I’ve thought about the idea of them having surprise content that wasn’t on the PTR but it’s consistently pointed out that it will almost certainly be a horrible mess on launch. Heck even content that is tested and launches after months of feedback ends up a horrible mess.
Just popping in to say that back in the day I remember going through the broken gates in the Wetlands and that giant dragon seeing me from a mile away and chasing me. I also remember being stopped in Ungoro and Outlands and always liked the immediate scare of the ground shaking and suddenly they were behind you. I never did get to experience Stitches attacking the town, although I do remember avoiding him along the roads. Now that we have skyriding, we’ll likely never see things like this again, and oh man would people lose their minds if there were large flying NPCs that would chase you if they did that now, lol.
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To this day if I am in Hellfire area I go out of my way to slam dunk that mechanical P O C Fel Reaver into the dirt and give him a dirt nap…he only got me once back during original TBC.
Easily doable by removing the terrible forced scaling we got in game.
It would solve every single issue you presented.
100% yes. Absolutely. Cousin Andy was turned into dust. Not too many people have rocks fall on them and then decide it’s still a good day for the beach 
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In another MMO, I use to “train” a world boss on the nearby town, the longer it was in combat the more adds it spawned, Max level players with the best gear, would fly in and die the second the landed, they had to use the next flight path over just to try to “train” it away, it was such glorious chaos.
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Wasn’t this the original design intent of the Maw and it sucked and everyone hated it?
Don’t forget the trio night elf sentinels in the barrens. They got my poor tauren a few times back in the day lol
Becsuse the maw just sucked period. Nothing to do with hard, could not ride and the mob density was ridiculous. As with all things shadowlands, just hot garbage and tedious not hard
lol great post …
I agree !
Whenever I go back to Silverpine Forest I always hunt that f’er down and extract my revenge for the multiple times he got me back in Vanilla and BC.
Jerk face deserves everything he gets.
Fel Reaver sneaking up on people in Hellfire Peninsula was always a good time.
Diablo has “The Butcher”, when you hear “Fresh Meat!” you know it’s time to put your big boy pants on, cus it’s about to get real.
Some hate him, some love him.
Fel Reaver got me many times too, wasn’t fun dying but I do miss it, BC was so long ago, what happened to the time, holy cow?
True, but Nazjatar was incredibly deadly upon its addition and it wasn’t as oppressive as the Maw, and I remember players being really receptive to this. I think the Maw’s an unfortunate crossroads of aesthetic, functional, and obligatory abuse that didn’t feel fun to traverse or succeed in. Clearly the difference between Nazjatar and the Maw shows it isn’t easy to find the difference, but the reception to the former seems to suggest having hard areas which necessitate teamwork and ground us aren’t always a bad thing!
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It somewhat feels like you’re talking about two completely different things.
“Hard” challenges are like the Mage Tower - something that is surmountable with use of your toolkit, and it designed to test you using 80-100% of your allotted powers (class tool kit) to overcome. Also this of course includes group content.
Things like Fel Reavers and Sons of Arugal aren’t really that. The ability to ask in zone chat for a capped player or an army of low levels to fight a monster that just stat checks you, is not a difficult challenge, it’s a roadblock or deliberate deterrent, and it isn’t utilizing a skill. It’s fine though, these things existed to add something else to the world - a sense of danger, which is good, in my opinion. It’s good when there are monstrous, dangerous enemies that exist just to keep you in check and remind you that you are in hostile territory. I personally do not think such things belong in every zone, but certainly belong in a zone that is undeniably enemy territory (e.g. most of the expansion zones where player factions do not have a capital city or a story reason to have a powerful presence in which they have tamed the zone).
Just to elaborate a bit more - I do not consider things like FR or SoA “hard challenges” because they were designed to be stat checks. Elite quests were clearly balanced around challenging you with your tools and perhaps other players and their resources, but monsters like SoA and FR in my opinion were in place to serve as pure deterrents from just carelessly running through their respective zones, which is why they stat check you and just kill you in a couple of hits and have a lot of health - you’re really not meant to win that encounter, even using your whole kit to its maximum, you’re meant to die and know better next time that this is a danger in the zone and you should take care the path you take through that zone.
Whether these are good things or not to your a average player is entirely subjective; clearly, data or surveys and player habits have told blizzard that these sorts of things are less appealing nowadays, and arguably, their inclusion in earlier iterations of the game were because some of the designers of the original game were products of EverQuest and UO and M59, all of which had either insurmountable PvE enemies just roaming around (and far more dire consequences for death) or always-on open-world PvP.
I can’t tell from your post, but my guess is that what you are really saying you miss isn’t “hard” challenges in the open world, because I do not think much of that has existed, but I do think you’re saying you miss when there were truly appreciable dangers out in the world, which I agree with. I know people find such things annoying, and they certainly can be, but for the flavor it adds to the zone, I think it can be worth it when done right. Sons of Arugal and Fel Reavers are two very good examples. The eye of the jailer is a bad example.
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I used to hang around the horde base in stone talon on my rogue.
Not sure why, but so many players came out of town flagged for PvP.
those armored skeles in west duskwood which are elites then the named guy shows up and ruins your day
thing about stiches tho is a player does a quest for the guy who turns out is hell bent on killing people and unleashes stitches. always fun to see him pop up now and then
Problem is that this assumes that Overland zones have a reliable population number.
I have been playing Dragonlfight in a high population realm and I have hardly run into anyone.
But there is something exciting about a danger roaming the land. Like Fyrak burning everyone in a path as you are questing. It makes the zone feel more alive.
I totally get where you are coming from though. My main mmo for the past 10 years has been ESO - and its overland content has a severe issue in lacking of difficulty.
You are never really in any danger when exploring a zone and none of the bosses in caves or even the main story of the zone are dangerous or hard. Regardless of your level. This has been a complaint about the game from new and old players alike.
You never really have to make any effort. It’s all very flat. This is why I appreciate that dungeons are throughout the storylines in WoW and Destiny 2. It gives the story these high points in its gameplay.
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The main issue with the maw was the stupid mechanic that limited the time a player could stay in the zone. By the time that was remedied, it was too little, too late.
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