Ever since World of Warcraft released back in 2004, there’s been an tension in this game between casual, solo play and hardcore group progression. It was a revelation at the time for an MMO to have a design that was accessible to the masses, but the original Blizzard team fashioned this title to eventually funnel those casuals into raids while weening them off of the solo stuff.
With a few exceptions, this is how the MMO functioned: It was very solo friendly and flexible at the start of an expansion, but by the end of it, you had to be doing some intensive PvP, Mythic+ dungeons, or raids to attain good gear. There haven’t been any serious attempts at new solo-friendly endgame system for this rather large segment of WoW‘s playerbase… until pretty much now, with delves.
And while this rollout’s been a little unsteady, the appeal and potential of delves is undeniable. This may be one of the most promising new systems that Blizzard’s created to fill the gap that this game has had for so long.
I’ve been holding back on offering up any first impressions or thoughts on The War Within for the first month until I felt that I had a good handle on what it’s offering. Overall, it’s a solid expansion that’s been personally appealing with a seeming never-ending amount of paths and rewards to pursue.
When it launched, I knew that I — like many of my guildies — was going to be investing myself in the delve system. This was it! Finally! A path to endgame gearing that didn’t strictly rely on top-end group content! Repeatable, soloable dungeons with shifting quest objectives, a large pool of rewards, a helper NPC (who keeps screaming for me to get out of the webs, I GET IT), some progression elements, and bonus loot seemed appealing. Oh, and there was also a customizable flying mount that’s pretty cool.
And as expected, this brand-new game system presented a lot of headaches to players and devs from the get-go. Delves weren’t balanced right, especially factoring in group vs. solo play and different builds, and there was that one week where Blizzard was slamming major hotfixes into delves on a near-daily basis. I can’t say that the studio’s gotten the mix right just yet, although it definitely feels better.
To give you an idea of where I’m at, I hung back from delves for the first week and concentrated on leveling, dungeons, and heroics. Once I started to get a decent base of gear, I tiptoed into delves and began working my way up the difficulty ladder. Starting at Tier 3, you have to beat the highest difficulty to access the next tier, and so on. Four, five, and six weren’t that much of a problem, but Tier 7 started kicking my butt.
Yet with a couple nice gear drops from a world boss and the great vault, I started to make headway, eventually clearing a Tier 8 delve every day or so. This is the tier you want to get to, by the way, since it unlocks some of the best gear rewards from the great vault. Also, everyone says not to use your coffer keys on bountiful delves before Tier 8, which does seem to be the way to go.
There are a good baker’s dozen delves in the game, with a wide variety of locations and mechanics among them. Every delve seems to have a mechanic that has to be understood, such as carrying a candle in kobold delves to keep the shadows at bay. I’m not super crazy about the mechanics, as I would prefer straight-up fighting as with dungeons, but I acknowledge that these are necessary to give solo instances more dimension (and probably to slow us down some).
The delves are hard but feel fair, if that makes sense. Of course, this is highly dependent on your class and build right now, as Brann the assistant NPC does not tank for you, only swaps between DPS or healing. Some builds are having a hard time moving through delves, while more tanky and self-healing classes are doing better. Again, from my perspective, it feels fair. Tier 8s are challenging and slow, but I can get one done in about 30-40 minutes if I pay attention and stay on my toes.
What has me excited is that I do see the foundation for an expandable system that could go far in this game. People seem to like delves and get what they’re trying to accomplish, which is a good start. And there are so many ways that the studio could keep improving them or adding new delves without invalidating older ones.
For me, I love them because delves are kinda fun and they totally free me from feeling any pressure whatsoever to do the parts of the game that I dislike (mythics, raiding, PvP) without making me feel left out of the cool gear.
Blizzard still has a lot of work to do with delves, and I hope that appropriate effort is made to really make this system shine. Brann, in particular, needs his AI retuned, and some of these insane delves should be given another pass. I also think that the studio has no idea what to do with groups in delves (I think it should’ve been solo or duo only, period), and that’s something to be figured out in the longer run.
For now, it’s a terrific start and the first time since Legion and world quests that I am encouraged that a casual like me has a path forward to beneficial rewards. But what about you? How are you finding delves so far? Let’s get a conversation going in the comments!
Stepping back into the MMO time machine of WoW Classic, Justin Olivetti offers up observations and ground-level analysis as a Gnome with a view. Casually Classic is a more laid-back look at this legacy ruleset for those of us who’ve never stepped into a raid or seen more than 200 gold to our names.
