The whole problem with the MAW. Unrewarding. Rares drop a little stygia. End of game. working as intended.
Don’t hate me, but if it was BFA, Rares or Dailies might actually give an upgrade VIA Titanforging. I miss that. Up until the end, you could almost always find something to use.
I hadn’t played WoW since Cata until the end of 8.2. I don’t know when this changed exactly, but one of the most obnoxious things I noticed in 8.3 that is only worse now is how much “rushed” I feel and how Blizzard seems to make a lot of content in which standing still or exploring is actively discouraged and punished. On top of that, they often force you to move but make it annoying or difficult to do so.
Examples:
M+ is time-based and mounts are only usable in some spots, checkpoints (graveyards) are sporadic and not consistent across dungeons.
You had to speedrun Horrific Visions and couldn’t afk during them. Being in Horrific Visions drained your sanity, a number of mechanics prevented you from moving, slower your movement, punished you if you moved wrong, feared you, etc. Mechanics continued while standing still though so you had to move.
The negative effects of Corruption in 8.3 included slows and mobs that forced you to move.
Mobs in the N’Zoth assault zones and the Maw frequently cast chains or mind flay on you as you try to pass, grinding you to a halt. Worms over the assault zones slower your flying and even killed you if you got too close.
You can’t afk or stand still in the Maw after getting Jailer 2 (or is it 3?) due to assassins, being bombarded by towers, and the abductors. You can’t mount in the Maw unless you get really lucky to loot a mount or grind 144 layers of TC.
You can’t afk in many places and wings of Torghast because adds can spawn on you. You can’t mount in Torghast.
The more I think about it, it’s almost if they think forcing you to move in particular ways and often preventing you from doing so efficiently is a fun and engaging way to challenge people.
I never refused to play in an endgame zone like this in my entire wow life. The game is supposed to be fun first. This zone is not fun and therefore many players and I do not go there. Blizzard is too focused on limiting how I want to play instead of making things that push me to want to play more in that zone. Its unrewarding and extremely slow. Ill give it a F for failure in terms of enjoyment. Wow hell is a fancy way of giving them a pass for bad zone design. I hope the devs that designes it feel bad for the disgusting place they created.
if you want hell and every thing there is worthless = the maw i dont even like going there its like a turd that should be flushed over and over in the toilet
yea but so is the expansion so shrugs
As a guardian…
1-Pull ALL THE THINGS
2-Kill them all, but very very slowly, while whispering in /1 “Hey I’m killing XXXXXXX and would love if some DPS shows up to help”. Noone shows up to help.
3-Finish soloing the elite 4 minutes of swipe/thrash/maul later
4-Repeat until rank 5
The problem in my opinion is that it is just too empty. Blizzard needs to stop releasing these empty zones with a few generic objectives here and there and think it will work.
I mean, I loved legion, but I remember being very disappointed with broken shores at 7.2 because it was basically an empty zone with a few world quests and some boring invasions that I had to farm just to get to the mage tower…
Unfortunately, I can see they trying to pull some kind of invasion system on the maw to “fix it”. Booooooh
Endgame zones should look at Suramar as a model and start to improve from there.
Movement has been leveraged as a “fun” mechanic ever since the WoD pre-patch, where the raid designers decided that it was time to take run speed and mount speed away and make players “earn” it back as a reward. Even today, thanks to the endless “does not stack” on mount speed bonuses, we haven’t got our MoP mount speed back.
But worse than that, with movement leveraged as a “fun” mechanic the devs went into full-scale move-or-die mode, most recently seen in BfA and Shadowlands as THOSE DAMN GROUND SWIRLIES which are everywhere, targeted on wherever you’re standing, just to make sure you keep doin’ the dance and MOVE MOVE MOVE.
You were fighting something? Well, 50% of mobs can now teleport behind you BECAUSE REASONS! Stuff the “lore,” it’s teleports for all! Tell 'em they all learned it from the Mogu or something! Wanna kill it? MOVE MOVE MOVE!
Stopped in a Shadowlands zone to look something up on Wowhead because it’s not even vaguely explained in game? Careful! That damage aura coming off a mob you’re not even engaged in combat with is taking 10% of your health every second! Wanna avoid a graveyard run and repair bill for daring to stay in one place for 60 seconds? Dammit, idiot, MOVE MOVE MOVE!
Yeah, it’s like they’re trying to leverage the tiresome gogogogogogogogo of Mythic+ and apply it to as much of the game world as they possibly can. Annoyances are everywhere. Even the aggro radius of mobs out in the world seems to have increased, and their pathing set to make sure they wander near as many players as possible unless they MOVE MOVE MOVE!
