Well you see, there are a whole class of players (many of whom are among the ambitious™) who don’t play because they enjoy it or because they receive personal gratification from progressing, but because they want to be better than other players. They don’t want that mount because it’s aesthetically pleasing to them, they want it because the player next to them doesn’t have it. They don’t want that better gear because it makes them more powerful or opens up more experiences to them, they want it because the player next to them doesn’t have it. They don’t play because it gives them pleasure or a sense of accomplishment, but because it makes them feel superior to other players. That feeling is a helluva drug, and they won’t allow anyone to take it from them without a fight.
Oh I’m fully aware of the “winning is only as sweet as how many people are losing, and by how much” ethic, and I’m sure the devs are too, but when apparently the majority of your players don’t raid beyond LFR if at all (I have no numbers, I just hear it everywhere when people who do know the numbers occasionally say it, and everyone reports on it), and you then respond by putting follower dungeons and delves on the map, and promise good loot from that… at some point those competitively ambitious™ players may just have to accept that the people with the telemetry are building the game that will actually survive in their player base’s current makeup.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the lanes used to play with friends shouldn’t be taken away, and I’m confident they won’t be, but it’s well past time to acknowledge that friend groups below five people are more and more valid with every year this game ages, and that includes groups of one. It’s clearly time to add things for those people, in an evergreen fashion!
LFD doesn’t cut it any more. I’m doing my LFD farewell tour now getting some of my characters from 50-60 and… jesus christ, it’s a mess! As a DPS I just stay quiet and let the mad pace play out, but when I tried to tank, ME, a very comfortable multiple-game career tank of small group content, the whip cracking, breakneck pace, the “why did you pull that unnecessary trash” (oh, you know, because my job is to protect y’all?) mad expected pace… that’s not how this content was meant to be played in the leveling game. I realize that they’ve tuned it, likely intentionally, so that playing like a lunatic isn’t a death sentence, purely as a capitulation to that en vogue style of play, but jesus christ it’s just nuts!
“It’s just a dungeon,” I’m sure someone might say. Y’all, WoW has the best dungeons in the business, and people treat it like 10 minutes is too long! I just… I can’t get into that headspace. This isn’t Diablo.
Anyway, I get what you’re saying, and I think they’re building something more approachable when it comes to follower dungeons. They have the telemetry, and it says something that they chose to unveil Follower dungeons and delves in the same “breath.”
I’ve played in guilds, I’ve played with IRL friends, but for the most part over the many years since Vanilla, I’ve played this game solo. That’s not just socially avoidant behavior. I actually earned the pug pet because I ran LFD so hard when it came out. The problem is, the older we get the less likely we are to find a social group who plays this game at the same time and in the same way, and if I’m forced to only play as part of a dedicated group then I just won’t be able to play at all. That also makes me rusty at doing group content, which is increasingly less hospitable to less experienced players. I don’t know if I’ll enjoy Delves, but the follower dungeons are definitely going to be something I can do for practice or even for some low-key fun.
I don’t think it’s a problem, I’ll just be disappointed if there was a possible avenue for challenging solo player content that was thrown away.
Hang on, you just made me remember an important detail! Apparently the difficulty is likely to be quite present, but mitigated over time by leveling up, speccing and gearing your NPC companion in delves! So yes, there should be a challenge that gets slowly nerfed if you keep at it, which is kind of the best of all worlds really!
When you put it that way it kinda reminds me of torghast… 
As for my philosophy since some people here seem pretty happy to try to guess it themselves (I didn’t particularly enjoy being tarred with that brush). I genuinely believe this game is at its best when everyone has something they can do today that they couldn’t yesterday. It’s not that everything needs to be difficult, or that I need to be better than someone else to feel good, it’s that overcoming things gradually can be a rewarding experience that’s effectively absent from solo play in this game.
Me too, glad to see you are excited. Dungeons don’t do much for me but i will at least run them on occasion now. I used to run them once or twice an expansion but folks don’t want to see any of the story along the way, it’s just rush rush rush. Now i will definitely take the time to run them a few times as needed.
Looking forward to Delves too. I hope the NPC’s are interesting and make the experience flow well rather than just blow through things for fast XP.
indeed.
“but i never needed CC when Capt. Garrick was my tank!”
“What? you mean i need to use more than one heal?”
Amen brother. I’m looking forward to getting along with everyone in my group as well.