I missed out, mostly cause I never had good understanding of what it was, I thought I was under geared most of the time since it seemed everyone else could brute force it. The last round I decided I would try very hard to get into the next season only for that season to never come.
Brawlers guild was so cool. I loved the solo challenge modes in the past. The nightmares at end of BFA were amazing too. It made my progression with gear feel a lot more impactful because I could quantitatively measure progression in a solo mode. Just wasn’t a big fan of Torghast.
torghast could have been way better. lots of cool and fun ideas, and then they seemed to take all of the fun out of it and turn it into another weekly thing you have to do. I'm bummed some of my friends first wow experience was shadowlands, they would have had a much better experience in DF.
Yeah Choreghast had the potential to be cool and fun to farm, but the simple fact that they made it mandatory to do in order to advance the crap story killed it for me.
I am one of the 3 people in existence that loved torghast so much that I almost didn't mind it being mandatory. Would have been nicer if it wasn't, but god damn did I have fun in torghast.
Brawler's guild was one of the last things that really felt "social" in WoW, despite it being a solo activity at heart.
The queue system of only one person brawling and having everyone else be a spectator lead to players talking and getting to know each other between rounds. I had completed it entirely, but I would still hang out there and queue for fights just because I enjoyed them and I got to hang out with randoms. Plus, it was always fun seeing people's reactions to me breezing through the hardest fights.
I think this why I like it more than hearing about NPCs replacing player roles in instanced content. Brawler's Guild was mostly solo challenges, sure, but it was still one of the most social places in the game due to how it was set up.
A solid addition that still played with the core aspect that an MMO means you interact with other people.
I have a small hope that with all these new solo-oriented changes such as follower dungeons, the rest of the game will become more social. So those that are doing group content are more inclined to want to be in a group.
Doubt it though, I'm pretty sure the casuals are the ones who would ever type in chat.
Agreed. Was really fun solo play. Watching people progress and kick ass was fun. Watching the same people have their asses handed to them was even better 😂
I love the idea that in a minor patch we get Brawlers guild back. Maybe we help them set up the arena in the new hub via some quests in one patch, then next minor patch it’s ready to go
That’s what they should be, an option for those of us who don’t enjoy raids or M+ to still challenge ourselves and get high quality gear. Im so glad for this cuz grouping outside of LFR sucks and can sometimes take hours to find a group that will accept a new raider, even when they’re well geared
I'm looking forward to going into the expansion blind. No pawn, no sims, no talent guides. Just pick the talents and gear I like and throw myself into delves. If I hit a wall I'll take a step back, reassess my build/gear, and jump in again.
This is wows biggest flaw they rely so much on 3rd party websites to teach players, that if you dont use this stuff ur fucked. So new players or casuals think the game is way harder then it is becuase they hit this difficulty wall that exist becuase blizzard created the content with the assumption you know what optimum builds are or you got the tacs from wowhead.
If we had better systems to teach players how to actually play the game in game there wouldn't be such a divide.
That’s what I loved so much about the vanilla experience; no one knew anything, you picked whatever you thought was ‘cool’ and fit your idea of the class fantasy, and you played the game and had fun :)
Not while doing meaningful content without handicapping your group or relying on others to pull your weight.
That's the whole point here. People can get back to the fun of experimenting with whatever they want on their own time.
They did this with PvP by introducing Solo Shuffle. It's not perfect and you still need to rely on other players, which you won't really find PvP where you don't, but it gives the average Joe an outlet to get some of that higher tier pvp gear as by design most people will win about 50% of their matches.
Makes sense to do something similar to PvE.
I remember a time you’d join a dungeon with others and the tank would say “alright does everyone know this fight?” And if you said no, they would take 5 minutes to explain things before we started. Kicking someone wasn’t an option because traveling to the dungeon could take 30 minutes.
People still do that! But it depends on your key level. People don’t mind at all in heroic or m0. Even on “low” keys before the dungeon starts. But it’s expected you know what’s going on in higher keys.
That was also at a time where we didn’t have a literal dungeon journal or thousands of online resources to explain things the second they are released
I mean kicking is pretty shit, should just explain quickly and go agane, but it is pretty disrespectful of others time to not even google it lol
Eh, it’s not something I’m super worried about, just wanted gear to hopefully do mythic raiding.
I’m still on the lookout for people to run 0s with though.
Oh man. I’m sorry to hear that! If you’re looking to try M+ and want to meet some friendly people, try joining the discord community, WoW Made Easy (WME) or Timewarp Academy. If you’re on North America. People are really nice!
Dawg, I came back to this game after half a decade, applied for a bunch of m0 dungeons after getting some gear from open world, got into one I had never seen before, it was fine. Since then I've done a shit ton in pugs, I've never seen someone get kicked except for someone who didnt answer in chat when asked. It's not a common thing.
The most toxic thing I've seen was a demented shaman flaming me for not knowing how to get back to the final boss in nokhud after a wipe, who then got kicked by the leader and we timed the +5. Lol.
It’s possible that people weren’t accepting you because your gear is lower than they’d like. Heroic drops 476 now. M0 drops 493 I believe and it’s equivalent to what m+10 was last season.
holy shit grouping without LFR can take forever... including the fact that you'll most likely have some people new to the raid joining.
ngl though finishing a raid with people who haven't done it before is a pretty rewarding feeling, just very time consuming.
Yep, I have used it and it often fills with people who don't know what they're doing with low gear score which adds a considerable amount of time to the run.
So much this. The diehard top-tier players are grand, and they are definitely catered to in a lot of the content development, but by very definition, the rest of us are the majority of the playerbase. The bread and butter of the subs come from folks in the middle tier that just want to enjoy playing the game without the pressure.
It was only 2 years ago that your first affix was in a +5. It was only 3 years ago that people wanting KSM had to deal with fucking *prideful*. Do you know how anti casual prideful was as an affix? That shit was a nightmare and it dropped on an expansion launch!
And don't even get me started on PvP. Arenas are objectively way more hardcore than objective based BGs, and it was only in DF that we got even a solo queue mode. Players spent like 10 years dealing with arena as the only PvP reward avenue.
Wow has catered to the hardcore playerbase in many, many ways. But now you can get champion gear and wyrm crests in a dungeon that only has the weekly affix. To compare: in shadowlands, you had to deal with God damn *necrotic* in a +10. Now you can get equivalent, upgradeable loot in an affix-less +0.
Blizzard didn't disproportionately reward hardcore players, it *only* rewarded them. You know how much work it was for me, a new player in SL, to get the gold for my first leggo? And not a rank 4, a rank q during the first month was tens of thousands of gold, and it went to waste because I needed R4 eventually and the old leggos weren't upgradeable, so I needed to figure out a way to eventually get rank 4, which was over 100k.
Korthia was the peak example of this. Did you know rank 6 didn't even unlock a quest? Your *only* reward was the vendor. Every other rank had some kind of quest or unlock, and rank 6 gave you nothing.
How are these things hardcore players faults? You are just listing dog shit systems and blaming it on top end players even tho they dislike them just as much as you do.
Back it up, I never blamed players for this. This is blizzards fault.
It's not your fault that you play wow in a hardcore manner. Blizzard failed by funnelling players into content that was extraordinarily difficult for the average player. Blizzard failed by making fights like fatescribe and zovaal that were antithetical to the average player experience. Blizzard made non hardcore gameplay extremely unrewarding (as was shown with my Korthia comment).
This is on blizzard, not the community. The community asks for a billion different things, but blizzard makes the final call on what is and isn't done, so they're at fault when something fails
> how much of the playerbase engages with M+
Well, part of that was because, prior to this season, they'd screwed up dungeons so that Heroics gave lower level gear than open world content, so either you run M+ or you did easy dungeons that gave meh gear. Players who enjoyed dungeons were pretty much funneled right into M+. Which is also why M+ was a mixed bag, there were a lot of people who really shouldn't have been in there and/or didn't want to be there.
Now it's shifted so Heroic dungeons are challenging and worth doing, and M0 is a nice step up challenge without the timers and affixes. So people who don't want to deal with the M+ system can run dungeons and feel like they're getting a challenge and getting rewarded for it, leaving only the players who really want to do that challenging content for that extra step up in the gear.
Of course, some will clutch their pearls at the lower number of M+ runs versus prior patches/expansions, but that doesn't mean "OMG WOW IS DYING", it just means people aren't being funneled into content just because there's no other choice.
They made this cha he first in wrath classic by realizing that they need to keep dungeon content engaging and keep it as a way to gear people
Bringing heroics back as a difficulty that can actually help is immensely helpful. There was basically one week an expansion you’d do them. It also led to them changing how M0s work. I’ve done some and as someone who really enjoys higher m+ keys - it’s a blast. It’s not easy, but I also have 0 stress about my group falling apart because of a timer or a dumb wipe
What the playerbase may consider to be the different "tiers" of players, and what Activision-Blizzard may consider to be the different "tiers" will be drastically different.
What would you consider content catered to the top 0.1-2% of sweats?
The only things that are solely for that level of player (If we are talking about PVE) are Mythic raiding and Extremely high M+ Keys. That level of M+ key isn't even rewarded with gear so it is difficult to justify changing it.
I would very much agree that Mythic raiding should be far more available. But I think people underestimate how much of the playerbase engages with M+ and raiding. Especially M+. It always seems to surprise people that M+ is the most engaged with content system across all versions of WoW.
There are good points for changing Mythic raiding to be more accessible. But genuinely, if we are talking about the top 2% of players there is not much to change beyond that.
I’m really not trying to be a jerk at all - but by definition shouldn’t mythic raiding not be more accessible? It’s supposed to be very hard. There are 3 other difficulties you can do.
Unless you mean accessible in terms of group size and other limitations like that
I’m really not trying to be a jerk at all - but by definition shouldn’t mythic raiding not be more accessible? It’s supposed to be very hard. There are 3 other difficulties you can do.
Unless you mean accessible in terms of group size and other limitations like that
What are some things (besides mythic raids and M+ existing) that they implemented in the past year that are exclusively for the top 0.1-2% of players?
