Addressing the Mage Tower fallout

Community General Discussion
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I think we’ve seen enough threads of the “Mage Tower too challenging” vs. “Get Good” crowd. To summarize:

Proponents of making Mage Tower more accessible:

  • Blindsided by changes and buffs from PTR
  • Higher difficulty than original (current static difficulty vs. legion-era rising item levels)
  • Degradation of current gear as opposed to old (and expensive) equipment, enchantments, and gems
  • Time locked
  • Restrictions to core gear and rotations (similar to above)
  • A vast majority of players are unable to complete a single challenge
  • Restricting content accessibility when game state could use some breadth of gameplay

Detractors of greater accessibility:

  • A minority are able to complete challenges
  • Optional content; You don’t have to do everything
  • It’s meant to be difficult (at this particular level of difficulty)
  • Changes would cheapen experience of existing completions
  • Challenging content is much needed in game

Clearly, they are all opinions, so conflicts are to be expected. The discussion, however, and I use this term loosely, is devolving to a point of plain insults and accusations of toxicity, elitism, terrible skill, and trolling. I don’t think this is healthy for the community as a whole, and we know that these threads aren’t going to stop (at least, until the event ends), so perhaps it would be a good time for community managers, as per their namesake, to step in.

The root of the issue is that the design philosophy isn’t readily apparent. Take, for example, Mythic raiding, Mythic+ ratings of 2500+, or Gladiator PVP rankings. They are difficult to obtain, and they are contingent on player skill, but you do not receive much complaints of them being out-of-reach. That’s because the design is well communicated, and players have a realistic expectation when approaching to challenge themselves. In this case, proponents of accessibility have pointed out that past experience (legion-era Mage Tower), expectations through the PTR iteration, the time-lock, and the recent round of adjustments has communicated a different vision; Something more accessible to players across a wider spectrum of skill. Time-walking has always been a staple of more casual content as well.

It would be to the benefit of everyone to make clear if the difficulty is as intended (at the current level, with reference to completion statistics), and so rather than having infighting of diverging opinions on the intent of this feature, simply make clear the intent itself. If it were not meant to be accessible outside of a quite a high skill level, making that design choice obvious would allow those not included in said group to go forward with that consideration in mind, and thus not have cause for complaint, or vice versa, to not have those who wish for it’s exclusivity to have grounds for belittling others when feedback is presented about it’s presumably unintended difficulty.

This is an MMORPG, and whether people like it or not, the more zealous players will not survive, or enjoy the game, without a healthy population, and that includes more casual ones. WoW already has a… reputation, to say the least, and many people do play WoW casually and would like to participate in new content without being ridiculed for a miscommunication. I’m sure casual players do not wish to rob more competitive players of content, and I don’t think the more competitive players care much about some catering towards the more relaxed, so some clarity on the current iteration of the Mage Tower, I feel, would be much appreciated by many at this point. Is it meant to be as difficult as is, with it being out of reach of most (and most who play WoW are rather casual), or should we expect changes to allow for more to attempt and complete it?

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It was entirely intentional to change the level of difficulty at the last moment, after lots of average players had resubbed. My feeling is that this was supposed to teach casuals a lesson in humility. Remarkably, the first triage attempt had elitists saying just that, that it was supposed to teach casuals to accept that they would see little content and not be dealt with honestly.

So, whatever. They made their bed. They are free to lie in it. Whether they want to or not, it is what they have chosen.

Nobody should have been surprised what happened.

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Nobody forced you to resub early.

Pass me some of that tinfoil you’ve got there.

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I did not resub for this. I’m not sure why you lied. Many did. They were more than “pretty upset” when they found out what had happened.

You are the mistress of tinfoil yourself. Keep patting yourself on the head for being so edgy. Keep channeling your master. Maybe after the game dips down to a mere 2% of current players and activision pulls the plug because it will no longer be profitable, you’ll be happy you got rid of all the paying customers at least.

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You do realize that the PTR is subject to change, right?

Let this be a lesson… don’t resub because you saw something on the PTR and thought it would stay that way. That’s a general you, not specifically talking about you. There have been many times where stuff on the PTR has changed last minute. Sometimes, it’s outright REMOVED last minute even. This is because it’s subject to change.

This is completely conspiratorial. The idea that Blizzard, a company, would care about “teaching casuals a lesson” is frankly ridiculous.

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You should’ve seen the guy yesterday saying he wanted to sue Blizzard for making changes to the Mage Tower before it went live, haha.

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A difference here is there are additional levels of difficulties raiding, dungeons, and pvp that average players can compete in, succeed, and collect rewards from which are generally slightly different than the higher tier rewards, more or less. They can still reasonable experience the content.

I do not want to take the challenge away from higher tier players, but I would also like to see the MT more accessible for lower tier players. When I suggested having different difficulties and offer extra rewards for the harder version, in came the elites with “how dare you give plebs rewards for easier MT”. So no, some of the more competitive and vocal players here on the forums definitely care about not catering towards the more relaxed.

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Ah, the “Average players should have known they would never have been permitted to do this content” argument.

HAHAHAHAHA… You repeated what’s her name’s lie and then edited it to make it appear you hadn’t been working off the same script.

