Thoughts about the Mage Tower

[Mage in Pajamas]

When Edmund Hilary was asked why he climbed Mount Everest he purportedly replied "because it was there." I often think of this story while playing wow and questioning why bother with some of the content.

Mage Tower is one of the odder challenges in wow, not only because it is difficult but because it is exclusively solo content, time gated, and currency gated (per attempt anyway.)

At first I thought why bother? But with each attempt, especially on my alts, I was getting better at the game on a way that heroics or even overgeared Mythics can't offer and punishing Mythics (higher keys or bad pugs) can't offer for a toon I'm still trying to improve at.

Curious what other people think but I wish these challenges were not time gated. I don't care about achieves or transmogs. I want this kind of hard proving ground where I can home my skills. I want to take my rest shammy I haven't touched since Cata and practice. Don't really care if it's going to cost repair bills and what not.

Tldr - mage tower makes me better. Could make the community better players. Would love a practice or proving ground system.

[Omedon]

My two cents: As an older gamer, I've put my time in "being better," and I play to relax now, so the mage tower is almost... I don't want to say "offensive" because I respect the concept, but it's certainly anathema to me. When I first heard of the mage tower I thought "I'll do it on my tanks" (I'm a career 5-man tank among my friends... basically the only one that enjoys tanking) and I thought "if it's too hard for me, it's too hard for the WoW I care about."

Yeah it ran me the hell over, and ceased to exist to me then.

There's... I don't know, there's a line where Blizzard goes from "this is for skilled players" to "this is for people that care way too much about this game," and I think mage tower crossed it. "Challenge mode" has existed in previous iterations before, but it was always group content. WoW has never, quite pointedly, put individual customers in a position to point at them and say "YOU... are not good in the objective measurement of this game!"... And... I'm not sure I think it's their place to be doing that, in my not usually humble opinion. Proving grounds were different, slightly. There was the opportunity to keep climbing it, but as far as gating anything substantial from players, that was kept at a low bar. Putting cosmetics, an entire line of your artifact behind this much higher bar... it went too far.

My guildmistress, a skilled player dating back to vanilla, had multiple panic attacks unlocking the fire glaives for her demon hunter, over the course of months. It was torture to watch, to know I couldn't help her. When she finally got them she said "yeah, no, that was ridiculous and doesn't belong in WoW."

"Having skilled friends" needs to be a fallback for access in WoW. I know, I know, that's how we get paid carries, and that's a whole other ball of wax, but being on the side of seeing my friends be told "NOPE YOU STILL SUCK" not by the community but by the game for months and months... that really sent the wrong message to me. I was happy to hear WoW say that nothing comparable to the MT is currently planned for BFA.

I'm not wow'ed when I see people with MT appearances, I'm not jealous. Unless I know them personally, my thoughts are in the neighborhood of "you poor soul." Indeed, the one person in our guild that has all the challenge appearances for his main gets "tryhard" shamed. Jokingly of course... but only jokingly because we know and like him.

I'm not a fan. I think they should have been a high end mythic+ thing, not a solo thing. "Having skilled friends" or "as a team we're better than we are as individuals" needs to be a valid path in an MMO.

Just my opinion.

[LoLcano]

When Edmund Hilary was asked why he climbed Mount Everest he purportedly replied "because it was there." I often think of this story while playing wow and questioning why bother with some of the content.

Mage Tower is one of the odder challenges in wow, not only because it is difficult but because it is exclusively solo content, time gated, and currency gated (per attempt anyway.)

At first I thought why bother? But with each attempt, especially on my alts, I was getting better at the game on a way that heroics or even overgeared Mythics can't offer and punishing Mythics (higher keys or bad pugs) can't offer for a toon I'm still trying to improve at.

Curious what other people think but I wish these challenges were not time gated. I don't care about achieves or transmogs. I want this kind of hard proving ground where I can home my skills. I want to take my rest shammy I haven't touched since Cata and practice. Don't really care if it's going to cost repair bills and what not.

Tldr - mage tower makes me better. Could make the community better players. Would love a practice or proving ground system.

