Microsoft purchased Activision-Blizzard last year, and with it, the legendary Blizzard franchises like World of Warcraft. The first expansion launched as part of that partnership is World of Warcraft: The War Within, and despite having a very typical Azerothian theme, it's actually probably the most pivotal, important expansion the game has had in over a decade.
In my World of Warcraft: The War Within on-going review, one of the aspects I've been working to dive deeper into is Delves, its much-lauded small group / solo player content. Delves are small 15-20 minute experiences (according to Blizzard in my recent interview), that are akin to mini dungeons complete with a boss at the end. Delves have 12 tiers, with the 8th and higher rewarding powerful end-game loot on par with Heroic difficulty raids. There's also a 13th tier that is a challenging boss battle, culminating a mini story quest chain that rewards players with added bragging rights and cosmetic rewards.
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So far, I've been having an absolute blast with Delves in World of Warcraft. But there's a huge caveat here. I'm a demonology warlock, armed with a personal demonic body guard and a variety of tools designed for solo play. Other players have been having an incredibly bad experience with Delves, owing to their on-going balance issues.
I feel like Blizzard is well and truly on the edge of making solo / small-group endgame play truly magical in World of Warcraft, but getting there may require a big change in design philosophy — a change that could negatively impact other parts of the game. Nailing balance for Delves is going to be incredibly tough.
Balancing challenge with access
World of Warcraft has been designed with group-play in mind for 20 years. Blizzard famously declared that 1v1 PvP would never be balanced in yesteryear, owing to the need for classes to have divergent flavor and tools. If every class has every ability, then you're homogenizing the class fantasy to a degree, and reducing the need to actually socialize in the game.
With Delves, Blizzard has acknowledged that no matter what they do, some players simply don't want to deal with other players. World of Warcraft can be a very "elitist" environment in some regards, with gatekeeping at every turn. Players will defer to tier lists online and make a blanket decision that "this class is bad" and deny access to group content, even if the differences between them are as little as 3% on paper. Delves are a potential reprieve from that universe, where finding likeminded players can be an uphill battle at times.
I'm blessed with an incredibly fun and kind guild of semi-casual players who like to go hard at seasonal content without getting too stressed about it. But finding this guild took me literally decades. Many players won't necessarily have that kind of determination, particularly new ones who never got bitten by the WoW bug. For them, Delves are on the edge of being the perfect content.
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In Delves, players are dropped into a mini dungeon designed to be finished in around 15-20 minutes, according to my previous interview with Blizzard. Each Delve has three different scenarios, which changes their stories, bosses, and in some cases, the dungeon's layout. In the picture below, you can see one particular scenario which had me attempting to defend a Leviathan giant squid from being taken over by necromantic Kobyss.
Over the weekend, I played through some Delves in 2-player co-op with my brother, and we had a blast. The tier-8 difficulty dungeons reward champion gear, which typically come from 20~ player raids or mythic+ difficulty 5-man dungeons, requiring very tight co-ordination and organization. The tier 8 Delves are similarly challenging, requiring careful planning, and class skill utilization. I found myself casting Fear for the first time in years outside of PvP to crowd control monsters, while my bro beat monsters down with his plate-wearing tauren warrior. We had a solid set up for Delves here, with his high-armor making him very tanky, and my demon pets keeping aggro on other monsters while I burned them with fel magic from afar.
But herein lies one of the issues with Delves, it's far, far easier for some classes and set ups over others.
Delves are great for strong solo classes, and awful for others
By the time this article goes out, it may already be irrelevant. Blizzard has been patching and hotfixing Delves at a breakneck pace since they launched them with the World of Warcraft: The War Within expansion, with some tweaks hitting players mid-dungeon run in some cases.
Blizzard says that fixing Delves is their "top priority," with a variety of buffs and nerfs hitting the system in various ways. For example, the latest one as of writing pertains to a "bug" that gives your NPC companion, Brann, extra damage in some cases. Players who encountered this bug had an easier time in Delves, while others didn't. I have no idea personally if I hit up this bug or not, but I can tell that my experience vastly differs based on what class I've played.
Playing through the tier-8 difficulty Delves with my plate-wearing brother, with item-level recommendation appropriate gear was incredibly fun. They certainly weren't the "15-20 minute" experiences Blizzard described, though, as monsters have incredibly high levels of hit points and can take a very long time to burn through. I found the extreme end of this example when I tried to put my discipline healing priest through the same Delve on tier-6, again, using the item levels that Blizzard recommended.
Update on Delves:Following recent hot fixes, we want to let you know we're working on additional updates.It's a top priority for us and we expect to deploy further fixes later today.September 13, 2024
This "15-20 minute" experience actually took me roughly 45-60 minutes to get through. And that wasn't because I died. I only died once on the final boss during this run. The issue was that the monsters simply took that long to kill as a healing specced player.
