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World of Warcraft: The War Wtihin: Do Delves Live Up To The Hype?

Robin Baird Posted:
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Columns Arlee In Azeroth 0

One of the most prominent new features in World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, The War Within, was the addition of Delves. They were described as challenging content for players who played mainly solo or in small groups out in the world instead of instanced content. Not only would it give them something interesting to do, but it also was intended to give that group of players a way to attain higher gear levels. After all, the main point of playing WoW has always been getting the best gear.

One of the issues with Delves initially was that Blizzard had a hard time balancing them, so they kept making buff and nerf passes, which caused considerable swings in the difficulty. As I mentioned in my The War Within Review, these hotfixes even caused an issue with being able to quickly complete one tier 8 to not being able to complete the next one immediately after. At this point, everything has settled into a decent stasis, which works regardless of whether you prefer to do them as a group or individually. It still feels like a group of three is the optimal setup; there isn’t a huge difference between a solo player and a full group clearing through, which is good.

WoW Delves

The difficulty discrepancy between playing solo as a tank, healer, or DPS hasn’t settled out yet. Depending on the specific delves, some classes or specs have an advantage over others. I’m not sure there’s a good solution to this problem without the delves essentially having slightly different versions for each spec, and that’d be a ton of work. Even doing that per role would be a significant lift, and even then, some classes would still have an advantage—as they did in the Mage Tower. Plus, once you start having different versions for different roles, that’d become a big problem for groups trying to complete delves. The best way to go is to balance them around being done solo and not balance around groups so much. Essentially, the primary focus on delves should be the solo experience, and if people want to do them in groups, then there needs to be things only solo completions can attain.

A rational assumption may be that I am advocating vault unlocks, gear, and crests to be only available to players who complete them solo. It’s a logical line of thought, but you’re forgetting the lessons of the Mage Tower. No power-related challenge was associated with Mage Tower; it was just a weapon appearance (or shape appearance for Feral & Guardian) and an achievement if you completed it on every spec for your class. In fact, if there had been some power for completing the Mage Tower, that would have made it a much worse experience.

WoW Delves

Some of my favorite memories in World of Warcraft include chilling in Discord with my friends, chatting and working through strategies, and sharing tips for completing them. It was hard, it was definitely frustrating at times, but it was also a ton of fun. If I needed to finish it in order to get a piece of gear or gain something that would make me stronger for my raid and Mythic+ runs, it would have been far more stressful and not nearly as fun. So, sure, some players only care about gear, but that doesn’t need to be the goal to make delves successful.

Solo players are only rewarded with an achievement and an appearance for completing the ?? version of the Zekvir fight. All the other rewards can be completed in a group. That’s a good start, but not nearly enough if solo players are the focus. A solo seasonal journey would be ideal, not as a replacement for what’s currently there but as supplemental, and you would only earn credit towards it when you complete delves solo. Even if it wasn’t a full seasonal journey, having unique goals and rewards that can only be obtained while playing solo is what is needed to keep Delves as a solo-focused activity that players can group up for if they’d like to.

Additionally, the recommended gear levels in delves need to be looked at. My experience is that the gear level listed is too high, and I’m not a high-skill level player. I worry that those listed gear levels might scare off players who would otherwise really enjoy delves. For example, tier 10 of delves recommends having an ilvl of 623+. That’s mythic level ilvl, which can be obtained by the last two upgrades on hero track gear, but you need gilded crests to get there, and they don’t drop in delves. So, if delves are meant to be content for players who enjoy solo content/small group content, you’re telling them they can’t do the hardest version of their content, and that’s not a good design. Additionally, if the plan is for a Delve into Mythic+ pipeline, pushing them to do +9 keys to get what they need will be a bad experience.

WoW Delves

Secondly, crests can be earned from doing bountiful delves at two crests per bountiful delve completed. Every week, there are 28 bountiful delves available, but you need coffer keys to open the locked chests with the good rewards at the end. These are gained from doing various weekly activities, which are also limited. I can’t imagine getting 28 keys in one week, so a much more conservative number would be twelve—which is still more than the average person would likely get in a week. Assuming you get those every week and complete all twelve bountiful delves with those keys, you’ll get 24 crests a week. That’s enough for one item upgrade a week, with some leftovers, so the next week, you can do two upgrades. That’s a prolonged upgrade schedule, especially if you are trying to hit ilvl requirements to keep progressing in delves.

Perhaps the ilvl recommendations are purposefully high, and the average person can do them at a lower ilvl? Then I’d say that’s a pretty bad design. It’s the same as letting someone beat you at a game to make them feel good. At best, players will feel good about doing it at a lower ilvl until they find out everyone can do it, and at worst, it can scare off the players who Delves are specifically targeted. I wish we could see data on the attempt and clear rates on Delves for players who don’t raid or participate in Mythic+. That’s a data set which would give a ton of information.

Delves are a great idea; seeing so many people enjoy them has been a blast. I’m sure we’ll see some more iterations on them for next season. I just worry that the players for whom delves are supposed to be for will quit before then.



In this column, Robin explores everything World of Warcraft, covering its past, current and future.


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Robin Baird

Robin loves RPGs, MMOs, JRPGs, Action, and Adventure games... also puzzle games... and platformers... and exploration games... there are very few games she isn't interested in. When it comes to MMOs she focuses on WoW and GW2 but will pick-up other games as they catch her fancy. She's a habitual returner to FFXIV because that game is an all-around great MMO.