The optimal method of leveling in Outland --according to all the game guides-- was to spam dungeons in succession until you get to the level cap. My guild back then followed that strategy religiously, endlessly spamming dungeons to get to the cap*, and then... They stopped. They --and a lot of other players who followed the same strat-- simply burned out on running dungeons and refused to run them again.**
This strategy, one of endlessly spamming dungeons over and over, was repeated in Wrath Classic and in Season of Discovery's Phase 2 (Scarlet Monastery, anyone?) and was even picked up on by Nixxiom in his latest video as part of the reason why he stopped playing SoD:
One of my Classic Era friends hates hates HATES
Gnomeregan, so she's right there with you, Nixxiom.
So, why bring this up? I mean, that community-wide scourge of min-maxing things to death is what led me to quit Season of Discovery too, but that's not why I'm posting.
I'm looking at Delves from Retail's soon to be released The War Within and am thinking that people will simply run Delves on repeat until they get to max level, and then switch to running dungeons and raids. That's assuming that they don't actually need to finish a main storyline to jump straight into endgame content. Maybe they do need to quest to get to endgame, but my belief is that people will skip everything to get to the end if you give them the opportunity to do so. The WoW community has shown in the past that enough players will do whatever it takes to "win" that they need to be protected from their worst impulses.
I don't need to rehash that TBC Classic experience that the leveling Shamans --myself included-- had upon reaching Outland: when we finally needed to enter some of these dungeons, we couldn't find anyone to run with us due to the burnout. At least with Delves you can run them solo, so you don't have to worry about your friends burning out on them and preventing you from getting your own runs completed.
It's just that I look at these new systems and think of all the ways that they could go wrong. Like death and taxes, the concept of developers underestimating a player base's lust for something --no matter what it is-- is almost a certainty.
*And then Heroics once those unlocked, because getting attuned to some of the raids required a lot of Heroic dungeon runs.
**Until the Isle of Quel'Danas unlocked at the end of the expansion, revealing the Magister's Terrace dungeon, and they all spammed that endlessly for reputation and gear.
Retail already does protect players from themselves. While there's always going to be the odd guy trying to see whether they can be the fastest to the new cap, there's not much point in rushing for the majority of players since major endgame modes (raids, M+) don't open until two weeks after the expansion launch. It's been like that for quite a few years already. Also, I don't know about TWW for sure, but in Dragonflight you did have to complete the main campaign quest line to unlock access to features like world quests and such.
ReplyDeleteThat's not exactly protecting players from themselves, since it means they've got 2 weeks to get their pre-raid BiS in place as well as perfect their max-level rotations.
DeleteRetail doesn't really have a concept of pre-raid BiS anymore since a lot of gear has the same stats and gear in general tends to rain from the sky (you don't have to take it from me) and in terms of general gearing-up advice early on, it tends to be "do lots of different content" since things like events, rares and world quests are often set up to only give you a special reward once per week or day, so there's no point in endlessly grinding a singular activity.
DeleteSo it becomes "do your dailies/weeklies" to get the gear, and Delves become yet another one onto the pile. I just get real "Torghast 2.0" vibes out of Delves, so we'll see what happens in practice about a month or two in.
DeleteExcept that Torghast was a gate to unique gear rewards (legendary crafting), while delves are meant to be just another alternative gearing route that offers the same gear as dungeons and raids? I mean, they don't look exciting to me personally, but that is not something I'm worried about.
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