What I loved about the timeless isle

Community General Discussion
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It has been a long time since the release of the timeless isle and looking back made me wonder what I loved the most of that sandbox isle that somehow kept me entertained even in a patch that lasted 14 months. The zone had little to no story, the more you uncover in that isle the more questions you are left with, this made speculating the future of warcraft fun, well people kept talking about a south sea expansion but still interesting. As small as the island was, it sparked some sense of exploration for me. There wasn’t a shadow looming above me telling me what I am supposed to be doing, the treasures were not marked on my map and they did not award vendor trash almost all the time. The music speaks for itself, every time the MoP timewalking event takes me back there, I just let that beautiful mystic music take me, to be immersed by sound alone is just amazing.

I feel like this zone had experienced so much love in a development perspective and I wish if blizzard would turn every single zone in the game into its own timeless isle and not limit the experience to one island alone. My idea is this; have a separate team of developers whose sole purpose is adding the RPG elements to the outdoor world. These changes will not be revealed to the player base because it will be for the player to discover them. Imagine an experienced player roaming the wastes of desolace on an alt and coming across a cave. Despite leveling 3 different toons, the player does not recognize that cave, he just sees it, no quest took him there, he just saw it on his way to a nearby camp. So he/she goes inside and finds centaurs with a different name than the normal ones in desolace, and as the player explores the cave they come in contact with some blues/greens that are found in chests with unique skins or colors that they never thought to encounter in desolace. How great would that be?

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I really disliked the Timeless Isle, it had no proper hub or dailies and everything was just a grind.

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I didn’t like it either. It felt boring. I went there on the patch day and didn’t return for a long time.

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N-o-thing.

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I liked Timeless Isle because it felt like such a nice little gathering place for your server (back then, servers were still somewhat isolated though I think some realms were connected).

The only part about Timeless Isle I hated were Bloody Coins. I spent hours upon hours arguing with people on the forums about what a terrible game mechanic it really was, I think some folks here might remember that lol

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5.2: Isle of Thunder. No flying. Rigid structure, dailies for rep, progressive unlock, scenarios to be completed for each stage, weekly scenario for treasure, gimmicks. Daily rares worth doing. Heavy, threatening atmosphere. Big enough that the whole island couldn’t group. Big enough to mostly avoid PvP on PvP realms.

5.4 Timeless Isle. No flying. Almost no structure, pretty much optional dailies, with rep mostly for a mount, no unlocks. Lots of rares infinitely repeatable, worth doing for low gear and currency. Collerctor’s paradise (or hell!). Amazing progression feeling for people starting with low gear. Bright, cheerful ambiance. Small enough to get pretty much the whole island together for something like Ship or Evermaw. Small enough to make it almost off-limits to the minority faction on PvP realms, which was a shame.

Both brilliant, brilliant designs in different ways, appealing perhaps to different people. I went to Timeless on the last evening of Mists, when nobody needed anything from there, and on my PvE realm, the place was still hopping with cries of “Ship up!” and people pulling Archie. On IoT, people were pulling Haywire on the beach.

Blizzard have never been able to recapture what they did in either one of those.

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Timeless Isle was (is) kind of cheesy with all the pop-up “treasures”, identi-kit elite mobs and jumping puzzles. I go there for the pet battle arena thingy but that’s all.

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I didn’t like it either. Felt shallow and grindy.

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Looking back at it I played a lot on the timeless isle and I remember it fondly.
I don’t remember the negative feelings I had with it, could be the nostalgia talking… :wink:

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What I hate about the timeless isles: the f@cking drop rates. 1% chance for such long spawns is not ok. As a player who has obtained every single pet that can drop from rares in the timeless isles (gifted them away for personal reasons) I hated every moment of it. If I ever decide to get them back I would much rather grind gold than kill any of these mobs again.

For me the drop rate of pets in warfronts with a cooldown is much better.

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