Wow news channels that love to rage at everything about the game weren’t a popular thing at that time.
Agree with you. They did have that crystal in Wod to. Forget the name of it, but it helped a lot to. A quest for that one you got from the garrison. You had to collect a couple of items in a dungeon(cant remember which one). I still use both. 5% stat buff from the crystal of insanity is not much, but it helps regardless. I took every one of my alts to that cave on Timeless isle to get that crystal of insanity lol. The Wod garrison crystal quest depended on when the quest was up for it. Rng quest lol.
Because it was well designed and very versatile.
There was something to do for everyone on the island, whether a fresh 90 scrub or seasoned raider. Both PvE and PvP. Solo and group play. Gogogo killers and collectors and completionists.
You were able to power up and go from cowering behind a tree to “You and me big man, bring it!”.
TI was amazing.
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Timeless Isles was ‘forced’ group activity because the elites were tough for most players at level. The reward system insured that there were enough people playing in the zone and the size of the zone insured that enough people were in relatively close proximity to get things done.
The experience now with people one- or two-shotting the elites isn’t the same as it was back then.
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Liked Timeless isle a lot more than the Maw. Felt more rewarding to do stuff on Ti. The other place though I hated as much as the Maw though. Thunder isle, or whatever it was called. I went there like twice haha. Went overboard on trash mob density on thunder isle imo. At least on TI you could get around for the most part without pulling aggro on everything that moved lol. The Maw is probably the most unrewarding zone they have added in this game imo.
You can tell the current gen of devs forgot (or never learned) the lessons of the past when they come up with stuff like The Maw. lol
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The zone designed also let people mount up and rush over to help with the boss. Only the 2 up the path past all the elites really had an issue for people getting there (and when “everyone” is rushing, it’s not that big a deal).
When the bosses were at level, it was routine to drop what you were doing, rush over, and actually be able to not just tag the boss, but participate in the fight.
Later, in Tanaan Jungle, the zone was big enough, and the terrain difficult enough, if you weren’t nearby a boss when it came up, it was likely not worth the time to bother trying to get to it. Even when flying showed up, this could be difficult (though obviously less so).
TJ was not TI, but it was pretty close. I had a great time in TI as well.
Exactly. I know Mop gets a lot of hate, because of the kung foo panda etc, etc, but it was probably the best expansion since wolk imo. And I would personally like for them to revisit 3 person scenarios like mop had also. The ones in mop were a lot better than isle in BFA. The only hate I have towards mop, is it was the expansion where these devs destroyed realms with crz.
Don’t forget the amazing, chill music!
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As someone who played back then that is exactly what it was. It would be like if you landed in Maldraxxus and you killed every mob they dropped 5 anima each, rares drop 25, and elite rates drop 50 and you use anima to buy catch up gear for 500+ a piece……
It was boring that’s why I don’t get the hype
Then there is the whole Ordos thing… I’ll explain it in modern game terms
- to access a world boss you have to collect materials from every raid tier and do PvP to get a cloak just to be able to fight the boss who drops nothing but catchup gear…. (For the record I actually love the idea of building a legendary item by using materials and questline that weaves together all the raid tiers, just not for catch up gear and to unlock a boring boss)
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Timeless Isle had a great variety of stuff to do, relevant content, and a lot of it involved joining groups through local chat. World pvp was super fun, also something that people would use local chat for. People would call out where coin gankers were, and if you were collecting coins that was fun too, because then you’d be on the run, basically playing a game of tag.
Timeless Isle was maybe the last really good thing in game that really felt like actual mmo. It also had a really fun layout, was cool how it progressed in tiers all the way up to Ordos at the top.
Exactly. And then I get the people who reply by saying ‘‘But that’s how it’s always been’’ and I have to say well, I’d like to expect a tad better instead of always expecting the same old thing that adds up to just busy work.
