wow Patch 7.1 To Introduce More Solo Activities

[Stan 5,240]

While Patch 7.1 provides a lot of group content, Nahkampfgnome was curious to ask about additions to solo play.

Despite World of Warcraft is a MMORPG, some prefer to play it as a solo RPG.

• He wonders whether the Suramar quest line added with 7.1 justifies the monthly subscription fee.
• As a person who sticks to matchmaking and won't use Group Finder, the content gating seems to be limited to Mythic & Raiding in Legion, adopting a "Mythic or die" (or "Mythic, raid or die") nature.
  • E.g. new and existing dungeons being limited to Mythic difficulty (Karazhan, the Arcway etc.).
• Another concern are World Quests. Will there be any new World Quests in 7.1 and will they offer steady item progression? 

We've got a satisfying answer as Patch 7.1 will introduce more solo gameplay oriented activities. A preview of such activities should be up soon.

Aerythlea

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG. Means, a massive multiplayer online role playing game. 

I play World of Warcraft as a solo player RPG, and group content only using Matchmaking. For me, the game is played best if i dont have to stick to a group of players. 

That wasnt always my preferred playstyle. In classic, i joined a raiding guild. I sticked to a guild up to catacylsm end, and left it at the end of Mists, when my final conclusion of all those organized gaming years was, that it is just not worth to have to stick to a group of people for longer than needed, to just see the content itself without the idea to have a shared schedule with people who could leave anytime using a simple realm transfer. I was not willing to invest any kind of commitment anymore just to be able to kill some pixel bosses.

I hate the new group finder. It is the worst version of a group setup tool which ever was implemented into World of Warcraft. Not catering to those who wish to gear up, but only for those, who already own the best gear and just need to grind up higher difficulty levels. It effectively locks out players with lower ilvl gear.

I like matchmaking. It is the golden path to gaming fun for a soloist like me. I may see the content, and dont have to attach to a group of people who only would see my purpose as a functioning soldier in a raid, while blizzard talks about "playing with friends". I only have to have a ilvl to be able to join the queue, and there is just no exaggerated ilvl prerequisite as like in the group finder.

That said, taking a look on 7.1, i wonder:

What is that patch bringing for me? Someone who wont use the group finder, who would want to stick to matchmaking? Someone who was used to run dungeons with the LFG tool, while legion started to limit dungeons to "mythic" mode, which is quite a bad return to content gating based on difficulty, which already failed in the burning crusade.. but which wasnt enough obviously so blizzard could learn for the future of their MMORPG.

Is the new suramar quest chain enough to justify a monthly subscription to a game that does not really want to offer me content? Or should i stop playing now as the only interesting thing, as usual, will be organized content (mythic dungeons, raids) at the mid and end period of the current expac?

Will there be a whole bunch of new world quests coming 7.1? Will world quests continue to offer a steady item progression without the need for "raid or die" (or in Legion "mythic dungeon or raid or die")?

Thanks for reading. If you think, a soloist should not play a MMORPG, you are wrong. As it both contains "MMO" and "RPG", and as multiplayer is not explicitly limited to organized content only.

We're working on more activities tailored towards the solo-player. Details about solo-player activites coming in 7.1 will be revealed soon, stay tuned. :)

It bothers me that Blizzard spend their time and my money on pleasing people who think that WoW somehow become Single Player RPG suddenly instead or preparing some group content for actual players.

I'm not sure I follow this line of thought. Legion has come with a lot of group content - particularly content tailored toward parties with the Mythic Keystone system.

Patch 7.1 includes new World Quests, the Karazhan Mythic Dungeon and the Trial of Valor raid - it's hardly devoid of group content.

(Source)

World Quests

• There is a new Kirin Tor World Quest called Barrels o' Fun.  
• A totally new series of World Quests will become available - Helarjar World Quests. 

[PatrickHenry 293]

the story line, to me, feels more single player.  More phasing and stuff is great, keeps it exciting, but its hard to jump in and start helping someone else quest if youre on a different area/portion. 

Minor complaint, however.  Throwing in the mythics/dungeon requirements feels... idk...  more like an afterthought.  Still better than WoD I think, however.

[Rainfable 0]

So people want to play WoW the same way Old Republic has been doing for years?

A problem with Old Republic, as many who played the game suggested, was precisely because of the emphasis on solo contents, although many who first tried Old Republic expected it to be like WoW, which focused a lot on group/raid contents.

If WoW goes for more solo contents (although with the artifact quest line, it very much suggests that you are THE savior already), some might start to complain about the lack of group/raid contents. A game can't have everything, I just hope Blizz doesn't swing too far from group/raid, since most of its players are looking for group/raids.

