So, I was asked to make a thread about this to help bring some more light to the issue outside of my replies to other threads and other people’s comments on social media. With Grimrail Depot most likely being one of the two dungeons being returned for Shadowlands Season 4, this issue needs to be brought up again, especially with Blizzard having employees specifically to address accessibility concerns now.
For those who weren’t around in WoD, one of the major complaints other than cut content or flying back then was that people got horrible motion sickness in Grimrail Depot. I’m one of them.
Unlike most motion sickness in game, which can be helped immensely with the accessibility options that were recentlyish added to disable camera shaking and such, it does no such thing in Grimrail, as most people (most, not all) have a reaction to the moving background. And unlike the only other (I believe?) encounter with a constantly moving background (Spine of Deathwing), this can’t be alleviated by simply moving the camera, as there’s mechanics that require seeing the entire arena.
This motion sickness can be bad - I’ve had to do Grimrail 4 times this week for Timewalking. I could not simply leave because you get a 30 minute debuff if you do. All but one of those times, I ended up in bed for hours afterwards feeling like I’m going to throw up, to be blunt. The other time was with my guild, and they were understanding that I needed to focus on not the background, so I was less useful than I could have been, but I was able to get through it.
What could be done, you ask?
As documented in this article 3 years ago, the train isn’t actually moving at all. The background is the thing moving. (This is actually a really fascinating article and I recommend anyone who’s ever been curious about Grimrail read it. I read it back when it was posted)
So this brings me two ideas that I think would be relatively simple:
- Add an NPC at the start of Grimrail that offers the option to witness the train in a static environment. As I believe this would likely be a group-wide thing, having the leader do it would make the most sense, and people could actively avoid joining groups unwilling to do this. Simply put, it would be Grimrail, but it’d be like the train was stopped. Though this may be an issue in random dungeon queues in Chromie Time and Timewalking if it relies on the leader.
- Add an NPC at the start of Grimrail that causes a mist/shadows/etc. to envelope the train (something that could be per-person as we’ve seen in the past, not necessary to alter the party like #1) that simply obscures the background to the point you see black/white/grey, instead of the actual background.
There are possibly other solutions as well, but those are the two I can think of off the top of my head. Thoughts are appreciated.
And since I know someone in General Discussion will tag me and ask: “But Mai - you don’t do M+, why do you care?” - I’m not the only one with this issue, and I’ve been slowly trying to break out of my comfort zone and deal with my anxiety and go into +2s. I may go further later on. I don’t know yet. But I do know if Grimrail goes live like this, I won’t be able to.