I don’t see what’s so great, even when I read people’s praise for Mechagon. I just did the lap around it and got some stuff that I needed, saw what it offered, just don’t see how people are so excited with that, timeless or I’ve even seen people defend the maw which is the worst iteration of these hack and slash, rare farming zones.
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I’ll agree that the zone looked nice but I think Nazjatar had better World PvP and frankly World PvP has been significantly decreasing in quality since WoTlK. TBC was the peak of World PvP (with the objectives in nearly every zone).
The Timeless Isle had few equals when it came to music.
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You weren’t doing that to access Ordos. Ordos was just icing on the cake for completing the cloak that everyone wanted to complete.
You’re also missing that those rares and elite rares often have unique mechanics that made them fun to engage. There were mechanics in play to get people to socialize and work together. It’d be like if the Maw had people actually working together to overcome bosses with mechanics, instead of people just doing their own thing. Some of the elite rares would have impromptu squads form up to take stuff down.
Add in the jump puzzles which were unique and fun for the time, the various different biomes (the cave interiors, the village area, the upper camps, and the inside of the Ordon Sanctum as well as various outdoor areas like the frog camp and the spriggan crystal area), the world bosses to fight… I mean it wa sjust good. It just simply worked.
Do I think the Maw should have been exactly like Timeless Isle? No. But I think Timeless Isle succeeded at being what it wanted to be, whereas the Maw failed to be what it wanted to be.
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I didn’t know it was considered that. I liked the Isle of Thunder more at the time.
It provided masses amount of content. Dailies/weeklies/reps/profession farming/pet hunting/mount hunting/2 world bosses/toy farming. PvP content, puzzles and the area was attractive and well designed to do it in. You could get so many rewards for doing the activities as well. You doing profession farming, you could get gear for your alts at the same time. Same thing with the rare - toy/pet farming.
“Gold standard” is subjective. If you liked it, you liked it. If you didn’t, you didn’t. At its time it got everyone playing in the same area and felt very alive. Groups for farming yaungnol, groups for PVP, groups for world events. The enemies were challenging and there were a bunch of Dark Souls references.
I finally finished my Cinderfall’s meteor maybe a year ago… that was a godsend for a long time in the no-flying expansions. meteor + glider, “homestyle flying”
No idea, it was incredibly boring to me.
No story or unlocks, just random rare tagging.
Other than a bit of censor fun because it was new, I only went there for the world bosses
Isle of Thunder was way better in MoP.
Timeless Isle, despite it’s map markers, had plenty of things hidden away to find, and several of the marked things still required you to figure out how to get there or what you need to do to trigger it. I was finding new things about Timeless Isle for a straight 3 weeks, when a typical zone has basically nothing to find and is very straightforward from day 1.
The mobs ranged from typical trivial world trash to “puts up a decent fight to a geared player and has mechanics”. Timeless Isle is the only time I would go and just fight mobs in the world because it was fun. The High Priests were fun to fight. That’s it. Full stop. I wasn’t grinding the currency/rep because I didn’t care about it, but I had fun fighting.
And of course there’s the “vanity farm” aspect. Not my thing, but plenty of people enjoyed it just because they like collecting things, so they ended up spending a lot of time doing the rare rotation and just chatting with people along the way.
Then there was the rep/currency (forget which it was, maybe both?) farm on top of that for a similar type of player.
Then there was the PvP aspect with the censer or whatever it was.
And on top of that there was a built in “quest progression” reward in the form of requiring the legendary cloak to see/fight the world boss.
It was a great zone despite being pretty small and having next to no standard questing.
Also, they bothered to add that campfire easter egg thing after WoD’s launch to skip the WoD intro. Didn’t help the zone during its day any, but it’s cool that they went back to add it.
I don’t think every zone should aspire to be Timeless Isle. It’d get old to see it repeated for every, say, x.3 patch (I know TI was .4, but we don’t really do those anymore), but I think Blizzard should keep in mind what people liked about it when they design zones.
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