I agree, solo challenging content were always my dream. I'm too old to find skilled ppl to do challenging stuff like mythic and what not ,so this solo challenge was rly a fun experience .

Hope we see more of it in BfA.

[Mage in Pajamas]

That's a very helpful observation. It's one reason. I don't care for transmogs. I had to draw the line years ago between content I enjoy and the filler I needed to cut to have a healthy family, social, and professional life. (Bye bye battlegrounds. Hehe.)

The value I see is practicing your class. No reward other than improvement and only required insofar as I want to improve.

Cheers.

[Egor2765]

I agree, solo challenging content were always my dream. I'm too old to find skilled ppl to do challenging stuff like mythic and what not ,so this solo challenge was rly a fun experience .

Hope we see more of it in BfA.

Same for me.

My two cents: As a younger, but also a bit older gamer, I've put my time into the game and I play for my own enjoyment now, so the mage tower is almost... I don't want to say "a blessing" because I respect the concept, but quite fun to me. When I first heard of the mage tower I thought "Oh can't wait to try it out on my druid" (I'm a career hybrid among my friends... basically the only one that enjoys trying out everything in the game) and I thought "if it's too hard for me, then I can't wait to see the cosmetics other people will get from it."

Yeah I ran it the hell over, and I actually did it on all my characters.

There's... I don't know, there's a line where Blizzard goes from "this is for one kind of players" to "this is for another kind of players," and I think the mage tower crossed it. "Challenge mode" has existed in previous iterations before, but it was always group content. WoW has never, quite pointedly, put individual players in a position to point at them and say "YOU... are not good in the objective measurement of this game!"... And... It still hasn't if you really think about it. I'm not sure I think it's their place to be doing that, in my not usually humble opinion, and they certainly still haven't done that. Proving grounds were slightly different, but they also yielded a cosmetic title if you cleared 30 waves on endless which I also did at level 90 AND 100. There was the opportunity to keep climbing it, but as far as gating anything substantial from players, there was nothing except the titles. Just like the mage tower has nothing but a cosmetic. Putting cosmetics, an entire line of your artifact behind this much higher bar... it was pretty cool to me.

My guildmistress, which is myself as I am a guild leader and officer of my bank guild would both make a fantastic pair irl too, had no panic attacks unlocking the fire glaives for the demon hunter, over the course of a couple of days when I first tried it on my friends account. It was pretty funny to do for me, as I at that point hadn't even leveled a DH on my own account yet. When she finally got them she said "yeah, no, that was ridiculous and I shouldn't have tortured myself over something cosmetic IN A GAME with such devastating consequences for my REAL LIFE.." (Are you shitting me btw? Why the hell would you do something like that for a freaking game?)

"Having skilled friends" needs not to be a fallback for cosmetic items in WoW. I know, I know, that's how wemy guild get paid carries, and that's a whole other ball of wax, but being on the side of seeing my friends be told "NOPE YOU STILL SUCK" not by the community, but by my friends and guild for months and months... that really sent the wrong message to me. I was happy to hear WoW say that nothing comparable to the MT is currently planned for BFA, not because I wasn't excited about the possiblity of more content of this kind, but rather because my head wouldn't call me terrible things for not being able to complete that one small tiny unrealisticly small tiny and unrealistic thing in that small tiny unrealistic game mode.

I'm not wow'ed when I see people with MT appearances, I'm not jealous. Unless I know them personally, my thoughts are in the neighborhood of "wow that's pretty cool," and sometimes I even whisper them asking if they enjoyed the mage tower or not. Afterall it is a personal challenge and not something where you rely on your team to carry your carries for you. Indeed, the one person in our guild that has all the challenge appearances for his main AND ALTS (me) enjoyed doing it on all his characters with all specs. There has been no negative responses to it as far as I am aware, but on the other hand I haven't tried pushing it down people's throats hoping for their attention regarding this. Oh wait, I'm actually the only person in my guild as I use it for bank storage only.


