From what I have seen the response to Terror Zones is tentatively positive. GGM’s feedback thread is pretty representative. The few who are opposed are vehemently opposed so you hear a lot from them beyond what their numbers would suggest.
Most people are more of the mind that this seems like the start of something good but that it needs more work.
If I were to sum up the feedback so far from players:
Things that have broad and solid support:
1: Increase Monster Density
2: Add a Boss Monster to the Terror Zone
For this second request there are different ideas, but generally I get the impression people are most supportive of using the already existing Super Uniques in each Terror Zone and buffing them to “Terror” versions. List of the Super Uniques in each zone .
3: Something more than just Terror Zones please
There have been several threads about ideas for small changes that can be made so that Terror Zones are not the only thing this patch.
Things that have a lot of support but with significant dispute over how much is too much:
4: Make the Terror Zones more difficult
Some want this to be really hard, requiring a party, etc. Others are adamant that these zones should be doable by a SSF player, (count me as one of those).
The impression I get is that people are more open to stylish difficulty increases (Boss Monster, Guest Monsters, or something flavorful), and less so to something boring like increasing monster health or increasing monster resistances across the board.
There is solid opposition to doing something extreme like disabling Teleport or TP in Terror Zones.
5: Terror Zones being too small.
Lots of different ideas on how to handle this. Some (like GGMentor), suggest combining smaller Terror Zones together. Others suggest having two or more Terror Zones active in a game (usually in different Acts). My favorite of the ideas is for new Terror Zones to spawn in the same game once the current Terror Zone is cleared.
Things that are very contentious:
6: How much experience gain should there be.
Some want the experience gain nerfed to be equal or slower than Baal runs. Others like it where it is. Some (like me) are sort of in the middle, liking the faster experience gain from the higher monster level, but feeling the bonus experience on top of that is too much.
7: Hammerdins benefiting too much from Terror Zones due to the lack of Magic Immune monsters that are difficult to bypass.
It doesn’t bother me much, but there is a lot of this sentiment going around. Maybe if you introduced some Guest Monsters to the Terror Zones and gave some of them immunities. Something like the Guest Monsters get Magic Immunity in Act 1, Poison Immunity in Act 2, Lightning Immunity in Act 3, Fire Immunity in Act 4, and Cold Immunity in Act 5. That wouldn’t nerf Fire or Cold elemental damage much at all considering how many of those Immunities are already in Act 4 and 5, Poison and Lightning elemental damage would be slightly nerfed by that, while Magic element characters would be significantly hampered in Act 1 Terror Zones. Since Magic Damage characters can always just go run Chaos Sanctuary or Worldstone Keep when Terror Zones are active in Act 1 it wouldn’t even be that much of a nerf, just giving them an area that they can’t handle due to immunities similar to what other single elemental builds have to deal with.
Things that are occasionally mentioned, and I think are important:
8: Adding item level to item tooltip
With monster levels varying now, we really need this information as we can no longer be certain what the monster level is.
9: Impact on the server if there are certain specific “chase” Terror Zones that everyone will want to play.
This is concerning because PTR probably won’t discover this if it is a problem. Not enough people playing PTR. This thread discusses this concern along with suggesting a possible solution.