End the war on solo gameplay in WoW

Community General Discussion
3742

degree of difficulty is relative…
one persons degree of difficult is NOT the same as anothers

and…I HAVE to laugh right out loud, every single time I read some cry baby crying about soloists getting ‘welfare’ gear…lol…what a nonsensical joke statement that is.

people who choose to play ‘solo’ are not really playing solo, they just choose to not engage in instances like dungeons & raids. We all group together to kill stuff, the only difference is, we get to mount up & fly off to kill something else, while others are tethered to an instance for hours on end.

who exactly does it hurt again? If we soloists get higher gear? Do raiders & dungeon head bangers actually think we pay attention to them enough to think they are ‘cool’ for having ewww shinnies for gear? lol…seriously? got news for them…shhh…most of us don’t really care what instance runners have, lol

pretty sure this toon is about as maxed out as she ‘can get’ …and still cannot solo the rares…so if no one is around…it aint happening. So don’t give me the ‘it’s good enough’ for you…thats a load.
And yes, I know how to play her, fairly well…I just want to log in, have some fun for a little while each day, without having to spend 20 minutes trying to kill something…simple…

6 Likes
3743

Link it. Let’s see what you are overlooking, because ZM is higher ilvl/power than 9.0 covenant sets were at the time

389 from world pvp? 395 from storm sigil? Normal starts at 398 for context.

3744

this is it chief. people find enjoyment in killing world bosses. they find that it’s “difficult” enough for them. and that’s all that matters. as long as they’re having fun in their 2 hour window that they have to play, that’s literally all that matters.

4 Likes
3745

M+ hurt raiding, and so will “elite” solo content, it’ll hurt m+ and raiding. Also known as mandatory torghast.

3746

but here’s the thing bro - nothing that blizzard does will change the fact that i’ll be on dungeon bis within 1 week. nothing. at all.

blizzard can make us do m+ naked and i’ll still be in “bis”

3747

If m+ and raiding are hurt by solo content that just shows that people are only doing those because they feel like they have to not because they want to.

7 Likes
3748
Note: My top post has been updated to reflect the current situation. Things seem to be getting worse for solo-minded players in both Retail and Classic. Devs continue to rage war on their largest player demographic.
4 Likes
3749

The simple fact is nobody is asking for solo content to be a path to top tier bis. But we would like that it was more rewarding and engaging and didnt feel like we are being punished for not wanting to run instanced content.

3 Likes
3750

I don’t have a horse in this race, but where are you pulling these numbers from? What’s your source?

3751

If raiding is so delicate that it can be threatened by literally any other content that awards gear, then perhaps raiding needs to be made more attractive.

For example: Make only two raiding difficulties. The easier one is queue-able and broken down into wings with 1-3 bosses without trash. The more difficult one would require organized groups and be laid out like a traditional WoW raid for people that enjoy that.

A more hardcore raiding difficulty could also be developed that provides time-limited cosmetic rewards only, if there is enough of a demand for that.

2 Likes
3752

This is a good thing. MMOs should require groups to achieve something. WoW went down hill as soon as they made this game more solo friendly. This is not only my opinion. It is backed up by subscription data. Cataclysm was the beginning of the end and oddly enough that was the revamp that removed most group required open world content.

3753

Not even Blizzard has one official number about what percentage of players are “solo”.

The number is dynamic depending on whether you count someone who occasionally does a queued Heroic dungeon or LFR, or someone who occasionally joins a pre-organized M+ run for the weekly event. There is a wide spectrum of players with a wide range of preferences rather than there being a box you can simply tick for being solo or not.

Metrics also vary widely depending on the game environment at any given time. For example, more solo players might be doing LFR now in Season 4 because no open world gearing options are provided. Or more solo players might be forcing themselves to do Normal raiding for the slime cat mount.

One thing we can say with certainty, though, is that more players do LFR only than players that stop at Normal, Heroic, or Mythic combined. More players do unrated PvP than rated PvP. More players want RDF in Wrath Classic than don’t want it.

There is a clear tendency for players to prefer do scalable content alone or group content with queued matchmaking, if the option is provided. Only now, devs want to remove those options.

Being able to level solo was what allowed WoW to explode in the early years. You earned gear upgrades through quests and a talent with each level at Level 10+.

If we had to group up for literally everything, most players would have quit on that first day.

Shadowlands is effectively asking players to group up for everything, considering that the leveling process is short and meaningless, and grouping up is required for any modicum of progression.

Solo players greatly preferred Wrath over Cataclysm. Wrath Heroic dungeons were accessible and rewarding, while Cataclysm Heroic dungeons were punishing and toxic and made you never want to queue again.

I can’t speak for everyone, but the Cataclysm leveling experience was much less satisfying than the Wrath one. It cost devs a lot to remake the zones, but I never agreed that the old content should be removed entirely, and the Wrath zones felt like they had more substance than the four new Cataclysm zones for Level 80-85.

So the decline starting in Cataclysm made sense to me as a solo player and open world content fan, and just proves my point.

5 Likes
3754

I don’t know why people need mythic raide gear to do questing or old raids.

If that’s all you do that’s great but much like in life, if you don’t put in any effort to do harder things you won’t get rewarded.

3755

Source? Actual data?

3756

We don’t need Mythic raiding gear to do questing or old raids, and I don’t think anyone is claiming in good faith that we do.

We could get up to Heroic item level, though, in the past. So as a compromise, I am suggesting Normal item level in all gear slots.

Achievement tracking and dev statements.

On the contrary, if you have any data (targeting the general audience) that suggests otherwise, please share.

4 Likes
3757

No offense, but why do you even play an MMORPG if you refuse to do any form of group content?

1 Like
3758

I enjoy the company of others and have been a loyal fan of WoW since the beginning. I am not opposed to queueing for matchmade content that is reasonably tuned, or grouping up to do achievements or world content.

The problem is when end-game progression is limited to instanced content in pre-organized groups. (Basically, the Shadowlands / Dragonflight model.)

4 Likes
3759

May I ask why you’re against pre-organized groups but match-making is okay?

Also, M+ up to 15 & Normal raids are not difficult at all.

3760

This system is tuned just about exactly the same as the patch 9.0 covenant sets, which I seem to recall you supporting earlier in this thread.

3761

Seems like a terrible waste of a big world just to spend everything beyond leveling in an instanced space. It seems kind of asinine to fault people for wanting more to do out in the world and not be stuck running the same few dungeons everyday. WoW really should be more than queue for this, queue for that.

4 Likes