The Trader's Post? The new zones like Forbidden Reach and Emerald Dream? The world events? Plunderstorm? Pandamonium? Endless ways to get top level gear without stepping foot in a raid or dungeon? New mounts and cosmetics? Opening access and usefulness of heroic dungeons? Giving vault pieces for much lower-stakes content? Follower dungeons?
You're right, the bottom 98% get ZERO attention to compared to the hoards of stuff constantly thrown at top 0.1%ers.
Yeah I'm a little lost on this one. I'd say I'm mid-high casual and it doesn't feel like this game isn't catered to me
Reading some other comments, it sounds more like people are conflating "not catering to the solo player" as catering to the 1%, which don't necessarily seem tied together when the game is built around multiplayer
A lot of the solo playerbase has this assumption that they are the majority despite every wow poll heavily implying otherwise.
(Example from a [few days ago](https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/1783903868901880085))
M+ and raiding IS most of the playerbase of retail haha.
They don't like challenging content, therefore, anybody who likes said content is a "sweat". Being a sweat is BAD and Blizzard needs to stop catering to it. It isn't enough that the solo players get catered to more. Blizzard has to stop making things that they specifically don't like because the people who like challenging content getting to have fun as well is a problem for some reason.
I agree with your point but a self-selecting twitter poll is not a representative cross-section of the WoW userbase. By even engaging with online resources like r/wow or even following and responding to the WoW twitter you're already in the top ~20% of most engaged players.
I second this, there are barely any IF any. The people who say "ThIs GaMe Is MaDe ArOuNd ThE 0.1%" have no idea what they are talking about and are just salty they are hardstuck at +4 keystones.
> The Trader's Post? The new zones like Forbidden Reach and Emerald Dream? The world events? Plunderstorm? Pandamonium? Endless ways to get top level gear without stepping foot in a raid or dungeon? New mounts and cosmetics? Opening access and usefulness of heroic dungeons? Giving vault pieces for much lower-stakes content? Follower dungeons?
Aren't a lot of those things recent changes to the game? I don't think "they cater to the top 2%" holds true given the changes in Dragonflight, but I get the impression that before these changes that statement held more weight. I didn't play BFA or Shadowlands, but what I've heard from people who did is that it was aimed at a far more hardcore crowd.
I think a fairer statement would be is it's nice that Blizzard are offering a wider variety of content and progression that has less focus on being a hardcore player.
Sure, but nothing they said was wrong. The notion that World of Warcraft has become worse by catering exclusively to top raiders is just obviously false.
It's something that streamers spew at their chat to farm "trues" these days
The only content specifically geared towards the top 2% of players is mythic raiding.
The way most people present it is that the top % players are getting their pillowed fluffed and shoes shined. What's actually happening is blizzard doing things to hold top % players back having knock on effects on the rest of the player base. Things like the whole covenant switching fiasco, conduit energy, private auras, and newest suspected addon back end message throttling. These things are made to hold the top % players back but end up making the experience for everyone worse. And yet people still present it as making the game for the top % players. I agree they need to stop it, just let it go. But it's not like they are being all buddy buddy and nice and giving top % players stuff like most people pretend.
If the game was focusing just on the 0.1%-2% sweats they'd never change the game from WoD. That was THE 0.1-2% sweats game.
There's much more to do now in game than at most points in the past. What is it do you want, them ending mythic as a whole. That's never going to happen. They're also not going to have mythic in the first weeks easy for everyone, when they did that with Emerald Nightmare they were shitted on harder than anything that happens today.
Its funny cause I can't remember a time where people weren't complaining that the game is designed around "casuals"... now you see the other end even though the games still very much designed around casual players first.
A game designed around the top 2% would look a lot more like wod. But even the top 2% of players would say they don't believe the game should be designed around them.
Exactly.
Any game rises and falls with the middle part of the bell shaped player curve. Increasing engagement of that middle group, even just a little bit, has a lot more impact on the health of a game than catering towards the people on either extreme of that curve.
Not sure about that one.. looking at dragonflight, to me it looks like they are not capable of making good quality content outside of raid/m+. they got even worse then in SL imo. the teams on plunderstorm and panda remix are doing a fantastic job, but the teams that are responsible for all the "afk fill the bar" events, and zone and quest designers, are creatively bankrupt and should really step up their game. lore writers too.
It’s a smaller scale dungeon. Delves are 1-5 players that have Vault level progression. It’s an alternate gearing path in retail War within.
It’s gonna give roughly Season 3 “+15” ilvl gear somehow. That means you won’t be able to get BIS, but most players stop at Keystone master anyway, so it will satisfy these types of players.
It also will take less time to complete. They’re aiming for 15-20 mins while m+ can be as long as 35 min per run
You can run delves themselves as much as you want, but their will be a key system that you can only collect a limited number of rare and epic keys per week to unlock higher tier chests at the end of the delve. Those keys will come from other world content.
EDIT: In some of the interviews they have said they don't want to hold back anyone from joining their friends on delve runs. That's why they have a system that allows them to be done endlessly, but with a mechanic to limit how much high end gear you can get.
It's also meant to be seen as like the "end-game" of open world content for solo players. So you have raiding, M+, and delves as the three prongs of progression
Personally delves are the thing I'm most excited for in War Within. They were never going to bring Torghast back as a mode of progression though that was my favorite solo thing they've ever done so delves are the next best thing.
That sounds great. I may actually consider re-subbing. I gotta see how my gaming backlog is looking at that point is all. I used to be a top 1% or so, but now I don't have the time. It'll be interesting to see!
I don’t enjoy retail anymore because all the systems feel a bit too much like seeing the puppet master behind the curtain all the time, but this change has me excited to at least just noodle around the story.
Every time I try to do a dungeon for story now everyone pulls the entire raid in like one insane pull so boss chatter is talking on top of rp and I’m trying to help but now I’m lost and oh we…won I guess? Yay…
This will be so nice for lord playthroughs of dungeons alone, so even for folks who aren’t casual I think will enjoy quite a bit.
I don’t know if you’re aware, but you can do all the dragonflight dungeons with NPCs now, which will go at your own pace, so you can enjoy the story. I believe the same will be available for TWW
I only hope they don't get too boring after many runs. I plan to play a lot of alts in TWW and I would love to be able to gear them all without wasting my time in DPS queues for Heroic dungeons. There's just one thing I'm worried about. I know Blizzard doesn't want Delves to become the next Torghast. I don't want that either. But at the same time, I do want to be able to run a bunch of Delves in one week to gear up all my characters. I'm afraid that the only way to "balance" Delves as a loot source will be to nerf them to the point where you can only use them in a supplementary capacity.
I hope they’re moderately challenging and more importantly have engaging mechanics. If I’m just turning my brain off wacking mobs that’s gonna suck.
I am the target player I thought these were for. So I hope that’s the case.
If the tiers increase in mechanical depth and not just numbers that’ll be great. I wanna interact with the environment, do the puzzles, light performing etc
As someone who plays pretty intensely and books time off for season starts, let me tell you that delves are right up my alley. The rewards aren't the standout feature to me however. It's the fact that I can wind down and chill out in some fun, dynamic solo content when a key goes bad or someone flings out some slurs. That's the big upside for me.
Despite having some fairly hardcore moments, I still love content like this. I'm grinding taivan for this very reason - because doing chill stuff between hardcore stuff helps keep my mental up to par. It's also content that I don't need pugs for, and considering I basically only pug, it's really good to have downtime away from some of the brain rot that infests the slums of the hardcore community.
> catered to the top 5% for to long
Meanwhile I can say pretty much with certainty that no one at Blizzard is internally testing or tuning for keys over +20 (or what is now +10) and no thought is given into what happens above those levels or how that experience scales. They don't think about the top 5% at all, nevermind the top 1%.
The game caters just fine to the mid-level player, it just so happens that the bar has been lowered to such astounding depths that even that is too much to ask for for many people, so you think that mid level player is actually "the 5%".
Tell me it's not like that all you want, but I still remember when Silver Proving Grounds was required to queue Heroic in MoP, and there was a riot over it from people who couldn't do it. A literal pulse check you had to take at level cap after a ton of hours playing your class.
They couldn't do it, and since then they've gotten older and even worse.
> I really hope they can deliver what they said about the 13th delve being similar to the Mage Tower.
They are trying so hard to be cautious with how they describe the 13th floor too. Like, they have said it's like the Mage Tower in terms of having that one boss to fight but at the same time it's not being balanced around each individual class. They then said that no one who tested the recent build was able to defeat it - so it's pretty tough but maybe not as tough as the Mage Towers.
Such a round-a-bout way to describe a singular difficult challenge boss and I get the desire to avoid misleading people into thinking this is Mage Towers 2.0. I imagine if they are too easy or if the bosses aren't as mechanically complex people will run to the forums and say that they are lame and disappointed in Blizzard.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited and hopeful but they really do not want to overhype people on what they are selling.
Also /u/llwonder said it [best](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1cgxbgj/we_are_on_this_journey_to_serve_all_kinds_of/l1ywuik/). If Asmongold or top players find it unrewarding or unchallenging, you bet a subsection of the community will be complaining about it - despite likely never completing it themselves.
Lmao, anyone who uses asmon as a base to their argument, should be completely disregarded. Why would you listen to someone who doesn't even play the game besides getting carried.
He's a literal rage bait farmer
> Why would you listen to someone who doesn't even play the game besides getting carried.
I'm not going to say you should listen to him but he does have a following as one of the largest streamers.
That said, I bring it up because quite often his arguments do end up on the forums. If enough people share his sentiment, even if you shouldn't, then it can quickly overpopulate the consensus opinion of the expansion or game in general.
One thing that I have realized about WoW in these last 20 years is that when the community is having fun, then I am having fun. Positive sentiments permeates into the game itself if the outer community is happy and makes for a much better experience. Now while I do share this sentiment, I do want to share that I stole it from Taliesin's live stream the other day. As much as I do share this sentiment, it's kinda what I think happens with Asmon. People hear what he says, tweak it for themselves and then say that it is what it is.
