Solo Progression Content: Ideas and Concerns

Community General Discussion
1

I’ve been seeing a fair bit of solo content forums recently, but I feel like they all take the wrong way to instigate discussion. It’s always very one-sided, nobody really seems to try to listen to the other. So here are my questions:

What would be your ideal concept of Solo Progression in WoW? And if you’re entirely against Solo Progression Content, what are your concerns against it?

I’m personally for it. I’ve seen many MMO’s rock solo content. And World of Warcraft has the ability to make it a reality without too much struggle. I think what I would want to see from solo progression content is challenge. Naturally, like M+ or Raiding, I would want it to have varying levels that give different reward tiers for varying difficulties. I don’t think we should have AI party members, I think that all progression should be tied strictly to player skill. My ideal would be Torghast-sized bits of content, a moderately long dungeon crawl. I feel like Torghast, Mage Tower, and Horrific visions all had great concepts, but just needed to be built upon.

Aside from this, any Solo Progression Content shouldn’t be a requirement for anything else in the game, it should be an alternate route. No important materials that you can’t already get from M+/PvP/Raiding. Just on-par materials with on-par difficulty. This would be strictly to ensure anyone doing these solo crawls wouldn’t feel forced to do it. The only pressure to do any content should be from your willingness to do it.

A few concerns I’ve seen in other threads are:

  • It’s an MMO, you should expect to have to play with others at some point.
  • It would take away from the MMO experience.
  • It would be too difficult and Solo players would complain like they did in BfA with Visions.
  • It would be a new gearing path that I would have to take part in.

All of these are valid concerns in some way shape or form. But there’s a handful of reasons why I think solo content would work around these:

  • I’m aware it’s an MMO, but many MMO’s have pulled off solid single player progression while still allowing good multiplayer world building. FFXIV being a great example.
  • As for solo players complaining about difficulty, I’d chalk that up to players on Soulsbourne forums complaining about those games being difficult. You can never please everyone. And with different difficulty modes, there would be a mode for everyone. And if someone wants to do the easier modes, they wouldn’t be rewarded high end gear.
  • For feeling like you would have to take part in it, that would be your choice entirely. Assuming Blizzard doesn’t make another piece of solo progression content that has important materials attached to it, your willingness to do the content should hinge on whether or not you actively want to do the content. WoW should be a game you play to enjoy, and not a game you force yourself to do things you don’t want to do in it.

Peace and Love, can’t wait to see discussions. <3

2

personally, i really liked torghast, and it would have been perfect with a few changes. first off it needed its own gear progression so that solo players like myself could make it the whole way through solo, without having to run a bunch of group content just to gear up enough to reach the highest floors. that defeats the purpose of it being soloable.

i think it also would have been better with more varied visuals, although i see why that might not have made sense given the setting. it just got very boring after awhile, visually

last i think it needed more cosmetics to entice us. they did well with all of the shoulder pieces towards the end, but you can never have enough cosmetics. make me want to keep going back after i’m done

also on another topic, the criterion dungeons or whatever that FF14 just added were a good idea. perfectly soloable, fun, gives you a neat mount if you finish the achievement. i just think they need to add more rewards to it, and perhaps tokens to upgrade the current gear; i havent played in awhile but the only way to upgrade the tome gear was by clearing savage raids. add some of those tokens to criterion dungeons too for more rewards

3

I agree, Torghast was really fun in my opinion. I could see them doing a similar concept, but smaller to match average dungeon time. But if they do, I really hope they add difficulties and gear prog, without upgrades to your class that make you overpowered.

I think it had enough cosmetics, because we did end up getting two whole wings that gave exclusively cosmetics. But I think cosmetics should be a reward from the content baseline, either from a vendor, or for completing achievements. Kind of like earning weapon skins and druid forms from Mage Tower in Legion.

4

To be honest, I liked how Shadowlands did it. Endgame was very meh, but I liked how long the campaign was and that there were extra campaigns for your covenant as well as new campaigns each patch. I think I am more invested in a campaign story rather than sidequests or the campaigns you unlock through reputation. In the next expansions, I want longer campaigns.

1 Like
5

I liked the campaigns as well. I think a lot of WoW is the end game though, so I think there should be a fine balance of lengthy campaigns and easily accessible end-game content. Maybe making certain parts of the campaign a non-req for the end-game, and offering cosmetic rewards/gear rewards that prep you to jump into the end game for completing the non-required campaign bits.