I Hate the Maw and Everything it Represents

[Stabbyfists]

Edit: Putting a disclaimer here because I feel I have to: I love the expansion, it's great. I just hate the Maw.

I didn't want to make such a contentious thread here of all places, but I feel I have to. I have to get this off my chest and for my own sanity because I'm halfway through Cordial and I will need to keep farming this shithole for the sockets long after I've maxed rep.

This is the worst zone they have ever made in the history of the game. I am absolutely floored that such a low effort, rushed piece of crap made it into the final release of the game. The fundamental gameplay loop becomes incredibly tedious very quickly after experiencing this piece of content for the first time. It's the sort of low effort, banal shit you can expect from a lesser developer and the only design intent present here (and it's incredibly transparent, mind you) is an effort to keep you busy and subscribed. The Maw may have been intended as something fun earlier on in development, but it's undoubtedly been transformed into a soul-sucking experience.

I have not done Maw dailies for 2 weeks now. I can only stomach doing the weekly quests now, and they are frankly terrible as well. Traversing Perdition Hold isn't "tense" or "exhilarating", it's downright infuriating at this point. Not to mention that some of the weekly quests, grouping up is a nightmare with their sharding/warmode on/off issues.

The lack of a mount for players is a clear annoyance but isn't even the root of the issue (worgen players have had it on easy mode from the beginning, mind you)! The core issue here stems from the fact that this place feels like it belongs in an earlier iteration of the game. We were supposed to have moved past annoying daily chores and feeling like you're being left behind unless you do the daily busywork every day.

Why the contradiction?

So you're saying the Maw feels like a plane of endless torment and torture with the hell of repetitive content and makes you feel like crap? sounds like the Maw hit what it was trying to represent on the head.

[FelPlague]

Edit: Putting a disclaimer here because I feel I have to: I love the expansion, it's great. I just hate the Maw.

I didn't want to make such a contentious thread here of all places, but I feel I have to. I have to get this off my chest and for my own sanity because I'm halfway through Cordial and I will need to keep farming this shithole for the sockets long after I've maxed rep.

This is the worst zone they have ever made in the history of the game. I am absolutely floored that such a low effort, rushed piece of crap made it into the final release of the game. The fundamental gameplay loop becomes incredibly tedious very quickly after experiencing this piece of content for the first time. It's the sort of low effort, banal shit you can expect from a lesser developer and the only design intent present here (and it's incredibly transparent, mind you) is an effort to keep you busy and subscribed. The Maw may have been intended as something fun earlier on in development, but it's undoubtedly been transformed into a soul-sucking experience.

I have not done Maw dailies for 2 weeks now. I can only stomach doing the weekly quests now, and they are frankly terrible as well. Traversing Perdition Hold isn't "tense" or "exhilarating", it's downright infuriating at this point. Not to mention that some of the weekly quests, grouping up is a nightmare with their sharding/warmode on/off issues.

The lack of a mount for players is a clear annoyance but isn't even the root of the issue (worgen players have had it on easy mode from the beginning, mind you)! The core issue here stems from the fact that this place feels like it belongs in an earlier iteration of the game. We were supposed to have moved past annoying daily chores and feeling like you're being left behind unless you do the daily busywork every day.

Why the contradiction?

Because that's the entire game, of you do not keep up on your dailies weeklies etc you are technically behind. But good news, the maw is not required. Yeah gear sockets and the extremely slow upgrade of your conduits. But you don't need to do it.... It's that simple. Literally just don't do it. Yeah maybe get to exalted first so you get all the torghast upgrades but after that, I know a fair few people raiding high end heroic low end mythic just not caring. Cause it's extremely minor upgrades.

Also it's hilariously easy to travel of you learn the layout.

1. Learn teleporters.
There is one in you base to the far north and the south.
Then from there, one reporter from top to the magma thing in the middle
Then there is one from the upper left to the bottom left.
Also always carry one of the "to to venari" items.

2. Learn dog paths
There is dogs all over the place. That you can kill and get the mount from. Learn their paths. Kill em

3. Glider.
The maw had a lot of verticality, it also has a toy that launches you into the air. Pair this with the glider and boy are you set. If you have the falling flame it's even more hilariously easy.

4. Make your path.
Learn a path that will get you to 5 and stick to it, you get better at it and will be able to do it faster. For example I go left and kill the Smith. Then the stygian incen then the other rare if he is there. I then teleport from there to tremeculum, pick up quest if it's there and do it. Kill the death elemental there if it's there, to not maleovenent Stygia, me if the quest is near cryxia kill them. Then I go up to dartnos and kill him then from there I look around. Is the drifting sorrow summon? Do I have the quest in the river? If yes I glide down there do that. Then I kill oldyn guy and grab the dog. To teleporter and go back up to dartnos. If not skip that last step. I glide over to hauwreth kill him then also the guy on the rock cliffs if he's up, i jump off and use my grAvity well to stop myself. Grab the dog, go to rainwear, then to agonizing Stygia, then. Ortholin. Then at that point I'm about 4. Maybe 5 if I ran into the soulwell on the way or the quests were all there. At that point if I have a wuest in perdition hold I glider down to perdition hold and land where I need to. Finish the quest there then use the item to tp to venari.


sorry writing out i got the path wrong but you get the jist

[Malkiah]

For me it's exactly other way around. I'm finishing Maw achievements/collections and I've seen more grouping with random people met in the world than since.. well, early WoW to be honest. Especially in that elite area in the south.