Let this be a lesson to you. You can’t change human nature. Railing about how other players should get no content, including what was designed to get them to resub, but should be happy to have all their money go to your content makes you sound about as entitled as they get.

Again, anybody who was paying attention could have predicted exactly what happened. You guys blew it. Surely if you random forum pro-blizz trolls keep pumping out that message from your script you will completely turn around the playerbase. Tens of millions will subscribe after reading that they won’t be welcome in your game.

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Your wise words will fall on death ears. The Classic toons aren’t here for discussion, they’re here for disruption. Hence why they hide on alts and pretend they are gods amongst men skill wise.

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That’s fair, but I would like to point out that the examples given naturally can’t be a exact comparison, but the incremental rewards (in gear) are pale in comparison to the actual objectives (gladiator mounts, mythic mounts, achievements, etc.). Either way, I would go as far as to say there are no complaints of difficulty of obtaining a gladiator / mythic mount, because the difficulty is still communicated effectively.

Furthermore, the way the Mage Tower is structured, I doubt “tiers” to allow for some level of participation is feasible, unless they were to add entirely new mechanics and skills as raid difficulties do. At this point, just some clarification and communication would be nice, rather than having players tear at each other, as above.

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Can’t you guys appreciate the MT for teaching players to get better at their class?

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And your comparison is definitely fair.

If they wanted to make tiers of difficulty, simple % nerfs wouldn’t exactly do it. But they could spread out abilities so there would be less overlapping, more time to react, and more time to recover from mess ups. Slower casts times too. But that’s neither her nor there because I don’t think that will ever happen. They will want to keep dev time on old content minimal and will either leave as is, or, imo very likely, end up % nerfing next cycle.

But yes, I would love to hear some clarification from them and put an end to all these MT posts.

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No, I don’t see how the mage tower is a way to be good at your class. That is false.

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You misunderstand the point of this post, I’m not asking for a nerf.

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I really wish you wouldn’t victimize the ever so common casual player as incapable, when these challenges are casual in design. You can attempt as often or as little as you like. That is casual content. It’s just also happens to be difficult. It’s in no way required for character progression if progression based content isn’t your cup of tea.

Many of us have been begging for difficult, solo content like the Mage Tower since it went away back in Legion. I really feel like you’re not considering the feelings of many players who love content like this, wishing to change it into content that is already heavily prevalent in the game when this type is sorely lacking.

The only thing I wish is that the Mage Tower wasn’t tied into Legion Timewalking but instead accessible indefinably in this form.

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You could attempt Dark Souls indefinitely, but many would disagree with your classification of that as a casual game. Nevertheless, difficulty is highly subjective, and the definition of “casual” is really up to the beholder, so debating over whether something is casual or not isn’t really productive.

The issue I was trying to present is the miscommunication that has mislead many to presume this was “casual” content as they understand it. Moderate difficulty, maybe, but not at it’s current iteration compared to PTR, or apparently legion-era once item level progression kicked in. Hence, it is more reasonable to be surprised by this, than to be not, due to precedent. You also acknowledged as per proponents of accessibility that the time-lock isn’t preferable, and I would agree. If it were to be as difficult as is, applying a time-constraint seems counter-productive in all ways other than exclusivity.

Really, the deployment left much to be desired, and community managers should really come out to engage the playerbase instead of letting them go at each other when the game’s reception is as fragile at the moment.

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Yet you decide another thread was necessary?

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This isn’t one. I would suggest kindly to read the post but I don’t think you’re interested.

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I didn’t say anything of the sorts. It’s a solo challenge and that is why most people are upset

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Oh no, I read the post but your misunderstanding the point. You know why Blizzard never responds to posts like these? Its because they know the community is upset. So a thousand threads about “Ways to improve the Mage Tower” is not gonna get anywhere.

Each person lists their own grievances about the Mage Tower and are full on demanding Blizzard to fix it. At the end of the day they ain’t gotta do anything, they don’t report to you. So, “Demanding a nerf or I unsub” posts are threats. Threats they are not worried about. Now lets pick apart your list of grievances shall we?

The one buff they gave was a buff to certain abilities, but the Tower itself? Got buffed simply because in Legion we all had MILLIONS… MILLIONS of HP, that’s now reduced to THOUSANDS. So what ever abilities that tickled you in Legion will now kill you in SL. So yes, this difficulty is by design. So to all the nay-sayers and the “Who is this content for?” crowd. You can slow your role.

Only complaint here is we should be allowed to use Legion-Era Legos, nothing more.

What’s the problem with a rotation that could possibly offer a different reward the next rotation? Pretty sure this is the original intention of Blizzard because… you know… Engagement.

This is a falsity, this is a number solely based off individuals who don’t have the achievement, this could mean a number of things, some aren’t doing the Mage Tower at all, some are and are failing it. Get the full picture before posting a number.

To summarize, bringing in a random number like 3% isn’t going to move the needle of difficulty from Hard to Below the Line Easy. If it was easy, everyone could do it. Blizzard is not going to cater to every beckon call, they came out and said, “Yeah, its a lil overtuned, we’ll nerf it a lil” You think their gonna do it twice? You think their just gonna throw their hands up and go, “You know what? Have at it, we give up!” They didn’t budge on this issue in Legion and their not now.

Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to masked language as it is in violation of the Code of Conduct.

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