Fall of Theramore thoughts?

[Brass]

So... MoP's first Scenario, Fall of Theramore, came out today. At last, new content! New excitement! Or not.

Grimster's thoughts on the matter?

[Hektar]

I was personally less than impressed. The scenario gives you no introduction at all, you just zone in and are expected to pick up on what's going on. The fight mechanics of the elites are just annoying, in no way interesting or fun.

I think they picked the wrong part of the battle for the scenario. I think it should have revolved around the failed ground assault. Stage 1, fight through Alliance Ambush, stage 2 get a battering ram to the gates, stage 3 fight through the gate into the yard, stage 4 tactical retreat. Fight your way out, if you are too slow you get overwhelmed. Stage 5 watch that mother fucker burn.

[Awatu]

If this is the direction of scenarios, then I'm alright with it. Rather simple, kinda fun, but plenty of room for improvements. Feels like a quickie dungeon for friends.

BUT, since this is meant to open us up for Mists in lieu of an "expansion event", it is quite lame. The fact that there is no expansion event at all is equally lame.

[Krinathalasa]

In comparison to other events before new xpac drops this one is absolutely lame. It wasn't even a "before xpansion surprise" like BC or Wrath was. All this is, is a event you see in MoP at level 90.

Just Blizz phoning it in yet again.

[Brass]

I'm disappointed, and given Blizzard's offerings in the last year or two, that's no longer surprising (just more disheartening). Furthermore, I'm concerned about what this could reflect in MoP's (and Wow's long-term) design. This is like they just hoisted it off on intern designers while the veterans went off to polish something else (maybe Titan?) - there were so many bad calls and missed opportunities.

1.) The Trash encounters were lackluster. Literally boring. No interesting gimmicks, no real variety in mobs. No real effort to make them stand out or feel characterized - they could've worked the 'Theramore's defiant last stand' angle, but it just felt like they were walking on patrols bored out of their minds. This was the most generic trash ever.

2.) The 'miniboss' fights themselves didn't feel exciting - this is the Fall of Theramore. It's a big deal and they managed to make it feel bland. Unimportant.

3.) There were some spots where the flow was just off. For example, it is easy to skip the first two boats on the dock (there are four boats down one dock, as opposed to two), and skip ahead to the last two - then backtrack because you realized you forgot them). Second example - the Last Stand. Giving us this objective just before coming up to the ramp for the central tower of Theramore is misleading. Going in there ends in Jaina and her scaly blue boyfriend splattering you. Instead, you are meant to loop around it to the other side barracks, completely ignoring them.

4.) Which brings me to another irksome thing. There was no confrontation with Jaina. None at all. Not a reprisal, attack, condemnation, or even a word from her (unless you decided to assault the tower, then you get a 'mumble mumble SPLAT', and a time to rez). You would think invading her city and killing her followers of countless years would have her react a bit more personally.

5.) There was little to no challenge. I did this twice today - once overpowered, second time, really underpowered. There was no real difference other than a couple minutes time.

First time I went with Tekk and Sethinus on Brass. We outgeared the heck out of it and busted the place apart. It flew by so fast that nothing stuck. We just stood there in orgrimmar after taking the portal and seeing the cutscene like 'is this it? Seriously?'

Second time I went, I went with Tekk on her Mage alt, and on my Hunter. We were both way undergeared - barely able to make the Scenario minimum ilvl. Despite that, the fights were only slightly more challenging and still not that interesting. Even the tank which I think is supposed to be a reminder to pre-raiders not to stand in bad stuff did negligible damage. It made me think more about my approaches to things, sure, but it didn't really matter ultimately.

Ultimately, I think 'mini dungeon' is being a bit too generous if this is how all scenarios are going to be. This just feels like an instanced group quest that's repeatable (and I guarantee repetition is not going to make it any more endearing). And the worst part I noticed is that while scenarios are almost entirely designed to give DPS better queue times (not requiring tank/healer) it still isn't even managing to do that. It took me 30 minutes to get into a Scenario Group on my Hunter - and this is launch night for the thing, when so many people are logging on to see it.

As far as the lore goes... what lore? Any lore that is actually here is all behind the scenes in that book that came out recently. I haven't read that. The only thing I approve of is Rhonin being dead. That could almost redeem this whole mess, but even that still feels close.

The idea of this Scenario being the launch event for Mists is abysmal. I can't believe it's true. Cataclysm's launch, while still kind of bland, was still way better than this. It doesn't hold a candle to the Dark Portal Opening or the Zombie Plague and I don't see how blizz can even think this compares in magnitude or excitement.

I think a better way they could've done this would've been to make it start out slow, then after we wreak significant destruction and rescue the Elf, Jaina gets pissed off and starts retaliating as she goes into a fury- it turns into a chase similar to the Lich King in Halls of Reflection, but with more blizzards and maybe some water elemental adds. We obviously can't kill her, because she's a special snowflake of magical fury, but we dodge the heck out of the things she throws at us (and swat elementals) as we run back the circular path we've taken thus far back to the boats we came in on. Would be a great spot to teach players about using defensive cooldowns. After a while, she breaks off to escape and we're left to watch the explosion from a boat leaving the doomed island.

It could've added at least a measure of excitement towards the end and getting to see Jaina cut loose would've been very satisfying.

[Kharzak]

it was much shorter than i expected and lacked any sort of framework. i think brass touched at length on many points that others might agree on

this quote pair is from mmo-champ

Theramore scenario completely underwhelming compared to other pre expansion events. It's Meh.

