Delves

Delves are the best thing Blizzard has added to WoW in years, and I say that as someone who has been around long enough to be suspicious of every new system they roll out. Usually the new shiny thing is a grind wearing a costume. This one isn't. Delves are the first piece of endgame in a long time that was built for the exact player I actually am, and I didn't realize how much I'd been waiting for it until it showed up.

Here's the pitch. Small, self-contained dungeon-shaped chunks you can run solo or with a couple of friends. They scale, so a tier 1 is a walk and a tier 11 will absolutely end you if you get sloppy. You bring a companion along who levels up over the season and fights at your side. It started with Brann Bronzebeard back in War Within, who you could spec to either patch you up, tank or add damage. These days, in Midnight, it's Valeera Sanguinar riding shotgun instead. Either way the point is the same, a partner who makes solo not feel quite so solo. That's it. No group finder anxiety, no linking your score to a stranger who's going to leave after one bad pull, no signing up for a schedule. You log in, you run a delve, you get something for it.

And the something actually matters. That's the part that still surprises me. For most of WoW's history, if you weren't raiding or pushing high Mythic+ keys, the game quietly told you the good gear wasn't for you. You could do LFR and the occasional normal and cap out somewhere respectable but distinctly second-tier. Delves broke that. The coffer keys, the Great Vault slot, the gilded stuff at the higher tiers, it's real gear at a real item level, and I earned every piece of it by myself on my own clock. A solo player finally has a lane to competitive gear that doesn't run through 19 other people.

For the warlock plan this is the whole ballgame. I've parked the alts, I'm going all-in on one character for once in my life, and delves are how that character stays geared without me having to become a raider at 56. Renown, a steady delve habit, the vault every week, and the blues slowly get replaced with things I'm not embarrassed to be wearing. Except for pants.  Pants never drop for me.  From anything.  

It's a progression path that fits the amount of time I actually have, which is not a sentence I've been able to write about WoW's endgame in about a decade.

They're not flawless. The companion AI does things that make me want to reach through the screen and smack it upside the head. The difficulty spikes between tiers can be rude if you're undergeared and stubborn, which I always am. And there's an end boss at the very top that rotates with the seasons. Zekvir was the first, back in War Within, the one who taught everybody that "solo content" doesn't mean "easy content." Nullaeus closed out the just-finished first season of Midnight and carried on the fine tradition of separating me from my repair money. Whoever's sitting up there, the lesson lands the same way.

But none of that touches the core of it. Delves respect my time and they respect the fact that I mostly play alone these days. They gave the solo, semi-committed, one-character-at-a-time player a real seat at the table instead of a folding chair by the door. Nineteen years in to this game for me, that's not a small thing. That's Blizzard finally building something for the guy who's still logging in on a Tuesday night with 45 minutes and no group.

More of this, please. Fewer costumes on grinds.

That's it for now! 

Cheers!

Joar