Meet The Jormungar // Solo Dungeons?

I hope this creature is scaled to size like the picture cause I would be in my glory. To stand toe to toe with this thing would be epic. This is called a Jormungar. It's a new creature we'll be facing in Northrend.

"The fiercely aggressive Jormungar are a marvel of evolution, possessing rows of chisel-like teeth capable of boring through solid rock, as well as muscular, flattened bodies well adapted to rapid underground navigation.

Legends tell of the nerubians' using the jormungar as creatures of labor, forcing them to carve massive tunnels through Northrend's subterranean ice and lay the groundwork for the nerubians' ancient civilization. With the fall of the nerubian empire, swarms of rogue jormungar ran amok, drilling through the region's permafrost, attacking surface dwellers, and devouring everything in their path."

Serves those Nerubians' right... Silly spiders, Jormungars are for Pallys :-D.

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Another post which caught my eye on MMO-Champion is a thread on the WoW Forums asking for Solo Raid Content. The poster makes valid points:

"First I just want to say thank you Blizz for making such awesome games. I love to play WoW. However, I also love to solo. Unfortunately when it comes to endgame the two don’t mesh.

I understand that RAID = WORK and as such raiders should receive better rewards for working harder. I do not understand however why this reward should be seeing content. Isn’t better gear enough? How about titles? Shiny glowing auras to prove you’re better than everyone else?

I personally play for FUN not WORK. This along with the fact that I cannot schedule time to play a game (Well I could… but I would need to get a divorce first) is why I do not raid.

I think Blizzard is taking a step in the right direction with the upcoming xpac making all raids being able to be done with 10 or 25 person groups. I’d like to see this taken one step further. Make instances and raids have a solo setting and have the gear be one step lower. For example in WotLK if in 25 man mode the raid would drop Tier 9 gear then in 10 man it will drop Tier 8 gear and in Solo mode it should drop Tier 7 gear. This would serve two purposes.

1. It would give people that don’t like to group (like myself and many others) a chance to see all the content and enjoy this extremely well crafted story and game Blizzard has put together.

2. It would give new subscribers who do want to group a chance to catch up to their guilds and help raid without putting as much strain on guildmates to come back and help them with as much low content to get their new friend up to being raid capable. You do the raids on solo to get your T7 gear. You get 9 guildmates to give you a hand and do the raid again on 10 man and get your T8 gear. Then you are up to doing the 25 mans to start actually helping your guild progress.

I’m not asking to be handed anything easy. I would really like as much challenge as I can get. However I don’t want that challenge to come in the form of trying to get people together to do an instance/raid and dealing with all the crap that comes along with that (Idiots wiping the group, people having to leave in the middle of a session, loot ninjas, etc.)

I apologize for the wall of text, you may now proceed to flame."

Bornakk responded in a typical Blizzard. In short, 'Sorry we're not doing things that you like but, tough luck.'

"I understand your desire for this, but grouping up is an important part of the game, our goal with the 10 person raids is to making the raiding content feel a little less exclusive to players, but if you want to see everything then you would need to take on the challenges of every aspect of the game.

When the new expansions come out everybody has to level their characters up and at some point find new gear. This is a great opportunity for new players to get involved in their guilds if they are looking to take on a bigger roll in progression.

We do have a lot of solo-content available in the game as it is. You can level up to the max level, go through every zone, complete the vast majority of quests, enter battlegrounds and continually do a number of daily quests without ever grouping up with other players - but adding more variety to the game is important to a lot of people and that is where the 5 person and then 10/25 person raid dungeons come into play. These aspects are more challenging and so the story arcs they involve build up accordingly.

In short, we don't currently have any plans to add solo play to every aspect of World of Warcraft."

I feel Tremallyn's pain. I would love to go toe to toe with Illidan, but for someone who only gets to play 1-2 nights a week (for only an hour or two each time), it makes me miss out on the story. One way Blizzard can do this is to set up a Solo Instance for all dungeons. You will get to choose whether to solo it or raid it. If you choose solo, and beat the boss, you will never be able to go back in. The gates will be shut - the boss will be dead. Award honor instead of badges (because most solo players either do dailies or PVP at L70). Lets say, 25,000 honor for Grull, 50,000 honor for Illidan, etc etc. And maybe some dungeon marks which can be used as any of the battleground marks. Honor shouldn't be just for PVP. We're fighting in a war and you should get honor points for achieving a big goal in the storyline.