Hello everyone,
Right now, WoW is in a rough spot, due to two major issues :
- lack of content, especially solo content
- lack of development resources, so any “solution” must keep that in mind
However, I have an idea that could add hundreds of hours with a system that half exists in the game already, would require little development time and nearly no maintenance, and most importantly would be fun.
I am talking about soloing, or doing old content with a group of friends, regardless of the number. This used to be a big deal in Wrath/Cata/MoP, before we really had repeatable content, and the Mage Tower proved players still want fun challenges. The basic idea is that if we let players choose the scaling in order to make old content harder, they will have fun.
I’ll explain in detail, but first, here is a short summary : in order to add hundreds (at least) of hours of content for any player, we need to use something that already exists : the Legacy Raid Multiplier. For example, Legion content has a x8 multiplier, so +700% damage done and -87,5% damage taken.
Here would be the steps.
- Make the multiplier customisable by the group. So x10, x9, etc until x1. Also have x0.5, x0.33, x0.25… in order to make things harder. This step alone would be enough to make old content fun again.
- Change the legacy system to be a multiplier on the boss, not the player. Purely a QOL change, but it would be more intuitive. Similar to Mythic+, except additive instead of multiplicative.
For example, Lich King with x0,1 health/damage could be Lich King -10, and with x10 health/damage would be +10. - I’m against adding rewards at first (wait and see how the feature works in practice) but I think we should add stats on the character sheet. For example “Lei Shen best kill solo : +3” and “Lei Shen best kill 4-man group : +8”. This will give people a way to follow their progress, and motivate them to engage in the system or engage with the rest of the game - for example, they nearly got Lei Shen +4 but need a little bit more gear, so they raid/mythic+.
The first step would be enough, but all steps seem very reasonable from a development perspective. There is also no drawback as all it really does is make old content harder for the same rewards.
And it would increase player engagement, play time and player retention, with an evergreen feature.
Now, I will go into details in 2 parts :
I. How solo content used to be a big deal, and why it could be popular again
Also, it would help with downtime between patches
II. The issues with timewalking and how they don’t apply here
And rewards can be ignored or added at a later date
I - How solo content used to be a big deal, and why it could be popular again
Disclaimer : I am extremely biased, being one of the longest playing soloers. Still, I have reasons to believe that there is a lot of evidence that many other players would love doing old content with this system.
First, my own experience. I was the first hunter to solo the Lich King. Recently, I got the world first on Kil’Jaeden Mythic. I also accidentally found a slime serpent and got immediately mobbed by 500 serpent-thirsty secret finders (in a fun way). So I really love soloing and am an extreme example.
In patch 9.1, I finished the solo content about 3 months after the patch. It wasn’t fun because it was very easy. However, after that, I did some solo adventures as usual :
- BFA normal raid
- Nearly all BFA Heroic bosses
- A few Mythic BFA bosses
- SL content - mostly Tazavesh. And it was awesome.
In other words, where patch 9.1 meant Korthia, Tazavesh and Sanctum for most, for me it also meant 4 other raids and one dungeon, with many real, fun challenges.
I finished said content 6 and a half months after the patch came out. In other words, I doubled the time between when the patch came out and when I was “out of (fun) content”.
So every patch, I get the patch content and new content from old patches becomes accessible. Meaning that every patch I get new gear, and suddenly I have the patch content and the content of several previous patches to do. So I feel the content drought a lot less than most players, and have a reason to keep on playing.
Second, the community experience. Back in BC and Wrath, we didn’t have Mythic+ and endlessly repeatable content. But players wanted to play the game more. So a soloing community appeared. If you felt as if there was nothing for you to do, you went to Tempest Keep and did the famous several-hour solo of Kael’thas where you kite the bosses through the entire raid.
Note that said community was huge, and soloing was a core part of the game. There were a lot of youtube videos. And it was the natural thing to do : once I reached max level, I knew about soloing because so many people were doing it I considered it a “normal” part of the game. There were forums where hunters discussed soloing and shared strats and hunter world firsts. So I started soloing because it felt “normal”.
However, that community is gone. I try to follow all the soloers I can on Youtube and Twitter, and there are a few, but we lost Raegwynn, Caribald, Mione, Shoot… But we also found new ones, people still find the motivation.
Still, the success of the mage tower has made me think that the playerbase hasn’t changed. They want fun solo challenges, and even with a lack of rewards - or only cosmetic ones - it was enough to motivate a ton of engagement.
As such, I believe making old content challenging again, done well, would result in massive engagement, especially during “downtime”.
There are currently 58 legacy (pre-BFA) raids and 106 dungeons. That is a lot of content.
