One of the big discourses in the World of Warcraft community is regarding how the open world content in Zaralek Cavern has fallen off in participation much more quickly than expected. One of the main solutions people have proposed is that we need more carrots to chase, with some going so far as to suggest that we need infinitely farmable things, which increases our power over time. Basically, we couldn’t even make one whole expansion before people started asking for AP back. However, I think that’s people falling back on what they know has worked in the past rather than what would be good. So, let’s chat about some of where Zaralek Caverns has fallen short for me and see if there might be better solutions out there.
To start off with something good, my favorite new activity is the digs with Myrrit. I really enjoy the short hits of puzzling activities that see me needing to employ all kinds of different tactics to work through. I haven’t done all of them yet, but the pacifist spider who was holding hostages until they were rehabilitated was perfect. Myrrit himself is also highly entertaining, although I really don’t understand why he can’t just sit on my back while I’m in bear or cat form.
The main issue with the digs is that I can only do one a week. I know there are ways to obtain other dig maps, with the main one being random drops from doing other things, but it’s just one dig per week as a baseline. So, although I will long specifically to do the quest, it doesn’t keep me very active over the week. Additionally, once I am done with the associated achievement, I doubt I’ll keep up with them. As much as the digs are fun the first time, I tried doing some on my alt Evoker, and they do not hold up on a repeated play. This makes sense since exploration and experiencing something new is the entire point with them.
One of my least favorite aspects of 10.1 is the whole barter brick system. The questline going around hawking timeshares was hilarious. However, some of the methods of acquiring the bricks are things I do not enjoy. For example, the new profession quests to gather various things and turn them in to the niffen are a bit extreme. The quantities are always much higher than seems reasonable, and I don’t really like putting in work orders for it or buying things off the AH. I’ve never been one to hoard gold, so I don’t have huge supplies of that as well. Essentially, I only do those when they are for items I can fill myself. As it stands, I’m not sure I’m going to bother trying to get the mount locked behind the bricks, and mounts are normally the thing I am most motivated to go after.
The other big issue with the barter bricks is that what you can get for them is spread out on multiple different vendors. It’s far more difficult to figure out how worthwhile a currency is to farm when the items are spread all over the place. Secondly, when you then must turn that currency into something else, it further obfuscates things. Sure, I could go look up all that information on a separate website, but that shouldn’t be the easiest way to discover why you should care about an in-game currency. I get that the goal was to create a real barter system feel, and for some players, that was probably a welcome change. For me, it was a real miss, which was exacerbated by the fact that I felt like I had to interact with the system for my leatherworking patterns.
The rares in the cavern are where I feel the lack of other players the most. As a tank, I have the privilege of knowing I can engage any of them and not worry about dying and having to start over. However, I also know it’ll likely take 10 minutes to kill. Sure, most of the time when I start fighting one, sooner or later, others will show up, but it isn’t guaranteed. Honestly, if there were a clear and simple announcement when a particular rare was engaged, more people would probably show up to help. I know I certainly would fly over to help regardless if I needed something from the rare.
As for actual reasons to kill the rares, I don’t have many. The guaranteed Drake Fragment was nice to farm before the raid and M+ opened up, but now it’s incredibly inefficient. Plus, I currently have 553 of those and nothing to spend them on, so there’s no reason I would want more. There’s a handful of dragonriding customizations, pets, transmogs, and one mount to go after. I don’t really feel the drive to go for those, though, because when I was farming them a lot, it felt like the drop rate was incredibly low.
Unlike in Forbidden Reach, there isn’t anything on them that is needed for the long term, like the keys for the vault were, and this is where some players fall into the trap of familiarity with AP. One of the biggest issues with AP as a general system is that it was easy to fall behind and difficult to catch up. At the same time, it was also tied directly to player power, so there was a strong feeling for anyone who participated in group content that if you didn’t keep up, you were failing your team. That’s a prime recipe for creating resentment. The vaults sidestepped this issue and just offered interesting things to explore, which were a bit different from week to week. Sure, the Forbidden Reach has far fewer players in it than it did when it was current, but there are still groups running around farming the rares there regularly. A bit of that is likely to do with farming keys. That’s certainly why I go back there periodically.
I’ve really enjoyed not feeling like I have to log onto WoW every day or even every week. July was a busy month for me, and it’s reassuring to know that in the time I’ve missed, I haven’t fallen behind my raid team. Additionally, it’s given me and my guildies time to focus on other pursuits like Diablo IV, FFXIV, and FFXIV’s new story. Any MMO that strikes a healthy balance for its players will have a natural ebb and flow to the player levels and engagement. The main thing is always having something that players want to come back to do and not something they feel like they must do. Also, there is another update coming in just over a week, so we aren’t in a content drought either.
