End the war on solo gameplay in WoW

I think the Torghast equivalent in 10.0 will give loot.

I hope…

Also, multiboxing was the best solo content I have ever played. taking 5 hunters or prot pally in a m+7 was really fun and rewarding.

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WoW development is in a state of crisis right now, and they have obviously made many mistakes in Shadowlands that cost the game subs and its reputation. The story, systems, and everything including art for the 9.2 tier sets are lacking a professional touch.

But somehow you think that only the gear gatekeeping aspect of the systems design was done based on a professional and well intentioned analysis of the metrics? Could it all have been just a cheap tactic to get more money out of the limited content of 9.2 by forcing token sales for boosts?

The requirements for the 278 conduit item feel like boost bait, especially since max-level conduits were available to anyone who wanted to grind in 9.0 and 9.1.

Well, if they nerfed the item level of raiding gear relative to all other gear in the game, and relative to past patches, it would certainly feel like a war on raiding to the raiders, and the raider tantrums and meltdowns would be unimaginable.

If you include leveling content, Shadowlands actually has the least open world quest content of any expansion. At max level, there are fewer world quests than Legion or BfA had, and the devs didn’t even add new world quests to the base zones like they did in Legion (falcosaurs, etc.) and BfA (Naga invasions, etc.).

Covenant mini games really don’t resonate with most WoW players. Even the solo and casual players would prefer gameplay-related content.

I simply will not play the next expac if it is a repeat of Shadowlands. Torghast dropping legendary mats instead of gear was an asinine decision that was bad for both group and solo-minded players.

Multiboxing is also one of the most efficient ways to get certain rare drops, in cases where each toon has a chance to get the rare drop. But no way I am giving Blizzard the money or gold for more than one account given the poor quality of this expansion.

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well said.

TY for doing us all a favor

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Still group content so irrelevant to the solo plater argument.

You seem to have forgotten the threads about how hars the maw is or how hard korthia is when first launched. People buband large don’t seem to want hars content. Anything challenging gets met with tears.
Just look at the mage tower. Challenging content that you can’t blame other people for failing… Solo player crowd got somewhat exposed by that one.

You mean the ones that more or less “hard” translates to “I can’t AFK my way to victory”?

People complain if it is too hard, people complain if it is too easy (boringly so).

Because people think they should be able to do all content the moment it drops.

Now some of them might have been over tuned, some under tuned, but after the round of fixes, I found the challenge to be about right (only issue with tank one is it is an RNG mess(.

The ones that got exposed were the ones that use “solo player” as a cover for “bad player” and which people seem to think represents all solo players or all players that do solo content.

Like there are different levels of raider, there are also different levels of solo player, the ones wanting harder content could easily be the ones that, if they raided, would be doing heroic or early mythic, the ones that cry would likely be the ones that cried about LFR N’Zoth being “too hard” when they did not have even a base cloak.

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Trinkets from world quests are only scaling up to 236 for me, even with a maxed out Cypher console and an average item level over 250.

I have not seen any trinkets from rares yet, but the three “Dune Domination” rares (announced with shifting sands text every few hours) can drop 246 weapons, seemingly regardless of your Cypher progress or current average item level.

You can get 246 item level trinkets by using Spatial Openers on sand piles in the Dormant Alcove. I don’t think any rares or quests go this high for trinkets.

Too bad Wowhead and other content creators didn’t seem to cover this, despite the fact that these trinkets may be BiS for players who don’t do competitive group content.

Content creators often scoff at gear like this for being “catch-up” gear or “free” gear.

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There was a time I would have disagreed with OP. That time has passed.

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It’s a Shadowlands thing. I, too, would have disagreed with a post like this in Legion or BfA, for example.

Until this expac, I always found a way to enjoy this game and just ignore the content that I didn’t want to participate in, because the content and rewards structures seemed fine for what I was doing. I don’t think I ever even posted anything in these forums because that time would have been better spent in game. But something changed with this expac.

Did devs think that if they brought in a higher level of elitism (with regards to gear) than the game has ever seen, the playerbase would just miraculously grow like the good old expacs? Did devs really think that Vanilla WoW was such a hit because you had to group up for everything and the only max-level content was raiding?

Or is the whole goal to make casual players feel the urge to buy tokens for gold and then boost, as a way to stretch out the minimal amount of content and assets allocated to this expac?

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Because in Legion, and BFA war, and titan forge were a thing. Don’t believe it would have caused much of a ruckus if forging would not have scaled up in item levels like it did. Imo they should have left it in, and just toned it down some. Cap it somewhere between lfr, and normal raid mode item levels. That way solo players still can get decent upgrades, and progression raiders uh. Idk can find something else to gripe about lol.

