So between islands and torghast...

[crusadernero]

Island you could do. Torghast you gotta do. Dislike both, but island were at times a bit fun. Snoregast was cool first time. Then a huge pain in the ass. Rather pick herbs in the nude on classic.

[Niwes]

i WOULD rate thorgast at number 1, IF i would not be forced on my PvE Druid and my PvP Rogue to run this shit endlessly every fukin week to get my Legendaries up. Kills every fun for me.

that said, even calling islands or thorgast „content“ is a pathetic joke.

[Nyel]

i love Torghast, i hated islands.

I hate both. Islands because they were boring af and Torghast because it’s tedious and boring af. Some of the worst content that ever found its way into WoW.

I wonder they didn’t regurgitate Warfronts and gave us another iteration of them in Shadowlands, maybe it’s coming later on?

[kranur]

Not a fan of either. But if I had to choose and I never would have imagined I'd be picking it over something else, I'd rather do islands.

[sam86]

Torghast is more fun to me than mage tower, worse reward (no doubt) but far more fun

[Dracullus]

Mage Tower tuning was awful. I don't know why people liked it so much.

Actually Mage Tower become really popular around 7.3, when you could outgear anything (but still had to learn the fight) with catch up gear. Overall 7.2 was pretty hated patch on forums while it was current.

[Versatia]

And Mage Tower was just a skill check that anyone could eventually overcome with gear.

didnt you get set to a certain ilvl while doing it ?

[haiyken]

I think both Islands Expeditions and Horrific Visions were good ideas on paper, but the need to rush through the "level" made them not that fun to do. The pacing in Torghast is way better, allowing you to pause when needed. I think it's a core difference with the design of these systems and why I personally did a lot more Torghast than the other two. I think the urgency can work well in some types of gameplay but it can be very stressful, or even frustrating at times. With the Island, it always felt to me like I didn't even had time to explore the island, participate in random events, etc, because either my team or the opposite npc team was rushing to the win. I felt like I barely played the game and it was already over. Visions were fine at first, but the currency to entry, the slow acquisition of upgrades and the sameness of the levels didn't make me want to bother after a dozen times. Torghast proved that no barrier to entry works well, in my opinion, meaning I can go there when I want, solo or with friends, and I can just play the content.

It's difficult to compare Islands, Visions and Torghast with the Mage Tower, because it's not the same kind of content at all. I only did the Mage Tower on one of my character and in one spec, but my understading is that all classes/specs had, basically, a solo boss fight. It's what it was for me on my Fire Mage. It was challenging, helped a lot by gearing up, and was, really, one and done. I liked it a lot, it was challenging for me, I did many attempts, and I was so excited to succeed. The gameplay and "feeling" of the other systems are not comparable to the Mage Tower. Even if the bosses in Torghast can be challenging, they are in no way as finely designed as the Mage Tower ones and some anima power make the fights trivial (and that's fine).

I think we shouldn't really compare all of these systems as they are, clearly, experimentations and iterations about solo/group content that is not dungeons or classic instanced pvp. There is good and bad in all of them, but there is also potential. I don't think Blizzard found the righ formula just yet, as they keep changing the system each expansion. When a new format will stick with the playerbase, you can be sure it will become mainline, like M+ became at one point, after an iteration as "challenge mode" in MoP. Blizzard is obviously experimenting a lot, also with Warfronts in BfA, and now with vehicule combat (Path of Ascension) or pets (Abomination Factory). Even if we don't like some of the stuff they add to the game, it's obvious they're trying a lot !

[Dracullus]

didnt you get set to a certain ilvl while doing it ?

Nope, people whined 24/7 it should be this way, but MT was always tuned for raid gear from 7.2.5 (or best 7.1.5 gear).

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I disliked islands. I loved mage tower and I love Torghast. This place is fun and challenging, which is why I was quite unhappy with the nerfs. Islands were like plundering our own planet from life resources. I hated it. Torghast serve it’s purpose, it reminds me a bit of Sauron’s Tower.

[Itisamuh]

Torghast is easily my favorite solo content of all time and then horrific visions would probably be a distant second. I have no idea why the mage tower is so revered cause it was really nothing special in my book. Island expeditions were awful and unless my memory fails they were not solo content anyway so should not be compared.