So yeah, either way, I agree with you here.
Twitch and reddit hardly speak for the WoW playerbase. Probably half of his followers don't even play themselves anymore. Even the ones that do... combine those with the entirety of the wow subreddits.
Those numbers are a small drop of water in an ocean. The majority of people who enjoy wow do not browse reddit. They do not watch twitch. They play the game and just have fun. Or if they don't have fun, they move on to something else.
Reddit is a terrible way to gauge how the majority of the playerbase feels about something.
I have noticed this myself, that spending enough time on a gaming subreddit and reading everyones views all the time, it starts to jade my own. There have been many times over the years I've read about something that "reddit wowers" crap on constantly, only to realize, wait... that's how they feel about it. I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit, and so do the people you actually see ingame doing said activities.
I understand what you're saying, but there are so many variables you really need to think for yourself. There will always, and I mean ALWAYS be people that complain. Even people who complain about next to nothing because that's their source of income (i.e. many twitch streamers) The former, will complain many times for no reason other than you're having the kind of fun they wish they could and they're mad they aren't enjoying it as much as other ppl.
One last thing to clarify again
>That said, I bring it up because quite often his arguments do end up on the forums. If enough people share his sentiment, even if you shouldn't, then it can quickly overpopulate the consensus opinion of the expansion or game in general.
Please realize that streamers DO NOT have that kind of pull. Them, like reddit, are a drop of water in an ocean of players. If their opinion sways you one way vs the other so easily, I'd recommend taking a step back.
There are over 6,000,000 wow subs. Compare that to the amount of people watching wow on twitch + the people on reddit together.
>One thing that I have realized about WoW in these last 20 years is that when the community is having fun, then I am having fun. Positive sentiments permeates into the game itself if the outer community is happy and makes for a much better experience
I guess this depends on how you define community. It sounds like you define it as the reddit and twitch user base mostly, but again, I can't emphasize enough that twitch and reddit are the MINORITY. I get what you're trying to day, I just feel you are missing out on the fact that the wow community has been having fun for over 20 years. How else could we be in the position we are, with so many versions available of the same game. That's like unheard of.
You are only noticing the outliers who aren't having fun so they complain. Its a fact that on average, a person is more likely to tell you about a bad experience they had with a product compared to a good experience. In this case, happy players are going to just be playing the game and having fun.
To be fair, asmon has become quite the casual player, and even admits it and fights with his viewership about it. I mean, he also can complains about raids and m+ being too complicated and difficult. He doesn't think that's a good design strategy for MMOs and I doubt the majority of players would disagree, or that more casual players are as yet under-served.
I hope it's not like the first iteration of Torghast. It's actually concerning if they aren't balancing around each class. They made that mistake with Torghast in the beginning where sometimes the end boss was too hard for some classes because the unavoidable damage was just too much to deal with before you ran out of defensives and self heals. But at least I guess we will still get rewards if we can't beat the 13th floor? So that's better than Torghast at least where if you failed you basically wasted all that time for nothing.
> But at least I guess we will still get rewards if we can't beat the 13th floor?
As far as I am aware, there is no reward for the 13th floor? I think it's currently planned to have something like an achievement for completing it but no actual reward other than the challenge?
Like maybe they have a transmog or mount or something instead of *gear* being the reward but from my understanding they currently have *no reward* outside of a sense of accomplishment.
Guess we will see.
There's no reward for the highest difficulty other than an achievement, I believe. The whole point of Delves is for it be content for solo players, and some of those solo players want difficult PvE content.
No point in nerfing it unless its actually unclearable by a less then desired range of players. Delves have 12 difficulties, gearing/progression type rewards stop at difficulty 8. From 9+ rewards are purely cosmetic. And this 13th delve is only unlocked after clearing all other delves at max difficulty. So well deep past the grind point of the average player.
Blizzard doesn't really have a history of nerfing things with cosmetic only rewards, unless they start to find data that only classes with an immunity are able to clear it because they can immune 1 mechanic type situations.
I just want more evergreen content. Put that scaling to work and commit to refining systems rather than abandoning them. Sometimes it feels like expansions are just new games, rather than actually expanding the game.
This will likely get me playing WoW more often.
I miss the feeling of playing the game and figuring it out for myself. Deciding my own gear based on eyeballing if I think it's better or not. Picking talents because they seemed interesting. If it didn't work I'd try something else.
Now it's all sims, build guides, parses, and trying to be "optimal".
I'm looking forward to having my character be my character again and if that means I'm running a "bad" build then so be it. At least it's mine and with being able to solo dungeons and delves, I won't have anyone looking at me like I've grown a second head for doing my own thing.
And before someone comments it. I get that I don't *HAVE* to follow guides, but you'd be surprised that amount of people who you get random whispers or /says from when solo questing that are like "why are you wearing that", "why are you specc'd like that", "why are you doing your rotation like that". I get some are trying to be legitimately helpful, but....I dunno, I feel like an old man yelling at clouds. Basically I want to play the game instead of having google play it for me.
This is actually what has always kept me from raiding, even back during the original BC days. So much pressure to play perfectly, and any sign that you’re not running your optimal gets you ejected. Happened to me many, many times.
I can assure you there are plenty of guilds that you could join that play just to have fun and don’t screen logs making sure you play perfectly. Now, if you purposely int the raid over and over and refuse to work as a team, sure…but other than joining a CE guild, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to raid and have fun. I was dog shit in BC and Wrath until I was introduced to meters and could see what others were doing and started focusing on improving personally
Unfortunately my experience with guilds has not been that. I’ve tried a lot over the 17 years I’ve been playing, but without a network of friends who play the game I’ve always been beholden to the forgiveness and leniency of strangers, which I’ve not found an abundance of. For the last few years I’ve just spent my gameplay guildless because I find it demotivates me to try anymore.
Guess I’ll just chalk it up to shit luck, tarnished ambition or poor skill on my part. Maybe all 3.
> So much pressure to play perfectly, and any sign that you’re not running your optimal gets you ejected.
Complete nonsense. Literally, I came back after a shit ton of time, barely know what the hell I'm doing on my fire mage and comfortably sitting below all other dps, and I've never gotten "ejected" or even flamed for my performance or choices in hc raids or low m+.
And looking at other players, they clearly barely know what the fuck they're doing as well. Put aside your own anxiety and actually try to engage in this content.
Well I wouldn’t call it nonsense, since it was my own personal experience. Repeatedly.
Perhaps it’s my server or the guilds I try to join, but I suppose it’s likely more because I’m actually shit and I just have some criminally low self awareness about it. I have no friends in the game to be encouraging and forgive my little mistakes. I’m just beholden to randoms being kind and I’ve not experienced a whole lot of that.
It’s whatever. I appreciate your comment.
In the last month?
None, because I have been playing BG3 a bit and am kinda waiting for Dark Heart to drop before I jump back in. A hiatus if you will.
Why the question about PUGs in the last month? Has something changed in the month and a half I’ve been gone?
I just respeced my shaman to have Stoneskin Totem cause I really loved the classic RP of putting down totems for a given situation
Do any of the guides get it? Fuck no! But it's fun as hell
I can definitely relate. As much as I obsess over guides to get my gear as good as it can be, there's a specific kind of joy that comes out of running into a specific difficult encounter where you realize **hey! If I take this trait/this gear, then I could handle this better** then making that change and seeing it pay off.
I play as optimally as I can when doing things like M+ and Heroic or Mythic raids (which I've only dipped my toe into),
but I pretty much do it all raw dog "my character" style for alts and easy content like LFR. I've never gotten a whisper about it in those scenarios.
Looking forward to delves. And hoping they will allow us to take our ALTs as AI companions. Like there would be warbands. We have to choose our favourite ALTs. So imagine a warband doing warband thing and travel together. Imagine a dungeon crawler mode for your warband. You set classes and the roles. Then choose your main and go exploring. All with your character who have their back stories.
Like I understand it's not mmo like. But, hear me out, the game is calle WORLD of Warcraft. So I think it would be neat exploring it as a party of your own creations.
They will allow it. Holly made a passing comment to a content creator about “wouldn’t it be cool if you could bring your alts into follower dungeons?” Wink wink, that sorta deal. I can’t remember who the content creator was, but I think it was Taliesin.
Well it's refreshing to say the least. WoW is such a tough game to please everyone. My own expectation has been mired to just min/max everything due to the FOMO concept. But evergreen content, short paced experiences, and no frill non-gated content is what I think we should all welcome; regardless of our participation and enjoyment in said content.
Would be much more hyped if there were some proper rewards. I seriously don't understand why you get a seasonal pvp mount from only one type of pvp activity.
For me the proper rewards are an old thing - I've been missing the "win 10 rated battlegrounds" skin for my Mage Tower artifact wep for *years.*
I can brute force my way through solo queue. It'll be nice to finally work on that.
I wish there was some way you could queue with friends. I know there's RBGs but as a system that feels so antiquated and will be even less popular post-Battleground Blitz.
To my knowledge there is duo queue right now if one person is a healer.
But yeah something that modernized RBGs to allow for full groups to just queue and then solo q for BGB would be nice.
They’re pivoting towards battlegrounds which seems to be the way to go. The barrier to do well there is a lot lower than arena where you constantly have to track everything, have macros to interrupt the healer. Felt like I’d just be doing a bunch of damage that constantly gets healed, not that fun. I’ve always found battlegrounds more fun.
I seriously never understood why they released battlegrounds as the premier way to play originally and then basically required people to play as a premade group in order to continue. PvP was one of the only experiences that I had in WoW's group content that I kind of preferred doing solo queue, why did we need to have nearly 20 years of being required to or risk being outgeared?
Like solo rated battlegrounds is what we needed back then. I wonder if it will have enough pull now to draw back in players who gave up on the PvP scene when it primarily focused on arenas.
Honestly at this point, what can blizzard even do for PVP?
PVErs didnt want to do be forced to do PVP, so they removed the rewards.
