Delves have given WoW’s devs the confidence to put mandatory grinds firmly in the rear-view, says game director Ion Hazzikostas

World of Warcraft, in case you haven’t been keeping tabs since the mass exoduses of Shadowlands, has been on a bit of a self improvement kick lately. It hasn’t all been roses, mind, but as an occasional dabbler, I’m feeling downright positive about the overall shift away from borrowed power systems and into things the players might conceivably have fun with.

Looking at it today, you wouldn’t think this was once an MMO that suffered random content droughts. Instead, WoW players are getting mad about the usual things—perceived balance sleights, gulp frogs, and uh. Super-expensive FOMO mounts. Alright, maybe there are still some areas for improvement, but still, nature is healing, and the roadmaps are being stuck to with admirable consistency.

Speaking to both game director Ion Hazzikostas and associate design director Maria Hamilton at an event last week—celebrating the release of the goblin-themed major patch, Undermine(d)—I asked how they felt things were going. It’s one thing to promise three expansions, and to commit to evergreen content like skyriding and warbands and delves. It’s another thing to, well, actually be doing it for a few consecutive months. From the dev’s point of view?

“Actually,” Hazzikostas says, “before you sat down, Maria and I were chatting about how much fun we’ve had as players, exploring and really jumping into that playstyle—the flexibility that it adds. I think our hope—my honest ambition—when we first started planning delves was that it would be able to take its place as a mainstay of our endgame ecosystem, a true new progression path alongside dungeons and raids and so forth … we were penciling in plans for [the next expansion, Midnight]’s delves and beyond.

“They’ve just been completely embraced in recent months, and there are tons of players who previously felt like their personal progression journey came to an end once they finished the outdoor world quest lines and campaigns, because [they] weren’t looking to do organized group content, and so there wasn’t anything else for them to strive for. And delves are great bite-sized adventures that I think are going to be a lynchpin of how we do world building, storytelling and endgame progression for years to come.”

That’s not to say delves themselves have landed flawlessly—again, this is an MMO, you’re gonna have balance problems and glitches—but as a defender of the midcore crowd myself, I’ve certainly got much to do if I’m playing on my lonesome, and an opportunity to do content that actually keeps me awake. For Hazzikostas, though, delves represent more than just serving a particular crowd: They’re an example of how WoW’s going to approach its endgame content for years to come.

“I think, in the past, at times, when we added new modes of gameplay, we felt obligated to incentivize players to do it to the point of it being required … with delves we made a very conscious choice to say, ‘you know what? It just gives you gear’.

“If you don’t want to do delves, if you don’t enjoy it, no one’s forcing you to do it. And I think organically, seeing so many players embrace it is, I think, a testament to the overall success of the content, and a good reminder about how we should approach such things in the future.” If you like what The War Within’s been doing so far, then the future’s looking bright. And, er, optional.