Was it perfect? No.
Was it better than everything that came after and tried to emulate it? Absolutely.
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You could ride your ground mount there from day 1. Not everything there was trying to kill you. You could actually stay there all day killing stuff if you wanted. These are some of the many things that make it different than the Maw.
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also you didnât lose currency if you died
also the shrines gave really fun buffs and it was a gamble that you might lose them all with a blessing of ordos
trivia daily, celestial pet battle tournament, a lot of consumable item drops that added flavour in one way or another
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Because people remember older content more fondly than they should. The Timeless Isle wasnât bad, but it was basically just a resource grind.
Though there was something to be said about the ease of access to everything on the Isle. The world bosses which were very conveniently places as well as the shrines which made you feel more powerful. PvPers got a unique toy which allowed them to farm for blood coins or what ever, and mount collectors were able to go after a unique-ish mount.
Yeah, I guess it was a good zone.
Maybe there are things Blizzard could take from the isle which would make the next content patches more lively or viable.
I agree. I remember farming frogs, lots of frogs. I will say the treasures were actually useful, unlike the garbage we have now, but the zone as a whole was just filler.
It was a fun zone for casuals- although technically a âcasual trapâ it was still the best one. Honestly as a casual gamer farming frogs in that place was probably more fun then almost everything I played in WoD since I really donât like to raid very much.
Tanaan Jungle wasnât as good- neither was Suramar. Suramar was praised as good content for casuals but it felt painfully slow to me. When it first came out it felt like jeez they donât want you to progress that much at all. And felt âtimegatedâ as all get out.
Nazjatar/Mechagon felt better than Tanaan Jungle/Suramar to me but not as good as Timeless Isle.
Iâve been playing WoW since vanilla - I would say the worst ever Casual Trap zone had to be the one that began with a Q in TBC. Man, I just hated that place- I remember back in the day itâs what made me take a long break from WoW and cancel my sub for awhile lol. And getting into raids in TBC felt the worst ever as a casual gamer. Before the expansion it just felt a lot easier to get into raids back in the vanilla even tho I never saw the Naxx one. So I donât care about all this hype theyâre doing for TBC classic as I wonât be playing that lol.
From a Machiavellian standpoint Timeless isle felt like a perfect thing to lure casuals/noobs in to increase subscriptions so they could then have their âraid or dieâ WoD expansion that they wanted that was much more focused on hardcore players. Itâs how most abusive relationships work tbh- be nice and kind to somebody at first so later on itâs all the more juicy when you show your true colors and hit them in the face. âIâm going to take away flying and most fun casual content and make the game only for raiders!â Thatâs how most WoW developers treat their playerbase. And to be honest- they had so much money already they probably didnât even care much that they lost so many subscriptions from WoD.
But is it like the Aimee Mann song- do we come back for more- like a Labrador?
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Bunch of mobs everywhere, cool unique rewards, 2 world bosses, tons of unique little fun mini games, the currency is actually rewarding to farm (unlike Stygia), rares that drop fun and interesting pets, toys, and mounts, âHUOLON? MORE LIKE HOWLONGâ
Iâd go with Tanaan Jungle being the best so far with Nazjatar coming close. Never saw the hype of Timeless Island myself. Concerning patch zone content. Though Tanaaan Jungle always felt like a original zone they just never completed before release of the expansion.
They lost more than five million paying subscribers BEFORE they announced they were taking away flying, and before too long they announced they would no longer report subscriber numbers.
WoD was already an unmitigated disaster shortly after launch thanks to âraid or dieâ - a story which I still hope weâll one day hear the real story about why most of its content got cut despite a 14-month content drought at the end of MoP (and two low-effort patches after 5.2) all with the excuse of âweâre working to make the next one awesome.â
And then they go and announce the total removal of flying on a third-party web site as though they felt the players needed to be âmanagedâ somehow. And judging both by the rapid departure of a huge number of players, including well known community members, and Blizzardâs rapid reversal of the decision, yes, they clearly cared about the sub loss not just being catastrophic, but accelerating because of bad decisions.
Itâs all quite fascinating. Jason Schreier, please get onto doing a book about this already 
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Dude, I wish Blizzard would look at Timeless Isle and see that not everything has to be either âCosmeticâ or âLootâ. The Crystal of Insanity was such a useful item, and while I understand that some argument can be made that allowing people to pull elixirs out of their butt âhurts the in-game economyâ or some nonsense, it was a reward that felt worthwhile without undercutting the primary loot progression. It was the perfect kind of reward to exist for the type of content Timeless Isle was - you wanted it, but you didnât NEED it.
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one thing i find, interesting, about the history of wow expansions is how they age.
You are spot on about the flying issueâŚthe amount of bat-sht crying that went on forums and in-game about the Timeless Isle, i donât think all the cries of Shadowlands that could create could replace it.
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The amount of crying over how few bosses there were in Icecrown Citadel was greater than the crying over flying in timeless island!
Yes, itâs amusing to remember the controversies of the past.
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Unlike the maw, timeless isle felt like it knew what mob density was.
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I think Timeless Isle was some of the best content made. All of MoP was pretty good.
I hope you are enjoy the Maw.
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Timeless Isle didnât look like a dumpster fire, which is what the Maw literally looks like.
Timeless Isle was pretty much optional content but if you did go there for whatever reason, there was no long, boring entrance quest unless you wanted to do it.
Even though I couldnât fly on the TI, I could ride my damn ground mount.
TI let me decently gear my alts and I had fun doing it.
Running around as a group, communicating and helping each other was great.
The rewards were worth it. Toys, pets, the few mounts⌠all great.
I could also spend as much time on the TI as I wanted without having some derpy death angel swooping out of the sky to kill me.
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TI was probably where I had the most fun in WoW and where my WoWdiction was cemented.
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I absolutely loved that island but I played on a PVP server at the time.
Hopefully the Warcraft Activision Dev team looks at this thread and comes to the conclusion that if there are rewards, people will actually play it for years and years.
Timeless Isle was okay because you could do group activities without actually being in a group. It was the right size so that during MoP there always were people around in close enough proximity.
But to me, Isle of Thunder is the gold standard. Nothing even gets close in any xpac before or after MoP.
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I looked over the place since I didnât play back then and honestly, have zero idea why people accept that as top tier zone design. Iâd actually expect a tad more from them but seems people like mindless grinding mobs, some rares and small other things.
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