For me it were progressive daily hubs ( molten front, argent, suramar, dominance offensive(this one wasn’t that good though) ,meaningful rewards not tons of recolours, solo player activities requiring skill or high ilvl like mage towers
some grinds that gave you more satisfaction than raiding sometimes.
Reps that required you to put your work ( current ones are good too, they aren’t enough tho)
Somehow I was always finding something to do between patch releases, now all I have to do is old content.
What do you miss in open world now that once kept it important?
Tbh I only played open world content, during Vanilla, TBC, Legion and BFA, because of: Dungeon anxiety.
Messing up, body pulling and doing mistakes.
In Dragonflight, because I have 25 characters at level 70, means I can do the same LFD/LFR 25 more times, than usual.
It’s difficult at first, but because, I’m repeating the same content 25 times more, than I would with one character, like in other expansions, that anxiety is gone, after the first characters, go through it.
This is basically the reason, why I haven’t touched, outside content this expansion.
I would love to go out and explore on my Dragon the outside world, but unfortunately, after not playing SL, I’m too addicted to instanced content, especially 25 players instance.
that’s literally why you have normal heroic and m0 dungeons that are so easy you can’t mess them up to learn, anyway this post is not about dungeons. it’s about open world activity but yeah, guess you thought it’s important to say somehow
Open world is important, but in my case, to answer the question: I don’t miss anything.
The only thing that made open world important for me, was because I was too scared to play with others, inside a dungeon. That’s why I leveled my BE Paladin, from another account, entirely outside, during BFA.
This is why, I no longer do outside activities, not because, they aren’t fun, but because you can do too many things in instanced content, that I would usually do outside like: leveling up (LFD), getting gear, getting reputation (Like the faction races reputation, wearing tabards) also: grinding (transmoggs, bonus rewards, pets, mounts etc.).
BfA had excellent zone design with really good themes / atmosphere. It also had great Warmode design and the additional zones’ activities were interesting and fun. I enjoyed just being in the game at that time.
SL less so, Warmode sucked but the zones were still reasonably good and the four covenants gave enough variety to make levelling alts interesting. I did really like ZM, though.
DF zones are hit-and-miss imho and the dragon theme was passé before DF even went into production. The two new zones are the worst since I started playing (2017), the lack of daily WQ means that the content lives or dies by the events. The problem with DF is that the events are designed around having 20-30 players involved, which means doing raid groups, which means it stops feeling like open-world content. Also, out of the events I’d say only half of them are enjoyable and the others feel like a chore (the Superbloom is a good example of how a bad event kills a zone).
Leveling being an adventure in and of itself
now its just a hurdle to get across thanks to just how unchallanging its become
it shouldn’t be hard, but currently its like playing a single player game with instakill and godmode cheats on on most classes
there is no challenge at any point for multiple hours of that journey
as for endgame I didn’t really do anything outside of getting gold from dailies or WQ’s
I don’t find most content island patches engaging, nor most of the outdoors events we’ve had
the first time playing through a story questchain is usually nice but repetitive content in the open world I usually just avoid nowadays
I think dailies, no matter what the format is get boring after a while because you are just repeating the same quests over and over, even if there is a small variation in them.
I’m not someone who was keen on the Mage Tower, but I’m not saying they shouldn’t be in the game.
I always have a great big list of stuff left to do in downtime. I’m just glad we’re actually getting downtime again. I have the time to go do old farms etc because I’m not having to grind constantly.
The Argent Tournament was nice back in the day because standards were at the point where simply doing quests felt nice, but that doesn’t work anymore. I’m no more entertained by “go here and kill/grab this” quests over and over again. Even during Legion, WQs were tedious (at least the atmosphere and game setup was nice).
I enjoyed having some content i could do solo or with some friends if we werent enough for doing m+. Like the visions of n’zoth or island expeditions in bfa. Or torghast in SL (i actually genuinely enjoyed torghast). I have never been much of a grinder, so i never did the grinds everyone «had» to do.
I feel like if the rewards arent worth my time (100th recolor of the same mount) and there is no challenge whatsoever I just cant bring myself to grind it out. Unfortunately DFs world content is full of that. I miss content like visions or meta achievs that gave you unique mounts, even the covenant sets from SL were awesome.
On the side note I am really bored with these events from DF, like really fed up with them. The timer, the afks, the boring activities make me want to log off immediately. Fingers crossed that they will scrap world events in TWW.
I’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again.
GW2 has done open world content really well. Now that we’ve stolen skyscale/dragonriding maybe bliz could steal their open world design as well.
It’s more about dynamic events, where there is danger of failing.
For example a random event starts on the map, bandits are attacking a farm stealing all the food.
Depending on if players succeed or fail in defending said farm, leads into different events afterwards. Could be that if you failed you’re sent on to find allies to retake the farm.
If you succeeded you might go infiltrate a bandit camp to recover some of the stolen food ect.
Then you have the big meta events that are much grander in scale. Where you might be fighting “the big bad of the expansion” after having prepared the canons to assist you, and defeat serval of his lieutenants before hand.
Then you have all the world bosses that are still relevant.
To give you an idea look at this link, basically timers for when the bigger events start… They’ve managed to make the world feel alive, and there being actual danger of failing, and because of the way their reward structure works, no content ever get’s really outdated, it’s all relevant. the “vanilla” world bosses still give relevant rewards a decade later ect. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers
The very structure of the world promotes exploration where you stumble upon the smaller events rather than “go to daily hub and pick up 5 quests, go kill 50mobs” thing that wow has going.
I havent played gw2 alot, but i really enjoyed the open world content there and how you’re just suddenly in the middle of some event. Also liked working on the map completions.
Q: What kept you busy in old expansions?
A: Casual leveling several classes through all of that majestic game world.
Q: Did you play end game open world?
A: For some awkward reason, never. I’m like an identical magnet to current patch, as I’m approaching, I stop as hard as possible. SoD is the first time I actually caught up.
Q: Did you find open world rewarding?
A: Frankly no. I did play some dungeons, so the rewards were always irrelevant. By the time I got the reputation (usually requiring a massive dungeon grind or 30-60 days of dailies), I’d have better. Of course I got the pets and enjoyed some mounts (rode Nether Rays and then Netherwing Drakes for a while).
Q: What do you miss in open world now that once kept it important?
A1: Meaningful combat. Press right click to delete is not my thing.
A2: I still enjoy roaming and exploring. Some zones are too bland for me. The horde starter in WoD and Azsuna or Legion were really uninspiring. On the other hand, I can spend virtually any amount of time in Classic Ashenvale, Stranglethorn, Tanaris, Netherstorm.
A3: I love the dark industrial ambient music of BC Outland. Excellent for immersion. I’m pondering to catalogue D3 music for certain WoW zones.
and doing mistakes.