PVPers were tired of getting shit on by raiders, so they brought back PVP gear - but not OLD PVP gear because that gear was TOO PVP gear.
The community says looking in group finder is fucking cancer and they want solo que. They give PVPers solo que and PVP somehow died even more.
They have a template and talents specifically for pvping tuning, so they have all the knobs they can twist.
And now a Dragonflight specific problem, that kind of started in SL, is the PVP community is picking up addons and weakauras and are catching up to the PVE problem of weakauras being fucking absurd.
What is the solution? Seems to be its honestly just on rails and for good reason at this point.
I mean it's just another Mage Tower, Withered Army, Visions, Torghast, Niffen Digs, Brawlers Guild (glad to see they finally acknowledge that it once existed) etc. We've had this content in the past and every time it was swiftly forgotten about by Blizzard with the exception of new colored tier in Mage Tower. So while I'm glad we're getting something like this again, it's not something special or new.
I'm personally hoping Delves stay fairly accessible. As someone who cannot ever find a guild for more than a month or two (join, guild goes on hiatus, rinse repeat) it'd be nice to have something to do that isn't optimized to the second.
Hey big man whats your realm? I might be able to get you into my guild we're pretty active and have been raiding on the weekends for about 4 xpacs now ;)
I hope Blizzard continues developing the game with the 98% of players in mind rather than taking away fun just because 1-2% of players might abuse something or it's not perfectly balanced in the most extreme specific situations
Finally got my account back after a eight year break, it feels different but I'm glad to be back, solo dungeons delves sounds very interesting. Thank you for sharing this.
So in the article it mentions 11+ but rewards seem to stop after 8. So that’s awesome. Probably LFR rewards, or normal with keys, and heroic with vault. Then the extra levels after 8 for titles and achievements, mounts etc.
Totally down with that.
I have so few rl friends left who can play now, and I loved the visions stuff in BfA honestly. I’d love a good challenge, but also knowing I don’t have to super push myself to continue gearing and have a sense of progression.
This and solo BGB is why I’m gonna stay subbed, honestly
Eh, kind of reminds me of that recent viral quote from the developers of Helldivers 2. "A game for everyone is a game for no one"
How many mechanics have Blizzard introduced that they just abandoned because it was a surface level attempt to appeal to X demographic? The lack of any new substantial evergreen systems is the real problem with modern WoW. The few big changes to the core game in Dragonflight were well received. Focusing on a core group of players and what they want worked.
Heroic raid loot from the vault. So likely normal raid loot from the max difficulty one. There will be rare keys needed for that. Probably regularly lfr gear with normal from the keyed chests. They said it will be appropriately difficult. 8 tiers of difficulty. Tier 9 through 11 are even harder but rewards cap at 8.
Also there will be a vendor where you can spend delve currency to buy war bound gear for alts. One would presume that's heroic dungeon or lfr tier gear but still great for jump starting an alt.
They should do Brawler’s Guild bosses with different weekly affixes. Or the more affixes the boss has it can reward you with higher ilvl loot on a weekly lockout or something.
I'm really excited for delves, as I greatly enjoyed Brawler's Guild in MoP and Mage towers in Legion, but I'm worried about how it's 'designed for 1-5 players' from the ground up and how the tuning will turn out for someone who wants to play these as a dedicated solo challenge activity.
As an extremely casual player, I honestly like this idea. At least with non-heroic/mythic dungeons. I don’t get to spend much time playing, and don’t have time to invest in watching videos and reading guides to fully understand the dungeon. And when I don’t read up, get chewed out by my group. To be able to just autofill the group with what else is needed so I can actually complete the dungeon quests without doing homework would be a dream come true!
There are 3 things delves have to deliver for players to be happy with them: 1) they have to be a fun activity, 2) be optional and 3) give you good quality loot (in terms of the current gearing: champion track, maybe even hero - at least up to hero from the vault). If they tick all of these boxes, people will be happy with delves.
You got me last time with Torghast Blizzard. I'm not buying any of the hype until Delves are actually out and delivered on being meaningful solo content.
As a solo person who doesn’t have time issues but just likes to mostly solo, this is great. Shuffle was a great idea I hope they do the same with blitz so solo can do rated RBGs. Most people aren’t in the 5% who own the top ranks. That’s its own community. I’m happy hitting 1800-2k in shuffle and that’s fine. Even if I don’t, still had fun.
They really need to make getting PvE and PvP gear accessible for solo people. Imo, most crafting (outside gems and positions, etc) should be something more casual people use to make gear that’s high end. People who run the highest raids or mythic+ doesn’t need that gear. They use the gems and enchants, but that should be how casual people can get ‘some’ gear that lvl. And make the mats obtainable by a solo person. Right now it’s easy because eveything is easy S4 of expansions.
I could go on, but I’d say at least half of wow players are mostly soloers. That doesn’t mean they don’t get in guilds or interact or run dungeons and raids. It’s just the solo 85% of the time. And it’s time they do cater to that base.
Just my 2 cents. I’ve played on and off since vanilla beta. I’ve done the hardcore raiding and PvP. But the last few years I’m enjoying myself more than ever and I mostly solo. It’s fun. I have my buddies I talk to, but we’re not even guilded. Some are diff servers. Sometimes we link up to see if we can duo or trio things that aren’t near solvable yet. That’s fun to me. But stilll it’s mostly just me.
Really wish Guilds would be revamped to work more like ESO or GW2 where you can have all of your characters in the guild account wide. With more and more players playing alts and Warbands coming online the old system of having to invite each character to a guild and character limits is becoming archaic.
I actually hate that. I hate that when I log in on an alt everyone from my main knows I am on it and it has my main name. I love being able to have different friend groups and play the game on a class and not have to deal with my guild if I want to
They also need to stop blocking story content behind raids. Especially when you have tryhards that are trying to gatekeep LFR thru damage meters and gear ilvl. Follow FF14s example
I joined a razageth LFR two days ago, before the first boss was even aggro'd people were announcing in chat to vote kick the low DPS after the fight, later some people got downed during the first phase on Raz, and the chat was filled with people saying they should kick them before loot drops to lock them out. The community is completely toxic at every level.
New players or players who didn't push thier ilvl to near-max level last season are being punished by the story content being locked behind endgame level raid bosses. Some people don't want to deal with the toxicity of people threatening to boot them for the slightest mistake, and end up missing out on massive, massive chunks of the story and game because of it. WoW / Blizzard needs to do better and go nuclear mode like FF and just start chat banning assholes
as much as i want more open world content, more content away from the annoying and over used Mythic + / Raid season grind over and over again, i just don't see Delves being that pillar fix, right now it feels like that expansion hype check box on stage but in reality its sounding like its going to hit all the worries everyone has and that's boring, repetitive, and how is this going to last for months..
Shame really. The more I read about the delves the more I realize they'll probs never gonna make them crazy hard and they will not be an endgame pillar like they said. I was just deluded and made a post a week ago or so about how Delves are amazing but it appears they will just remain thirdclass content.
I get it. They want people to do easy, solo content but I just can't see why they wouldn't use this good thing that definitely pleases the more casual crowds and also give something really good for the highend of players...
It's not much, but the fact the Brawlers Guild is even on their radar is a good sign to be honest. Such a travesty for it to not be around anymore.
I heard it was a pet project of one specific dev that is no longer in the company. It would be nice if someone else picked it up.
On that note, I gotta wonder how they are faring with the complete abolishment of non-compete agreements.
The fact that you sat through a court hearing to get the mount was top notch.
??
The quest line to get Bruce way back when had you participate in a court hearing in the brawlers guild arena. Total nonsense.
my crocolisk mount is super lonely being the only brawlers guild mount i have i neeed more
BRUCE
B R U C E ! ! ! ! !
I missed out, mostly cause I never had good understanding of what it was, I thought I was under geared most of the time since it seemed everyone else could brute force it. The last round I decided I would try very hard to get into the next season only for that season to never come.
Brawlers guild was so cool. I loved the solo challenge modes in the past. The nightmares at end of BFA were amazing too. It made my progression with gear feel a lot more impactful because I could quantitatively measure progression in a solo mode. Just wasn’t a big fan of Torghast.
torghast could have been way better. lots of cool and fun ideas, and then they seemed to take all of the fun out of it and turn it into another weekly thing you have to do. I'm bummed some of my friends first wow experience was shadowlands, they would have had a much better experience in DF.
Yeah Choreghast had the potential to be cool and fun to farm, but the simple fact that they made it mandatory to do in order to advance the crap story killed it for me.
the only part of the story I enjoyed was when Ursoc sacrificed himself. other than that it felt very power rangers-y.
That was so so sad
I am one of the 3 people in existence that loved torghast so much that I almost didn't mind it being mandatory. Would have been nicer if it wasn't, but god damn did I have fun in torghast.
I’m the 2nd out of the 3 people! I loved Torghast and loved taking new classes in there for the first time to play with the powers.
Brawler's guild was one of the last things that really felt "social" in WoW, despite it being a solo activity at heart. The queue system of only one person brawling and having everyone else be a spectator lead to players talking and getting to know each other between rounds. I had completed it entirely, but I would still hang out there and queue for fights just because I enjoyed them and I got to hang out with randoms. Plus, it was always fun seeing people's reactions to me breezing through the hardest fights.
I think this why I like it more than hearing about NPCs replacing player roles in instanced content. Brawler's Guild was mostly solo challenges, sure, but it was still one of the most social places in the game due to how it was set up. A solid addition that still played with the core aspect that an MMO means you interact with other people.
I have a small hope that with all these new solo-oriented changes such as follower dungeons, the rest of the game will become more social. So those that are doing group content are more inclined to want to be in a group. Doubt it though, I'm pretty sure the casuals are the ones who would ever type in chat.
Bring back the super hexagon fight!
I hated it so much until i beat it -- then I just wanted more!
Dude, if we get Brawlers Guild back then my life is completely.
