wow Zaralek and Forbidden Reach Rare Changes Explained, Possibly More Changes Coming

[Staff 1,410]

Yesterday's 15-minute despawn timer on Zaralek Caverns and Forbidden Reach rres did not go over great with a lot of players. Today, Blizzard are both explaining their rationale behind the changes and shared some changes they are considering adding as well. 

Rares (Source)

We’ve been closely reading your feedback about the recent changes to rare elite creatures in Zaralek Caverns and Forbidden Reach. A number of you have asked why we made this change, so we want to give some more explanation. We can also share a bit about what might happen next.

(We’ll use Zaralek Caverns as the example for this explanation, but all points also apply to Forbidden Reach.)

As shown above, the Zaralek Caverns map regularly displayed 12-15 rare elite enemies available to kill at any given time. This was not an occasional jackpot moment. It was the default state of the zone for most players who came along. Because of this, we regularly saw players who might want to take down those rare elites, but they and other players were scattered around the zone. Due to the sheer number of different spawn points, players simply wouldn’t come across other players who were looking to fight the same rare, even in Group Finder. Yesterday’s hotfix was a step that we’re taking to focus attention on fewer rares at a time and encourage the glorious murderballs that we all know and love.

We’ve absolutely heard your feedback that this feels like a quality-of-life reduction, particularly if you’re hunting specific rare elites for rare cosmetic drops. We’re considering a couple of additional changes to address this:

• We recently found an issue that was causing zones like Zaralek Caverns to be underpopulated. We’re working on a hotfix for that, and once we’ve deployed the fix, you should start seeing more players and have an easier time finding others to group with.
• We’re planning to adjust the droprates of some rare cosmetics that come from these creatures. More details on that should be coming soon.

Thanks as always for your feedback; keep it coming!

[Q 146]

I remember somewhere they mentioned allowing players to get buffed if they were the only one doing open world events like the superbloom or the researchers under fire allowing them to solo the event. Whether it was intended for the future or just a fever dream, I don't know.

[Starym 3,787]

2 hours ago, Q said:

I remember somewhere they mentioned allowing players to get buffed if they were the only one doing open world events like the superbloom or the researchers under fire allowing them to solo the event. Whether it was intended for the future or just a fever dream, I don't know.

 It's for Superbloom only tho (for now hopefully).

[Cham79 76]

Not that I care about these rares, but surely just lowering their HP would make more sense, they take like 3 minutes to solo and there's no reason to kill them in current content

[Brightamethyst 87]

This is a mindbogglingly terrible change.

"Hm. This outdated zone is empty but for a handful of mount/transmog/achievement farmers. What should we do about it? Should we slash the HP of the rares to make them soloable? No, wait! Lets make them despawn instead! Everyone love having to get a group together to wait around spawn camping. That will definitely make more people want to come farm, right? Right...?"

You could have gotten the easiest win in the world by just reducing the HP of the rares by 80%, but noooooooo. This change not only doesn't fix the problem, but actually makes it WORSE.

[TheCake 130]

• - Lower their HP depending on how many are fighting (Scaling down per less people)
• - Don't make their spawntime worse, make it better, easier, so people can - ENJOY - just going there to kill them.
• - Stop trying to phase in / phase out people, it usually just leads to issues, instead - let people solo, You've understood a lot of people enjoy playing solo already by mentioning it on Blizzcon and adding Delves... so why make it worse in "old" content?

These are my cents.

[Q 146]

11 hours ago, Starym said:

 It's for Superbloom only tho (for now hopefully).

Ah, that was it. Sure would be nice if it applied to the rares of Zaralek and the Forbidden Reach.