The Maw, why does no one like it?

Community General Discussion
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What is everyone’s beef with the Maw?

I didn’t play it while it was relevant

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It was most frustrating part of Shadowlands.

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We might bump into Sylvanas and be regaled with her tales of woe is me…

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Yeah but why?

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Did you play it while it was current content? Anyway, there are many reasons to dislike it, I’ll name a few:

  • No mount (aka walking simulator)

  • Dreary music/atmosphere

  • Timegated activities (get in/get out fast)

  • Death penalty

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For me the maw was just an annoying zone. You couldnt mount in there, there were mobs all over the place, swirlies to dodge all the time and the theme of the zone felt very meh to me. I went back to finish some quests there few week back and it just struck me how depressing that zone is. And yeah, it makes sense since its some sort of hell, but i just didnt like it at all. I did like torghast though and the raid in there.

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Dark, dingey, samey, depressing, and just a slog to get from A to B.

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I only went back to complete stuff there in DF as I didn’t play SL when it was live. Even then it was annoying at first and that was being at max level. For me it was the no mount and the death penalty but as soon as you can overcome them, it isn’t too bad. I don’t like no flying there though.

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What’s the death penalty all about?

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Also known as the “Eye of the jailer” mechanic:

As you progress through the Maw, slaying Mawsworn and dismantling the Jailer’s forces, the Jailer will notice your presence. Completing quests, opening treasures, and defeating rare enemies in the Maw will attract the Eye of the Jailer . The master of the Maw will torment you with increasingly treacherous punishments—including siege fire that will deal devastating damage and assassins that will hunt you down. There are five different Threat Levels. Once you reach Threat Level 5, your life will be siphoned until you fall, and you will not be able to re-enter the Maw again until the next day.

Once this was removed and you could mount up, i actually enjoyed the maw

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You lose Stygia when you die and need to go back to your corpse to recover some of it or something like that.

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That zone personifies the word tedious.

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Do you like walking on Lego blocks while doing dailies?
Yeah, me neither.

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-The place looks extremely depressing
-The music is depressing
-Originally you could not use mounts in there so it was boring slow walking sim
-Timegated content
-Death penalty
-Only few quests
-If you wanted to progress it was mandatory
-Didn’t help that torgast had same aesthetics

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Here’s the unpopular opinion on why it was hated: It massively hurt the careless, pull-everything-and-AoE quick playstyle that the game has conditioned players to be the only viable way of playing.

  • No ground mount (let alone flying) meant that they couldn’t run immediately to their desired targets, kill them and get out immediately without interacting with any other enemy in the entire map.
  • The Eye meant that even with walking mode they had to avoid undesired enemies and also limited ultrafarming that would allow players to complete that content within a few weeks.
  • Some of the enemy packs were not doable solo at first and required partying up. This upset players who were used to soloing everything that wasn’t a raid boss.

And then there was Blizzard which, due to the troubled development of Shadowlands, attempted to overextend the grind by providing dripping hard-capped progress which at its initial rate would have required months of farming every day the absolute maximum to complete. The gloom appearance and uninteresting music outside of maxxed eye-threat, even if only for ambience, didn’t help either.

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It also ruined an achievement.

This. exactly this.

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The lightning gave me an instant head ache and I found it difficult to see things. This was worse in the parts where ghosts are floating about than in the area right when entering from Oribos, but still, not worth playing something that makes you borderline sick.

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It honestly felt like a punishment, especially at the beginning.

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Maw was great. It’s literally wow’s hell, but some people expected sunshine and bunnies hopping in the fields.

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Couldn’t ride a mount, you lost stuff when you died, there was a timer basically, it was godawful ugly and depressing.

Just because it was ‘WoW hell’ doesn’t mean it should be ‘player hell’.
Fun is always first and foremost. And the Maw had absolutely none of that.

3 Likes