If Delves are truly designed around the solo player, then in essence, I should be able to complete them efficiently with any class. I have Brann Bronzebeard, the NPC companion players get to partner up with for these "solo" dungeons at level 20. I had him in his damage dealer mode, and still it took an exorbitant amount of time to slowly burn monsters down with the tools I had available to me. This wasn't the "casual" experience I feel Blizzard sold to me during the initial press run. I'm using the item level recommended to me here, with Brann Bronzebeard in his damage dealing role to compensate my lack of damage. Other players are hitting the same frustrating walls, depending on their class choices.
If Blizzard can make Delves a fun experience for any spec, that would be the true holy grail solo players of WoW have been waiting decades for.
Many classes don't have access to short cooldown interrupts, for example. These interrupts have been typically the realm of melee-based classes, and it seems that some bosses (particularly the tier-13 challenge boss) are designed around having access to interrupts. In some cases, players have found that it's optimal to play these dungeons in a more traditional way, in 5-man groups with a tank, healer, and three damage dealer roles assigned. In other cases, players have found that certain classes have a brutally difficult uphill struggle while other have a total breeze, based on the tools their classes have.
Indeed, my discipline priest does not have access to an interrupt at all, which meant the final boss of this particular dungeon was able to deal massive amounts of damage to me unimpeded using a curse spell, that I also lacked the tools to remove. I was able to heal through the damage just about, but I couldn't help but feel like as the tiers climb higher, it's going to just become ever-increasingly choring to get through them on this particular class.
My warlock by comparison has a far easier time. A personal tank, several fears and interrupt options, self-heals, high sustained direct and area damage, teleports, stuns, and much more, designed to help me in solo play. Warlocks and other classes have long held the mantle of being great for solo play, but with Delves, Blizzard may have to reconsider how it approaches class balance and design if it wants this to be its flagship solo content.
Can World of Warcraft get solo Delves right?
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I want to emphasize that I do love a challenge in WoW. Getting the fel fire cosmetic challenge unlocked on my warlock back in Mists of Pandaria is one of the most fun and rewarding things I've been able to achieve as a solo player in WoW. Things like the Mage Tower and Brawler's Guild have fleetingly offered solo players ways to enjoy and challenge themselves beyond the typical group-based content. I've also been concerned that Delves could be too rewarding, to the point where highly organized group-based content could become obsolete. Indeed, the highest item level in my weekly reward vault is as a result of the Delves I did this week, rather than any of the raiding or mythic+ 5-man dungeons I did.
Brann Bronzebeard and other seasonal NPC party members for these Delve dungeons should be the complimenting factor to any of an individual class's shortcomings. Brann has interrupts, but they're painfully random, and often interrupt the "wrong" thing. His damage often feels middling and difficult to quantify, and the fact he can't really tank or taunt directly seems like a total mis-fire for players trying to play solo as healers or even more vulnerable cloth characters. As a shadow priest for example, I still found myself far too squishy to actually run the Delve, with Brann unable to take attention away from monsters who wanted to murder me.
I want every run to feel as fun and rewarding as it did when I played through with my brother. It was a solid challenge, still required to navigate the dungeon's various hazards and be sharp with interrupts and stuns. We completed it in a reasonable timeframe too, about 20-30 minutes as previously advertised. We got insane rewards for it as well (for me, a ring, whose enchants and sockets nearly bankrupted me to upgrade). But by comparison, playing through the same Delves on my healer priest solo was an utterly miserable, slog of an experience.
If Blizzard can make Delves a fun experience for any spec, that would be the true holy grail solo players of WoW have been waiting decades for. But it goes beyond simply giving Brann more damage, some classes simply don't have the tools needed to overcome certain challenges. I think it's important that classes remain powerful in their respective niches, but Blizzard needs to rethink Brann and how much control we have over his abilities, like his interrupts, if Delves are really going to land more keenly.
I am incredibly excited for Delves, I just want every Delves experience to feel like the what I had when playing my warlock, rather than the miserable experience I had while playing my priest.
You don't want Delves to be too easy, because it'll trivialize group content and social play. You don't want them to be too rewarding either, because again, players will find it's more efficient to eschew guilds. You also don't want them to be too hard, because they're designed around a shorter gameplay loop many casual players absolutely need in order to justify the subscription. You also don't want to exclude any class or spec from it, because that defines what "solo" play is all about. But you also don't want them to punish players who do want to play with friends in small groups.
Delves have the opportunity to be "everything" content, without the same types of restrictions of other World of Warcraft endgame activities. If Blizzard can nail the balance, they could be truly huge for the game in a variety of ways. Whether it's attracting new players, opportunities to experiment with new mechanics, inject world building lore into small spaces, or even just showcase a cool moment that didn't fit into other types of content.
I don't envy the challenge Blizzard has given themselves here, but the rewards for what Delves could bring World of Warcraft from a game health perspective could be immense. Delves are tantalizing glimpse into what could be one of World of Warcraft's most important, pivotal features, as it enters its 20th year.
