What Killed Islands? - Letdown of a Promising Feature? Or did players stamp it out?

[melodramocracy]

We need SOLO expeditions

Islands were the perfect, wasted (again) opportunity for blizz to move followers away from the tedium of the mission table, and into a situation like withered army training where you could actually interact with them.

Maybe they’ll eventually get it.

[Brewhan]

Anything with a timer in wow gets rushed and with the current player mentality everything is grouped up AOE'd down. There is no sense of exploration or "plunder uncharted islands" as claimed in bfa trailer. Also the rewards are crap and total RNG. They could have made it not rush timer based/ drop an actual currency to farm and unlock cool cosmetic items and even provide offset power gain gear sets that would have been an alternative for those who didn't like dungeons in beginning of BFA or something.. so many opportunities . I feel like blizzard developers just have no soul anymore and just work to collect their 80k a year paycheck then check out of life.

[Kalcifur]

The thing that hurt islands most? Shackling them to the ap grind and making them timer content.

Go back to the exp launch and make islands free to explore scenarios with tons of transmog, pets, and mounts to collect with no raider incentives like ap and the story shifts entirely.

[Wondercrab]

It's a very complex issue with islands. There isn't any one thing about them that really let them down. Overally I think it was just one of those ideas without any real clear vision behind it regarding what this feature was supposed to be. Islands aren't really exploration content, despite being thematically framed that way. They're not really PvP despite the faction v faction flavouring. The PvE elements are incredibly simplistic, and the reward structure is all over the place. They just strike me as one of those features that started out as someone saying: "You know what would be cool? Taking a ship out to all sorts of different islands to collect azerite. And the other faction is there too! And the content is all randomised! And there's a PvP mode!" But then that concept never really got tightened up into anything more coherent during the design process.

It's very telling in general whenever a developer is eager to add in "randomised elements" to a game that isn't built with randomised elements in mind. Random content is typically worse than carefully designed content, for obvious reasons. It only works when the entire experience is built around that idea of constantly shifting gameplay elements from the ground up. Taking an underdeveloped premise like "run around an island killing stuff" and adding randomised spawn points, skins, and enemies doesn't make that premise any more innately compelling.

This lack of vision seems to have been responsible for how warfronts turned out as well. The concept of big epic horde v alliance PvE battles that play out like missions in Warcraft 3 sounds really neat, but the process of translating that idea into gameplay didn't really have the design chops to back it up.

Ultimately islands just don't really serve any gameplay purpose that dungeons, raids, questing, and PvP don't already serve better. There's nothing unique enough about them to justify their existence, which leaves them feeling like a pretty gimmicky game mode at the end of the day.

[cuafpr]

caues its more zoom zoom rush rush beat a "timer" content... I had high hopes as well that fell off around the first few weeks when i realized it was yet again just another race. Do I have a brilliant idea to fix it? No... but i'm also not a game designer and can't sit around thinking of better ideas. Some variety in types of islands would have been nice, maybe some as is, some with a big PVE boss to kill, some with a fortress to overtake, some that are a rescue mission.

i do think they were more so a test bed for a new AI system though and that is where I'd love to know what they are planning to do with.... Give me an MMO with better NPC AI plz ktx.

[KainneAbsolute]

I do not why I thought islands were going to be randomly generated (roguelike) and dynamic events. We competed with the AI party but for me was dumb the trash was there waiting to being killed.

For me is half-baked concept. They started with many ideas and didnt implement them.

[Echeyakee]

Because islands are literally "the questing experience" condensed. Think about it. Each run is just a big "fill the bar" quest, that touches on every cliche quest design: kill mobs, kill elite mobs, interact with highlighted objects in the world, find and loot an item, deliver an item to npc and magic stick. And to complete the authentic questing experience, you are also randomly ganked by opposite faction. Either in hyper realistic version of pvp islands, or a shit stand-in version that they could not make smart, so they gave them annoying shit like a 5 second non DR stun every 10 seconds.

So, at the start of expansion, your journey was to level up to 120 doing quests and then move one to doing post leveling quest for the campaign, world quests or more quests in the form of island expeditions. Gosh, I wounder why people did not take a liking to more quests, except on a timer.

[Blightrose]

As with everything in wow, if taken in moderation on a casual level, the islands were fun but if you have 5 characters who all need to grind AP and at the very least do 3-4 islands every week it just becomes a tiresome and annoying timewaste.

