Why not? It works for Apple and their phones.
Timeless Isle deserves respect because it was the first time that they fully capitalized on the “dopamine secretion exploitation” with those zones; every few seconds the player was triggered to get some new loot from a rare and people followed each other like a mob too; it was bright and shiny too which gave it the most happy feeling in all the iterations of that zone type.
But as its implied by the character of the method itself (dopamine secretion exploitation): it’s something that gets old fast or it will get old eventually and most players that value their time should not respect game types like that too much.
They should design new systems that rewards skill and not “completionism” as much or at least if you still exploit completionism obsession: do it with a new way.
timeless isle was always fun for me. pandaria was new and diverse area and well designed, there was nothing to hate (except for the traditional long wait between the last patch to next expansion.
tanaan jungle dailies was not as important for high-end stuff as korthia.
also, korthia is an extension of the Maw. a region that is widely hated among players, while tanaan jungle was in wod, wod wasnt hated, just severely lacked the things MoP had.
lots of players played WoD.
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It was definitely the best iteration of those loot piñata islands, but even that got repetitive to me because I played it for a long time.
I even ended up getting the dragon mount with no good luck with drops at all so we can say I played it a lot.
everything gets repetitive. but the fact that you enjoyed it for a long time says something.
MoP got a bad name, while it was one of the best expansion blizzard ever made.
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Not sure you got the crowd’s sentiment correctly there when you said WoD was not hated and MoP has a bad name. WoD had the worst name of every expansion ever until at least BfA (and MoP was loved a lot by the Cata haters who were a ton).
I personally liked WoD though because professions are a secondary hobby in the game to me and the garrison was like a little factory for them (I also found Cata good compared to what the haters of it portrayed it to be at least).
The first priority for me, with ANY zone, is : Do I want to be there? Is it enjoyable just to sit, and watch, and listen to the music and the sounds? That’s numbers 1 through 10 on my list of priorities. EVERYTHING else is far, far down.
I still go back to some old zones, and Timeless Isle, just to see the place.
For a farming zone like Tanaan or Korthia, where we are expected to spend significant time, this is even more important.
Jeff Kaplan delivered a speech on lessons learned from TBC long ago, in which he stressed that if the devs want people to spend time in a zone, the zone must not be oppressive.
Korthia isn’t quite oppressive - in fact, for Shadowlands it’s relatively light - but it’s nowhere I’d want to build a summer cabin. Mind you, neither was Tanaan.
It’s better than Broken Shore, i suppose.
Ishayo above has a good list.
“Korthia doesn’t have more difficult areas.” Yup. All very monotonous.
“Korthia’s events are pretty bland.” Korthia has events? … oh, yeah. Kind of proves the point.
“Korthia is not in any way difficult anywhere. Korthia has far greater mob density and loves to annoy you with it.” Um. Personally, I would agree with the first statement, but I have three people who couldn’t handle it. I helped two of them to learn their tank spec so they can survive; the game has lost the third. The mob density was a large part of the problem.
“Korthia has some truly awful quests like that one with wings and catch balls.” Yeah, but I’m not going to put that on Korthia specifically. The devs have beel allowed to get away with putting their personal vanities in the game for years now; Korthia just continues the pattern.
“Korthia has a huge power bonus for grinding its dailies.” Yeah. Raiders and all need to go there. It’s “mandatory”, unlike Tanaan, which emptied after 3 weeks to get flying.
Like Tanaan, very few people actually want to be there.
Like Tanaan, there are no interesting encounters. (Compare Timeless and Isle of Thunder, where we were spoiled with well-designed mobs and rares.)
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In general the ending parts of your post remind me that even if those zones aren’t great: they shouldn’t last for more than 2-3 weeks. It’s just dull; and I mean that even for Timeless Isle; Timeless Isle was great for the time but now that we’ve seen a dozen of loot pinata islands: they shouldn’t last for long.
Just put the players there to do something basic like unlocking part of the expac; do it for 2-3 weeks max; let the players do nothing at all (in order to be optimal at player power) compared to having to be there.
I went back to Timeless on the last night before WoD to say goodbye to the place.
On my small realm, there were HUNDREDS of people still there, asking when Huolon last spawned, or calling that Ship was up. Nobody needed anything from Timeless by then; they were just enjoying the place.
That was the way to do it.
I think Isle of Thunder would have been equally successful if it had been an end of expansion patch that went on that long. I think it would have been more successful if it had a slightly less depressing atmosphere.
There are LOTS of people who enjoy that gamestyle. But Korthia doesn’t cut it.
Let me tell a harsh truth: World content is inherently unfun and grindy.
There is no good way to make it interesting.