[cateran100]

1. Horrific Visions as fun and rewarding....
2. Mage Tower as fun and rewarding...
3. Islands as boring and slightly rewarding...
4. Torghast as unfun, boring, unrewarding

[Lochton]

Island expeditions were not solo content, so that is disqualified.

I loved the Mage Tower but Torghast is more all-around available for people. As well, the ability of randomness is one of my more favorite parts.

[Adamas102]

Torghast is easily my favorite solo content of all time and then horrific visions would probably be a distant second. I have no idea why the mage tower is so revered cause it was really nothing special in my book. Island expeditions were awful and unless my memory fails they were not solo content anyway so should not be compared.

The thing I liked about Mage Tower was that the rewards incentivized me to run it multiple times on all classes (I wanted ALL the skins). Even though there were only 7 different fights, doing it on different classes added a decent amount of variety. I also found it kinda fun to learn specs I'd never even played before. Yeah, some runs were pretty frustrating, but I found it super rewarding to complete with every class and every spec. That's why Mage Tower still holds such high esteem in my view.

Twisting Corridors I compare more to Visions, where it was fun to work up in difficulty, but I only did it on my main and once I completed it (Layer 8 TC and 5 Masks) I was done. I'd run TC again on different classes, but only if a friend wanted to group for it. On my own there isn't any incentive anymore. Trying it with different classes might be interesting, but it's also really time intensive.

As for regular Torghast wings, I don't feel particularly incentivized to do those either. By the time you're over 180 ilvl they're not really challenging anymore and over just 6 floors you often don't even get the powers that can make a run exciting (compared to TC where you usually finish a run with almost all your super powers).

Island Expeditions I did maybe 6 times total over the entire expansion and they never hooked me.

[LemonDemonGirl]

I really don't like eoither, but I'll choose Islands because at least doing them dosen't put me to sleep

[Tojara]

The problem with Mage Tower was there was only five distinct encounters (maybe six, I forget), and the difficulty was drastically reduced based on how long you waited to do it and what class you did them on. Half of them were incredibly easy and some of them were sort of challenging. The fact for me remains though, you did it, and never did it again. Most people I know waited until the last part of the expansion and did them in a trivial manner as something to do before BFA came out, collecting mog that's going to go away on characters they probably wouldn't play with vastly overpowered characters.

Mage tower only gets a good wrap because most people did it in 7.3 with overpowered characters. Go back and watch how much fucking whining there was when it was released as relevant content during 7.2.

Visions were actually super fun (to me) until the cape maxed out and made it fairly easy. I thought they were pretty unique, but they had a design flaw. There was only two different types of visions so they quickly lost their appeal a couple months in, combined with the fact that they were pushed to do quite a bit each week. It took ~5 perfect visions to get a socket in a world where you had more items you could get a socket and it was easily the most efficient way to buy corruptions when they added that part of the system. They also took about as much time as doing a single layer of Torghast. Visions were also unappealing to some because you could fuck them up and come out with little or no reward, and some people hated the time pressure (I don't).

Withered training was something you could do rarely and had the same aspects that visions had, in regards to royally fucking them up. While fun, it was only something you did early on to get a leg up on reputation and a few neat unlocks.

Islands to me just never hit the mark, but I suppose to people who like collecting shit, they were okay (when they finally fixed them). They were sort of pushed as mandatory content in the first little bit (because AP was rare and this gave by and large the biggest source), and they were something people farmed prior to a major patch release as gaining neck levels was the only way you could realistically gain power on your character. This wasn't really a problem with island as it was a design flaw with the game (IMO). Islands followed the same structure throughout the entire expansion though, run around, mass AoE and fill up a bar. Nothing really changed and it actually wasn't solo content, you had to queue with three people.

Personally I like Torghast for what it is currently, but it could be better. I think a major underlying theme in Shadowlands is the systems are good, but they don't feel that rewarding. In BFA and past expansions they push super rewarding content in certain areas making people 'feel' like they need to do it, when they might not necessarily want too. Torghast is something you have to do, but that narrative is pushed a bit too far by some people because after a month or two, you could simply stop doing them on a character if you don't feel like getting every multiple legendary items (I still do it on my main, but my alts got two legendary items and stopped).