Don't get me wrong. Classic/Vanilla quest design suck, no use of Group Finder suck most of the time, but both create opportunity or even need to look for other people around you, which would be impossible in Maw smooth as rest of open world.

ok that's a fair point.
i guess i'd clarify to say more anti 'casual community', in the sense of just folks running around and interacting without actually grouping.

then again, a LOT of this expansion feels that way, what with the change so that if a group tags a mob in a world quest it turns gray to anyone not in the group and such.
SL's overall theme seems to be "if you play casually and solo, go fuck yourself"

[Schizoide]

So you're saying the Maw feels like a plane of endless torment and torture with the hell of repetitive content and makes you feel like crap? sounds like the Maw hit what it was trying to represent on the head.

Thematically, yes. But this is a videogame and it's supposed to be fun. There are ways to represent a hellscape that are endlessly inventive and enjoyable to experience-- check out the game Hades.

[Factcheck]

Done the event for the mount twice... no mount. Didn't mind the maw before but now it is getting annoying.

[Shrouded]

I like the Maw! I'm about three days from maxing out my rep with Ve'nari and it's still enjoyable for me. That having been said, at the same time I know it won't stay enjoyable for me - it started out being fun because it was so hostile and difficult, especially once I first unlocked Perdition Hold. Now that my gear is a bit better, it no longer feels as difficult, so I enjoy the relative power spike. I also don't have any issues with navigation cause there are a lot of shortcuts, especially once you start knowing where the grapple points are.

But yeah, there isn't enough variety in the content for this feeling to last. I haven't killed every single rare or done every single thing in the Maw yet, but there are only a few different dailies, weeklies and events, and the non-Stygia rewards are even fewer. Overall I think the design of the zone was fantastic - including not being able to mount - but it feels like they failed to give compelling reasons to keep coming back.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I'm ignoring the shit out of it aside from the souls.

[Daevied]

I only do it once each week, i figure that eventually in this expansion ill be able to buy sockets, now thinking about it having sockets on 10 items coul be a big deal stats wise

[TaurenNinja]

Maw is fine.

- Not mounting adds to the "danger" of the zone, it wouldn't seem as "dangerous" if you could ignore tons of mobs while on a mount
- Not mounting also allows for the travel/teleport upgrades to be relevant. They woulnd't really be relevant if you could just travel fast anyway
- It's just one zone where you can't mount up, and it's a rather small zone. You'll get over it
- The daily cap (until threat 5) is also not very high, so you don't have to spend a lot of time there

- Overall there could be more variety for quests and so on, but it's not bad. It's a typical endgame zone with daily and weekly quests, a different style of cap this time (jailer threat), and a lot of rares. It's just the usual stuff in different wrapping

Overall I like the maw due to its design and the implementation of the daily cap (threat system). It also feels dangerous at times, especially when doing things solo. There's some cool effects too, e.g. the river of souls is nice. Questing is as usual. Buyable permanent upgrades to speed things up are nice. Torghast is also nice, but could need more work and variety as well.

[Incarnia]

It's shit yeah, not my kind of "fun" at all. Not doing it except for souls, campaign quest/story. The sockets ain't worth it, and frankly sockets aren't as valuable in Shadowlands as they used to be so no real point torturing yourself over it.
HOPEFULLY the Maw is something they'll do more work on, and get better in future patches. Might be worth going after the sockets then if the experience gets more enjoyable.

[Accendor]

Yes, its really terrible.
Best thing is the Hunt stuff is still bugged weeks into the expansion so you can not even progress the quest lol

[thilicen]

The maw pulls SL from a 9/10 to a 7/10 for me. Everything else is excellent, but this thing being an end game feature is just weak AF.

[Uthan]

Really like the maw, only issue with it imo is that it's a bit barebones, but what's there is all great. Could use some more variety in events and stuff to do, as well as some big dangerous stuff a la fel reaver or similar, but hopefully they'll add to it going forward.

[Holdodlig]

I get what they wanted to do with the Maw but I'm really not a big fan. I feel most of the features that are supposed to bring difficulty are just time waster (no mount, eye of the jailer) and in overhaul I don't think the gems are a big enough reward to justifiy the time lost in this hole seeing how much time you have to spend here.

Also I dislike the idea to put Thorgast upgrades here as it makes Thorgast less relevant for its own progression.

[Tyris Flare]

I don't think people realize yet that it it is one of if not the only way to upgrade many conduits. You will need exalted with venari and have to keep randomly rolling RNG on conduits because m+ only drops 200 and the raid conduits are all utility ones.

So yeah, enjoy either getting rating in pvp (for a handful of conduits) or endlessly grinding the maw if you ever want 213-226 conduits.

This is probably a bigger deal than sockets

[Aucald]

I don't hate the Maw, but I do agree with the general sentiment that there needs to be extra inducement to go there beyond grinding out Ve'nari rep. Add some pets, mounts, a trickle of possible gear, etc. etc. Right now the Maw often feels like an afterthought as well as a chore - spicing it up with extra rewards might help a bit.

[exsanguinate]

I have to admit I was blown away by the Maw the first week, but the more I went in to do my dailies, the more I hated it. Now I've reached the point where I only do the weeklys.

Just thinking about going in makes my whole body tense and stresses me.

[Nalam the Venom]

We need more aspects of the game that helps usher ourselves further towards the KR grind MMO mentality.

[Skexis]

It's boring, no story, just mobs and some dailies to kill things that everyone else is killing.
It's bugged, annoying and the rep doesn't add anything fun. No secret bosses to spawn, bugged weekly. And just annoyance..

Remember domination point in Pandaria? Doing dailies until the next rep gave you more storyline. Actual good story line too!
Instead we get, new rank = place a beacon here. The end...

[Kumorii]

I like it, they just need to do more with it instead of just dailies and rep. Not sure what tho.