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I never really liked or disliked Titanforging.

I always did the content I enjoyed or that would guarantee an upgrade if the gear dropped at all, rather than repeat low-level content in hopes of winning the lottery. Then I just equipped whatever was best for my toon without worrying about whether the item level was higher than it should have been for the content I was doing.

Years ago, devs said that they introduced Titanforging so that geared players would have a reason to do lower level content with their friends, seeing as they could occasionally get an upgrade. But ironically, hardcore players felt that Titanforging forced them to clear content endlessly, and elitist players felt indignant about seeing casual players with a slot or two of Mythic item level gear.

Titanforging was replaced by Corruption during the last patch of BfA, and Corruption was replaced by low drop rates in Shadowlands. Devs obviously felt that they had to make players grind for something for months!

But could devs just please go back to thinking about progression systems that benefit solo or casual players, rather than elitist systems like the Great Vault and the new Valor?

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They thought that if they starved casuals of gear and content they’d naturally gravitate to hard content, git gud, and start doing mythic raiding to boost the participation metrics.

Yup.

And not only that, but they figured all the casuals would either git gud or git the heck out of their game, which would allow tens of millions of hardcores to join, now that casuals were fully purged and wow had become a safe space for gamers who couldn’t abide the fact that there are people in the world who don’t play games right. Or even at all.

When profits are a direct result of management decisions, it’s not an accident. But since most boosts were purchased by elites gearing up their alts, players who were already partway there, and whales for whom money is no object, I think it was not a real expectation that casuals would buy boosts.

There were plenty of players in Legion who did play with their friends of lower skill levels, or who cruised the group finder looking for low keys to carry. Remember “My key, your carry”?

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Sort of wish the sandworn gear was upgradeable with valor at least.

So far they just hotfixed it to be able to be used with creation catalyst.

So far the only real use for that is a nice way to collect the lfr/normal mode tier transmog sets.

If it could be upgraded with valor at least it could add like a bad luck protection slot for mythics.

Although I wish we had better options for solo gearing.

So far pugging can be unfun with the high decline rates. I just sometimes feel like logging off and doing something else then waiting for a group to form.

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Yes, it’s weird that Valor can be earned from callings but is literally useless for character power if you don’t do M+.

Yes, making Sandworn Relic gear convertible is a good change that can benefit not only world content players, but also competitive players that are desperate for more options to earn tier pieces.

However, something is still very lacking in 9.2 for players that mainly do open world, queued, or solo content. This barely feels like a full patch to end the expansion for us.

It would be great if Cosmic Flux could be used to upgrade conduits to 265, or upgrade ZM gear to 259, just so that we have some kind of progression comparable to Korthia. And Cosmic Flux can be earned everywhere, so the hardcores can’t cry that you made them do dailies!

Yes, especially if you are a DPS, you really need a high item level and high RaiderIO and/or M+ score to reliably get into groups.

At least, many group leaders are more welcoming during the dungeon event week (next week for example) because they just want to get groups together without much hassle for M+0s or M+2s for the loot cache.

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Just go back to where loot rewards scaled up as you got better stuff, like in the previous expansions. Example. Say you get to 200 item level, then the dailies, or wq rewards scale up to like 205, 207, 210 etc. Of course, doing that would mean no ridiculous mundane/boring currency, or rep grinds, and these devs would never allow that again lol.

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I am pretty darn sure that those who play casually do not care about gear levels as long as they’re not naked lol

Numbers such as item level and DPS in and of themselves don’t matter so much to most solo and casual players, but that doesn’t mean that devs can just limit these types of players to worthless gear and say “everything is fine because these players don’t need better gear”.

For one thing, upgrades feel good no matter what kind of player you are or what content you do. If you are going to be playing the same patch for 9 months, you do in fact “need” some kind of progression or reward.

For another thing, the way that this game is developed, all players “need” better gear to do anything (outside of pet battles or covenant mini-games) more efficiently.

If Torghast does not reward gear, then it needs to be tuned for players in Heroic dungeon or world content gear.

If solo players’ power levels are to be kept so low as in Shadowlands, then the damage bonuses for legacy content need to be applied for content even as early as BfA.

Of course, the best solution would be for all types of players to have progression options, and for gear to matter in all content, but the current WoW dev team is continuing to create a game where solo and casual players can’t earn the power levels that their content requires.

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There are some free games on your phone you can play, and that way you don’t have to deal with all the hardcore LFR raiders that ruin your solo experience.

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Why do people play a MMO if they don’t want to play with other people? There are a trillion actually good single player games out there

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