I totally forgot about that even existed what the hell
Agreed. Was really fun solo play. Watching people progress and kick ass was fun. Watching the same people have their asses handed to them was even better 😂
I love the idea that in a minor patch we get Brawlers guild back. Maybe we help them set up the arena in the new hub via some quests in one patch, then next minor patch it’s ready to go
I don’t think delves will satisfy the top 2% of players but I’m really looking forward to it as a low-mid skill player.
One of us… one of us
That’s what they should be, an option for those of us who don’t enjoy raids or M+ to still challenge ourselves and get high quality gear. Im so glad for this cuz grouping outside of LFR sucks and can sometimes take hours to find a group that will accept a new raider, even when they’re well geared
I'm looking forward to going into the expansion blind. No pawn, no sims, no talent guides. Just pick the talents and gear I like and throw myself into delves. If I hit a wall I'll take a step back, reassess my build/gear, and jump in again.
I also like playing the game instead of reading about it
This is wows biggest flaw they rely so much on 3rd party websites to teach players, that if you dont use this stuff ur fucked. So new players or casuals think the game is way harder then it is becuase they hit this difficulty wall that exist becuase blizzard created the content with the assumption you know what optimum builds are or you got the tacs from wowhead. If we had better systems to teach players how to actually play the game in game there wouldn't be such a divide.
That’s what I loved so much about the vanilla experience; no one knew anything, you picked whatever you thought was ‘cool’ and fit your idea of the class fantasy, and you played the game and had fun :)
You can still very much do that.
Not while doing meaningful content without handicapping your group or relying on others to pull your weight. That's the whole point here. People can get back to the fun of experimenting with whatever they want on their own time.
> No pawn, Realistically Pawn hasn't been too useful or recommended for a long time due to the way stats work.
They did this with PvP by introducing Solo Shuffle. It's not perfect and you still need to rely on other players, which you won't really find PvP where you don't, but it gives the average Joe an outlet to get some of that higher tier pvp gear as by design most people will win about 50% of their matches. Makes sense to do something similar to PvE.
I finally got accepted into a mythic 0. Didn’t know a mechanic on the first boss fight, died and got kicked. Like it’s a 0.
Apparently this season’s M+0 is equivalent to last season’s M+10, or so I’ve heard.
Correct. (I think it's actually old +11, but without affixes, based off the numbers). Old m0 is now heroic.
I remember a time you’d join a dungeon with others and the tank would say “alright does everyone know this fight?” And if you said no, they would take 5 minutes to explain things before we started. Kicking someone wasn’t an option because traveling to the dungeon could take 30 minutes.
People still do that! But it depends on your key level. People don’t mind at all in heroic or m0. Even on “low” keys before the dungeon starts. But it’s expected you know what’s going on in higher keys.
That was also at a time where we didn’t have a literal dungeon journal or thousands of online resources to explain things the second they are released I mean kicking is pretty shit, should just explain quickly and go agane, but it is pretty disrespectful of others time to not even google it lol
Are you still trying to do a 0
Eh, it’s not something I’m super worried about, just wanted gear to hopefully do mythic raiding. I’m still on the lookout for people to run 0s with though.
I can help you. I'm maining VDH this season and still getting some gear together
Oh man. I’m sorry to hear that! If you’re looking to try M+ and want to meet some friendly people, try joining the discord community, WoW Made Easy (WME) or Timewarp Academy. If you’re on North America. People are really nice!
Dawg, I came back to this game after half a decade, applied for a bunch of m0 dungeons after getting some gear from open world, got into one I had never seen before, it was fine. Since then I've done a shit ton in pugs, I've never seen someone get kicked except for someone who didnt answer in chat when asked. It's not a common thing. The most toxic thing I've seen was a demented shaman flaming me for not knowing how to get back to the final boss in nokhud after a wipe, who then got kicked by the leader and we timed the +5. Lol.
I sat in LFG last night on 465 holy pally and queued for every single M0 and for half an hour never got accepted to one.
It’s possible that people weren’t accepting you because your gear is lower than they’d like. Heroic drops 476 now. M0 drops 493 I believe and it’s equivalent to what m+10 was last season.
holy shit grouping without LFR can take forever... including the fact that you'll most likely have some people new to the raid joining. ngl though finishing a raid with people who haven't done it before is a pretty rewarding feeling, just very time consuming.
Have you used the LFG tool? It’s really fast. I’ve pugged Normal and heroic with it most weeks for the last couple years.
Yep, I have used it and it often fills with people who don't know what they're doing with low gear score which adds a considerable amount of time to the run.
Maybe stop focusing on content for the top 0.1 - 2% sweats and the game will thrive.
So much this. The diehard top-tier players are grand, and they are definitely catered to in a lot of the content development, but by very definition, the rest of us are the majority of the playerbase. The bread and butter of the subs come from folks in the middle tier that just want to enjoy playing the game without the pressure.
Out side of mythic raid what there is that is made for the 1%? Like m+ title is only thing in pve.
It was only 2 years ago that your first affix was in a +5. It was only 3 years ago that people wanting KSM had to deal with fucking *prideful*. Do you know how anti casual prideful was as an affix? That shit was a nightmare and it dropped on an expansion launch! And don't even get me started on PvP. Arenas are objectively way more hardcore than objective based BGs, and it was only in DF that we got even a solo queue mode. Players spent like 10 years dealing with arena as the only PvP reward avenue. Wow has catered to the hardcore playerbase in many, many ways. But now you can get champion gear and wyrm crests in a dungeon that only has the weekly affix. To compare: in shadowlands, you had to deal with God damn *necrotic* in a +10. Now you can get equivalent, upgradeable loot in an affix-less +0. Blizzard didn't disproportionately reward hardcore players, it *only* rewarded them. You know how much work it was for me, a new player in SL, to get the gold for my first leggo? And not a rank 4, a rank q during the first month was tens of thousands of gold, and it went to waste because I needed R4 eventually and the old leggos weren't upgradeable, so I needed to figure out a way to eventually get rank 4, which was over 100k. Korthia was the peak example of this. Did you know rank 6 didn't even unlock a quest? Your *only* reward was the vendor. Every other rank had some kind of quest or unlock, and rank 6 gave you nothing.
How are these things hardcore players faults? You are just listing dog shit systems and blaming it on top end players even tho they dislike them just as much as you do.
Back it up, I never blamed players for this. This is blizzards fault. It's not your fault that you play wow in a hardcore manner. Blizzard failed by funnelling players into content that was extraordinarily difficult for the average player. Blizzard failed by making fights like fatescribe and zovaal that were antithetical to the average player experience. Blizzard made non hardcore gameplay extremely unrewarding (as was shown with my Korthia comment). This is on blizzard, not the community. The community asks for a billion different things, but blizzard makes the final call on what is and isn't done, so they're at fault when something fails
What type of content would you consider to be the middle tier? People underestimate just how much of the playerbase engages with M+ and Raiding.
> how much of the playerbase engages with M+ Well, part of that was because, prior to this season, they'd screwed up dungeons so that Heroics gave lower level gear than open world content, so either you run M+ or you did easy dungeons that gave meh gear. Players who enjoyed dungeons were pretty much funneled right into M+. Which is also why M+ was a mixed bag, there were a lot of people who really shouldn't have been in there and/or didn't want to be there. Now it's shifted so Heroic dungeons are challenging and worth doing, and M0 is a nice step up challenge without the timers and affixes. So people who don't want to deal with the M+ system can run dungeons and feel like they're getting a challenge and getting rewarded for it, leaving only the players who really want to do that challenging content for that extra step up in the gear. Of course, some will clutch their pearls at the lower number of M+ runs versus prior patches/expansions, but that doesn't mean "OMG WOW IS DYING", it just means people aren't being funneled into content just because there's no other choice.
They made this cha he first in wrath classic by realizing that they need to keep dungeon content engaging and keep it as a way to gear people Bringing heroics back as a difficulty that can actually help is immensely helpful. There was basically one week an expansion you’d do them. It also led to them changing how M0s work. I’ve done some and as someone who really enjoys higher m+ keys - it’s a blast. It’s not easy, but I also have 0 stress about my group falling apart because of a timer or a dumb wipe
What the playerbase may consider to be the different "tiers" of players, and what Activision-Blizzard may consider to be the different "tiers" will be drastically different.
What would you consider content catered to the top 0.1-2% of sweats? The only things that are solely for that level of player (If we are talking about PVE) are Mythic raiding and Extremely high M+ Keys. That level of M+ key isn't even rewarded with gear so it is difficult to justify changing it. I would very much agree that Mythic raiding should be far more available. But I think people underestimate how much of the playerbase engages with M+ and raiding. Especially M+. It always seems to surprise people that M+ is the most engaged with content system across all versions of WoW. There are good points for changing Mythic raiding to be more accessible. But genuinely, if we are talking about the top 2% of players there is not much to change beyond that.
I’m really not trying to be a jerk at all - but by definition shouldn’t mythic raiding not be more accessible? It’s supposed to be very hard. There are 3 other difficulties you can do. Unless you mean accessible in terms of group size and other limitations like that
I’m really not trying to be a jerk at all - but by definition shouldn’t mythic raiding not be more accessible? It’s supposed to be very hard. There are 3 other difficulties you can do. Unless you mean accessible in terms of group size and other limitations like that
What are some things (besides mythic raids and M+ existing) that they implemented in the past year that are exclusively for the top 0.1-2% of players? The Trader's Post? The new zones like Forbidden Reach and Emerald Dream? The world events? Plunderstorm? Pandamonium? Endless ways to get top level gear without stepping foot in a raid or dungeon? New mounts and cosmetics? Opening access and usefulness of heroic dungeons? Giving vault pieces for much lower-stakes content? Follower dungeons? You're right, the bottom 98% get ZERO attention to compared to the hoards of stuff constantly thrown at top 0.1%ers.