Overall:
I am a fan of this kind of content mainly because its something you can do without having to rely on many other people. You can even do it at all points of the day (provided the mage tower is up ofcourse), unlike with guild raiding where you need a schedule.
I hope there will be more solo content like the mage tower and proving grounds, or small group content like the challenge mode dungeons or mythic +. The first time I tried out the mage tower was in line with the "because it was there"-reasoning and that's it.

[Battlebeard]

I think this could be something to be implemented as a mandatory system for most classes.

Like, before you can queue for stuff, you must do your class challenge, almost like you required to do Proving Grounds silver before. Maybe not as hard as current Mage Tower but still fairly challenging. That way, if you roll alts, you make sure you can actually play your alts too before you queue for stuff. Would increase quality.

This current form of Mage Tower didn't do much for me. I played Rogue and only Rogue since vanilla and this meant these fights became only a gear fight, with enough gear it was easy and did both Assa and Outlaw on 2nd attempt, first was just "what is this" attempt. Subtlety took a few more, but that's because of RNG more than difficulty. Still fairly easy.

And I don't play any alts, at all, so didn't have much use of it personally. BUT for those who DO play alts, this is an amazing way to learn alts.

[faithbane]

I have warmed up to the mage challenge now, it doesn't bother me anymore but I hated the Mage challenge at the start since it was basically a gear check instead of a skill check. I mean they had this hp/damage scaling on mobs based on your ilvl for legion and they decided to go with static encounters for these bosses? On top of that some challenges are basically impossible below a certain gear (like phase 2 of xylem, unless you can put out enough damage before the whole zone is covered you are dead, straight gear check), and completely different specs had to do the same challenge as if the experience is comparable at all..

[Mlz]

My guildmistress, a skilled player dating back to vanilla, had multiple panic attacks unlocking the fire glaives for her demon hunter, over the course of months. It was torture to watch, to know I couldn't help her. When she finally got them she said "yeah, no, that was ridiculous and doesn't belong in WoW."

She trying to do content above her capacity was the problem all along (and her not trying to improve herself by analysing what she did wrong/asking for advice). The underlying issue is that people get offended when they are not up to par to something and then blame the system rather than improve themselves. Like was her DPS rotation off? Or cc? Practice that outside of the challenge to the point where it organically fits into your playstyle (as it should tbh). Couldn't remember waves? Write them down and put them next to your screen. It is like those guys who couldn't complete Silver Proving Grounds which was easier than normal dungeons and then complained that the system is rigged not them being lazy/stupid. Although, the difference is that Mage Tower is absolutely 100% voluntary. There might be aspects of the game that you will not complete unless you overcome the obstacles - some people who find Mage Tower easy might find arenas hard and so on. It took me A LOT of tries, even when I was overgeared, to do the healer challenge because I'm an absolute garbage healer. I had to memorise the waves and cooldowns I was supposed to use but once I beat it, it felt good. I wanted to unlock all spec appearances and decided that the reward was worth it for me to improve myself as a healer. I two-shot the tank challenge because I'm a lot better tank and I didn't need a thought-out strategy to quickly react to shit because I was already used to it. Also, if something in a game gives you panic attacks and you keep on doing that (for a cosmetic reward, mind you), then you probably have bigger issues to sort out in your life.

The mage tower is fine. Is it a gear-check? Sure, it becomes pretty much a 'freebie' with 930+ gear but at least for some classes it was pretty fun and challenging at 900ish ilvls.

[Deleted]

I think this could be something to be implemented as a mandatory system for most classes.

Like, before you can queue for stuff, you must do your class challenge, almost like you required to do Proving Grounds silver before. Maybe not as hard as current Mage Tower but still fairly challenging. That way, if you roll alts, you make sure you can actually play your alts too before you queue for stuff. Would increase quality.

This current form of Mage Tower didn't do much for me. I played Rogue and only Rogue since vanilla and this meant these fights became only a gear fight, with enough gear it was easy and did both Assa and Outlaw on 2nd attempt, first was just "what is this" attempt. Subtlety took a few more, but that's because of RNG more than difficulty. Still fairly easy.

