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Zereth Mortis Feedback

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Letholas
WoW Community Council
#1 - Feb. 23, 2022, 4:45 a.m.
Blizzard Post

In this thread I want to give my feedback for zereth Mortis, starting with the first day, and continuing as we continue to experience the zone.
One caveat I will state is that I did not do any of Zereth Mortis on PTR and experienced everything for the first time today.

Day 1.

I play on a small server. So while I know some people had issues with lag in Haven and multiple disconnects, I was only disconnected twice in the time I played today. During that time I did everything I could get my hands on. Every main and side quest, every rare I could find, every chest I could open, and every cave I could enter. I ended my day by conquering what I had failed earlier and reached the summit of the rock orbs to loot the scroll I had watched people ahead of me get with ease. And I did it without any assistance. No warlock, no priest, no 2 seater mount and no door of shadows. I logged out with pride still atop the summit.

Given all that, here are my Initial thoughts:

The good:

  • The zone is beautiful. The lush green biome and the desert biome are both brilliant and have their own thematic appeal. It’s a nice chance from the Maw and Korthia.
  • The quest line was intriguing, and not boring, overall a good pace.
  • The side quests were also interesting and I enjoyed them.
  • The rares are unique and have several interesting abilities that require interupts or dodging to defeat the rare.
  • The challenges to get some of the chests are fantastic. Handynotes was a massive help here, but gaining a buff to break a door or find a rune to open a barrier or jumping perfectly to reach a chest is awesome.

The bad:

  • The puzzles might have been my favourite part of the day, as I love puzzles, but I found the explanations on how to complete them very lacking. I’m sure this was intentional, but I did have a hard time figuring out how to complete them.
  • one of the chests I sought to open, through clicking 4 objects emitting a tone, in a specific order despaired the exact second I completed the order. I’m not sure if this was just bad timing, but it was frustrating to go through the effort of figuring out the order and getting nothing out of it.
  • many times today I was unable to mount up as I remained in combat long beyond what would be considered normal. Even dismissing my pet and shadowmelding did not drop combat for me.

Final thoughts:
Overall, it was very refreshing to have new content in a fresh zone. I enjoyed hanging out in discord with my guildies, and running all over for rares and chests and everything else. There were a few frustrating moments, but overall a smooth release (early even!) and I’m looking forward to logging into tomorrow to do it again.

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Rootysnooter
WoW Developer
#27 - March 1, 2022, 7:48 p.m.
Blizzard Post

I’m glad you like how the zone looks. We definitely went for a bright and vibrant look for this zone, in both the vegetation, devices, and structures.

It was interesting designing props for this clean geometric aesthetic as we hadn’t really done something like this in WoW before.

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Hunkulus
WoW Developer
#29 - March 2, 2022, 7:27 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Thanks for your feedback on Rare tuning and feel. A couple things to talk about:

Generally, the Rares (especially group Rares) in Zereth Mortis have a bit more health than say Korthia or Mechagon. We wanted to try out making Rares that were a bit more dangerous than previously seen. Health is actually a great way of making something a bit scarier to fight without increasing damage done. If an enemy has a bit more health, that enemy will be able to attack more often – dealing more damage in the process. We do however see a few enemies that likely have too much health currently. We are taking an active look at some of the outliers in that regard.

On the tuning note, I am assuming you are referring to the damage done / frequency of abilities (please correct me if I am wrong). This is largely due to the same point above. There is an active want on the team to make more engaging, non-instanced combat. Rares, Elites, Quest Bosses, etc. are a great place for that, but there are some outliers for sure. The upper echelon of what we would consider appropriate for a Rare Elite would be something like Otaris with their rotating beams and missile attacks. We are okay with some Rares being more difficult than others - those peaks and valleys provide valuable texture to the game and can make for some memorable play experiences.