I thought the new follower dungeon would have no appeal to me as a 485 ilvl mage, so didn’t put much thought into them prior to going live. I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised by the handful of runs I’ve done. Below are my observations and feedback as well as my hopes for what Follower Dungeons become in the future.
My observations:
- Pulling like it’s hot and seeing if I can get the tank/healer killed is super fun. I can usually save the day, but finally getting to walk into a dungeon and pull EVERYTHING in sight without upsetting a real life tank/healer player is freedom personified.
- I explored a lot more. Since I’m not worried about time, I wanted to find and defeat EVERY enemy in the dungeon, like a 100% completion, and found so many cool/unexpected details in the dungeons that I had totally missed in the “rush” playstyle of Mythics. Little details/areas of interest, caves, and coves that make the dungeon come alive. It grew my appreciation for the designers and developers who took the careful thought to put those details there in the first place.
- I can actually come out with a net positive gold. I’ve mentioned before that Mythic+ is a total gold suck and that’s never been more true. Running a large number of 18+ keys a week is thousands of gold in expense and so little return, but these follower dungeons actually produce a net positive on gold and quite a bit for me so far. I even had some recipes drop that were worth a big amount.
- Time. So if I Q for a Mythic+ I know I’m committing to at least 30 mins and committing to the other 4 players that I’ll finish with them. Follower dungeons take the pressure off. If there’s a knock on the door or something else, no worries, no one is waiting for me or counting on me to beat a timer. This take the game from intense to chill, and it a nice way to mix it up based on what I’m up for.
Follower Dungeons of the FUTURE:
- Build my bench, recruit followers (something we did when followers were first introduced with command tables), upgrade my followers, give followers personality based on their fictitious backstory that rolls into how they play the dungeon. Recruit Leroy Jenkins? Sure, but you know what you’re getting. Let me pick the team (3 mages for DPS, sure!) and let me develop the team members.
- Upgraded followers allow me to play more difficult dungeons/content, such as Heroic and Mythic, based on my teams overall ilvl. Max out 4 followers and want to run some Mythics? Great, go get em!
- Ability to adjust the team for new challenges/achievements. All healers/No healers challenges? All DPS challenge? 3-man team challenge? Sure, why not? Let me select the members of the team I want to run with and give some achievement or cosmetic or follower upgrade for achieving it. In shadow lands you had the one slimy snake-thing mount from solo’ing the ooze dungeon (whatever it’s name was) and as a mage that SUCKED to get, but I got it and was impressed by myself for a day or two. Similarly, letting me build an unconventional team in a follower dungeon would be fantastic fun.
- Follower Dungeons designed specifically for followers. Remember Torgast? It didn’t play into the main game, it was a side-game, but was fun. Design some specific dungeon experiences for people who want to solo with their followers. Again, end rewards could simply be upgrades to follower’s ilvl, or mounts or cosmetics, etc.
- Simple follower customizations. I don’t want to be able fully gear them (what a headache that would be), but maybe one item slot for each for a follower-specific trinket that has fun affects/abilities.
- Last thought (big picture idea here, stay with me a minute), let me play locally with some game controllers and some of my kids as I control the main and they control the followers on their WOW-themed PC game controllers (only $69.99 this Christmas). Followers would have simplified controls and abilities and the camera motion through dungeons would have a fixed perspective to prevent too many players being off screen (or do a split screen type thing, idk whatever technically you can figure out). One of my long held observations for WOW players is that it’s a “social” game that excludes being social with those closest to you. Why? This was fine when I was 15, but in mid-40s, not as much. Question: Why do you have to be anti-social with those closest to you in order to play a social game? Answer: You don’t!!! Just grab a controller or two, plug in the family/friends and run some dungeons together and have a blast with the social element right around you.
Overall, I give the follower dungeon feature an A+ as a great addition to WOW (which honestly I thought was gonna happen like 5 years ago) and I hope the developers continue to see opportunities in the solo/local-social format and grow them.