If Blizzard makes it challenging (which is subjective) it risks making it too oppressive and excluding for a lot of the playerbase. If Blizzard makes it easy, it’s going to end up being boring.
Oh, people are complaining that Korthia has no Elite areas with tougher mobs?
Wait, weren’t the same people complaining about the Elite areas in the previous Shadowlands zones?
You guys gotta decide.
I think a lot has to do with the aesthetics. People love bright settings because they look hopeful; or/and they like the gradual progression from light to darkness (e.g. Ulduar or Timeless Isle).
I think some raids or zones really overdo it with the hellish pattern; I don’t want to see demons from hell 24/7; someone at blizzard is really into black metal I guess.
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My favorite is the plant mob in the Rift that roots of you for 5 seconds, such fun 
You can even tell the person who put it there put it in annoying spots on purpose like near the safe zone where you can find like 8 of them almost next to each other.
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I like both.
Can’t fly in Korthia
Also we have to go back to base if we wanna reach special area
Korthia is very single player friendly.
Tanaan Jungle had some elements that were dependent on a group.
Generally speaking the design structure is quite similar.
These type of zones generally operate with the same objective design, slight sandbox layout, sprinkled with rare encounters, events and secret treasures.
So they’re variations on a theme, but still different and enjoyable in their own right, I think.
Between Tanaan Jungle, The Broken Shore, Argus, Mechagon, Nazjatar, and Korthia, it’s a fair mix of different game experiences I think. And not everyone has necessarily played through everything, so I don’t see the harm in finding inspiration in past zones.
I suppose the counter opposite to these kind of zones would be something like The Isle of Quel’danas or The Molten Front where the gameplay emphasis is on incrementally building a base and increasing your gameplay objectives and such.
There’s something to be said for those zone designs as well.
Fair point.
Early in 9.1 we had massive whines about how getting to the raid boss in maw is hard because “he’s in area surrounded by elites”.
So apparently not everyone likes a dangerous part of a zone, not when it gets in the way of their loot at least.
For every person who wants a dangerous elite area there are ten more who want to straight safe passage into a semi-afk world boss fight so they can just roll the dice for a purple. Game play and immersion be damned.
I’ve always enjoyed the Maw. Maybe the aesthetics get a bit samey but it’s an area of the world where you can’t just afk where you like and there are parts which are dangerous, which makes sense given it’s the jailers doorstep. But it seems a fair amount of people want danger without actually being in danger.
Like, tough mobs, but mobs far out of the way so you never have to encounter them unless you want to. Like what? The mob density of the maw is a big part of what actually sells it properly. Nowhere is safe. That’s the point.
In other zones we can argue this sure, but for a zone like the maw (and areas of Korthia where the jailer is occupying) yea there absolutely should be high mob density. Otherwise you don’t really sell the urgency of the threat so you? “Oh man this big bad dude is gonna smash us all but his forces are nowhere to be seen”
Absolutely disagree.
Take a zone that is nice to be around (something like Nagrand, but perhaps a little flatter than WoD one), add things that give you collectibles instead of power, done.
For Korthia: make it green and light, make it 2x bigger, decrease mob density (make it much more uneven), change all rewards for reps to cosmetics, add more achievements, add Korthia-specific crafts of toys / engineering items and the likes, enable archaeology, add some buildings that you contribute to during your personal grind (some lifts that you get to buy with archivist currency and then keep forever, maybe), add some questlines for taming and growing pets or mounts, done.
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WoW’s early history provides some interesting lessons here, as usual.
During the levelling game, mobs that are too strong for you avoid you, and mobs that are too hard for you actively seek you. This is done simply with an aggro radius.
Furthermore, the roads are generally safe at the intended level for a zone. Generally, there are some really interesting, but rare, exceptions to this.
This does several things:
- Trivial, annoying mobs don’t show up all the time to knock you off your mount or otherwise irritate you.
- You cannot go to places you’re not supposed to, which means that exploration (i.e. content) is the reward for a level-up. Power is a means to exploration, making it a powerful and fun moment.
- Terrain is forced to be more open with camps scattered about, eventually allowing you to traverse it easily.
This is what Korthia needs - and really much of the game does. With the large focus on end-game and the scaling mobs this system has broken down, and it’s causing a lot of frustration and irritation. Perhaps changing it to base it on item level would do the trick; even item level can eventually be grinded without going ham on Mythic raiding and +15’s.
This would screw over the non ‘Big 3’ players even more than they already are, no?
Agreed, also Timeless Isle had lots of world PvP, skirmishes over rares etc. It also had the Ordos toy which created an added level of tension between players - one minute you could be killing a rare with somebody, the next minute they’re killing you.
Korthia by comparison is completely bland. Just a ton of mobs and nests to rummage through. Thanks Blizzard!