[dope_danny]

"What if we took scenarios but removed all story and set pieces and just made it a flat open plain to grind mobs?"

Its the WoW version of pokemons wild area. Its bland white noise gameplay where you and a few other people beat roaming elite mobs for farmable upgrade material but its not fun and the maps always the same shit with different weather effects.

[Hinastorm]

Islands were never even alive to begin with. They never showed promise. You could smell the stench of bad gameplay from when they were announced at Blizzcon. What they announced is exactly what we got.

It's a joke that people think removing the timed aspect would make them really good. It doesn't change the shallow gameplay of grinding mobs and clicking things to fill a bar.

I was excited about islands and battlefronts going into the expansion.

It's a good reminder to temper expectations for Torghast too. It sounds interesting, but.....I don't know.

[SenpaiDean]

I wanted to be able to choose what Island I wanted and sail to it like that Korean ARPG,

The reward structure was completely bland and lame, no RNG protection. triple layered RNG slot machine. That gave you duplicates, no way to get value out of the duplicates you got, If there was some way to it could have solved a large problem with the constant disappointment of the collection grind.

Its main reward sell was giving a resource that was needed to regain access to your gear to prevent power loss on equipping a new item instead of giving you progress towards a desired goal. IE; being in there was a constant reminder of the sht game design.

Complete RNG of mob types to get a RNG roll on the loot that drops, that is completely RNG; so three levels of loot RNG, 0% chance to have the items drop if that mob isn't killed.

The implementation of the usable items was very dub. bind on account filled your mailbox to keep the best ones, "what flavor of training wheels do you like??" should have been something like chromie talents that upgraded artillery onto your boat or something.

Islands could have been solo/co-op real world instanced adventure content

Twinks were fun, until they were killed. DH twink was legit fun, nop no fun allowed.

max level characters suck ass for boosting Freehold until possibly this patch?? (maybe prot warrior??? blood dk??)

I dunno I leveled up again in AV in 3 hours, had a lvl 8 neck and just gave the game the middle finger "but the quest gets you to 35!" 35 is about as good as lvl 8. This neck power crap should have been some kind of collectivized neck per region that bounded every player to the same neck level. at least that would get people working together. never would have been implemented anyway game design has lost all vision and innovation beyond how many different ways can I yoink the $ from you wallet?

TLDR: why do I dislike and have stopped eating garbage? because its toxic and tastes like garbage :\

[Powerogue]

No matter how much stuff they added to try to increase variety, it always just felt like you run in fairly mindlessly and just click a bunch of stuff to fill a timer. The closest thing to tactics I ever remember being iconic was being low on azerite so we'd get a few people together and kill the other AI team.

It's just boring. Even with all the pets, toys, and junk they threw into it with RNG it was boring. And by the time they added a currency system so you could work through things I was so sick of expeditions I couldn't grind them for the dependable currency either.

If the currency vendor was there from the beginning, and the better you did at the expedition and the harder one you did the very clear increase in currency and azerite you'd get, it might've been interesting.

[Marrilaife]

They overhyped it and didn't deliver.

The areas are too small with too many mobs and little opportunity to actually avoid enemy team, you always bump into them especially on stupidly small islands where half the terrain is impassable filler (looking at you molten cay).

EDIT: Enemy AI is also very stupid and predictable, for example they ALWAYS go for the robot (extractor / rupture), they always bubble at low hp, they repeatedly engage you even after being overwhelmingly wiped, etc.

Mobs have too many annoying mechanics like stun, root, fear, whether they were overtuned in 8.1 or completely push over and outscaled in 8.3 it's still not fun.

If you pull anything you're stuck in combat forever with it basically encouraging you to mow through mobs rather than skitter around them. If an invasion spawns that incapacitates older mobs THEY STILL KEEP YOU IN GODDAMN COMBAT.

No way to target the rewards.

Amount of rewards is very low so the chance to get what you want is low powered to low.

Oh, and people... that one Blizz can't fix but I hate goddamned pugs never looting the chests or mining nodes while also being glued to me as I'm usually tanking. It's very inefficient to have to go back and loot all the stuff as the tank while it provides much more azerite than killing the mobs. Literally 70-80% of the time the other 2 people get glued to me or only kill mobs, nobody loots. Not even the healers who literally have nothing to do atm because nobody needs healing as the content is just outgeared.

[Powerogue]

Its main reward sell was giving a resource that was needed to regain access to your gear to prevent power loss on equipping a new item instead of giving you progress towards a desired goal. IE; being in there was a constant reminder of the sht game design.

