I’m a big proponent of the “follower dungeons to delves” (and now story mode raids!) pipeline, which as of TWW will start at level 10 and land in the great vault. That’s a whole on demand, no waiting PVE game with no tag wars, no cleared out WQ spawns, no “competitive clickables.” That’s wonderful!
Every time I get into this though, folks immediately refer to it as solo content, and while that IS true, while that is a big part of the appeal, I think it needs to be pointed out that this stuff is for one TO five players. Husband and wife? A whole game for just them if they want it. Couple of friends that are the remnants of a M+ or raid team that fell apart? A whole game for them. 3 friends that just want to play DPS and not deal with tank or healer stress? Whole game.
The War Within will re-write the social rules of WoW in a lot of far reaching ways by just telling every group smaller than five that, no, they don’t need to grow a thick skin to play the group content. Yes, this is an MMO but the people that lean into telling everyone that the hardest are failing badly at concealing that what they are really saying is “HEY! YOU SHOULD NEED ME! I SHOULD HAVE POWER OVER YOU!” Well, no, they shouldn’t. If the community is going to treat each other badly, WoW has your back now. It has you and your “up to four friends’” backs now. That’s wonderful.
It’s not just solo content, it’s more importantly about support for groups smaller than five. That’s such a big deal, and I can’t wait to see the game that comes from that!
I do a lot of group content (right now in MOP Remix anyway), and I don’t hate it at all, as long as it’s with decent people. Give me decent people and I’ll have fun with them. But randos are, in fact, rando-ing, and sometimes it’s so heinous that you have to bounce.
But having solo options with I’m all randoed out? Priceless. Worth the money I pay for the game.
I think the game needs to change one of 2 things in terms of group content.
Go back to when raiding and dungeons were simple and easily doable just with friends in a social atmosphere where everyone is having a good time with their guild and making friendships that last for years as opposed to the esports sweaty content where you can’t afford even 1 weak link in your group and if you surpass your friends level in skill you have no reason to play with them anymore. As well as guilds just being used as stepping stones to move onto a better one constantly.
Or start developing the game where solo content is just as rewarding and demanding in terms of player skill. Because if the game is trying to be esports level difficulty, I’d rather not have to rely on getting a group with no weak links and having some random cost me an hour of my time because they aren’t good enough, or decided to rage quit.
The way the game currently is designed, is nothing more than the majority of the time spent playing it feeling like your time was wasted with no progression because of things outside of your own personal control. The game already timegates almost all of its content to weekly checklists, I don’t want to also be gated behind whether my spec is good enough to get invites to content to begin with let alone when I finally do, having to hope everyone in the group is competent
Delves are the best new feature they’ve added in a long time, if they actually function the way they should. I’m very happy to know that they’re finally giving solo players a consistent gearing path, because even though I dislike M+ and raiding, I do still wanna get the good stuff.
everyone saying others need to grow a thick skin ARE the obnoxio’s who everyone else needs to avoid in the first place.
agreed.
its not even ironic that the clowns screaming “MUH MMO” the loudest are the same ones who make this MMO horrible for everyone around them. lol.
Its just pathetic.
That blizzard is making more SOLOABLE content is certainly their finally acknowledging the problem with obnoxious PLAYERS in this game.
and honestly Ive had people ask me about what video game they could look at.
Ive steered half a dozen of them away from WoW for one reason or another.
The two biggest reasons are…
There has long been an implicit design assumption that if only one manages to somehow get players into groups of strangers then connections and positive social experiences will grow. I’ve always known that this was not true for me, but I’ve never been sure if that’s just a quirk of my own personality or represents a misread of how the social dynamics play out for a wide swath of the community.
So I’m very curious to watch the success or failure of these sorts of experiments.
Been a solo player for many years now in WoW and without a doubt the worst part of this game is the people playing it. And after a long night at work I want to sit down and enjoy WoW before bed but group content is filled with too many problem children (mentally, not physically) hopped up on Monster, making a nuisance of themselves.
I do not know what “delves” is but I keep seeing that word, it sounds interesting. I’ll have to look it up.
Even when I was good, I didn’t like to be competitive for long and I went back to very casual content for the majority of the xpac. While I still talked to my friends, you get invited less and less when you don’t wanna do most content like arena and keys regularly and keep denying the invite, I get it. xD
Being alone (or spending time with one friend) has almost always been my go to and finding someone you really like can be challenging, imo. And, I never really meet ppl who wanna do casual stuff in the game on the regular.
Idk the older I get the more ppl hurt for some reason and obviously I am not perfect but yeah, it’s more peaceful to be solo or with one other bud.
I’m grateful the company put time into this and hopefully they put a lot of love in for group content as well.