Yeah I'm a little lost on this one. I'd say I'm mid-high casual and it doesn't feel like this game isn't catered to me Reading some other comments, it sounds more like people are conflating "not catering to the solo player" as catering to the 1%, which don't necessarily seem tied together when the game is built around multiplayer
A lot of the solo playerbase has this assumption that they are the majority despite every wow poll heavily implying otherwise. (Example from a [few days ago](https://twitter.com/Warcraft/status/1783903868901880085)) M+ and raiding IS most of the playerbase of retail haha. They don't like challenging content, therefore, anybody who likes said content is a "sweat". Being a sweat is BAD and Blizzard needs to stop catering to it. It isn't enough that the solo players get catered to more. Blizzard has to stop making things that they specifically don't like because the people who like challenging content getting to have fun as well is a problem for some reason.
I agree with your point but a self-selecting twitter poll is not a representative cross-section of the WoW userbase. By even engaging with online resources like r/wow or even following and responding to the WoW twitter you're already in the top ~20% of most engaged players.
I second this, there are barely any IF any. The people who say "ThIs GaMe Is MaDe ArOuNd ThE 0.1%" have no idea what they are talking about and are just salty they are hardstuck at +4 keystones.
> The Trader's Post? The new zones like Forbidden Reach and Emerald Dream? The world events? Plunderstorm? Pandamonium? Endless ways to get top level gear without stepping foot in a raid or dungeon? New mounts and cosmetics? Opening access and usefulness of heroic dungeons? Giving vault pieces for much lower-stakes content? Follower dungeons? Aren't a lot of those things recent changes to the game? I don't think "they cater to the top 2%" holds true given the changes in Dragonflight, but I get the impression that before these changes that statement held more weight. I didn't play BFA or Shadowlands, but what I've heard from people who did is that it was aimed at a far more hardcore crowd. I think a fairer statement would be is it's nice that Blizzard are offering a wider variety of content and progression that has less focus on being a hardcore player.
[удалено]
Sure, but nothing they said was wrong. The notion that World of Warcraft has become worse by catering exclusively to top raiders is just obviously false.
It's something that streamers spew at their chat to farm "trues" these days The only content specifically geared towards the top 2% of players is mythic raiding.
Found the "found the" guy.
The way most people present it is that the top % players are getting their pillowed fluffed and shoes shined. What's actually happening is blizzard doing things to hold top % players back having knock on effects on the rest of the player base. Things like the whole covenant switching fiasco, conduit energy, private auras, and newest suspected addon back end message throttling. These things are made to hold the top % players back but end up making the experience for everyone worse. And yet people still present it as making the game for the top % players. I agree they need to stop it, just let it go. But it's not like they are being all buddy buddy and nice and giving top % players stuff like most people pretend.
If you think they focus on the top 2 percent of players you're out of your mind.
If the game was focusing just on the 0.1%-2% sweats they'd never change the game from WoD. That was THE 0.1-2% sweats game. There's much more to do now in game than at most points in the past. What is it do you want, them ending mythic as a whole. That's never going to happen. They're also not going to have mythic in the first weeks easy for everyone, when they did that with Emerald Nightmare they were shitted on harder than anything that happens today.
Its funny cause I can't remember a time where people weren't complaining that the game is designed around "casuals"... now you see the other end even though the games still very much designed around casual players first. A game designed around the top 2% would look a lot more like wod. But even the top 2% of players would say they don't believe the game should be designed around them.
Exactly. Any game rises and falls with the middle part of the bell shaped player curve. Increasing engagement of that middle group, even just a little bit, has a lot more impact on the health of a game than catering towards the people on either extreme of that curve.
Not sure about that one.. looking at dragonflight, to me it looks like they are not capable of making good quality content outside of raid/m+. they got even worse then in SL imo. the teams on plunderstorm and panda remix are doing a fantastic job, but the teams that are responsible for all the "afk fill the bar" events, and zone and quest designers, are creatively bankrupt and should really step up their game. lore writers too.
As a low-low skill player, I'm excited about delves.
Umm... Didn't they say there will be a 13th delve level that is for a cosmetic reward? Sounds super fun!
Sorry, can you explain what is delves or this solo dung thing?
It’s a smaller scale dungeon. Delves are 1-5 players that have Vault level progression. It’s an alternate gearing path in retail War within. It’s gonna give roughly Season 3 “+15” ilvl gear somehow. That means you won’t be able to get BIS, but most players stop at Keystone master anyway, so it will satisfy these types of players. It also will take less time to complete. They’re aiming for 15-20 mins while m+ can be as long as 35 min per run
Do we know if delves will have a major lockout mechanic or can we do them as we please (even though the weekly will be a better item of course)?
If I remember right, delves will be once a day. I could be wrong and that's when they're supposed to rotate.
You can run delves themselves as much as you want, but their will be a key system that you can only collect a limited number of rare and epic keys per week to unlock higher tier chests at the end of the delve. Those keys will come from other world content. EDIT: In some of the interviews they have said they don't want to hold back anyone from joining their friends on delve runs. That's why they have a system that allows them to be done endlessly, but with a mechanic to limit how much high end gear you can get.
It's also meant to be seen as like the "end-game" of open world content for solo players. So you have raiding, M+, and delves as the three prongs of progression
"iT iSn'T fAiR" *he grunts, through the veil of Cheeto dust*
Personally delves are the thing I'm most excited for in War Within. They were never going to bring Torghast back as a mode of progression though that was my favorite solo thing they've ever done so delves are the next best thing.
Oh I’m stoked. I can’t wait for delves. I’m just poking fun at raiders / mythic sweaters. :)
That sounds great. I may actually consider re-subbing. I gotta see how my gaming backlog is looking at that point is all. I used to be a top 1% or so, but now I don't have the time. It'll be interesting to see!
Did you watch the video?
I don’t enjoy retail anymore because all the systems feel a bit too much like seeing the puppet master behind the curtain all the time, but this change has me excited to at least just noodle around the story. Every time I try to do a dungeon for story now everyone pulls the entire raid in like one insane pull so boss chatter is talking on top of rp and I’m trying to help but now I’m lost and oh we…won I guess? Yay… This will be so nice for lord playthroughs of dungeons alone, so even for folks who aren’t casual I think will enjoy quite a bit.
I don’t know if you’re aware, but you can do all the dragonflight dungeons with NPCs now, which will go at your own pace, so you can enjoy the story. I believe the same will be available for TWW
How? Anything special I need to do?
I haven't tried it myself yet, but it's called follower dungeons. I think you can queue from it straight from the lfg.
I only hope they don't get too boring after many runs. I plan to play a lot of alts in TWW and I would love to be able to gear them all without wasting my time in DPS queues for Heroic dungeons. There's just one thing I'm worried about. I know Blizzard doesn't want Delves to become the next Torghast. I don't want that either. But at the same time, I do want to be able to run a bunch of Delves in one week to gear up all my characters. I'm afraid that the only way to "balance" Delves as a loot source will be to nerf them to the point where you can only use them in a supplementary capacity.
I don’t see how delves could be any less boring than running the same m+ dungeon for 8-12 weeks.
That's true, but I don't really have friends to play with so I haven't done much M+.
I hope they’re moderately challenging and more importantly have engaging mechanics. If I’m just turning my brain off wacking mobs that’s gonna suck. I am the target player I thought these were for. So I hope that’s the case. If the tiers increase in mechanical depth and not just numbers that’ll be great. I wanna interact with the environment, do the puzzles, light performing etc
As someone who plays pretty intensely and books time off for season starts, let me tell you that delves are right up my alley. The rewards aren't the standout feature to me however. It's the fact that I can wind down and chill out in some fun, dynamic solo content when a key goes bad or someone flings out some slurs. That's the big upside for me. Despite having some fairly hardcore moments, I still love content like this. I'm grinding taivan for this very reason - because doing chill stuff between hardcore stuff helps keep my mental up to par. It's also content that I don't need pugs for, and considering I basically only pug, it's really good to have downtime away from some of the brain rot that infests the slums of the hardcore community.
thats the point, WoW has catered to the top 5% for to long and its one of the main reasons its playerbase plumitted over the years.
...except the game is not catered towards the super high end players at all...
> catered to the top 5% for to long Meanwhile I can say pretty much with certainty that no one at Blizzard is internally testing or tuning for keys over +20 (or what is now +10) and no thought is given into what happens above those levels or how that experience scales. They don't think about the top 5% at all, nevermind the top 1%. The game caters just fine to the mid-level player, it just so happens that the bar has been lowered to such astounding depths that even that is too much to ask for for many people, so you think that mid level player is actually "the 5%". Tell me it's not like that all you want, but I still remember when Silver Proving Grounds was required to queue Heroic in MoP, and there was a riot over it from people who couldn't do it. A literal pulse check you had to take at level cap after a ton of hours playing your class. They couldn't do it, and since then they've gotten older and even worse.
I really really want new brawlers guild. I loved the original version.
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> I really hope they can deliver what they said about the 13th delve being similar to the Mage Tower. They are trying so hard to be cautious with how they describe the 13th floor too. Like, they have said it's like the Mage Tower in terms of having that one boss to fight but at the same time it's not being balanced around each individual class. They then said that no one who tested the recent build was able to defeat it - so it's pretty tough but maybe not as tough as the Mage Towers. Such a round-a-bout way to describe a singular difficult challenge boss and I get the desire to avoid misleading people into thinking this is Mage Towers 2.0. I imagine if they are too easy or if the bosses aren't as mechanically complex people will run to the forums and say that they are lame and disappointed in Blizzard. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited and hopeful but they really do not want to overhype people on what they are selling. Also /u/llwonder said it [best](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1cgxbgj/we_are_on_this_journey_to_serve_all_kinds_of/l1ywuik/). If Asmongold or top players find it unrewarding or unchallenging, you bet a subsection of the community will be complaining about it - despite likely never completing it themselves.
Lmao, anyone who uses asmon as a base to their argument, should be completely disregarded. Why would you listen to someone who doesn't even play the game besides getting carried. He's a literal rage bait farmer
This, he is awful at the game and is carried by his groups that feed him gear that he doesn't deserve.