And I don't play any alts, at all, so didn't have much use of it personally. BUT for those who DO play alts, this is an amazing way to learn alts.

I am not sure if something like that should be a gateway to all group content, because especially in the healer and tank challenges, you function a bit different from the usual group experience. Like, as a healer using CC heavily, which is usually a job for DPS characters (okay, shackle was always a priest thing, but encounters with shackle have been not that numerous, most memorable for me was one of the last bosses in Zul Aman).

But I wish that we could move away from item level requirements in pugs more towards personal achievements. Practicing the heal challenge on my holy priest was definitively a good thing for me to learn every detail about this spec. While I have been playing holy in Classic, most of the time I have been healing in Disc spec, and especially with all the holy words changes, I had to relearn the spec from scratch. Saw immediately a HPS boost in the current Great Invasion point compared to older ones, without much changes to my gear.

Anyway, this is exactly the kind of challenging content I like. Group content depends on other people having time and motivation to do the same things, finding these is getting harder for me with every year. Proving grounds started to bore me early because it's always the same mobs and the same NPCs. With mage tower, you have at least a variance in DPS challenges. And it has much more story flavour because you build up a story with some artifact quests beforehand. And it's quite a long time since I have been kiting anything with my characters, so the Twins encounter was also quite refreshing.

I also have enjoyed the Green Fire quest for the warlock, though I had to put quite a few tries and some time for gear upgrades into the whole ordeal (mostly I had TI gear with some upgraded pieces and some LFR items without setbonuses, no legendary cloak). I wished to get something similar for all classes, since I am an altoholic, and Mage Tower was granting me this. 9 encounters to do and I will be finished with all of them - and I am already pondering about repeating some encounters on alts.

[Zig Zug]

Panic attacks over Xylem as a DH? You may have too much esteem for the skill level of your GM. It's a bad joke as a moderately geared, semi-competent DH. I'm going to go out on a limb and presume this player doesn't participate in PvP? I'm not trying to attack your GM, rather - re-gauge your view of what sort of players these encounters are designed for at the "ground floor" if you will.

To be frank, the vast majority of the content's difficultly outweighs its potential benefits. The cosmetic rewards are nothing more than bragging rights, and possibly adding a layer of mental security that you're ahead of the curve in skill. For me, that was established in MoP with Proving grounds and CMs, and the tradition continues into Legion.

I have no problem with this system existing in game, there are many like it (Mythic+, 2.2k 3s, Mythic Raiding etc) - but the fact that this requires no other players, makes it unique, and a system that should be kept in the game. It would be nice to see more of these encounters, with tiers and varied rewards. It has a great opportunity to create a self-contained elitism, based on your individual effort - rather than being able to fake it (easily at least).

I felt a strong compulsion to achieve this on my main, and characters I frequent enough to merit an effort. FYI - I've completed, all Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Marks, Beast Mastery, Guardian and Feral. Nothing else really makes me say "Oh man, I'd like to have that as T-mog option in 2-3 years!"

[Deleted]

Tldr - mage tower makes me better. Could make the community better players. Would love a practice or proving ground system.

Exactly this, i'm dying to do the mage tower on more alts but i'm locked out until it's back up again. I've completed both my pally and priest on all specs and want to do all my alts that i've got up to 110 so far.

also annoying that when the mage tower comes up during the week i don't have time to do it

wtb perma mage tower

[Theholypally]

I've done all of the challenges for paladin (tank, healer and dps) from the mage tower because 1) I enjoyed the solo challenge and 2) i like achievement points.

[Kazuchika]

I think the mage tower is great. The ones I haven't completed I have never once said "well this is fucking stupid" it's always been "Guess I need to git gud".

It's the perfect system. You yourself are presented with a challenge and should you succeed you get a sweet looking cosmetic for it. Safe to say it has been a huge success for Blizz so hopefully they add a lot more of it going forward.

My guildmistress, a skilled player dating back to vanilla, had multiple panic attacks unlocking the fire glaives for her demon hunter, over the course of months. It was torture to watch, to know I couldn't help her. When she finally got them she said "yeah, no, that was ridiculous and doesn't belong in WoW."

