How does Blizzard find The Maw fun?

This is mostly just a rant, but I needed to put it out somewhere.

At the start of Shadowlands, I went to The Maw maybe three or four times, nothing significant. I wasn’t interested in Venari rep, and beat Torghast fairly early on, so there was no reason for me to go besides standing by the lava to get the 5/10/15/20 Lost Souls for the weekly. After upgrading my covenant sanctum (Night Fae) to level 3, I found I needed more spirits for the 3-day-lootboxes in the garden, and knew Venari quests was the way to do it.

My Maw experience this afternoon is possibly one of the worst gameplay experiences I’ve had in WoW, if not in gaming. The lack of mounting is passable at first, since I play a priest with decent mobility (Angelic Feather, Spiritshape), but the more time I spend in The Maw the more unpleasant it becomes, and that’s a part of the design. What sort of developer designs a zone that is supposed to become less fun the more time you spend there?

If the Eye of The Jailer stages were health/damage debuffs, I could maybe see the appeal (enemies get more powerful the longer you stay), but instead the focus seems to be solely on mobility. You are nuked from orbit if you stand still too long; if you are running, you can get shackled down, and have to manually disable every single shackle; if you are fighting an enemy, an assassin will appear from behind and daze you; and, to top it all off, even if you do everything right, an angel of death can just decide to halt whatever you’re doing and carry you off.

The fact that The Maw already by design removes the one major form of player mobility (mounting) makes these stacking forms of mobility halters an utter nightmare to play against. Sure, the lore is that The Maw is an oppressive and awful place to be, but why in God’s name would this mean the zone is designed to be a terrible gameplay experience? Hades is set in The Underworld, and doesn’t decide that, because of this, the gameplay must be atrocious. Doom is set in Hell, and doesn’t try to enforce a fantasy that you are being strangled alive by your computer. These games focus on an oppressive atmosphere as opposed to an oppression gameplay loop.

The fact that 9.1 is also focusing on The Maw can only lead me to believe Blizzard was developing 9.1 simultaneously with Shadowlands (and thus was too far along to scrap the main concept), or they genuinely believe this nightmare was a success and want to double-down on the system. It’s plain ignorance, and if anyone reading this has gotten enjoy out of The Maw, I’d appreciate knowing what it is about this zone you find fun. Because, ultimately, that is a game’s goal; to be an enjoyable investment of time.

None of these arguments are new or unique, but after the hours I spent trying to get just a few seeds for my garden, I’m already feeling done with WoW for the week. No game should design itself around causing player fatigue. I’ve played this game since Cataclysm, and Timeless Isle did everything The Maw wants to be, so, so much better, nearly a decade ago.

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Developers heard people loved Classic, so decided to try a zone that is more like Classic - i.e. unrewarding, misdesigned afterthought that seems to hate the player. They just didn’t realize that players who want to play Classic are already doing that.

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I agree the Maw in its current form is A pretty awful place to be. I also tend to avoid it as much as possible at the moment. However, I believe that there will be some improvements come 9.1. I know that mounts will be usable which will help.

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There is nothing to enjoy in the Maw. Unless your a class that has travel form then it’s bearable.

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I really wish they’d stop this ‘Classic is amazing we must add elements to Retail’. Although some players will delve into both, I think we can safely say the bulk of Retail players do not enjoy any kind of Classic metrics in Retail. There will always be a minority that wants Retail to become just like Classic ofc.

You are not alone and as someone who has done the Ven’ari grind and got the Twisting Corridors mount more or less as I hit exalted, it is a horrible place. My dailies are much faster now I can mount and I still do it as part of my daily routine but it’s just meh. The whole place is meh. It’s not dangerous it’s just a tedious chore which is exacerbated by the lack of mounting options.

The good news is that in 9.1 everyone will able to use any mount and the Jailer’s eye mechanic should go.

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That’s a nice exposition about The Maw, but I think you have the wrong handle on this:

The part of The Maw in 9.1 is not part of The Maw. It’s a whole completely different zone the Jailer yoinked in there. It will apparently be very very different, and there will be no more unmounted travel or Eye of the Jailer nonsense.

The Maw of 9.0 is already dead now.

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I only endured the Maw for that once a week Renown level, and now I endure it for the 500 anima once a week. The only Ven’ari rep I do, I have barely touched her “story” quests, is one or two rares and one or two quick weekly.

But now that I have the soul shapes I want, and the upgrades take like 10k anima the soul quest feels useless. I kept going a bit for the crafting thing that rise iLv until I realized that are BoP and I have to do everything on my alts anyway to get them, I feel kind of done with the Maw and everything else.

I don’t raid or m+ so I guess I can finally start to try to get the story from the other covenants.

The bad news is, nobody will be going to the Maw for any reason anyway :joy_cat:

20 souls, hearthstone, that’ll do.

(Wouldn’t mind if Torghast runs gave some Venari rep though.)

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Depends what we get in the new part of the Maw where the raid will be.

I’m sure there’ll be at least one new currency to grind for - question is whether it will be worth the effort. Seems like most people decided it wasn’t in 9.0…

It’s been confirmed there will be a new grind with Ven’ari to socket the new gear you will get in 9.1

And I confirm that I won’t be doing that grind either :joy_cat:

Give me a grind that I can do via any content I prefer, then I’m interested, but expecting solo grinds just doesn’t work for me. I don’t have enough game time to be wasting it on stuff I’m not interested in.

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Socket gear? That requires exalted with the maw, or whatever the name is :joy:

my biggest issue is the constant mobs that i cant avoid. I just want to go to where i have to go to do the quest, why do i have to fight 8 million trash, including tough elites, waste all my cds, die and lose my stygia, run back. Its just a pain in the a. And i wont even mention the Hunts that i still have no idea what exactly they are or how to do them. I tried doing it once and each elite i fought was like a dungeon boss for christ sake to get 1% of the bar or something like that

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Road mobs annoy me.

Doorbell rang, torpedoed to the road, answered the door. 60 seconds later, came back; dead.

At least my stygia was easy to retrieve, but still. Out of combat on a road should stay out of combat. It is not necessary that every square foot of land be within aggro range of something. Let us have some areas that are just… quiet. And no, I don’t care about “but the Maw is supposed to be horrible”.

You wouldn’t say your game is supposed to be annoying; we call that bad design.

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Urgh and that second eye level. Which pretty much means even as a Rogue: you can’t do a quick afk because you’ll get bombed.

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Really annoys me when I get that 700 sygia quest to go into that hold place to kill some elites and by the time i done with that one quest im 2/3rds of the way being nuked by the Jailer for my trouble. Decided not to bother with that one.

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I found a lot of up above things on grapple hooks were the only safe spots but I think that is a rep perk, you buy the ability to use grapple hook.

I think I do actually have that, I just forget about it.

Also I literally grab my 20 souls and hearthstone, so I’m probably not anywhere near a grapple point anyway. Even doing that gets me 2 eye levels of annoyance :confused:

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I agree you still have to not trigger an assassin, so wont work for long.

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