[Mawoon 10]

"Look at me! I am special snowflake and you should cater for my antisocial needs!"

Jesus, even his guild is named Special Snowflakes and it's only him and his alts.

[Kharth 9]

Massive MULTIPLAYER Online Role Playing Game

/cry not enough solo content

You don't like it, unsub. I don't think Blizz is going to lose any sleep. Go play a console game.

Edited October 21, 2016 by Kharth

[PaasHaaS 81]

There's no need to feel so butthurt over someone expressing their thoughts/concerns, this won't take away your precious MMO experience so don't worry.

The main point I take away from this is different perceptions people have of the group finder and the auto matchmaking. Making it possible to auto-queue up for Mythic (normal) dungeons as well, instead of forcing people to the group finder, would be quite a big change already for some/a lot of people.

The complaint about group finder could easily be countered with 'make your own group then', which is perfectly valid, but also rather narrowminded. There's a much bigger mental barrier of sorts to creating and organizing your own group rather than just hitting a button that'll put you with people having similar goals; completing content without the worries of a 'perfect' group.

[Archimage 98]

Opinion on group vs solo content:

Most casual, semi-hardcore guilds will only allocate a dedicated time for raiding. What you do the rest of the time is up to each member. I solo questing (leveling, world quests, Suramar etc) because not all my friends have a dedicated time when they are also doing the same activity.

If you have less than 4 hours a day to play, and are playing on multiple characters and specs, you cannot be competitive with other people due to player-specific progression (Artifact, Reputations, Honor level, Gear etc).

Opinion on the group finder:

When looking for a Mythic+ group, the leader decides on restrictions regarding applications. They normally follow the norm of "please whisper your achievement", but they still only invite players due to how their class performs on the content (Fire Mage, WW Monk, MM Hunters in Mythic+), which is unfair to current under-preforming classes. Things start getting stupid when they ask "Please link your legendary / Mythic Level 10".

In WoD and MoP we had the Proving Grounds as a filter to check if they can at least play their spec correctly.

LFR will still be labelled "Looking for Re**rds" when you see people not being able to complete their bronze proving grounds.

Improvements?

I saw that Blizzard has updated their voice chat functionality, perhaps they should allow you to create a chat group when listing on the group finder. This will allow some form of communication in pugs.

Proving grounds are still there, when listing on Group Finder the leader should be able to see your current level on proving ground. Perhaps they should add your current progression on the content you are going to do (Completed Mythic level 7) etc.

Unsure if your proving ground achievement has been reset for the new expansion.

They should add more mechanics to proving grounds and make the mechanics more spec focused.
Mechanics like: Interrupt dangerous Spell, move out of Hazard, burst down priority adds, purge an buff (if your class can).

I like the fact that dungeons alternate between paths, affecting the order in which you clear the dungeon. Also the Mythic plus affixes provides an unique experience every week. When are we getting affixes in raiding? (totally evil emoticon)

[Valks 2,375]

12 hours ago, PatrickHenry said:

Still better than WoD I think, however.

For me, this is key. As long as they are learning, I'm fine with it not being perfect yet!

[Valks 2,375]

15 minutes ago, Archimage said:

"Please link your legendary".

This is the one that gets to me the most, tbh. This is absolutely nothing a player can influence. They can farm everything, every day, every week, every month and still not have one. It's just RNG, so they are immediately excluded from a group simply because they cannot control the RNG drops of legendaries. 

[Stan 5,240]

1 hour ago, Blainie said:

This is the one that gets to me the most, tbh. This is absolutely nothing a player can influence. They can farm everything, every day, every week, every month and still not have one. It's just RNG, so they are immediately excluded from a group simply because they cannot control the RNG drops of legendaries. 

Indeed, I still have no legendaries :(

[Valks 2,375]

2 hours ago, Stan said:

Indeed, I still have no legendaries :(

6 characters worth of constant emissary quests, dungeon runs, all of it. Not 1 legendary. 

[Darkjester79 47]

5 hours ago, Blainie said:

For me, this is key. As long as they are learning, I'm fine with it not being perfect yet!

I agree.  Is it perfect?  No.  There are still flaws but to Blizzard's credit, as opposed to WoD, they are fixing and resolving issues.  This is a game that tries to appeal to everyone but there is no way to make it everyone's perfect game.  I do a lot of solo play myself as I work odd hours and I have had no issues playing by myself.  Would I like a bit more content?  sure but to me what I have now and what I have seen coming down the pipeline is enough to justify the sub fee.  As long as i get new content on a regular basis, it does not matter to me if it is more solo or group play.

