NO! Absolutely NOT acceptable. Revert this change IMMEDIATLY!
Absolutely ZERO reason for this. First you make them bi weekly reset then you do THIS. FOR WHAT REASON? Very few topics on these forums get me as heated but WHAT.IS. THIS?!
WE ask for change but This is a MILLION steps in the WRONG direction!
Bizarre change to say the very least. Why exactly is the change being made? A developers note could’ve been useful because a cynical way to look at it is that it makes it simply take longer to do certain achievements or to go after certain toys/pets etc. If there is an issue with something like zone lag, maybe the solution to that is to do what people have been asking for since a few weeks after 10.1 when Zaralek became basically dead outside of the weekly event:
Nerf the rare’s HP.
Maybe then they will be killed?
Feels like they wanna have Pseudo TLPD Rewards. You waste hours on sitting there and watching a series on the second monitor. I spent a month of IRL Time sitting for TLPD to show up, and he never did. While this is not as bad as TLPD it kinda heads into the direction of sitting pointless in front of the monitor praying to the server gods to bless ya with a respawn. First the Druid Forms in the Dream now this… - I’m not even a big collector but even I get mad on those pointless anti player changes.
We’ve been talking about these encounters being a slap in the face to a respect of a players time and somewhere someone said “Lets disrespect their time further.”
I literally cannot wrap my head around this change being “within reason.”
I see no issue in them being a hard encounter to solo in general - Kinda gives the classic “Rare” Feeling to it, but the problem is here more that the zone is not current content, so having a soft nerf to them would be better since you will mostlikely never met someone in caverns to help ya.
Not sure what to say about that change other than “?”. It’s just a nonsense change that doesn’t make the game better for anybody.
Its even odd, as no other rares in the game behave in this manner of spawning and then going “Nobody’s around… Welp time to despawn and go into a 3 to infinite hour respawn timer”.
What is the basis behind this change? Why these rares specifically? Why not, seriously, do what the community has been requesting with a nerf to the health of these rares to make them actually be able to be solo’d by the common player?
This change is mind boggling. I don’t even know what would go through someones mind to enact this change and think it was for the betterment of the game. So much for player agency, respecting our time, and getting away from old stuck in the mud ways. This change by far is the worst change that could have happened to these already super dead zones. Just took the proverbial shotgun to the face with this one.
I haven’t talked with a single person in various circumstances as of yet that can understand the reason for this change or how it it benefits anyone.
Are there technical limitations that caused this change?
What sort of philosophical mentality are we not understanding that this change is a result of?
If we could understand the reasoning behind the change maybe this would make sense on some level.
This is an absolutely ridiculous change.
Time and time again we’ve been asking you to respect our time, and now you let them despawn after 15 minutes when no one is in the zone? How about, you make these zones more attractive for people to go to instead, reduce the HP on elites so it can be solo-d by non-tanks as well.
This has to be reverted and never thought about, it’s literally a slap in the face to your player base, mechanically, Dragonflight has been really good, don’t start ruining it now.
I have to quote ‘‘Is this an out-of-season April Fools joke?’’
Honestly, stop trying to make us be online more by having to stand afk waiting for rares to get our cosmetics, it’s a stupid mechanic, no one finds it fun and it is so un MMO-like that it literally makes my head hurt.
Besides reverting this change, I demand the reasoning behind this, you can’t just drop something like this by literally only saying.
Unpulled rare elites in Forbidden Reach and Zaralek Caverns should now despawn after 15 minutes unless players are in their immediate vicinity.
Without giving a proper reasoning.
Clearly out of touch with your own game. 
After Blizzcon and being so good with player feedback with respecting players time it is so weird to see this change. It is antithetical with what players want and the philosophy that the rest of the game is moving with. It feels like one of those changes that are made purely by a designer point of view and not someone who plays the game. We’re talking conduit energy vibes here.
What should be done: Rares from patch zones that are considered outdated like Forbidden Reach & Zaralek should become more soloable.
I hate this change. It’s just bad for gameplay. Period. There is zero benefit to it. They are the ones that made ZC a dead zone when they were upset that people were farming fragments of crests. Fragments. They were supposed to alter the loot to reflect the new change. . but they did not. Forcing players to try to cobble together a party to kill rares they don’t want or need just in the HOPES that the one(s) they do will spawn is just downright mean.
if there is any change, it should be to revert the last change. … let people farm them for the toys, pets and mount. if the crests are that big a deal . . .and they fall like rain in Emerald dream, then just take them off the loot table. Let people farm them without making it so damn hard.