Dungeons and raids have been core to World of Warcraft's endgame progression for most of the 20 years it's been around. You level up, you run dungeons, and then you do raids. There have been a few other ways of getting loot, but to get the best loot, you had to group up.
The War Within introduced Delves, mini dungeons scattered throughout the world that are designed for solo players. They scale up in difficulty and reward items that are on par with the kind of gear you previously could only find in group activities. Delves were destined to shake up WoW's endgame progression, but egregious bugs with enemy damage and health scaling early in the expansion had players questioning their purpose.
Now over two months into the expansion, Blizzard has fixed the worst issues with Delves and players are starting to adjust to the idea of dungeons that are harder in a group than they are on your own. However, there are still problems with how punishing they can be for certain classes compared to others and how much of a pain it is to manage your mouthy NPC partner Brann Bronzebeard.
Brann will finally be able to tank for you in addition to his existing healer and damage dealer roles.
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, game director Ion Hazzikostas didn't mention whether Brann will be any quieter in The War Within's second season, but he did confirm that he'll finally be able to tank for you in addition to his existing healer and damage dealer roles. Hazzikostas said it will "help a lot" for solo healer players who don't want to swap their specialization just to be able to finish high-tier Delves. Brann will also get a new set of curios to find and upgrade within the two new goblin-themed Delves coming in patch 11.1.
Outside of Brann's new role, Delves don't have any major changes on the way. Hazzikostas said Blizzard is "happy with this as a starting point," and that it will expand on them as the expansion continues.
"[There are] definitely some regrets and lessons learned. As has been discussed in the past, there were a couple of tricky bugs with scaling that, until we realized that there were bugs, it led to some very wild over-corrections and tuning," he said. Once those were fixed, the team focused on "tweaking a few pain points here and there, specific encounters, specific bosses that we were seeing frustrate players," he added.
"But otherwise, players are having a ton of fun. We're really excited about the emergence of Delves taking root as a new pillar of the WoW endgame, alongside raids, dungeons, and PvP, which is exactly what we'd hoped it would be when we set out to create the feature."
I'm not sure you could insert a new endgame feature as unique as Delves without pissing a few people off. We're talking about a part of the game that hasn't dramatically changed for over a decade and is where you find its most dedicated—and loudest—players.
"They're not everyone's cup of tea, but for many players, they enjoy the feeling of progression, of getting stronger, overcoming a challenge," Hazzikostas said. "And I think in the past, that gameplay was really limited to people who were playing in groups. There wasn't a challenge to be found for you as a solo player, other than one-off things like the Mage Tower back in Legion. And so I think giving players, of all play styles, a chance to have goals to work towards is something that we're very excited about."
It feels like everyone will have something to enjoy over the next year of WoW. The MMO will give you the keys to a goblin hotrod with the ability to drift in patch 11.1. And in the next expansion, WoW will finally get player housing, a feature that players have spent almost 20 years asking for.
