end. Queued, outdoor, unrated, untimed, casual, and solo content each need to have considerable gear rewards again.
To Developers
âHaving all the metrics at your disposal, you should be well aware that a large portion, possibly even more than half of the subscribed playerbase, does not engage in your prescribed endgame of raids, Mythic dungeons, and rated PvP.
âDo you hope to force your solo and willfully casual players into graduating into difficult group content in order to increase time played and increase WoW token sales, all while saving yourselves the development costs of producing alternative content?
âYou have already developed a working, scaling system in Shadowlands where players can challenge themselves to varied dungeon-like content, but you refused to add gear rewards to it out of fear that solo players would actually have power progression. Yes, Torghast was a huge opportunity and development expense that you intentionally wasted by forcing group players to do it for secondary rewards.
âWoW grew to the size that it did because it never forced grouped instanced content on players, so do not let the elitists delude you into thinking that Shadowlands gear gatekeeping is somehow magically good for the game now. Donât wait for 10.0, and donât even wait for 9.2.5. End the war on solo gameplay now.
To Elitist Players
âNo, we donât expect max iLvl Mythic BiS gear mailed to us just for logging in.
âNo, you wonât be forced to do any content that you donât want to do, unless you want gear downgrades for some reason.
âNo, your efforts wonât be devalued by ours, because you will still have your BiS gear and exclusive cosmetics such as equipment appearances, titles, achievements, feats of strength, or mounts.
âYes, we realize that this is a multi-player game, and we may even enjoy doing many things with our friends, but no, we do not want to do raids, Mythic dungeons, or rated PvP together or with you.
âYes, we do need more powerful gear to solo rares and mass-pull mobs in this expansion, and to complete legacy content in past expansions.
âYes, we deserve to experience power progression just as much as you do in your content.
âYes, WoWâs population is declining, and it is getting harder to justify the majority of the gameâs development expenses going into activities that fewer and fewer players are engaging in (both in terms of absolute and relative numbers). End the war on solo gameplay, so that WoW can go back to being WoW.
To Content Creators
âAdmit it. You absolutely praised Shadowlands during Beta for going back to a hierarchical gear system, for doing away with endless world quests for AP for a tiny increase in power, and for making outdoor mobs feel threatening again.
âAdmit it. You create content as though every last WoW player is going to min-max talents, covenants, currencies, legendaries, reputation, or any other content to obtain every last bit of power as soon as the game systems physically allow it.
âAdmit it. Shadowlands has been a failure because the typical gamer does not play WoW the way you do, and they have lost interest in WoW as well as your content. End the war on solo gameplay, and acknowledge the actual needs and habits of the players that should have been playing WoW and enjoying your content.
To the Community Council
âWe realize that you were not elected by the community itself, and it seems as though Blizzard installed you as representatives so that it has an excuse to outright ignore any feedback from the other 99.998% of the WoW population. However, the Community Council as an entity will fail the community and ultimately the game itself if it continues to remain silent on the issues of 9.2 for the players that donât min-max. End the war on solo gameplay, and represent the majority of the potential playerbase that somehow has been denied a voice.
To Microsoft
âTruth is stranger than fiction. The top MMO in history has sabotaged itself by trying to force its entire playerbase into doing what only the maniacal minority has expressed interested in doing.
âI would assume that no business would make such a huge investment just so that they can let the game developers continue to sabotage such a profitable IP for no reason other than their own pride and stubbornness. Make WoW a game for the masses again, instead of a lobby for toxic players to congregate in and gatekeep rewards. End the war on solo gameplay, whose casualties are your customers.
To My Fellow Solo Players
âDo not boost for gear and allow Blizzard to succeed in forcing us into their scheme for maximizing profits while minimizing content.
âDo step away from the game if 9.2 has nothing to offer. Blizzard has already had enough feedback and metrics about player behavior, and they still chose to ignore it all. Perhaps depriving them of money would be the message that finally gets through and ends the war on solo gameplayâa staple feature of all games, even MMOs.
