I just went to turn in some anima given the collector thingy in korthia is more convenient, and I thought about how much of a disaster the zone was, and the patch for that matter as well. The first major issue was the fact that people were druid hopping, or DH gliding over to the far island, which gave the advantage of being able to take advantage of treasures and rare’s that weren’t meant to be encountered until a couple weeks later. Which forced blizzard to patch in the island due to how many people were abusing it to gain research so early on. With the grind being limited to that one zone that it made for one long grind that was just not fun to have to spend hours upon hours just running around and collecting treasures.
Then domination sockets were just flawed from the start given the sets were so broken initial, and the fact that it took weeks for many to have at least one set, let alone all 5 sockets.
Then the fact that the sockets restricted what you could get from your vault just added fuel to the fire honestly. Like I got so many pieces that were ilvl upgrades, but because it was a socket I couldn’t use it.
I am so glad they are taking a huge step away from this in 9.2, I personally do not think I could of taken a whole other major patch of more of the same. I am glad that we are getting tokens as well, as that will ease the amount of time it takes to get a set working. With the bonus of being able to slot in mythic pieces for heroic ones through vault gains and raid gains. That I am definitely looking forward to, as it SUCKED to be stuck with two heroic pieces this entire tier due to both being a domination socket.
I have to say for me personally this has been the worst patch I have played in, I thought 8.2 was bad with the zin’anthid botting crisis. Yet this was just worse and I hope we never see something equivocal to this again in a major patch or expansion.
My biggest issue with the domination gems were they went live, THEN got major tuning weeks later. What the hell is the point of the PTR exactly? You CANNOT let something that requires that kind of investment on behalf of the player go live without being balanced to your satisfaction. Not saying it needs to be perfect but under NO circumstances should it be changed after people have invested in it.
The big weakness of 9.1 is how small it is, which adds to its disappointment.
This patch has convinced me that Activision has stripped the WoW team to its utter bare bones, probably for profit’s sake. The whole patch is just one single raid and one small zone. That in and of itself might not have been terrible, but then everyone is forced to be squeezed into Korthia, which is itself a diminutive and dull place— one of the few times the art team has really let down the game imho. (“City of Secrets” indeed!)
The decision to constantly squeeze all the players into a tiny zone for a new patch is not new, but it remains a questionable decision. Even as recently as MoP, you could do lots on your farm, PvP was still good, and the legendary quest made old zones and raids relevant. Nothing like that is present here, and the game suffers for it.
My main gripe with the zone that it was just so drab and dull. When you read “City of Secrets” you expect… well a city… with maybe some secrets and stuff to it. Instead it was just a bunch of rocks and dead trees. There isnt really anything interesting or engaging about the zone, in my opinion. And we really only discover one secret, which was the Primus’s Sigil. Then after that, there is pretty much nothing else to see or learn.
For a City of Secrets, Korthia was not much of a city either. There werent really any structures or signs that it was in fact an actual city. Sure there are some runes, but even the majority of the rock piles and broken things dont even aesthetically amount to a ruin of a city.
While Mechagon and Najatar were not perfect zones, they had much more to them than Korthia. Korthia just didnt really amount to anything. Even with the story, We are just standing on this poorly fortified cliffside, mounting our assault on the Sanctum of Domination. Even as a staging area for a military operation, there is what… 2 or 3 tents? A handful of people guarding it? It was just very poorly executed.
I remember first playing it. I did the opening questline and thought that was decent. Then I got to the zone, and started to venture into it… and just thought to myself… Is this it? Where is the city? It was a huge let down.
More like quick we need an island with lots of chores and rocks and stuff.
And we can call it Chorthia. Also let’s make sure that the research rewards mimic 35 anima rewards.
Personally the most interesting aspect of the place was the chains that led from torghast to it.
That easily could have been expanded upon where it was like one giant chain or various chains linking the island together and we work to free it or something.
Also the chamber of secrets on the eastern end was kind of half finished if you ask me.
Climbing chains to various different islands would have been cool. Could’ve varied the scenery a bit as well, instead of the same drab grey/blue/brown everywhere.
I’m mostly just amazed that Korthia was so bland and terrible it made me hate the Broken Shore less.
Call me crazy but I actually enjoyed the whole charge up the lightning strikes on the chains.
The chains could have been a lot bigger too. Maybe a friendlier version of the Torgast dungeons. Not so much a knock off the platform experience.
But if you do a friendly Kyrian will come rescue you or something. Climb your way up to a hidden balcony at the bottom of torgast it could have been like the most epic secret dive bar hang out place.
It aint just Korthia. Every zone in Shadowlands is absolutely tiny. Like, if this isn’t due to Activision having stripped the team for profits sake, then it may be time for Blizzard to let go people who clearly hate their job and the player base.
SoD was fun but Domination sockets kind of ruined it.
Tormented Affix was fun but needing to raid if you wanted to min-max ruined the season for anyone who likes to push keys on alts.
Tazavesh was fun but it had no reward structure and fell out of relevance.
Maw Assaults and Korthia dailies were fine little bi-weekly or daily adventures but Archivist Codex didn’t come from those activities, they came from the brain-dead rare hunt. STOP FORCING US TO HUNT FOR RARES BLIZZARD.
Blizzard’s system guys are basically trash. They’re really, really trash. The content team knocks it out of the park but the system guys utterly failed us in 9.1. And now they’re trying to corrupt 9.2 as well - I pray that the systems guys cube crawled so their team is in shambles and they can’t ruin the patch because they’re just too slow to add the MAU BS before Kotick ships the patch out.
I think it is mostly the systems with a little bit of just how easy open world content has to be doable by the lowest skill players. I don’t think any raider, M+er, or PVPer (could be wrong I guess) really wants to farm archavist codex points to upgrade their conduits and get gems. It probably would suck less if the open world wasn’t so completely braindead easy though.
Initially that wasn’t supposed to be a thing, similar to how the grapple points weren’t available until a couple weeks later due to the storyline progress. On week one the wyvern wasn’t available, and wasn’t supposed to available until like week 3-4? Yet due to players getting to the island sooner than intended blizzard put it in early to let everyone access it any time.
I don’t understand the story of Korthia. Like I understand it’s where the Primus hid his sigil but like…Why? Why hide it in a place that deal with secrets? Like if you know of a place that deals with secrets isn’t that the first place you look? Could he have not hide it in the infinite afterlives out there that would be safer?