This is an utterly ridiculous statement. "I couldn't handle it so it doesn't belong in this game" is almost as laughable as calling her a skilled player if it took her months to get it done.

[Teri]

Only purpose they could further upon is to use them as attunement for like heroic/mythic raiding :P

Make it use templates, so new players/rerolls/overgearing isn't an issue, skill based.

[Tyron]

I'm 19/37 and I've had a great time completing some of these challenges, but I think they should try to make this type of content so that everyone who doesn't have an army of alters can see it.

[killwithpwr]

The Mage Tower is a great way to make yourself better and to learn a bit more about the niches of the specs you play.

Now that we have LFR and many players are at a level where they have no idea how their class (main) even works, it is quite a bad thing imo.

I know that some players think along the lines of "I can't do this/that, so i'm not even gonna try..." and that, to me, feels like they are blocking themselves from reaching a whole new level of fun and excitment in the game.

Another thing, these challenges are not mandatory in any way, and don't reward any power gear, so why not continue along those lines as they did in the last 3 expansions and give the players who like to do this kind of stuff for the cosmetic rewards that don't impact gameplay whatsoever?

I really hope that Blizzard realises this and make some new challenges in game (solo would be nice) and perhaps even introduce a skaling system to the challenges and let players test their knowledge and strengths in their spec.

[Deleted]

These challenges also seem to be a measurement of skill, to some degree. People who are extremely good and have appropriate gear are able to finish the challenges at lower item level than people with same / comparable gear but less skill (and probably dedication).

I would place myself somewhere in the middle, because I have dedication, I am quite wipe-resistant, but I am surely not a top player. Sometimes, I also don't have confidence so I rather overgear things a bit before I try them out. At least I got my main spec at an appropriate item level (fire mage with 905), and some other challenges I deemed easier than other for me have been around 905-915 item level.

Sometimes, it's also about plain activity in the game. I have beaten all shaman challenges in item levels range from 905 to 925 (enhancement, ele, resto) with 1 good legendary (roots) and one of occasional use (Sephuz, which is one of my favorite legendaries because it has general utility for most specs). A buddy of mine, who plays shaman since mid-TBC as his main class (mosty resto / ele, currently mainly enhancement) has already an item level over 930 and all good legendaries for the challenges, but still has to get anyone done. At least he had been trying enhancement lately, but not successful up to date. I guess, he has not enough confidence, and probably also playing the character not as much lately. Which is kinda strange that I have had more activity on my alt than he on his main. But he is a true casual, while I am something of a hardcore-casual (spend much time in the game and want to play efficient and goal-driven, but shun most group content). But he is the one complaining about LFR being mind-numbingly boring. Sometimes I don't understand people.

[glowzone]

It's pretty much the only reason I play, gota collect em all.

The only thing that I really don't care for is getting the shards.On the one hand I understand why it's there, but now that the nethershard activities are outdated I'm not sure it adds much.

[Deleted]

It's pretty much the only reason I play, gota collect em all.

The only thing that I really don't care for is getting the shards.On the one hand I understand why it's there, but now that the nethershard activities are outdated I'm not sure it adds much.

It would make sense if the mage tower would be available 24/7. With limited availability, this additional access gate is stupid.

[Straamibuu]

Personally, I didn't mind the ones I did (Rogue / Druid / Monk), but only the DPS ones seemed to fit.

The tanking was too much... of a dps race in itself with a weird avoid-the-knockback being the only difficulty.

And the healing one is so loooooong... urgh. At least when you're learning the Tank/DPS ones it's not so bad to restart, this one was just so laborious.

Plus, I feel the difficulty in all of them comes from trying to avoid a one shot mechanic, be it a knockback, or a mana drain sting. Once you've dealt with those, then there isn't much to it.
So in that aspect, how does it represent the rest of the game at all? Perhaps if I played Mythic raids... but even then I'm sure they aren't so binary in their outcomes.