There is Timewalking, but it has some rather fatal flaws - mostly lack of accessibility. I’ll now explain how this system solves them.
II - The issues with timewalking and why they don’t apply here
This new system isn’t incompatible with timewalking. Timewalking does have it’s good points, but it also has many flaws. As such, this system would address those flaws.
Development time and quantity of content
For timewalking, every new raid needs to be updated, recoded, balanced…
Also, there are only 4 timewalking raids out of 58. And only about 30% of dungeons.
With the legacy multiplier slider system, you would have every single raid and dungeon updated at once. And it would be evergreen content - always balanced, since it is balanced by the players. At most, we might reach a point where we need to have the slider go from /20 to x20 instead of /10 to x10.
Lastly, if there is an issue with a boss, players can just reduce the difficulty and “skip” it. So far less pressure.
Availability
Timewalking is only active at certain moments. However, the objective is to give players content they can play when they want to instead of being bored and going to play other games.
So a system that is always active would be better.
Massive barriers to entry for raids - raid size and time constraints
I wanted to do Ulduar timewalking once, on a Saturday evening. There wasn’t a single group. I tried making one, but in an hour I only had 4 dps.
This is for two reasons : first, forcing a 10-man minimum for old content doesn’t work. There is seldom a group of friends that wants to do an old raid with 10 people - you’ll need to PUG. And people have a lot more fun playing by themselves or with friends. So people just won’t do the content if it means not having fun with their friends.
As such, old content is only good if you can enter with any number of players.
Second, there is the time constraint. If you are in a PUG, you have to clean the raid in a single night or nobody will want to bother.
With this system, you can play for 30 minutes, an hour… You can kill a few bosses and, since you are playing with friends, decide to continue another day. If you ever lose your ID, just reduce the difficulty and one-shot the bosses you don’t want to redo. Or skip straight to the boss you want without having to “lose time” on content you don’t want to do.
Having to sit down for hours for any kind of challenging content is a massive barrier to playing WoW. So people don’t play even if they have free time, but want to have fun so they go play other games. In my guild, when the raid is over, my guildies want to play together so either they are +25 enthusiasts (a few), or they go play League of Legends (a lot more).
In conclusion, by giving players something they can play with their friends at any time, we could help with player retention.
Balance
Timewalking raids are too easy. They just aren’t fun. You don’t get to see the bosses or experience the fights, which defeats the purpose. As such, people have little to no intrinsic motivation to do them - hence why it’s so hard to find a group.
However, if you increase the difficulty, some people will no longer engage in them because they don’t have enough time. And since you need 10 players, and two tanks, it all falls apart.
As such, I do not believe that Timewalking can be balanced. It needs to be balanced for both casual players and Mythic raiders. It also needs to be balanced for a single player, a group of 4 with no tanks, and a group of 9 at the same time.
But if you let players balance their own content, every single problem is solved. When you can already one-shot any boss, it’s impossible for players to “game the system”. Especially if there is no increase in rewards. So there is no risk.
Rewards
If content has rewards, you have to balance it.
As such I believe the easiest way to solve this problem is for the new system to have no additional rewards, at least at first (also : the best reward is still fun).
It allows not to spend time developing rewards, and nobody cared about rewards in Wrath/cata anyways.
We can also add rewards at a later date, such as gold, more pieces of loot, new transmogs if the art team has free time… And by adding them at a later date, it will be possible to determine which multipliers give the “right” amount of challenge.
However, I believe the biggest incentive would be a “scoreboard”. Numbers going up is a proven and tested motivation. As explained before, it would be a statistics page saying : best Ragnaros 25-man Heroic solo kill : x3 multiplier. And other pages for 2-man, 4-man etc.
These are stats that would be useful to Blizzard, and they would provide intrinsic motivation - challenge, bragging rights, fun. I did not to the Mage Tower for the transmog, and I believe a lot of players did not care about the reward either.
Extrinsic motivation gave us Thorghast. I would absolutely be doing Thorghast right now if it had infinite floors and I could be farming Anima (not player power, just mogs), but right now it ends as soon as it starts getting fun. Try doing the opposite - a system designed purely for fun - and I believe it will have some success.
III - Conclusion
In conclusion, if you gave it a try, there would be no downsides - only upsides. What WoW is missing the most right now is fun content for players to do on their own terms. I believe it is a simple “easy win”, and I’m not just saying that because I really really want to solo Throne of Thunder again (please please please) - I truly believe I wouldn’t be alone in enjoying such challenges.
Thank you for reading,
Durendil,
Hunter Soloist