Nice to see someone think of the positives instead of immediately scapegoating and witch hunting.
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It won’t, it’s not the dungeons causing the anxiety it’s the people. A lot of us that don’t do dungeons because of our anxiety is because someone freaked out at us in a dungeon, or at someone in the dungeon we was in. Nothing is going to change unless you start punishing people that freak out on other people and get rid of that behavior.
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Server does not matter for queues. Though, granted, maybe it’s a timezone thing or work hours thing. If you’re playing at 8am maybe it’s worse. I’ll grant you that.
Not bringing it up because you did, bringing it up because it’s a direct comparison to what Blizzard is adding.
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I don’t think they are adding it because Final Fantasy did, I suspect there is data that shows enough people are simply not interacting with dungeons and they want to make their time investment in dungeons more worth it by encouraging more interactions with the content.
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Your point? If Blizzard wants people to do the content they need to find a way to get people to try it, if Anxiety is the issue then they have to address it. It’s just that simple…
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Its a combination of a lot of things.
New player experience is pretty terrible in this game and leveling dungeons are a toxic speed run mess currently. Also some people have anxiety and doing dungeon quest to progress the story is a very big pita.
This AI feature is being added because of people like you. If ya’ll didn’t act a fool to others in game then maybe people would be more comfortable running dungeons.
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No it doesn’t. WOW is a multiplayer game at it’s core, always has been. Solo players do not contribute to the multiplayer aspect of the game, meaning they don’t help reduce queue times or add more players to LFG sign ups allowing for more groups in general to be listed. In short they don’t help a multiplayer game grow at all.
I’m not saying there should be zero solo player experience in WOW. It is good to have solo stuff to do in between waiting for friends and guild mates to log on. But it’s a fine line. Too much development resource on solo play hurts multiplayer content. Too much encouragement to play solo, such as not properly tuning it, will further take away from multiplayer. Ex: If the followers are too strong and it becomes more efficient to level with follower dungeons than this experiment will be a disaster.
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I’m pretty sure solo players do crafting, and professions, move around the world making it look more alive, and list items on the auction house or sell them in the trade chat. Your precious dungeons is not the only thing in the game that has a multiplayer aspect.
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Honestly, I FULLY expect followers to be much slower than live players, and yet… I’ll still live in that mode for many reasons.
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I can bring one or two friends without needing to fill the group out with randos.
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I can tolerate quite the hit to efficiency for the freedom to hit the bathroom or eat a sandwich between pulls (source: the way I’ve been playing FFXIV for the last two years)
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I come from an era of MMOs where dungeons were shared, public, competitive (with other groups or for spots in a group) and/or long. The idea of “this dungeon is JUST FOR ME” will never lose its novelty. That’s a me thing, but it is a thing that colors my experience.
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KILL. ALL. DAMAGE. METER. CULTURE. Like honestly, don’t overlook this part!
A lot of what you said is… pretty much exactly proving my point from the OP I’m afraid. MMOs are no longer novel enough to exist in that bubble of “we should need each other.” We can’t be trusted any more with that power over each other. It’s time to give options that leave room for us to want each other, but no, we shouldn’t need each other any more. It’s time.
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MMO doesn’t stand for “Must Meet Others”. It’s means Multi Massive Online.
In it’s hey day, WoW didn’t need any kind of solo NPC stuff. But this isn’t 10 years ago. Heck, this isn’t even 5 years ago.
It’s 2023. We don’t have 12 million players anymore.
Changes like this aren’t for people who are able to easily get into groups because their friends list hasn’t dried up.
Get off your soapbox, Gramps. Game’s changing.
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It’s almost like I said some solo content is needed…
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That’s fine. The main point of my post was that solo content is fine as long as it is not the most efficient way to play in a multiplayer game. The game can’t be encouraging people who normally want to do everything with friends to stop doing that.
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I’ve tried joining a guild or whatever and it has never been a good fit. To say that playing the same game has never made me friends would be an understatement. That means I have only really enjoyed playing with people I’ve known IRL.
