With Mists of Pandaria, one of Blizzard’s main goals is to give players more content they can do by themselves or within small groups. This is shown with many of the new features, such as the Brawlers Guild and Scenarios, as well as the new emphasis being placed on dallies. With so many new ways for players to play the game by themselves it got me wondering. Could Blizzard make solo-able content be a form of end game progression?
Now, it has almost been an ongoing bad joke of people in the community saying that dallies are end game content, but this is obviously not true. Yes many raiders feel the need to do dallies to keep up with other raiders, but this not make it end game content. What I mean by this is could Blizzard have solo content that is difficult, yet rewarding for players with a way to gear their characters up in it?
At first glance, this does not seem like a long shot. Blizzard has proven they know how to make solo content that is fun to play, as well as difficult. The only thing they need to do is add a way for champions to get geared solely through this solo content. This runs into a major problem, one that Blizzard has been fighting with PvP and PvE gear since the game started. They would need to make sure that this gear that is obtained through this solo content is the best possible gear for solo content, while also making sure that it is not better than raid gear in raids. Though difficult, this is not an impossible task. They could add set bonuses to gear that would be great in solo content, but un wanted in raids. For instance, a rogue could have set bonuses that increase their survivability. Though not a terrible thing in raids, most raiders would not choose survivability over damage. Secondly, gear could only give the maximum amount of stats to players who are not in a group. This would work, but introduces a completely different problem.
World of Warcraft is an MMORPG, meaning a huge part about it is social interactions between players. If players see that they can have a rewarding and fun experience by themselves, they might just completely abandon other parts of the game that force players to play with others.
Playing with other people is what makes WoW great, but this does not mean that players do not enjoy solo content. If Blizzard is able to great “Heroic” solo content, I don’t see why they would not. As long as it does not overlap into raiding or PvP, having gear that is suitable for soloing players would bring a great way to allow players to play however they wish to play.
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