Surely this will be an entirely uncontroversial post, but is there a good reason that the alternate tints for legion mage tower artifact appearances shouldn’t be unlockable now? Keep the base color unavailable, to preserve the prestige and whatnot of those that did it in legion, but make the tints unlockable for those who have completed the timewalking mage tower on their respective class. Hell, you could even lock them behind the “Tower Overwhelming” achievement to preserve the grind/exclusivity to some degree.
The main argument I hear against bringing these back is that it would diminish the achievement of those who did it back in legion (I think that was even blizzard’s wording?). I remember the grind, it was frustrating and miserable, and while I disagree with the sentiment by many others who got mage tower appearances that they should remain unavailable, I sympathize. It would be extremely frustrating to feel as though you wasted all that time back in legion thinking it would never be available again, but that’s true either way. It’s just an example of an ongoing trend in game design to make things time-exclusive to incentivize engagement at the cost of causing player burnout and frustration. But still, I sympathize. So a feat of strength and the base color staying exclusive should prevent the diminishing of anybody’s effort while adding to player expression, right?
The “diminish effort” argument is bunk considering Blizzard goes out of their way to nerf long grinds like Mecha-Done, and dungeons/raids that required tons of effort at the time still have the same stuff. Things get nerfed all the time yet the same rewards stay. Considering TW MT’s difficulty is on-par with Legion MT, I see no reason at all to lock anything away. The achievement date will also bear a date to show original MT completion.
I don’t disagree with locking the originals behind the 36 challenge FoS, but they should all be available.
I 100% agree, though as someone who completed my challenge 2 months pre-Antorus, I doubt they’ll recreate that challenge, and I don’t object to some compromise as pseudo-restitution for the players whose time was disrespected by time-locking these challenges/appearances.
Blizz is not gonna do this because this will contradict their game plan that is GO FOMO , I myself would like to get a shot at those tints but … well tough luck i guess .
Now if this reset MT is like it was on PTR its gonna be so godamn disappointing .
yeah unfortunately we’re seeing this trend increase all across gaming. I think it’s a really poor game design decision for game health and longevity, but I also don’t really see it changing soon.
Blizz said from the very beginning of the Mage Tower that the rewards were only available until the end of Legion. Didn’t get them? Tough. You knew it was limited from the start. I see no good reason to bring the original rewards back.
Doing so would only encourage new forum campaigns to bring anything else that was limited time back from the past. And I say that as someone who missed the Mists challenge mode set and the WoD challenge weapons.
They shouldn’t have been limited from the start. It’s a poor game design decision and they should both avoid it going forward, and rollback some of its implementation honestly. I don’t see any good reason to keep them (especially all of them) gone. As someone who did the mage tower when it was still hard and has a host of other exclusive goods, they can and should all be made available again. Player expression is one of the most important aspects of an RPG and if you disagree then why would you care about the exclusivity of appearances?
If we’re going to talk about game design, do you really want something that has to constantly be re-tuned to try to approximate the same level of difficulty? Level squish and time walking scaling are already a mess and vary wildly at times. I’d really rather the devs not have to devote time to tuning a feature that people will complain about regardless. No matter how they try, people would still always complain that it was too easy/hard now compared to whenever. That sounds like a time sink for the devs with nothing but constant criticism.
The mage tower is here regardless of its rewards, I never argued in favor of the mage tower’s return, and honestly I don’t think the tints necessarily need to be tied to it, but it’s a convenient vehicle for reintroduction of something that should be made available again. As far as addressing the difficulty, Mage Tower had variable difficulty depending on spec, gear, and legendaries throughout the expansion, so if they scale the timewalking to Tomb-ish levels in the hopes to make it somewhat difficult and lock the progression behind the timewalking tower meta, it’s already going to be more difficult to get the tints than it was before. I’m not saying make it easy, I’m saying make it not time-limited.
The time-limitedness of the feature we can agree on. It’s crazy to me that 9.2 is however many months away and they won’t just keep the tower and Legion timwalking open straight until then. I might be motivated to farm up a timewalking set if I could try it out anytime. If they actually limit it to 2 weeks and then regular timewalking cycles, that’s a stupid decision.
Especially since it’s solo content. Like, I get timewalking dungeons being done in cycles so as to not divide the playerbase, and holiday events being locked to holidays makes sense, but this? Not so much.
I’ve never understood the “it diminishes my accomplishment” argument. How does it do that? I’d understand if I could walk into any of that old content and one shot everything taking away all the challenge, but they already let us do that with mythic raiding. Nobody ever says that me running around in old mythic raid gear takes away from their past accomplishments so why do people feel that way about the MT and the MoP/WoD challenge rewards.
When people who’ve beaten these challenges see other people who’ve also beaten them does that take away from the accomplishment? probably not I’d guess. With this new scaling technology we could remake the challenges of old content and let people who missed them for whatever reason have their shot. If the challenge could be remade than it would be the exact same as seeing someone else with the MoP armor, you both beat a hard challenge and got the same reward. I truly believe skill should be the barrier to reward instead of poor timing
In one of his interviews Morgan Day said that they’re using a new technology that allows them to rapidly tune old content up to current standards. I’d be on board with you if it wasn’t for that. If it still looks to be a time sink then why not tie it to a new weekly event like timewalking or the dungeon event? Every six months or once a year you get a week long event where all the old stuff gets tuned up. You have the week to try and beat everything and if you don’t get it you wait for the next event. That keeps some of the exclusive feeling these rewards have but doesn’t make people frustrated for missing out.
100%. Doing the Mage Tower back when it was current made me adapt to beat it, and I think I’m a better player for it. They can and should try to replicate that for newer players, and I don’t see any reason they should be less rewarded for their success.
content windows