Thing is, my brother is the only one left and he can’t play more than a couple hours a week. Meaning the rest of the time I solo.
Its been this way since TBC. People keep telling me I’m doing it wrong and should play something else but I’ve been at this a very long time.
I have pretty much always been here for the rpg part, community was never a factor. Looking forward to all the solo qol incoming. All I can say is it’s about damned time.
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I think we, and the devs, can agree on this.
The game is “ideally” played with friends. An offramp away from the randos is healthy and that’s what these features are.
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I played elder scrolls online for a few months last summer, about 300 hours. I did group content like lots 4 man instances and some raids. They were pretty cool. There are also delves, where you can adventure in with your companion. They gave you some xp, you loot some treasure and there’s a boss at the end. ESO is littered with delves, there’s hundreds. The delves in ESO are open to everyone though, you run into people all the time in them. I like the idea of solo delves in WoW. I am older. I am more reclusive as I get older and don’t want to deal with people all the time. I am really looking forward to adventuring some dungeons solo, because my character’s a damn badass and don’t need no group! I do m+ enough as it is. I pug my way to keystone hero every season since shadowlands season 4. Believe me, that’s more than enough of dealing with people. I don’t really care for the people that cry this isn’t an mmorpg anymore. It still is. It’s just different.
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I’m personally excited for this new follower system. When DF first launched I had a goal on my Worgen Druid to learn and get used to tanking. I tanked two normal dungeons, nothing bad happened, but I still went back to switching to one of the DPS specs before queuing for something. This new system, provided it goes well, will help actually get to that goal. In fact, I think it should be expounded upon by making it an LFR option, especially since LFR always gets hated on anyway.
It’s also a good wager that the ones saying “It’s an MMO, that means group, you’re supposed to group, so group!” are the same ones engaging in 
bag behavior in groups, which makes this new system that much more appealing to the rest of us.
It’s also worth noting that just about every other major MMO on the market seems to have a system similar to this. Just wanted to point that out, especially to those that believe because a thing exists in another game, it should exist here. Which I don’t completely disagree with, I just have in mind remarks like “if you like that system in (insert other game) then go play that game”.
Last edit: I caught some video of some folks on the PTR testing this new system. It’s not perfect, like AI mages not throwing out Arcane Intellect, but it’s definitely on the right track.
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I wouldn’t sweat the resistance that you see to features like this too much OP. It seems like it’s a relatively small but very vocal group of people (as usual) that are trapped in the definition of MMORPG from 2004.
It’s a simple fact that the vast majority of the people playing WoW are now adults with careers/families/responsibilities, and a lot of us no longer have the time/desire to adhere to set raid schedules or be locked into an hours long event. While I’m sure raiding and dungeons will remain the core focus for gear level progression, many of us welcome the addition of solo/small scale group content like Delves.
If I’m spamming dungeons then yeah, I’ll go for the queue. But I’d absolutely use the AI group the first time through just so I (or myself and a couple friends) can actually enjoy the dungeon more.
You can’t take your time to smell the roses and appreciate the music/art/story as much when you’ve got strangers that just want to get the dungeon done.
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I used to be one of them. At this point I honestly think LfR should be replaced with an AI companion mode, those of us who prefer playing with real people have normal heroic and mythic
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I was thinking of this point as I just did a quick lap of some of my old prior-expansion hub hangouts and… yeah they’re dead.
Yes, I know, they’re prior expansions, there’s no reason to be there beyond doubling back for collections, competionism or chromie time, and yet… it was never THIS dead.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going all “LoL game is dead,” it’s not, but it’s not an 8-figure membership game any more. The genre just doesn’t do that very much, if at all, in 2023.
I’m very glad WoW is still here, but yeah, it has to adapt.
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I doubt I ever engage much with the solo AI dungeon stuff aside from maybe leveling or w/e, but I don’t see why anyone would think it’s an issue to have it in the game.
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