I have played WoW on and off for 20 years. My most dedicated runs were during Vanilla, BC and MoP and “dedicated” would be a strong word to describe it.
I’m a casual player. I will level through the new content, dip my toe into Mythic Dungeons and become a LFR hero. I will maybe run some content with a couple of friends a few times and go on to completely ignore the chat of a guild that’s name illudes me. And then I rest. I wait for a new patch…rinse…repeat.
This may qualify me as a “solo player,” but at my age simply I wish to enjoy the beautiful MMO content at my own pace. And honestly, I think have been given the tools to engage with all of its content at a difficulty that doesn’t require me to hop on a discord channel and discuss strategy and tactics.
So all of that being said, my question is: is content like Delves (from a solo players perspective) something that you truly want? Content that you would engage with months down the road? Or is this another miss by Blizzard?
Personally? I find them boring and just a easier way to get gear. And that doesn’t truly help me since I won’t really use it higher-end content. So what do I really need champion level gear for?
I love Delves so much I am actually recommending friends to come back to WoW and trying to get friends who don’t play WoW to come join. I have never done this ever in 20 years.
While I did a month of M+ last expansion, each one was a terrifying experience for me where I fretted that I secretly was terrible and wasting my friends’ time. Delves give me a challenge I can approach without being worried that i’m infringing on anyone else’s time and help me build confidence in my play to engage in the group content going forward in a way I have lacked for the last decade.
I can explore areas on my own time, too. I can go AFK when I need to. I can SQUIRREL SQUIRREL what were we talking about?
If I have a request for Delves it’s that I’d like one to integrate Skyriding somehow and let me use engineering toys because that stuff’s fun as heck.
Zekvir is kicking my bottom right now but I’m looking forward to maybe taking him out this week.
IMHO: I think Delves are perfect for solo progression, but - right now - have a serious tuning issue where it doesn’t feel challenging (like Mage Tower)… it just feels unfair, like there’s nothing you can really do to succeed if your class/spec doesn’t happen to have the perfect tool to deal with what’s in your path.
I think they have potential but I’m already thinking they’re going to get scrapped. They’d be better off letting people get gear through pet battles that they can tune properly
As a “hard-core casual” myself I really only want gear that will let me farm the bee mount and maybe the storm griffin mount. Never done mythic and the only normal raiding I ever did was back in MoP with the only guild group that I clicked with that has since dissipated into the void.
Any content that I can manage by myself, because the past ten years have fostered a community that makes 4chan look like the Church of Latter-day Saints.
It’s close enough yes, I wanted content that felt similar to dungeons but didn’t require a group. Thus I could feel challenged but capable of learning on my own with my own rules. I don’t want to have to use addons unless I decide for myself I need them, I don’t want to look up guides until I decide for myself I need to. See my issue with a lot of group content aside from the toxicity we see is that I don’t get an entire lot of autonomy over what I do. I have to act like a robot and play the way the group wants me to. This isn’t a fun experience, delves give me that feeling. However some of the missions make them unwarrantly long but I’m okay with that if they need to justify their existence by making them different from dungeons.
Absolutely. This community is really bad, and I don’t want to have to depend on them for higher end gear progression. It’s fun to have that option, but I’m done with it being the only way to gear up. I love queuing for BGs, and matchmaking dungeons, chatting, and pugging in open world content. But I’m pretty much done bothering with M+. Delves are a huge step forward, and only reason I’m subscribed at this point. REALLY happy they quickly addressed the lopsided group-cakewalk/solo-slog issue in them.
I’d like to see more creative mechanics tho. Right now, it’s kind of just bullet spongey and overtuned things. Difficulty can come from actual mechanics tho that are interesting. Look at the mage tower. Things like that. Doesn’t even have to be that difficult. But that line of thinking.
I totally relate to this. I don’t mind doing my homework to carry my weight, but I don’t want it to be my first and primary experience engaging with the content, which is what it’s felt like in WoW since sometime around Legion. Delves (and follower dungeons) let me work it out for myself, and then later I can refine and I feel less like I’m being made into a cog in a machine as a result.
I like the idea of Delves. I like the idea of challenging solo content that you can get gear from and progress through, I had a bunch of fun with Mage Tower and Brawler’s Guild.
I don’t like that the challenge from Delves just comes from overinflated numbers. Like yeah, I can use defensives and mitigations and interrupt casts on every pull, but it isn’t particularly fun. It feels like I’m wailing on hyper-lethal quest mobs, as opposed to the unique execution-based challenges that the Mage Tower and Brawler’s Guild had.
I’m a solo player because I’m not good. I want something that I can do a thousand times until I get it, without messing up the majority of WoW’s “one shot or I quit” runs. Yes, that gives gear.
I want to be able to see what I did wrong when I fail. If something is going to hit me for 10x my HP, handhold me. Offer advice. “This is an instant death mechanic. You need to interrupt it.” “That’s an avoidable AoE - stand out of it.”
Not really an unreasonable ask. Note, nothing in the Mage Tower hit that hard.
this pretty much. I like the idea of delves. I dont like that if I want to play a spec I prefer like aug evoker or frost mage, I’m inherently worse equipped for the delve even without the scaling issues than just running prot paladin
I’ve also played since the beginning. I don’t think it matters when you started playing. I like the delves. I respect you find them boring. I’ve just started, only done 3, but if i have to do them over and over, (and over) then I agree. However I like for now and hope they roll out better than that
Straight up: I just want a way to continue to progress gearing my character for as long as possible without having to join a group. I think that pretty much sums up what every solo player wants in this game. I like delves and I hope that’s what they are.