[Stan 5,240]

2 hours ago, Blainie said:

6 characters worth of constant emissary quests, dungeon runs, all of it. Not 1 legendary. 

Wow, that's even worse than on my part. I'd really like to know details about the Legendary bad luck prevention system. I know they mentioned if you play on a regular basis and you still haven't gotten a Legendary the chances somehow increase. At times, I would farm Heroic dungeons for bloods like crazy, do World Quests every day and still nothing. I think I played a decent amount of time since Legion's launch.

@Archimage I totally agree on the LFR part, the difficulty is ridiculous. You can entirely avoid fight mechanics, stand in fire, be AFK just on a /follow and nothing happens. Not only is it bad for the game (because somehow I feel like LFR should be a place to learn encounters for players, who don't have time for a fixed raiding schedule (odd hours). The difficulty has immensely shifted since they introduced Normal mode. There are currently so many bad players. When there were only Normal (now called) and Heroic (now called Mythic) versions there weren't as many issues. Many guilds are still stuck with Heroic Xavius which was just called "Normal" back then. Or maybe it's just my personal thought. LFR to me is just free loot. Blizzard could have allowed us to join a raid group once every week, do a /roll and whoever scores highest gets loot. Would save us a lot of time.

@Rumgin I entirely agree. WoW is an MMORPG. At the end of the day, there are just so many solo activities you can do... World Quests, Suramar, Fishing, mog runs are among the lots of things that instantly came to my mind. Besides, looking for players has never been easier and more convenient. Mythic dungeons shouldn't even carry the name "Mythic". Many get scared by the name and farm the hell out of Heroic dungeons, but they are totally easy.

[ADUB87 1]

I am a VERY casual player of WOW and find myself often outclassed, even while questing. I play a PVP server, that I regret doing sometimes, as I am trying to quest in Legion and find myself surrounded by 20 Horde.... Horde players will laugh, Alliance will understand. Makes perfect sense though cuz they chickened out in the fight and abandoned Anduin to die.... but this game was initially Alliance vs Horde and should be a PVP. :), I digress.

Most of my game time is soloing, and since I drag along 5 characters, I stay pretty busy just getting them to max level. I don't think soloing this game should reward the same as playing it as a group, but something I appreciated from WoD was the ability to actually create items with professions that were decent and competitive (my ilvl 749 greataxe with enchant was AWESOME!) almost kept playing it because I was so attached. Hoping to have the same chance in Legion, WITHOUT the unique-equipped restriction. I mean seriously, it would take forever to max out a full set of gear in WoD, so why not let us do it. I doubt anybody maxed out a set of boots, for sale, 20k gold...lol

just my 2 cents.  

" you died for nothing"

"no, FOR THE ALLIANCE!"

[PatrickHenry 293]

2 hours ago, Stan said:

Mythic dungeons shouldn't even carry the name "Mythic". Many get scared by the name and farm the hell out of Heroic dungeons, but they are totally easy.

Hey now, the first time we ran CoS it was tough! 

 

So... many... mobs...   luckily one guy had run it previously.  Find the traitor? 

anyway, like I said, LUCKILY, someone ran it prior.

[Stan 5,240]

@ADUB87 I don't thing there are limitations to crafted gear you can equip in Legion. Besides, Obliterum can increase all crafted gear item level up to 850 and I think it will increase in the future as we get raids with higher item levels and 850 will just feel obsolete.

[Valks 2,375]

On 10/21/2016 at 4:49 PM, Darkjester79 said:

what I have seen coming down the pipeline is enough to justify the sub fee.  

This is key. I cannot agree more. I actually do not mind paying for a subscription, token or real money, because the game is currently worth it. The plans for WoW make me feel like it is going to continue to be so (fingers crossed). 

I'm just praying they keep it up!

[Boonatix 1]

I am just puzzled at how players are constantly limiting the content for themselves... I know that not everyone likes to do the same things or has the same taste. But I get the feeling that players are narrowing down their options for great adventures to much, to like a 10th of what the game really has to offer, forgetting that they actually subscribed to a Massive-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Play-Game... there are so many different things to experience - blaming the developers and complaining about having to "pay so much for not enough to do" is not fair.

[Valks 2,375]

14 hours ago, Boonatix said:

I am just puzzled at how players are constantly limiting the content for themselves...

This is where that opinion originated from that people who complain were "LFR Heroes". It was a big discussion point, because people essentially said: "I have cleared LFR, why is there no more content for me?", but they hadn't stepped foot into any other difficulty of the raid. 

People being completely unwilling to try parts of the game are one of the reasons why there can be problems with "content running out too fast".