Was never meant to be a world event. It's the first Scenario of the game. Tons more content coming next week!

hopefully this means that in fact there might be something a big "grander" coming, or something with some meat to it

[Syreenna]

To be honest, I was disappointed.

I didn't have a problem with it being easy. I'm sure it's almost impossible to tune something to be challenging, yet still doable for a group of any three people without any role requirements. It's more like a group quest than a dungeon. Besides, I think this type of thing is more for the lore rather than challenging game content, especially this first one, since it's the only pre-expasion event.

But that's where I was disappointed. I couldn't find any leadup quest or intro to the scenario. There could have at least been a quest from Garrosh or someone to send us to Theramore. (Yeah, I know Garrosh sending us there wouldn't make sense, because technically, he's outside Theramore when it happens.) But it would have been nice if there was something in game other than clicking queue for a scenario in the LFG interface.

I read the book, so I knew why Thelan Songweaver was there, what he did, and why he was being held prisoner. For people who haven't read the book though, I wonder if the scenario gave them enough explanation to know what they were doing there and why, and what was happening overall.

[Yrzuli]

it was much shorter than i expected and lacked any sort of framework. i think brass touched at length on many points that others might agree on

this quote pair is from mmo-champ

Theramore scenario completely underwhelming compared to other pre expansion events. It's Meh.

Was never meant to be a world event. It's the first Scenario of the game. Tons more content coming next week!

hopefully this means that in fact there might be something a big "grander" coming, or something with some meat to it

The xpac drops next week. Unless they have some super secret "TA DA!" at launch, I don't think we're getting any event.

To be honest, I was disappointed.

I didn't have a problem with it being easy. I'm sure it's almost impossible to tune something to be challenging, yet still doable for a group of any three people without any role requirements. It's more like a group quest than a dungeon. Besides, I think this type of thing is more for the lore rather than challenging game content, especially this first one, since it's the only pre-expasion event.

But that's where I was disappointed. I couldn't find any leadup quest or intro to the scenario. There could have at least been a quest from Garrosh or someone to send us to Theramore. (Yeah, I know Garrosh sending us there wouldn't make sense, because technically, he's outside Theramore when it happens.) But it would have been nice if there was something in game other than clicking queue for a scenario in the LFG interface.

I read the book, so I knew why Thelan Songweaver was there, what he did, and why he was being held prisoner. For people who haven't read the book though, I wonder if the scenario gave them enough explanation to know what they were doing there and why, and what was happening overall.

I'm wondering if we gain more insight on it later on, as I think this was just "sneak peak" at scenarios since this will be switched to a level 90 scenario once the xpac drops. I haven't done the Horde side one (was waiting for Anaie, silly me), but I did hit up the Alliance version last night on my mage. That was pretty much, "Holy crap, they're dropping a bomb on us! Kill anyone you see! Save Jaina!"

[Abric]

We have a week until Mists of Panda Town. I'll wait for that to happen before I hold judgement on this scenario. Maybe there will be more... maybe they'll flex the reason why Blizzard is king of the mountain... or maybe they won't. Seven days will tell!

[Anaie]

The sun was blocked out and Theramore plunged into darkness. As Jaina frantically looked out the tower window, her Alliance compatriots screaming for her to step through the portal, she saw the Horde superweapon.

A flying mass of fur, fat, teeth and claw was hurtling right at them. It's path erratic as the rockets propelling the beast forth sputtered in and out of life, belching black, choking smoke. The creatures thunderous roar barely audible over the cacophony of brilliant engineering mechanisms, Jaina made out the final thing the residents of the once proud city would ever hear as the terrifying beast came closer and the engines sputtered out...

"Damn you Bloodscream & Anaie!!!!!"

moving this to a story thread, as i find it too amusing to not be IC.

[Brass]

Having now read Tides of War today (finally), I can safely say I'm even -more- disappointed with this scenario. I've seen what it could've been like - that is, given the depictions in the book. At the very least, it could've been decorated up more; make it actually feel like an actual siege zone inbetween assaults (like in the book). But no, it is unadorned, boring, with fresh patrols with unsoiled armor that don't look like anything is remotely amiss. Could just be an average day in Theramoore during the scenario.

If blizz were to do anything, anything at all, for this launch event in this week before the expansion - I hope they actually do something more like the final bit of the book.

[Hektar]

Based on a Blue post I am too lazy to seek out, they basically said they put the production time that would have gone into a world event into the expansion. It gives me high hopes for the x pac.

[Aureilya]

There were 'mini bosses'?

If it wasn't for the fact that I had queue'd up for this, I would have mistaken it for any other time I've gone to Theramore or some other Alliance city to blow stuff up for fun. It didn't feel like any sort of dungeon or quest to me, and I didn't notice any fight mechanics except for the tank (kind of).

It sort of felt like most of our Onslaught events while we're waiting for the Alliance players to show up. Run around and kill off all the guards and NPCs. Every now and then, we'd get an elite in the mix, but it was pretty much just 'stand in the back and spam fireball' until the next pack of guards and NPCs came along.

The only exception was fighting the tank, which was kind of fun because I actually had to move around a couple of times rather than just stand and burn down trash.

[Ashenfury]

Like Abric said things may change but I didn't even notice an event was going on. Far cry from say the opening of the dark portal or the zombie plague where it was really hard to miss the fact that something big was happening.

Oh well. Hopefully the xpac is good...

[Krinathalasa]

I ran it again on my DK to see if anything was new or chance for loot. You get around 10 gold per run now and fireworks. The loot drop must be crazy low.