Without echoing most of the feedback everyone else has given (which I think is great and I agree with almost all of it), a couple of thoughts that have marinated for a while:
- I really like the zone for its artistic merits, its ambience and the feelings these things invoke as you play. On launch day someone said “breath of the wild vibes!” in general chat, and I totally agree with that. ZM feels so peaceful, untouched and relaxing most of the time, and suddenly you’re in a desert filled with mawsworn and it’s putting the war in Warcraft again! It’s really well designed.
- I initially thought the travel time between hubs, rares and treasures was too much, but I have since changed my opinion on that and I think it is pretty decently designed as a whole. Traveling on foot means you can usually pick up some treasures or a rare or two on the way to somewhere else, so taking the flight paths almost feels bad because you can see everything you’re missing out on. Once flying is unlocked, rushing over to rares is going to be much less of a pain, which I’ve seen is one of the biggest issues with the travel time. As always, it feels bad to see a rare spawn you want, and not be able to hurry over there to grab it because someone else pulled it.
- The story feels a little… empty. I’ve enjoyed the quests so far, but I’m surprised at how few there are. When all the non-daily/weekly quests are completable in 30-60 minutes every week, you’re often left wanting for more. I would have loved a couple of extra quest chains that delved deeper into the origins of ZM, some more personal storylines, and to see some of the ramifications of discovering the place. (Not gonna talk about the Anduin cinematic right now.)
- I really like the pacing of the zone. The quests are well-paced (I wish there were more!), and the daily/weekly to-do list is very well-shaped. Prior to this week’s change, I was going to write that I did not like the 3-day Patterns within Patterns quest, but so did everyone else it seems, and now that it is weekly I’m very happy with it. I know exactly what I’m getting when I log in every day now, and it feels great to not be forced to spend hours in Zereth Mortis to do something because of a lockout. I know some players still feel forced to kill as many rares as possible to ‘stay ahead of the curve’ with rep, but I’ve never really felt that is much of a problem now that you can easily get to revered when you need to be, without grinding anything. Thank you for listening to feedback on this point :>
- Cosmic flux!.. I have more than 10 000 of it, and I don’t know if I’ll ever use any of it. As far as I know, it is only used to upgrade a legendary to its highest form, or change any season 3 item into a tier set. I’m unlikely to get either of them, as I don’t participate in raids, pvp or m+ to get tier-eligible items, and the legendaries are so expensive that I can’t justify spending so much gold on an item I know that I won’t need to do the content that I’m doing. Yet, I keep getting more and more cosmic flux, and a cool reminder that I’ve just looted it every time I open a treasure chest, kill a rare, or complete a quest. My question is, can we get to change Cypher equipment into tier sets, and could we get another way to spend our cosmic flux? (the latter also kind of applies to soul ash/cinders).
Edit: Forgot to say that I’ve been really happy with the bugfixing of ZM! Every time I’ve encountered a bug, it’s already been noticed by the community at large and it’s usually been fixed the day after.