Blizzard needs to explain why they made this decision. It doesn’t make any sense. The original change to rare spawns made no sense either. “You’re playing ZC wrong, so here’s a nerf to rares” is not a proper explanation. What did they expect us to do instead? Why did they just nerf ZC rares even further?
This is one situation where an explanation would go a long ways - along with listening to the negative feedback and understanding why players have a problem with the changes to ZC rares.
This is all ZC needed. Better dynamic scaling.
Because (afaik), EVERY “special encounter”, Rare mob, vignette mob starts out with “X” health, and then as more people show up, that health increases “Y” amount to some maximum around 20-25 people.
So instead of STARTING with 11M health and going up, they just needed to make it 1M health… and then scale-up … LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.
Then, not only is it SOLOABLE, but it’s also not TRIVIAL if a huge group shows up.
The fact this solution is so flipping OBVIOUS is what’s so annoying…
Credit where credit is due: ZC being a place for failed experiments is very on-brand for the lore of the zone 
I read through the entire wowhead comments section under the article that highlighted the change and I completely forgot about this achievement one commentor talked about.
They legit do not think of the content/achievements/collectibles they put into a zone and how these hot garbage changes would effect them.
Chipping in - I’ve been gradually working my way up after taking an extended break, working towards Shadowlands and earlier Dragonflight world content, mounts, appearances etc. I don’t understand what this change is meant to accomplish. Have the devs gone back and tried to accomplish anything in Zaralek Caverns by themselves in 10.2? It genuinely feels like this is an idea that they threw out in an attempt to “get more players active there” without any real understanding of what it’s actually like.
I cannot say I favor the “suggestions” but at least we have a somewhat reason? Things still need to be addressed to turn it around.
Because I’m not convinced it’s a problem.
If anything…this kind of testing and fixes were required when the zone was current content…They didn’t address the impact for future expansions when a player wants to go back to these zones and farm cosmetics.
At least they mentioned a better drop rate which is still pure RNG, so players will have to wait 1-3 hour periods waiting for a specific rare.
Keep going, They always response only if there’s a massive backlash… 
There’s a burnout in the community with these kind of decisions.
Honestly I read all this as them trying to do damage control from the backlash.
Yeah practically if you want something in this game, you need to do a massive backlash to their changes or do a lot of noise…and when Devs try to be proactive, they solve issues that didn’t exist…
I won’t say only buff the drop rate, add those to a vendor at renown 20 like they did with several cosmetics from 10.2…also fix Druid forms drop rate via bad luck protection.
a big portion of players don’t want these time sinks mechanics that don’t provide gameplay. More communication regarding Rewards
For the life of me I will never understand why they don’t just slash the HP and make the rares soloable once the content is no longer current. That is the ONLY thing that will truly solve the “The zone is empty, now what?” problem.
I’m glad the devs finally offered an explanation. I see what they’re going for, wanting the rares to be a multiplayer experience. I use the term multiplayer in the loosest possible way - multiple random players, not in a group, who are in the same place at the same time.
I don’t think these changes will have the impact they want, especially in a zone that is no longer current, even if it’s in the current xpac. Multiplayer rare killing often requires listing rares in the group finder and that requires a baseline level of interest in the zone that doesn’t exist because of the previous changes to ZC rares.
I had an experience in a dreamsurge yesterday where we couldn’t get enough players to kill a rare, only 2 of us, and eventually we both left having due to no one else coming. That’s what I expect will happen as a result of these changes. If only a few are up at a time, that leads to less interest as well since different players will want different things. If a rare someone wants isn’t up because it despawned due to lack of interest from other players in the zone, they’re more likely to simply move on to a different zone and find something else to do.
So, after reading the feedback explanation/response, all I can say is: …Huh? This is the perfect example of imagining a problem that doesn’t exist, or misreading data completely.
Now, the image being posted was seen by plenty of collectors (heh, I know I definitely saw it on more than one occasion), or people after a single collectable on lower pop servers. So, your goal seems to be… creating an artificial focus that aims to force the players in the zone to work toward defeating a specific set of rares? But that negates a major reason why people might do them to begin with. Collectors will simply ignore ones they don’t have. And the potential for it to be HARDER to find the rare(s) they are after, means they are less likely to use alts to contribute to zone activities. Which means a lower population and this defeats your entire stated goal. And, heh, imagine being one of those ultra casual players seeing a rare up you haven’t killed yet, flying toward where it is on the map …and then having it despawn??? LOL. chef kiss
I’m neither here nor there in regards to increasing drop rates. I mean, I think it’s fine, but I get why some people don’t like it.
The sharding hotfix sounds very interesting–and maybe a little worrisome that data scientists/people monitoring zone/shard populations didn’t see it before. But for most of the game’s population, it’s too little too late at this point for ZC/FR. Introducing new friction like this is just an awful idea.
This guy gets it.
We recently found an issue that was causing zones like Zaralek Caverns to be underpopulated.
lmao
yeah, since basically a week after it was launched. the issue was just terrible gameplay and instead they’re just going to do fewer shards.
hilarious they’d frame it as some bug they just found instead of an inherent problem with the zone rewards
players simply wouldn’t come across other players who were looking to fight the same rare, even in Group Finder. Yesterday’s hotfix was a step that we’re taking to focus attention on fewer rares at a time and encourage the glorious murderballs that we all know and love.
Another sly cop out here. it was never ‘everyone is killing a different rare’ but more ‘nobody is here to kill anything’
Nobody is killing the rares because the zone is dead. blizz did not like the optics of zoning into an area and people realizing it was dead.
these ‘murder balls’ have basically never existed in ZC due to the lockouts they imposed shortly after the patch.
I also commented about how not everyone loves a “good ol murder ball” like they seemed to imply.
People who want to stay on dead realms do so because they can accomplish more than on a more lively full realm. Z.Caverns and Forbidden Reach destroyed their ability to rely on themselves because they don’t want to join the “good ol murder ball” that doesn’t need to exist in the first place if rares were easily soloable and spawned with more frequency.
the fact there doing that instead of making them legacy content so its easier for alts etc is just down right moronic.
Ask and ye shall receive