Torghast is also something you can do with 1-5 people, Islands required 3. I also don't get the complaint that Torghast takes too long. When you're undergeared it might take 30 minutes, but I think too many people fully clear when they're massively over geared, when you can in fact just beeline towards the exit picking up anything you see on the way. You can absolutely clear Torghast in 15 minutes or less.

I think the only thing bad about Torghast was the initial climb to unlocking all the layers because they made you do too much of it across all characters, something that has since been fixed. Other critiques would be that it doesn't feel rewarding enough, but that's something they have to tread carefully on because it's easy to push something into a category where it's too rewarding and makes you "feel" like you have to do it even more than you already might have too. Throwing weekly anima quests or anima upon completion isn't going to destroy the game though, especially since anima really isn't tied to power in Shadowlands and a major complaint is that they took the scarcity of anima a bit too far.

For a first pass in it's infancy as a system, I still think Torghast is far superior to every other system that's "solo". Adding new Islands in BFA really didn't do much, but adding new wings in Torghast does change up the experience some. As long as they keep adding powers, adding variety, and they tread carefully about adding things that give you more reason to do them, it's only going to get better.

Seriously though. How hard would it be to add a couple rotating weekly quests to Torghast or Twisting Corridors that gives anima? In BFA and Legion this might be seen as too rewarding, but anima isn't really tied to power so I fail to see how it would be a problem. You could easily have a weekly for Twisting Corridors to complete an entire wing for 500 anima, and a rotating set of weekly quests for the main Torghast mode (complete without hitting a trap, complete in 'x' amount of time, complete without dying, complete with less than 10 anima powers, etc).

[Scarnage86]

1. Torghast
I like pure rng factor and the fact that has flexable group requirement.
2. Mage tower
Pure skill based. good for flex our pp, do not liked the preparation to it (unlock model) and the reward (just win once, done goodbye, never to see u again)
3. Island (non pvp)
Too much useless reward, mandatory for grinding....
4. Vision
Mandatory, TIMER TICK TOCK MF!!! to much class/spec dependent, force ppl to be boosted, to much to learn

Now that i think it what about island expedition but with torghast rng and flex group, every camp u clean u get power!!!!! THAT I WILL PLACE 1ST!!!

[shise]

Torghast is 90% clearing trash, 5% bosses and 5% moving.

Isles gave you a choice on how to do things, you could even pvp on them. They were simply too weakly developed.

Torghast is the best representation with all wrong in WoW for the last 3 expansions: borrowed powers and systems.

[Asrialol]

1. Place: Visions, hard at the beginning, rewarding, u could raise your own difficulty level
2. Place Magetower, nice skillcheck
3. Island, rewarding in both charprogression and gold, but there was literally no need to do them if u dindt want to

long time nothing


999. Torghast:
Boring, stupid Chore, fighting always 3-4 mobtypes per stage, no challenge at all, besides staying awake. Unrewarding, unimportant for charpower and to make things even worse: we were forced to visit this sh*thole of hell for soulash...
Animaperks are unblanced, if you play a class with good perks you were able to aoe grind this fast. if you play a class with bad perks it took way longer.
oh and of course, if u got a broken endboss, you wasted your time...

Visions and mage tower "skill check"? What. Hard? What.

So the endboss in Torghast is "broken" if it's too difficult for you? Insert kekw emote here.

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torghast visions islands maws and other sh1t shouldnt be required to play competitive
if u did max lvl of any of them, it should prove u put enough effort to unlock certain things and you should go on

I quitted SL like 1.5 month after season started, logging every day to do maw, torghast, daily quests (callings for best conduit, they said its not essential, but at the end of the day it was more than emissaries, because from emisaries u could get equivalent of item, from callings u get conduits that u just can;t loot normaly for example doing pvp), playing game shouldnt be like a second job
in older expansions (before legion) i wasnt forced to do so much casual stuff to play a game in my manner

but its a win win for them, player like me probably would quit anyway, many sheeps continue their advanture because they have goals and rewards

and now i cant even buy gametime for 1 month to check if its worth coming back without sharing my credit card info

Yeah, totally sharing your credit card info indeed.

[Osmeric]

That was never its intent so thanks for your input?

That's literally the reason why everything in the game exists.