One Of WoW: Dragonflight’s Best New Features Is Plagued With Quitters, But Changes Are Coming Soon

Blizzard is set to introduce a slew of changes to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s new Solo Shuffle Arena mode in the coming weeks, with updates set to further punish players who leave mid-match and improve the experience for those who have to deal with the aftermath.

Formerly a limited-time PvP brawl, Solo Shuffle is now a new rated PvP mode in Dragonflight. It finally gives players who have always wanted to engage in rated PvP battles but didn’t want to find a whole rated Battleground team or multiple Arena partners a way to earn Conquest points and climb the PvP ladder. Even if Solo Shuffle queue times for DPS players have been long, the mode seems to have been well-received by the community.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest issues currently holding the mode back are players who choose to leave mid-game when a match might not be going their way. Leavers effectively punish all six players in a Solo Shuffle match, as no rating can be earned or lost by others in the match once someone quits. The issue is compounded with the long queue times most players have when trying to find a match. Spending 30 minutes in matchmaking to get into a match only for it to be completely thrown out the window when someone quits can be infuriating, to put it mildly.

In a post on the official WoW forums, Blizzard writes that improvements to the Solo Shuffle experience are on the way. A change coming with the game’s weekly reset on January 10 will make it so quitters will have both their current rating and their matchmaking rating negatively affected for leaving. That, however, is just the start. With the game’s 10.0.5 patch (which currently does not have an exact release date but is slated for early 2023), rating will still be calculated on a per-round basis in games with quitters. Matchmaking values will also be displayed in a match via the scoreboard, in order to “provide additional visibility” in regard to rating changes and how the game’s matchmaking system works.

Blizzard will additionally be making it more clear to leavers what exactly their punishment will be when quitting early via an in-game warning prompt, in order to further incentivize players to stick around. Players who repeatedly leave will be subject to “account review and suspensions,” according to Blizzard, “as abandoning matches repeatedly is a violation of the terms of service via exploiting functionality to the detriment of the game environment and the intended player experience.”

Looking even further ahead beyond patch 10.0.5, Blizzard states it is looking at ways to incentivize healers to queue for Solo Shuffle in order to reduce DPS queue times. Though Blizzard doesn’t share concrete plans, changes are being looked at that will make Solo Shuffle a “more fun, rewarding experience.”

Blizzard recently outlined its Dragonflight content roadmap for 2023, which will include two major content updates over the course of the year alongside more frequent minor updates. The first of those updates, patch 10.0.5, will introduce the new Trading Post feature where players can earn additional cosmetics for free.