Why is Timeless Isle so fondly remembered?

[Sinaa]

It was a very pleasant daily quest hub, with a great layout, attractive visuals and frequent, but somehow non toxic world pvp.

[Sondrelk]

It was a very pleasant daily quest hub, with a great layout, attractive visuals and frequent, but somehow non toxic world pvp.

Not sure how you remember the WPvP from being non-toxic. From what I remember of it the PvP griefing was absolutely horrendous. Ordos players using the item that lowered aggro range, then standing in the sanctuary attacking players. If they retaliated they would be killed by the guards, if not they would be killed by the griefer. It was awful, and if it wasnt for my guild I probably would have quit at that point.

[Kaleredar]

If that was the only method you had to reach the top you were very clearly doing something wrong. Meteor toy aside, you had birds, glides etc. If you felt like running it was still super quick. Let's not be disingenuous and pretend the elites were a real thread to anyone

The birds were even worse; you’d have to go out and find one and wait for them to circle around to where you wanted to go and they moved painfully slow. The meteor wasn’t even remotely a viable movement option unless you had a goblin glider to steer yourself and even if you did the meteor was a rare drop item with a limited number of charges and a one hour cooldown.

And whether the elites were dangerous or not wasn’t the issue. You’d have to stop and fight them almost every time because they’d charge+stun and two of them beating on you probably meant you’d get dazed off your mount.

They were annoying, just like a lot of little things on the timeless isle. The encounters weren’t particularly interesting, nor were any of the rewards beyond the aforementioned billion yak man rep grind’s golden serpent mount. It was a lot of gimmick with very little substance.

[Uoyredrum]

and they were literaly nothing alike...
both danas and thunder were about daily quests, story quests, timeless isle had what, 2 weekly q and thats it? it was more about exploration and "chasing" rare spawns and treasures, in that regard it was indeed first of its kind

It had dailies just like they did and Isle of Thunder also had rares lol

IQD was the least like the others but timeless isle just a continuation of the original concept that was IQD.

[Lolites]

It had dailies just like they did and Isle of Thunder also had rares lol

IQD was the least like the others but timeless isle just a continuation of the original concept that was IQD.

timeless isle had 1 daily and 1 weekly if i remember correctly, MAIN focus was rares and treasures

IQD had pretty much only dailies (outside ofc) and IoT had a lot of story quests, daily quests, shared progresion, and yes, some rares, but it was definitely not focused on rares and treasures like timeless...

so other than being islands they had very little in comon... tbh to me Korthia is somewhere half-way between isle of thunder and timeless isle as far as content goes...

[Tziva]

I liked Timeless Isle. I felt like it had a lot of little stuff to do - stuff that was fun and had rewards, but not so useful that it felt mandatory. I could hunt treasures and farm rares for pets/mounts/toys, but I also didn't feel obligated to do every piece of bullshit on every alt, or to keep going with stuff when I got bored of it. I basically did it until I got the stuff I wanted most, and then could move on when I didn't feel like it anymore.

I like that kind of content: lots of things you can do, but none of the rewards feel so useful or important that you feel obligated to. I do think that Timeless Isle set the stage for the future treasure and rare hunting that has continued in all subsequent expansions, but nowadays that stuff is usually also tied to power grinds which makes it a lot less enjoyable since it tends to pressure you into still doing it even when you don't feel like it anymore.

(also since I see people discussing it, I HATED Isle of Thunder. One of my top five raids of all times so all the props to that patch, but that island was a pain in the ass to get to, a pain in the ass to get around, and was almost entirely built around obnoxious dailies which I fucking hate. Noooo thank you.)

[Schizoide]

Yes, it was fine for a couple of weeks and then boring as hell (unless you PvP).

The problem was it came at the end of an expansion and it was current content for thirteen months.

[Ticj]

IMO, different from other zones like it that came after, it had an interesting form of progression that I personally really liked. Having a bluff with only one entrance that is littered with increasingly difficult elites was one of my favorite aspects of the zone, as well as the zone just being designed with fun in mind. It was a genuinely fun zone with fun items and toys to collect.