Same here.
I swear, if I hear that lame excuse that SO MANY of the forum dwellers poop out like clockwork (“it’s literal wow hell, it’s supposed to not be fun”)… argh.
It was completely empty in beta until literally a few weeks before launch, after streamers called it out for not having anything in it.
Now it has stuff in it that nobody wants to do because it’s such a miserable and un-fun place to be. Design win!
Broken Shore was awful, and so was Argus - both of which were un-fun design failures that people excused with the “but it’s demonic hell and it’s not meant to be fun” line. It’s almost like Blizzard’s got PR people posing as users in these forums to help “sell” zones they know are dreadful.
Can’t hear you over my WORGEN RUNNING WILD PRIVILEGE.
/awoo
Why go to the maw. Frost Mage here, nothing except a torghast upgrade which I haven’t gotten yet is keeping me from making the legendary I want. Do I need it… no. I dont need it. I have almost no use for increasing my dps slightly.
for me it’s a excelent challenger, I do not worry because for each patch increasing our ilvl to become OP will make it easier over time like all classic WoW expansions, which cost us in the end we adapt, we get used to it and we get stronger to the point that we cause fear to our enemy.
That is why the Maw experience is temporary, and we probably get to use flying mounts depending on whether they does not keep on being difficult or not.
The Maw as a zone is the worst idea they’ve ever had for a zone. How are the devs paid all this money and still come up with crap ideas? 
Oh I forgot - it’s that California mentality of “problems will get fixed if we tax the people and throw money at it ”
i bet they threw together the maw like really fast but they gave us stigma = worthless the maw is wortless a tauren smells better then the maw and nothing smells worse then a tauren
Souls-borne genre lovers say otherwise. Calling something bad simply because you think it’s too hard doesn’t make it bad.
The zone itself is fine. You may be surprised, but some people like challenging content - it’s an end game zone that’s optional. You can get your Souls pretty quick just by hanging out in that area right below the portal. You don’t even have to go to the more aggressive areas. It’s literally as hard as you want it to be.
I think the biggest issue with the Maw is what’s the point? Sockets? Nice, but lets be honest, it’s not that nice. What if it was something more akin to AoH? After all that grind maybe you could buy a high ilvl ring that could be on par or slightly below m raiding loot. Or have Ve’nari sell one peice of gear slightly below n raid and heroic on a few other rep obtained before hitting Cordial. Think it’s safe to assume most folks don’t like Torghast so those upgrades aren’t that appealing to most. So we really don’t have a point to an area is already more difficult than any other areas in the game. That’s the issue. The Maw doesn’t even have a carrot on the stick, so of course you don’t like it.
Oh how I have missed you, my dear.
What challenge? I’m not calling it bad because it’s too hard. I’m calling it bad because it’s so damn frustrating and annoying. It’s slow and inconvenient just for the sake of being slow and inconvenient, and there isn’t even a meaningful payoff at the end. Where am I supposed to find the fun in that? No mounts, stygia loss, long GY runs, Eye, etc aren’t challenges. Just frustrations.
A Souls game has me clearing an area or beating a boss with a sense of satisfaction and making me excited about what’s next. The Maw on the other hand I leave wishing I never had to go back.
You’re right, it does. And what else comes with clearing a boss? Massive currency and in most cases the ability to forge a strong piece of eq from the boss soul. Once again, like my post mentioned the reward- the carrot on the stick. The Maw lacks that.
By no means do I think it’s a great zone, but it could’ve had some potential. The mount issue was incredibly dumb, it’s fine that some races/classes can have a leg up on others in certain situations, but druids and worgen having that much of an advantage is pretty bad
I don’t mind the EoJ for the most part, though I do hate the barrage in it’s current format. Not being able to just find a safe corner should you need to go AFK feels pretty bad. Hearth or log out otherwise you’re dead. Have it fire off more while in combat. Forcing more mobility during combat sounds like a better trade off than just go AFK and you die.
Yeah the Maw is cancer. Don’t even go there anymore and just mythic+ and raid. They really botched this game.
the maw is a place were people try to make us fight the way they want us to fight and play how they want us to and timers ect . when you pay to play it shouldnt be that way
It seems fairly clear that not many people like the Maw or Torghast. I found it incredible disappointing that all 9.1 is about more Maw and Torghast.
The solution:
Leave Shadowlands in 9.2 and wrap the Shadowlands story in 9.1.