After 20 years, it is now possible for solo players to finish stories in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. world of warcraft which previously required a group to do an intensive raid.
This is thanks to “Story Mode”, a new raid difficulty that was added for the final wing of the first raid of the recently released The internal war expansion.
Over the years, developer Blizzard has expanded raid difficulty options to accommodate various players and communities in terms of play styles. The main difficulty is Mythic, where hardcore semi-pro guilds compete. Below is Heroic, where serious capital-G players coordinate with friends on weekly raid schedules to progress. Then there's Normal, which still requires some coordination but isn't as challenging and can usually be completed by a pickup party in a few tries.
The most accessible difficulty is Raid Finder, where you are automatically matched with random players to complete a much easier version of a raid. Now Story Mode has been added and it's even easier than Raid Finder.
How Story Mode Works
In Story mode, you fight alone against the raid's final boss, which has been reduced in stats and complexity to make it beatable by a single player or a very small group of friends. Challenging encounter mechanics were removed and the entire fight was reorganized to focus solely on the narrative aspects.
There are some rewards, but they are not the same as in more difficult raids; The objective was to avoid making the experience cheaper for those who do I want to go to the end.
So far, Story Mode is available exclusively for the newest raid, which is called Nerub-ar Palace. He hasn't been available for other matches yet, but Blizzard has hinted that this could be the long-term goal.
Supports new (well, actually, old) play styles
Throughout WowThroughout history, it has been common for the conclusion of a major story to involve defeating the final boss of a raid or dungeon. In previous years, the raid finder didn't exist, so only a small percentage of players who were willing to take on intense raids could see those narrative results.