People would rather ignore the means to get around easier and just complain. It’s going to happen every expansion and every content update till the game eventually ends.
Great post.
From a player perspective I detest The Maw because it’s not fun to play.
From a sheer design perspective, The Maw is perfect.
It’s The Maw. It’s exactly as it should be: a punishing hellscape in which deserving souls are forever imprisioned. The artwork is gorgeous in that it embodies exactly that.
From a story perspective the devs nailed it. As players we shouldn’t want to stay for any length of time. But instead of the zone turning into a level-capped, overgeared PvP griefer one-shotting you to the point you need to leave before you can’t even hearth out, it might have served the game better to make it more difficult to navigate the longer you stay. It could have gotten darker and foggier by degrees until you can’t see at all, and must hearth.
It should also not be so overtuned. As mortals, we should be far stronger than corpses. Having my timer run out because I’ve been overrun by mobs to the point I can’t even hearth, isn’t fun, and it wastes time. It’s just another timegate in a different form.
The second biggest problem The Maw has from a game-play perspective, is the ridiculous amount of time-gating in Shadowlands overall. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was more story/quests available.
I don’t find The Maw compelling or engaging content in any way. And as a non-dungeon/raiding BM Hunterholic, Legendaries are pointless. I usually do my Maw chores last, so I’ll hate the game less for logging off because there’s nothing else I’m motivated to do.
I might be less frustrated if there was a Skip The Maw Intro feature for alts, but I’ll never know until that happens because I hate it so much.
It’s a shame, because it’s a cool zone. It’s just not compelling from a gaming perspective, and it should be.
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I avoid that place as much as possible. I go there for my weekly soul collection and while I’m there, if there happens to be a daily that’s in the same area I am standing, I’ll do that. Using group finder is impossible due to the phasing thing.
Same. If the Maw is indeed WoW’s hell, then it should be reserved for cheaters and botters. The rest of us good players can stay out of the Maw for good.
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It has the same issues as Torghast and the expansion endgame in general. Risk vs Reward. They don’t match up at all and this is a reward based power progression game with an area that literally doesn’t offer any power just ways to avoid or get around the stuff you are apparently not supposed to be killing or engaging with despite having six quests telling you you need to. What? Defending this zone should have your soul condemned to the maw IRL
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Maybe from a story design perspective. From a game design perspective, it’s terrible. Giving you daily chores to perform in a place that’s deliberately designed to be repulsive is a real head scratcher. I honestly feel like the devs really hate us players when I set foot in that zone. It’s like they’re playing their own game where try to wear us down into simply quitting.
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Exactly.
Making it mandatory to open up more story/covenant quests adds insult to injury.
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you know what else the devs give you? they give you consumables that makes it easier to get around.
Try them. They are cheap. They’re pretty good.
This is the one thing I agree with. I understand that Blizzard wants to add activities that encourage server-communities… but then why are you allowing CRZ at all? The half-way implementation is just a disaster. Blizzard could commit hard and say no CRZ in the Maw and we would adapt, but this weird implementation where you have to go to Oribos to finagle with phasing is just bad. Stahp it Blizzard. Either make it work like normal or commit to no CRZ.
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Outside of rescuing souls I haven’t bothered with it in weeks. Place just sucks. It’s not like it’s even dangerous with good rewards. It’s irritating with 0 reason to be there.
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That’s not why the maw is a failure. The maw is a failure because it just misses being fun. I am not talking about Torghast, but the Maw as a zone. We can’t get people to do even bigger rares that can’t be soloed in my realm. The only people who try are usually undergeared and die right away. For example, the executioner quests where a big elite spawns after some combat–no one shows up and people aren’t OP enough to solo it. The Eye of the Jailer is overdone and prevents fun. If you want to keep going, you can’t without being penalized by losing thousands of stygia.
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I hate going to the Maw. The parking always sucks, the food court selections are awful, most of the shops are boring, the restrooms are nasty, and too many Mawrats running around…
What?
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The Maw gets much, much better once you beat Twisting Corridors.
That’s why I keep my maw time to a minimum. There isn’t really anything I need there as in like gear that will help me for raid so I just usually do 2 maybe 3 dailies and call it day for the maw since the Jailers Eye will be at least rank 3 then. Sure it will take longer for the rep but keeps me from being burnt out in the Maw.
The maw isn’t nearly as bad as Naz. The only reason you feel that way is because we got flying a few weeks into Naz.
Whats sad doom metal? Graveworm?
The maw and torghast build that beautiful cycle of frustration. You go through the frustration that is the last layers of tc to get a mount that makes the maw, that you don’t enjoy going to, more bearable. You do the maw so you get upgrades that make torghast more doable so you are less frustrated in tc while trying to get that mount that’s supposed to make the maw less horrible so you can get more upgrades that make tc less frustrating so…
The maw doesn’t only punish you by having to run back to your corpse all vulnerable to get it back. It punishes you twice by ridding you of all the stygia you got while suffering through it if you can’t make it to your corpse without dying.
Sometimes I wonder if the maw is supposed to punish people for thinking visions were punishing… Or if it’s supposed to punish people for saying bfa was unrewarding… Sometimes I wonder if Ion views himself as the Jailer and us as his prisoners. Imprisoned in that endless cycle of frustration and punishment. Imprisoned in this game that now seems to work based on a philosophy of no punishment being enough of a reward.
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I agree. I’m just hoping to max my rep with the broker. Once I’ve achieved that, I’m not spending a moment there beyond the weekly that requires more souls.
The zone is intended to be unpleasant
The eye of the jailer is to prevent endless grinding
You don’t need a group for literally anything other than perdition hold quests
Agreed. On top of that, Blizzard deliberately broke phasing in there so that you have to go back to Oribos to form your group before running to a given boss. They really pulled out the stops to make this zone as inconvenient as possible to quest in.
I havent done any of the maw weeklies or torghast after reset and im not sure I will. Dropping chores has historically been an indiciation my interest in the expansion is burning out.
Hate to see it, but PvP is gated behind too much PvE conent. I would gladly queue all season if the PvE rat race requirements to be competitive weren’t there.