Make this some kind of queueable instance or solo event. It’s obnoxious having to make sure I’m online within the first 5 minutes of a given hour because the event is so short and over so quickly.
2 Likes
You have ~168 chances to catch it per week. If you can’t manage to catch it, you probably need better time management skills.
20 Likes
You could do other things in the game and check the time now and again. Or you could set an alarm.
3 Likes
Time-based events like this were terrible in Dragonflight and they’re terrible now. The cooking, giant siege, and superbloom events were these extremely odd events that had a short duration but long cooldown, and required zero participation to get completion.
It’s bad game design and weirdly time-boxes your play to a small window of minutes per hour, where basically no other system in the game does.
1 Like
It’s on the hour every hour. Not seeing the problem. Making it queuable means you have to wait until some preset number of players show up.
12 Likes
The problem is that depending on the play it can last 5 minutes or 15 minutes and if you aren’t in the zone sitting at the guy ready to go at the top of the hour, you may miss it and have to wait another hour. It’s a strange timebox around a weekly event that didn’t exist for any of the other weekly events until surge pricing with Undermine. That one is also bad but at least it lasts longer than 5 minutes.
It’s a 15 second flight away from most people’s current hearth. If it’s make or break for you, look at a clock and show up a minute early. This seems silly and puts me in the position of defending blizz which is really a rare thing for me.
5 Likes
It’s meant to be a world event. It’s at a predictable time. It’s not difficult to miss.
4 Likes
You really only need to get 50 points which takes no time
7 Likes
This isn’t the frustrating part, it’s the having to show up on time when I may be in the middle of an M+ or a dungeon or a raid or just not at my computer for those 3-5 minutes.
It’s also that I can get the 50 points, and then I have no incentive to participate for the remaining 14 minutes if it’s a long play, but I have to stay in the area or I won’t complete the weekly.
Compare this to the Nerubian missives, the awakening the machine, or the Arathi farms. The faster you do it, the faster you get your reward and go onto the next thing. The theater is just this weird timebox that requires you to participate at a specific time and then doesn’t require full engagement for the duration of that time.
Just show up at the end then, you can still earn 50 points very quickly lol
4 Likes
That’s part of the problem though - the end may be at 10:05, or 10:10, or 10:15 depending on the play. It’s not easy to tell when “the end” is because the play durations are different.
If they instanced the event or made it queueable and starting every 5 or 10 minutes instead of every hour, it could be designed to encourage participation instead of doing your 50 points of approval and going AFK.
the end of it is when it asks you to take a bow
it bugged on me this morning tho, first time it’s done this. when the prep phase was over and it started the play, the costume chest was put in the middle and was interactable like normal, but it didnt change my char’s goal from “kill hozen” to the steps of the play. So i didn’t get quest credit for “completing the play”
about a dozen others doing the event had it happen to them too
This isn’t even remotely a problem.
8 Likes
You’re right but I’m making it one
Is that what you think you’re doing? 
4 Likes
Is that what you think I’m doing?
This is false. I have 10 alts that I do theater on every single week. The “intro” part of the play always lasts until roughly the :06 or :07 mark of any given hour. The actual play (after the “get to the center, the play is starting” message appears) can vary depending on the play, but the intro is fairly consistent. There is no full theater event that is as quick as 5 minutes. Usually when I do them it ends around the :10 to :12 mark of the hour depending on the play.
You also don’t have to join the play on the top of the hour, you can join mid-play if you want to, so long as you pick up the quest and get your 50 participation points (extremely easy especially with the NPC that follows you around and gives you +15 points when you click on him) you are good to get your chest.
You also have multiple other ways to get a chest if you don’t want to do the play, including:
- Awakening the Machine (queued, exactly what you’re asking for)
- Hallowfall keystone lamp things (do on your own time)
- Weekly quest from right outside the inn (usually complete X world quests, get 100 disc shards, do X delves, etc.)
- Azj-Kahet world quests (do on your own time)
You only get a coffer key for the first 4 chests anyway, so there’s your 4. Go do those if you really hate the play. Personally I will continue AFKing through the play every week because it’s so easy and convenient (literally right outside of Dorn) and it gives me 10 extra minutes to be productive and do other things around the house while I get a free chest.
3 Likes
It also tells you the time, literally on the maps. That he can’t manage to get there 5 min beforehand is mind boggling
3 Likes
Sounds like the problem is you, not the event.
8 Likes