Disagree with a fair amount of that post but not this. Never this. Azerite armor can die. Forever. Getting an upgrade that's actually a massive downgrade until you grind is bad. Getting an upgrade only to find that it has nothing good on the defensive ring and the mobs scale to your new ilevel causing you to die even faster than before is bad.

Essences were a big shiny golden band-aid on the horrific gushing axe wound in the game's side that was azerite armor.

Maybe that contributed to my distaste for islands, that I was primarily doing them to make my "upgrades" actually usable, so I was always doing it begrudgingly.

[ArmatisUlv]

being forced to run it from the table and lack of lf tool for Mythic runs

Have you forgotten about the whole system where you can look for a group with their build in UI called "Group Finder"? Mythic dungeons don't have a LFG queue like heroics, so why would Mythic islands? I don't wanna queue into a Mythic island and carry a guy who is just AFKing at the ship.

[Kyriani]

The timed aspect is one of several things that ruined islands for me. Being timed may add some level of "difficulty" but it takes away a much bigger level of "fun" for me. There's little opportunity to explore these islands because you're racing against the clock. It's stressful because of the timer and I game to relax and be entertained, not to be "challenged" and certainly not to be stressed out. The fact that for a long time, loot from islands was a mess due to layers upon layers of rng and how loot ran contrary to the "go go go" timed design of island gameplay was another big factor into me ignoring islands for the bulk of BfA.

Frankly I am sick of timed content overall. I wasn't thrilled with it in Mythic+ and I'm concerned about seeing it elsewhere (islands, visions, etc). I'm old now, but even 10-15 years ago I was a "slow and steady wins the race" type of player. This "rush rush rush", "go go go", "no time to look around or type chat" trend of gameplay design is off-putting to me. I believe the devs said Torghast isn't timed, but if they renege on that in the name of "added difficulty" for the deeper levels of the tower, I will probably skip Shadowlands altogether... heck I am not even subbed to BfA right now so it will be easy to give Shadowlands a pass if I start seeing BfA 2.0 when SL info starts coming out.

[Darknessvamp]

Tbh at some point I thought they alluded to islands being a sort of randomised Temple of Doom content with the whole explore, do quests and gain Azerite angle in new locales whilst competing with the enemy faction but when it turned out it was literally run around downing mobs that give slight contributions to a bar like some kind of inflated WQ just to gain Azerite and a "Treasure Map" which was for the Garrison system of the expansion I was massively disappointed. I also think they didn't actually set up the cosmetic loot system properly and it wasn't actually working for most of the expansion until they just made doing IEs give you a chance to earn something.

I'm still disappointed we didn't get to explore somethings like "the Isle of Oongo Bongo, The Pygmy Warlord" (who possibly tamed a Dragon) as a throwback to the Island from the Goblin Starter experience having progressed. I could see us breaching a Temple fighting Gargantuan Azerite Enfused Pygmys, looting the Temple of Shiny Things and fighting through the Arenas of Angry Green Men and Large Pygmy (Humans) all in an effort to loot the Big Shiny (A Huge Chunk of Azerite). All the events could be randomised, even could have invasions like the current Island System and the Enemy AI players could make it harder to complete certain puzzles or get past certain areas and fighting Oongo could have been an optional but desired future goal for running the Island as a Special boss that ensures certain rewards drop and acts like a proper raid boss.

[yamix]

The reality of going around and clicking on azerite and chests with random people you'll never see again for rewards that are very hit or miss just doesn't do it for me. It's better than a dungeon, I guess, but the dungeon at least gives you gear.

[Corroc]

1. They were too hard at the beginning. There were literally mobs that you didn't want to attack at all.
2. They turned too easy after better gear levels and nerfs.
3. They turned in to boring grind fest, internal objectives didn't offer anything compared to just pulling everything and aoeing.

[Finear]

Have you forgotten about the whole system where you can look for a group with their build in UI called "Group Finder"? Mythic dungeons don't have a LFG queue like heroics, so why would Mythic islands? I don't wanna queue into a Mythic island and carry a guy who is just AFKing at the ship.

Mythic Islands are extremely easy, personally i wouldn't mind carrying someone because i can pretty much solo it anyway (also what stopping manually invited guy from AFKing?)

it takes more time to find a group than to clear an island

its ridiculous

Mythic dungeons are nothing like Mythic islands

tho yeah i also don't really pug Mythic dungeons either