The pvp was also just awesome as well.

[GMZohar1]

No, it was just a worse Isle of Thunder.

Better* Had to correct it for ya

[Kalisandra]

No, it was just a worse Isle of Thunder.

No, it wasn't. Isle of Thunder was based around dailies. Timeless Isle was based around cyclical events, though it did have some dailies.

What made Timeless Isle great, IMO, is that it had a good flow. as you went up and around the island the mobs changed and got tougher, but because you could jump down reasonably safely in many places, it was fairly easy to leave 'cowland' if you'd had enough. Also, the mobs were fairly interesting to fight, if sometimes frustrating.

Like MoP in general, there was a feeling of exploration about the island at the start, and due to decent design it retained value for quite a while. The only real flaw of the place was one that wasn't its fault - it was 'current' for too long, as we waited for WoD. The funny thing is, during that time subs didn't drop unlike during the long wait in Cata, and (as far as we can tell) at the end of more recent expansions.

[WowIsDead64]

Thematically it wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad either, pleasantly grounded like the rest of pandaria. What i remember the most of it was the exploration and the many ways of it, like in the water, or gliding through the sky. And best of all! WPVP! Got like 3000 bloody coins from that place thanks to that red item, very fun times as a lock with many toys and items to glide and swim very very fast.

It wasn't fondly remembered by my, because I hate so called "claustrophobic sandbox" design. I hate it due to several reasons. Overcrowding, that causes exceeding competition, lags, bugged combat, etc. - is one of them.

First I was doing it just to get coins from chests and buy some gear for alts. But then I quit game due to nothing else to do. And resubbed in 6.2 only, because Blizzard tried to turn whole WOD into one big Timeless Isle.

[Kalisandra]

Simply put, Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle are meant to be two different things and different experiences. While Isle of Thunder was superior in terms of story progression and quests, Timeless Isle was superior in terms of a social hub for players to interact with each other for various reasons. Ironically enough, Blizz has tried to replicate the Timeless Isle experience, but they've never been able to do so.

That's another thing that was good about it - at the time if a rare popped people would announce it and wait a few minutes before pulling, and people that didn't wait were pretty universally yelled at, at least on my server. It was really sad that by the time Tanaan came around in WoD people had pretty much stopped doing that. Thus Timeless Isle saw the last time there was any sense of community on my server.

The PvP was fun, even on my carebear server. You could usually find a few people flagged or using the various PvP items there if you were in the mood.

- - - Updated - - -

- fun way to gear up alts

It was actually fairly good for levelling the last half of the MoP level range too. You could round up the non-elite bugs or crabs and burn them down for pretty good XP. I levelled a couple of alts that way.

- - - Updated - - -

The birds were even worse; you’d have to go out and find one and wait for them to circle around to where you wanted to go and they moved painfully slow. The meteor wasn’t even remotely a viable movement option unless you had a goblin glider to steer yourself and even if you did the meteor was a rare drop item with a limited number of charges and a one hour cooldown.

And whether the elites were dangerous or not wasn’t the issue. You’d have to stop and fight them almost every time because they’d charge+stun and two of them beating on you probably meant you’d get dazed off your mount.

They were annoying, just like a lot of little things on the timeless isle. The encounters weren’t particularly interesting, nor were any of the rewards beyond the aforementioned billion yak man rep grind’s golden serpent mount. It was a lot of gimmick with very little substance.

You could get to anywhere on the island simply by flying out to it nice and high up (or swim out until you're outside the no-fly zone and then fly) and using a goblin glider when the island knocked you off your mount.

It's one of the few no-fly zones where it actually works having players forced to stay on the ground or use workarounds.

[Kaleredar]

You could get to anywhere on the island simply by flying out to it nice and high up (or swim out until you're outside the no-fly zone and then fly) and using a goblin glider when the island knocked you off your mount.

It's one of the few no-fly zones where it actually works having players forced to stay on the ground or use workarounds.