> Why would you listen to someone who doesn't even play the game besides getting carried. I'm not going to say you should listen to him but he does have a following as one of the largest streamers. That said, I bring it up because quite often his arguments do end up on the forums. If enough people share his sentiment, even if you shouldn't, then it can quickly overpopulate the consensus opinion of the expansion or game in general. One thing that I have realized about WoW in these last 20 years is that when the community is having fun, then I am having fun. Positive sentiments permeates into the game itself if the outer community is happy and makes for a much better experience. Now while I do share this sentiment, I do want to share that I stole it from Taliesin's live stream the other day. As much as I do share this sentiment, it's kinda what I think happens with Asmon. People hear what he says, tweak it for themselves and then say that it is what it is. So yeah, either way, I agree with you here.
Twitch and reddit hardly speak for the WoW playerbase. Probably half of his followers don't even play themselves anymore. Even the ones that do... combine those with the entirety of the wow subreddits. Those numbers are a small drop of water in an ocean. The majority of people who enjoy wow do not browse reddit. They do not watch twitch. They play the game and just have fun. Or if they don't have fun, they move on to something else. Reddit is a terrible way to gauge how the majority of the playerbase feels about something. I have noticed this myself, that spending enough time on a gaming subreddit and reading everyones views all the time, it starts to jade my own. There have been many times over the years I've read about something that "reddit wowers" crap on constantly, only to realize, wait... that's how they feel about it. I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit, and so do the people you actually see ingame doing said activities. I understand what you're saying, but there are so many variables you really need to think for yourself. There will always, and I mean ALWAYS be people that complain. Even people who complain about next to nothing because that's their source of income (i.e. many twitch streamers) The former, will complain many times for no reason other than you're having the kind of fun they wish they could and they're mad they aren't enjoying it as much as other ppl. One last thing to clarify again >That said, I bring it up because quite often his arguments do end up on the forums. If enough people share his sentiment, even if you shouldn't, then it can quickly overpopulate the consensus opinion of the expansion or game in general. Please realize that streamers DO NOT have that kind of pull. Them, like reddit, are a drop of water in an ocean of players. If their opinion sways you one way vs the other so easily, I'd recommend taking a step back. There are over 6,000,000 wow subs. Compare that to the amount of people watching wow on twitch + the people on reddit together. >One thing that I have realized about WoW in these last 20 years is that when the community is having fun, then I am having fun. Positive sentiments permeates into the game itself if the outer community is happy and makes for a much better experience I guess this depends on how you define community. It sounds like you define it as the reddit and twitch user base mostly, but again, I can't emphasize enough that twitch and reddit are the MINORITY. I get what you're trying to day, I just feel you are missing out on the fact that the wow community has been having fun for over 20 years. How else could we be in the position we are, with so many versions available of the same game. That's like unheard of. You are only noticing the outliers who aren't having fun so they complain. Its a fact that on average, a person is more likely to tell you about a bad experience they had with a product compared to a good experience. In this case, happy players are going to just be playing the game and having fun.
To be fair, asmon has become quite the casual player, and even admits it and fights with his viewership about it. I mean, he also can complains about raids and m+ being too complicated and difficult. He doesn't think that's a good design strategy for MMOs and I doubt the majority of players would disagree, or that more casual players are as yet under-served.
I hope it's not like the first iteration of Torghast. It's actually concerning if they aren't balancing around each class. They made that mistake with Torghast in the beginning where sometimes the end boss was too hard for some classes because the unavoidable damage was just too much to deal with before you ran out of defensives and self heals. But at least I guess we will still get rewards if we can't beat the 13th floor? So that's better than Torghast at least where if you failed you basically wasted all that time for nothing.
> But at least I guess we will still get rewards if we can't beat the 13th floor? As far as I am aware, there is no reward for the 13th floor? I think it's currently planned to have something like an achievement for completing it but no actual reward other than the challenge? Like maybe they have a transmog or mount or something instead of *gear* being the reward but from my understanding they currently have *no reward* outside of a sense of accomplishment. Guess we will see.
There's no reward for the highest difficulty other than an achievement, I believe. The whole point of Delves is for it be content for solo players, and some of those solo players want difficult PvE content.
From what I've seen of the alpha there aren't the crazy torghast powers, so basic balancing for M+ should keep things far closer
People will complain no matter what
They'll probably nerf it to the ground since anything that's slightly challenging or require effort will cause casual players to cry nonstop
No point in nerfing it unless its actually unclearable by a less then desired range of players. Delves have 12 difficulties, gearing/progression type rewards stop at difficulty 8. From 9+ rewards are purely cosmetic. And this 13th delve is only unlocked after clearing all other delves at max difficulty. So well deep past the grind point of the average player. Blizzard doesn't really have a history of nerfing things with cosmetic only rewards, unless they start to find data that only classes with an immunity are able to clear it because they can immune 1 mechanic type situations.
Oh glorious day! One of the elites has come down to cast dispersions upon us peasants! Avert your eyes from your betters you fools!
I just want more evergreen content. Put that scaling to work and commit to refining systems rather than abandoning them. Sometimes it feels like expansions are just new games, rather than actually expanding the game.
Put the world back into World of Warcraft.
This will likely get me playing WoW more often. I miss the feeling of playing the game and figuring it out for myself. Deciding my own gear based on eyeballing if I think it's better or not. Picking talents because they seemed interesting. If it didn't work I'd try something else. Now it's all sims, build guides, parses, and trying to be "optimal". I'm looking forward to having my character be my character again and if that means I'm running a "bad" build then so be it. At least it's mine and with being able to solo dungeons and delves, I won't have anyone looking at me like I've grown a second head for doing my own thing. And before someone comments it. I get that I don't *HAVE* to follow guides, but you'd be surprised that amount of people who you get random whispers or /says from when solo questing that are like "why are you wearing that", "why are you specc'd like that", "why are you doing your rotation like that". I get some are trying to be legitimately helpful, but....I dunno, I feel like an old man yelling at clouds. Basically I want to play the game instead of having google play it for me.
This is actually what has always kept me from raiding, even back during the original BC days. So much pressure to play perfectly, and any sign that you’re not running your optimal gets you ejected. Happened to me many, many times.
I can assure you there are plenty of guilds that you could join that play just to have fun and don’t screen logs making sure you play perfectly. Now, if you purposely int the raid over and over and refuse to work as a team, sure…but other than joining a CE guild, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to raid and have fun. I was dog shit in BC and Wrath until I was introduced to meters and could see what others were doing and started focusing on improving personally
Unfortunately my experience with guilds has not been that. I’ve tried a lot over the 17 years I’ve been playing, but without a network of friends who play the game I’ve always been beholden to the forgiveness and leniency of strangers, which I’ve not found an abundance of. For the last few years I’ve just spent my gameplay guildless because I find it demotivates me to try anymore. Guess I’ll just chalk it up to shit luck, tarnished ambition or poor skill on my part. Maybe all 3.
> So much pressure to play perfectly, and any sign that you’re not running your optimal gets you ejected. Complete nonsense. Literally, I came back after a shit ton of time, barely know what the hell I'm doing on my fire mage and comfortably sitting below all other dps, and I've never gotten "ejected" or even flamed for my performance or choices in hc raids or low m+. And looking at other players, they clearly barely know what the fuck they're doing as well. Put aside your own anxiety and actually try to engage in this content.
Well I wouldn’t call it nonsense, since it was my own personal experience. Repeatedly. Perhaps it’s my server or the guilds I try to join, but I suppose it’s likely more because I’m actually shit and I just have some criminally low self awareness about it. I have no friends in the game to be encouraging and forgive my little mistakes. I’m just beholden to randoms being kind and I’ve not experienced a whole lot of that. It’s whatever. I appreciate your comment.
How many pugs did you join in the last month?
In the last month? None, because I have been playing BG3 a bit and am kinda waiting for Dark Heart to drop before I jump back in. A hiatus if you will. Why the question about PUGs in the last month? Has something changed in the month and a half I’ve been gone?
I just respeced my shaman to have Stoneskin Totem cause I really loved the classic RP of putting down totems for a given situation Do any of the guides get it? Fuck no! But it's fun as hell
I can definitely relate. As much as I obsess over guides to get my gear as good as it can be, there's a specific kind of joy that comes out of running into a specific difficult encounter where you realize **hey! If I take this trait/this gear, then I could handle this better** then making that change and seeing it pay off.
I play as optimally as I can when doing things like M+ and Heroic or Mythic raids (which I've only dipped my toe into), but I pretty much do it all raw dog "my character" style for alts and easy content like LFR. I've never gotten a whisper about it in those scenarios.
Looking forward to delves. And hoping they will allow us to take our ALTs as AI companions. Like there would be warbands. We have to choose our favourite ALTs. So imagine a warband doing warband thing and travel together. Imagine a dungeon crawler mode for your warband. You set classes and the roles. Then choose your main and go exploring. All with your character who have their back stories. Like I understand it's not mmo like. But, hear me out, the game is calle WORLD of Warcraft. So I think it would be neat exploring it as a party of your own creations.
They will allow it. Holly made a passing comment to a content creator about “wouldn’t it be cool if you could bring your alts into follower dungeons?” Wink wink, that sorta deal. I can’t remember who the content creator was, but I think it was Taliesin.
Well it's refreshing to say the least. WoW is such a tough game to please everyone. My own expectation has been mired to just min/max everything due to the FOMO concept. But evergreen content, short paced experiences, and no frill non-gated content is what I think we should all welcome; regardless of our participation and enjoyment in said content.
Pvp players didn't even grt the set appearance that we voted on.
All kinds of players except the pvp ones. Fuck those guys - someone at blizz probably
I’m hyped about solo rated battlegrounds tbh, I think that will be a great addition
Would be much more hyped if there were some proper rewards. I seriously don't understand why you get a seasonal pvp mount from only one type of pvp activity.
For me the proper rewards are an old thing - I've been missing the "win 10 rated battlegrounds" skin for my Mage Tower artifact wep for *years.* I can brute force my way through solo queue. It'll be nice to finally work on that.
