As stated in the description, Gary Gygax created the game to be a player killer, but it turned out that most everyone loved it even if they died in it…like we did lol
It was voted the 3rd greatest adventure of all time AND IT WAS A PLAYER KILLER!!
People figured out some very clever ways to destroy the demi-lich, all to the shock of Gygax who didn’t think anyone would be able to survive it, but they did.
I think the topic that immediately springs to everyone’s mind is Torghast. What rewards does Torghast give right now? A small amount of currency. You have to keep doing Torghast or you will eventually fall behind on your legendary iLVL but it just doesn’t feel rewarding. So the earlier versions of Torghast could be pretty difficult but they didn’t give loot that matched the difficulty.
There are two solutions to that problem: nerf Torghast or buff the loot it drops. Blizz went with nerf Torghast, but that creates a problem when later on down the line Torghast becomes trivially easy and the loot it drops isn’t going to be worth the time it takes to speed through Torghast, so no one will do it and it will be forgotten.
Give Torghast loot drops like in Horrific Visions so that it scales with difficulty and then you have something that people will be willing to stick with for longer, and the difficulty can be raised without too much complaint.
I think you’re missing the context of that those same people didn’t stick around for those entire expansions, and many only played in the very beginning, especially expansions like WoD and BfA. People often come back to see if the new expansion is something they enjoy, and when it’s not, they quit until another new expansion comes out.
The only people who have more time are the fools who grinded for legendaries or azerite gear or whatnot for the last three expansions. Most people didn’t do that, they just played the game.
I actually liked Warlords lol. In my opinion, what was in that expansion, was peak WoW. That expansion was killed because of the flying debacle and the fact that was when they tried shooting for one expansion a year, couldn’t do it, and ended up cutting like half the content from the darn thing lol.
Some challenges are just off limits to casuals like me. This expansion seems to have made it so that time played equals meeting the challenge. Not complaining, but maybe I’m wrong, this expansion is significantly less casual friendly thereby fewer “rise” to the challenge. My 2 cents
basically, sunk cost fallacy. WoD sucked and i struggled to keep my attention, but i had invested so many years into my characters so i held on. “the next xpack will be different”. And Legion was. I enjoyed it, though i saw some changes happening to the game with raiding and the reliance on m+ that bothered me. “They’ll fix it next expansion” I told myself. Then BFA came. It wasnt fixed. It was worse from top to bottom. it barely held me beyond the first month. I quit and didnt look back. "the next expansion will be different’, I said again. Shadowlands is here and its more of the same.
The aspects of this “new wow” style game design that have bothered me since WoD and Legion havent improved - devs have doubled down on them. In short - i’ve been burned too many times. I can no longer say ‘give it time, they’ll fix it. next expansion will be different’. This is clearly just what devs want wow to be. And its not fun anymore.
But tell me this - what’s wrong with being rewarded for your efforts? Is it equally wrong for someone who has worked their way up through the game to expect a reward for completing a mythic raid?
Effort = reward is a perfectly acceptable equation.
It’s important to remember different people find different things challenging. Some people find Torghast challenging - I find it boring. Perhaps if it was shorter without quite as much painful RNG? Or more puzzles and fewer traps? I dunno.
100% my favorite part of torghast. Rift had tons of these spread throughout the world, linked to various items and achievements and it was one of my favorite parts of that game.
It died with the Greatest Generation. Not only did it die it was kicked into the gutter lit on fire speed on lit on fire again and then plaved in a garbage disposal to end up in the sewage treatment plant never to return. Its sad really.
RNG is no challenge, some classes have so many good anima powers that chances are you will get something good by the last floor, other classes have so little good anima powers that you can actually get to the last floor with no actual power and lose the run entirely cuz of RNG.