That's also not really "simple." You have to leave doing whatever it is you're doing and then either be a class with water walking, use the water strider mount, or swim out into the fatigue water, mount up, then fly way up into the air and in and hope you have just enough lag that it dismounts you far enough in to let you then use the goblin glider, which you have to either have bought a series of or be an engineer, to then glide to your destination. That's like a five-step, six minute process to run up a god damn hill.


It was just a pain, plain and simple. And the tasks were so repetitive and grindy that it didn't make going through these rote, inconvenient motions over and over again rewarding or interesting.

Like I said, Isle of Thunder did it way better just the patch before and BFA did it better with Mechagon and Nazjatar. Hell, you could eventually fly in the latter two which made the areas way better already.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm not 100% sure, but other MMOs like GW2 started to provide so called "sandbox" content and players seemed to like it, so Blizzard decided to copy-paste this design, because at that moment they had problems with outdoor content. For example Cata lacked it completely. Problem is - game had such design in the past, but it was optional. Like Wintergrasp and Tol'Barad. But since then such design started to be mandatory for all players. So WOD was meant to be one big Timeless Isle. It was big mistake, because some players, including me, liked classic questing much more. And their "sandbox" content is something similar to ore/herb grind from WotLK/Cata. I can bear it with flying. But circling around location while searching for RNG spawns on a ground? Hell, no.

GW2 didn't release its first endgame sandbox grind zone, Drytop, until mid 2014, over a year after Timeless Isle hit the WoW PTR. None of the other GW2 zones before Drytop were really like Timeless Isle.

[WowIsDead64]

GW2 didn't release its first endgame sandbox grind zone, Drytop, until mid 2014, over a year after Timeless Isle hit the WoW PTR. None of the other GW2 zones before Drytop were really like Timeless Isle.

"Sandbox" means no explicit "railed" objectives, that guide you through content, like quest lines. You go, where you want, and do, what you want. And in GW2 whole content is made this way.

[Sinaa]

Not sure how you remember the WPvP from being non-toxic. From what I remember of it the PvP griefing was absolutely horrendous. Ordos players using the item that lowered aggro range, then standing in the sanctuary attacking players. If they retaliated they would be killed by the guards, if not they would be killed by the griefer. It was awful, and if it wasnt for my guild I probably would have quit at that point.

That never happened to me. I guess it's the different server culture?

[Austilias]

One of the biggest factors is the aesthetics.

It looked very pleasant. Nice music too. Depending on the type of content you were doing, it was relaxing too.

Compare that to many of the other 'sandbox'-type hubs that Blizzard can't help but make. I'm thinking Broken Shore and Korthia. Dreary, depressing hell-holes. Generally boring. Dull.

Now, some could accuse Thunder Isle of being all those things - but unlike Broken Shore and Korthia, it actually had great quests/lore to prop it up.

Timeless Isle is everything the likes of Broken Shore and Korthia wish they were - but inevitably aren't, given the severe talent/imagination shortage on the WoW team nowadays.

[Huzzaa]

Not gonna lie.

The 30% haste buff was the reason it was great!

But so were the classes, thus the haste buff made it even more fun.

[Austilias]

Not gonna lie.

The 30% haste buff was the reason it was great!

But so were the classes, thus the haste buff made it even more fun.

MoP class design was the best to date. The most alt-friendly expansion I can recall too.

I played nearly ten classes to a high gear/content level.

SL was supposed to be alt-friendly again. So much for that.

[MoanaLisa]

I'll admit that I didn't much like Timeless Isle the first couple of times I visited. But it grew on me and eventually I realized that I was having a really good time in a well-done and interesting zone with a wide variety of things to do.

Sometimes I think that content that grows on you over time is more likely to be well-remembered than the flashy stuff that shouts its EPICNESS the first time you go through it but ends up being relatively hollow after a while. Blizzard does a lot of that now and I tend to believe that the game suffers for it.

I still go to Timeless Isle now and then just for the hell of it. It's still fun and at last I have my revenge on those fucking gulp frogs.