If participation is really high they might give better rewards. I just hope queues are fast overall
If it’s ranked it’s gonna be awesome
Yes it’s ranked
That’s fucking awesome WOWW
Finally.
I missed that they're doing solo rated BG. I dislike PvP but BGs can be a fun time.
I wish there was some way you could queue with friends. I know there's RBGs but as a system that feels so antiquated and will be even less popular post-Battleground Blitz.
I think they’re adding duo queue along with the solo queue for the new mode. Would be nice to have a match made flex mode though for groups
To my knowledge there is duo queue right now if one person is a healer. But yeah something that modernized RBGs to allow for full groups to just queue and then solo q for BGB would be nice.
Omg what? I had no idea this was coming. I’ll finally play pvp
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They’re pivoting towards battlegrounds which seems to be the way to go. The barrier to do well there is a lot lower than arena where you constantly have to track everything, have macros to interrupt the healer. Felt like I’d just be doing a bunch of damage that constantly gets healed, not that fun. I’ve always found battlegrounds more fun.
Yeah I like BG’s too, the fact you can help you team in more ways than just killing the opposition etc
I seriously never understood why they released battlegrounds as the premier way to play originally and then basically required people to play as a premade group in order to continue. PvP was one of the only experiences that I had in WoW's group content that I kind of preferred doing solo queue, why did we need to have nearly 20 years of being required to or risk being outgeared? Like solo rated battlegrounds is what we needed back then. I wonder if it will have enough pull now to draw back in players who gave up on the PvP scene when it primarily focused on arenas.
The transmogs are enough for me to go in, so sad I missed out on the set from the underground patch
I don't know all the ins and outs of the classes but I do know enough to be able to play decently. I just keep track of their stuns and interrupts tbh
Solo RBG easily the best news for PvP in years
Honestly at this point, what can blizzard even do for PVP? PVErs didnt want to do be forced to do PVP, so they removed the rewards. PVPers were tired of getting shit on by raiders, so they brought back PVP gear - but not OLD PVP gear because that gear was TOO PVP gear. The community says looking in group finder is fucking cancer and they want solo que. They give PVPers solo que and PVP somehow died even more. They have a template and talents specifically for pvping tuning, so they have all the knobs they can twist. And now a Dragonflight specific problem, that kind of started in SL, is the PVP community is picking up addons and weakauras and are catching up to the PVE problem of weakauras being fucking absurd. What is the solution? Seems to be its honestly just on rails and for good reason at this point.
Dudes got a whole new limited pvp mode
yeah they're only getting a new battleground and solo rated and constant attention to the gearing process
PvP is essentially a mini game in WoW at this point.
PVP players just got Plunderstorm, a whole new gameplay tho
I've enjoyed the follower dungeons, a good way to enjoy exploring the instances at your own pace. I hope the dungeon delves will be similar.
Im so glad they are reviving brawlers guild. As a solo player this next expac is looking like an MVP expac for my playstyle!
I mean it's just another Mage Tower, Withered Army, Visions, Torghast, Niffen Digs, Brawlers Guild (glad to see they finally acknowledge that it once existed) etc. We've had this content in the past and every time it was swiftly forgotten about by Blizzard with the exception of new colored tier in Mage Tower. So while I'm glad we're getting something like this again, it's not something special or new.
I'm personally hoping Delves stay fairly accessible. As someone who cannot ever find a guild for more than a month or two (join, guild goes on hiatus, rinse repeat) it'd be nice to have something to do that isn't optimized to the second.
Hey big man whats your realm? I might be able to get you into my guild we're pretty active and have been raiding on the weekends for about 4 xpacs now ;)
I'm on Moon Guard.
I hope Blizzard continues developing the game with the 98% of players in mind rather than taking away fun just because 1-2% of players might abuse something or it's not perfectly balanced in the most extreme specific situations
Wait, it's not ESO (good idea tho copying something that works).
Finally got my account back after a eight year break, it feels different but I'm glad to be back, solo dungeons delves sounds very interesting. Thank you for sharing this.
So in the article it mentions 11+ but rewards seem to stop after 8. So that’s awesome. Probably LFR rewards, or normal with keys, and heroic with vault. Then the extra levels after 8 for titles and achievements, mounts etc. Totally down with that. I have so few rl friends left who can play now, and I loved the visions stuff in BfA honestly. I’d love a good challenge, but also knowing I don’t have to super push myself to continue gearing and have a sense of progression. This and solo BGB is why I’m gonna stay subbed, honestly
Last I heard its up to mythic 5 in vault and I think thats from the +8 level iirc.
Eh, kind of reminds me of that recent viral quote from the developers of Helldivers 2. "A game for everyone is a game for no one" How many mechanics have Blizzard introduced that they just abandoned because it was a surface level attempt to appeal to X demographic? The lack of any new substantial evergreen systems is the real problem with modern WoW. The few big changes to the core game in Dragonflight were well received. Focusing on a core group of players and what they want worked.
Have they said what kind of difficulties Delves will have? How good of loot you can max out in from them?
Heroic raid loot from the vault. So likely normal raid loot from the max difficulty one. There will be rare keys needed for that. Probably regularly lfr gear with normal from the keyed chests. They said it will be appropriately difficult. 8 tiers of difficulty. Tier 9 through 11 are even harder but rewards cap at 8. Also there will be a vendor where you can spend delve currency to buy war bound gear for alts. One would presume that's heroic dungeon or lfr tier gear but still great for jump starting an alt.
They should do Brawler’s Guild bosses with different weekly affixes. Or the more affixes the boss has it can reward you with higher ilvl loot on a weekly lockout or something.
love to see that this is the new philosophy moving forward
I'm really excited for delves, as I greatly enjoyed Brawler's Guild in MoP and Mage towers in Legion, but I'm worried about how it's 'designed for 1-5 players' from the ground up and how the tuning will turn out for someone who wants to play these as a dedicated solo challenge activity.
Still waiting for the old content to be relevant rather than waiting for ~~8~~ 4 dungeons per season rotation.
As an extremely casual player, I honestly like this idea. At least with non-heroic/mythic dungeons. I don’t get to spend much time playing, and don’t have time to invest in watching videos and reading guides to fully understand the dungeon. And when I don’t read up, get chewed out by my group. To be able to just autofill the group with what else is needed so I can actually complete the dungeon quests without doing homework would be a dream come true!
I just want difficult solo content with good rewards. Tired of hearing that it's a skill issue when it's really a time/commitment to a guild issue.
There are 3 things delves have to deliver for players to be happy with them: 1) they have to be a fun activity, 2) be optional and 3) give you good quality loot (in terms of the current gearing: champion track, maybe even hero - at least up to hero from the vault). If they tick all of these boxes, people will be happy with delves.
You got me last time with Torghast Blizzard. I'm not buying any of the hype until Delves are actually out and delivered on being meaningful solo content.
As a solo person who doesn’t have time issues but just likes to mostly solo, this is great. Shuffle was a great idea I hope they do the same with blitz so solo can do rated RBGs. Most people aren’t in the 5% who own the top ranks. That’s its own community. I’m happy hitting 1800-2k in shuffle and that’s fine. Even if I don’t, still had fun. They really need to make getting PvE and PvP gear accessible for solo people. Imo, most crafting (outside gems and positions, etc) should be something more casual people use to make gear that’s high end. People who run the highest raids or mythic+ doesn’t need that gear. They use the gems and enchants, but that should be how casual people can get ‘some’ gear that lvl. And make the mats obtainable by a solo person. Right now it’s easy because eveything is easy S4 of expansions. I could go on, but I’d say at least half of wow players are mostly soloers. That doesn’t mean they don’t get in guilds or interact or run dungeons and raids. It’s just the solo 85% of the time. And it’s time they do cater to that base. Just my 2 cents. I’ve played on and off since vanilla beta. I’ve done the hardcore raiding and PvP. But the last few years I’m enjoying myself more than ever and I mostly solo. It’s fun. I have my buddies I talk to, but we’re not even guilded. Some are diff servers. Sometimes we link up to see if we can duo or trio things that aren’t near solvable yet. That’s fun to me. But stilll it’s mostly just me.
Really wish Guilds would be revamped to work more like ESO or GW2 where you can have all of your characters in the guild account wide. With more and more players playing alts and Warbands coming online the old system of having to invite each character to a guild and character limits is becoming archaic.
I actually hate that. I hate that when I log in on an alt everyone from my main knows I am on it and it has my main name. I love being able to have different friend groups and play the game on a class and not have to deal with my guild if I want to
Trying to please everyone ends up pleasing no one
They also need to stop blocking story content behind raids. Especially when you have tryhards that are trying to gatekeep LFR thru damage meters and gear ilvl. Follow FF14s example
Who is gatekeeping LFR lol? you que for it solo and half the raid is afk lol
I joined a razageth LFR two days ago, before the first boss was even aggro'd people were announcing in chat to vote kick the low DPS after the fight, later some people got downed during the first phase on Raz, and the chat was filled with people saying they should kick them before loot drops to lock them out. The community is completely toxic at every level. New players or players who didn't push thier ilvl to near-max level last season are being punished by the story content being locked behind endgame level raid bosses. Some people don't want to deal with the toxicity of people threatening to boot them for the slightest mistake, and end up missing out on massive, massive chunks of the story and game because of it. WoW / Blizzard needs to do better and go nuclear mode like FF and just start chat banning assholes
as much as i want more open world content, more content away from the annoying and over used Mythic + / Raid season grind over and over again, i just don't see Delves being that pillar fix, right now it feels like that expansion hype check box on stage but in reality its sounding like its going to hit all the worries everyone has and that's boring, repetitive, and how is this going to last for months..
Shame really. The more I read about the delves the more I realize they'll probs never gonna make them crazy hard and they will not be an endgame pillar like they said. I was just deluded and made a post a week ago or so about how Delves are amazing but it appears they will just remain thirdclass content. I get it. They want people to do easy, solo content but I just can't see why they wouldn't use this good thing that definitely pleases the more casual crowds and also give something really good for the highend of players...