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

[Eurhetemec]

it's boring, and being timed is annoying.

if it didn't have a timer and could be done solo, it'd be fun.

Pretty much this + shit rewards. The timer really just MURDERED any potential fun. I get what they were going for but they should have realized how basically un-fun the whole thing was. You can't explore, you can't look around, you can't understand the encounters or the quests, you can't appreciate the atmosphere, because Blizzard have designed it so unless you're in maximum GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO mode, even on the easier settings, you could lose. It made the BGs look chill and relaxed for god's sake. A ghastly mistake, frankly.

Add to that the totally rubbish rewards, which they never really fixed, and the fact that you absolutely HAD to have three people, no more, no less and it was just... ugh.

Sad because I love the concept and I found the AI enemies quite amusing and engaging (hopefully they can find uses for that tech in SL), but just no to GOGOGOGOGOGO content.

[Gyrotex]

"Expedition" assumes some sort of exciting exploration. Going out there to find random stuff you didn't know was there.

And Islands are just rigid templates populated with changing sets of mobs nobody cares about or pays attention to after x 10 runs anyway.

Plus, the rush-rush idea to get AZ and get out of there contradicts with the exciting exploration concept.

So basically - they've mismanaged our expectations and botched up a feature that could have been very very good.

Also I agree with many people earlier in the thread - they should have allowed islands to run solo.

[Delmorii]

What killed it for me was the reward ratio. I did a handful and gave up because I did like 4-5 in a row and had literally nothing to show for it. I ended up just buying the rewards I could afford and wanted off the AH, and giving up on the rest. The buff they gave drop rates was nowhere near what it needed to be.

And any content that's timed is immediately not fun to me. It means I have no time to explore the content the way I want to.

[ArmatisUlv]

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

If you make a group and you go into an IE with someone and they AFK, you can just kick them so they don't get rewarded for being AFK. In a PuG you'll have to vote to kick and that may never pass because maybe they're friends.

Mythic 0 dungeons are just as easy as Mythic Islands. If you can solo a mythic island I am willing to bet you can solo a mythic 0 dungeon.

[gobio]

Imagine there is a valuable reward, that players have a chance to acquire be it raiding (even old raids), world quest, m+, even m0, even random chest ... So people can play however they like to get such valuable reward.
oh wait legend legendary sucks, I am told.

[kranur]

Boring, easy and random random random random random rewards which are just reskins anyway.

Also die not need yet another feature in which you do aoe on a timer.

[Wries]

If they were just islands filled with easter eggs, mechanically overloaded minibosses and triggerable events that would be fine and kind of fun.

But they put a timer on it. Fill the bar before the other bar gets filled. I can't exactly stop to enjoy the view or try anything new than what I know already works.

[tankbug]

Maybe I'm not the only one that finds azerite-grinding somewhat depressing, and that the rewards should have included some gear, a box of mats or something that's not just a few more ticks on the azerite bar. Even though getting a high azerite level is probably a lot more useful, it just seems like such a chore. My main is at 75/76 at this point, and almost all of that is gained through doing content where the azerite wasn't the goal itself, and that has kept me sane. I liked the island expeditions, but they seemed hidden away and not rewarding. Almost like Blizzard didn't really want us to do them.

[Emeraldon]

Running them ad nauseam for virtually zero AP, repetitive and very predictable and pretty much all down to RNG in terms of rewards. Easily one of the worst features of BfA.

[sam86]

u get zero reward for what u do in island, just in end however u finish it
having timer also make u try to finish asap to not lose
also i bet everyone said that, it wasn't hard to guess how it f8cked up in first place

[Luxeley]

It's a combination of things which is why the potential is still there, unlike Warfronts. The repetitiveness, the AI not being as good as touted or expected and the fact there are 2 other in some cases 4 other must dos for the week. Other must dos include: Warfronts (a genuine failure), WQs and M+ and/or Arena. A strong argument can be made you needed to do 5 different systems each week if you include the aforementioned 4 and visions.

[MrLachyG]

the problem was that they got old very quickly and people spammed them to get AP which meant they got sick of them quickly. Blizzard did try to make them more interesting by changing up the mobs that would appear in surprise encounters and added new islands but yeah the damage was done. people still do them of course but now it's only for cosmetic rewards like mounts etc

[Alvito]

Do you find the timed aspect added difficulty though? That matters, but also only if met with a respective increase of reward somehow. The timed aspect does allow for that 'race against the clock', or in this case, the opposite faction is the clock.

I didn't know they were timed and have never run into a timer. If you mean the other faction gathering AP as the you can cheese that in many ways, kill them, tag things in a smarter way, limit their routes of progression. Even with all of that the only time I have ever really looked at or cared what the other group had was in pvp islands, in the PVE forms I can't imagine losing. Besides all that islands are hot garbage and in many ways the worst of what the game has to offer. If they didn't have high AP payouts or other rewards people need/want almost nobody would do them.

[FuxieDK]

Nothing killed Island Expeditions; it was a stillborn baby.

[Akibaboy]

I think a couple things could've made them better, and a welcome piece to the formula the same way Horrific Visions are (idk I like Visions, I'm guessing the community hates them because they hate everything):
1) Allow me to do them solo or with a group
2) The rush timer is dumb - not exactly an expedition or an adventure when the moment you land, your boss is like "OK, we've got 5 minutes then I'm leaving".
3) Let me explore, put some unique quests out there with interesting lore bits and payoff. IEs hinted at a lot of fun things to come story wise, but were ever only empty winks that led nowhere... reward my diligence with some of WoW's juiciest inside tidbits and foresight
4) The "random" invasions and events should've been accompanied with more weight and importance, like optional objectives you want to do. Create difficult fights or things with unique criteria for players to figure out
5) The new locations were an opportunity to also explore factions and parts of the game that may have been forgotten or don't have a super relevant place in the main story, but could still break things up in the form of side stories or carefree tales
6) Because they were easy and spammable, they also could offer any rewards of significance

Overall, the fact that they were this empty smash and grab fest meant that it didn't ever really leave an impact on me as content that I felt brought out opportunities for compelling gameplay interactions or world experiences

[Devilyaki]

The timer was the issue, would of loved just going and exploring at my own pace. Timer should of only been on pvp one..

[ArkantosChampion]

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.

True, true. The devs have a lot of interesting systems, but they forget about them after a while

[Niwes]

islands just added something that game has already way too much of:

mindless aoe zerg.

LFR: mindless aoe zerg.
M+ (until 10-15): mindless aoe zerg.
Warfronts: mindless aoe zerg.
Most quests: mindless aoe zerg.
Most world Quests: mindless aoe zerg.

We really do not need more of that.

on top of that they did that annoying timer shit.

[Rotted]

The players.

I went back to BFA a while back and about 90% of IEs I entered were the same. Some clever cunt decides because hes in epic gear he can run off and solo everything. Shocker, none of them could and ended up increasing the time to complete each one drastically. I had very few IEs where people went as a group but every single one of them was done in minutes.

[neik]

Just another world quest. Boring grind.