Let’s imagine this.
You are playing on an alt character in Bloodtide Coast, which is the zone south of Lion’s Arch. You happen to be doing the heart quest that involves you protecting and reviving Priory medics as they tend to injured quaggans before they become enraged and go on a rampage. This is content that’s already in the game in a zone that’s considered “dead.”
All of a sudden, you hear a loud, familiar roar as Tequatl the Sunless clashes down on the mountain southeast of that beach and sets up minions on the coast surrounding Dredgehat Isle. A group event label pops up stating that Tequatl must be taken cared of or he will fly away to a new location and leave Dredgehat isle and the nearby beaches infested with Risen minions. The event fails because of the lack of people and Tequatl flies off to the Straits of Devastation and attacks Fort Trinity, or back to Sparkfly Fen to irritate the Hylek, and could even fly over to Lion’s Arch and attack the city.
If Tequatl is not dealt with in Lion’s Arch, he will remain there until the community drives him away and saves the city from Risen domination. At the moment, these world bosses can be zerged no problem with no chance of failure. The problem here is zergs, groups of people who can pretty much spam 1 to kill him with one hand while the other is used as a head rest before they fall asleep. So why not give these world bosses a zerg of their own?
Imagine Tequatl stationed at LA’s Bloodcoast Ward with hoards of Risen Abominations rushing into Fort Marriner blocking the WvW portals and dungeon token vendors. Now it’s personal, now if you want to spend your dungeon tokens or preview the armor or even use the waypoints surrounding Tequatl, you’re going to have to group up with your fellow community on The Gangplank and take care of this problem.
If world bosses worked like this, “dead” zones would be populated by people trying to find the bosses on their new locations and fighting them on their new locations. Let’s say that instead of in Blazeridge Steppes, the Shatterer spawns in the Iron Marches? Or the Claw of Jormag on Snowden Drifts? If the difficulty of these bosses were scaled up to deal with zergs, like veteran and champion karkas and their roll that used to devistate zergs when Southsun Cove was released in November, then these world bosses would be more entertaining to kill for their bonus chests and loot chests while still posing a threat and a chance for failure.
TL;DR -
- Give world bosses a variety of randomized spawn locations within their respected regions (Fire Elemental and Great Jungle Wurm in the Tarnished Coast. Shadow Behemoth and the Champion Modniir Ulgoth in Kyrta. Tequalt the Sunless in Orr and parts of the Steamspur Mountains. The Claw of Jormag in the Shiverpeak Mountains. Etc.)
- Give world bosses a zerg of their own to scale with the number of players attacking them or give them more potent anti-zerg mechanics to deal with groups of players.
- Allow world bosses to fly in and attack popular cities and areas so they’re actually threatening. It doesn’t make sense that we’re having a Dragon Bash when the only dragons we’ve ever faced don’t actually pose a real threat to the main cities and come back to the same area to find 30 people grouped up with Black Lion Salvage Kits ready for use. The main cities are so huge
perfect targets for angry world bosses looking for a fight.
You’re dishing out all this temporary content per month, why not focus on permanent changes that would improve world boss encounters and add a real sense of danger to these events?