The most ambitious feature of World of Warcraft is Torghast, Tower of the Damned. It contains a multi-floor dungeon which is basically a self-contained roguelike. When you explore it, each time the enemies change and as you progress to harder floors you’ll find more advanced abilities that can turn you into a demon-slaying badass.
Game director Ion Hazzikostas said during an interview, “One of the biggest points of feedback we’ve gotten since the release of Shadowlands was that, while the feeling of becoming this powerful wrecking ball going through Torghast and breaking all the rules is super fun, the flip side is that losing in Torghast is one of the worst experiences ever in World of Warcraft. And that’s a problem. That sucks.”
Torghast is the primary source of an important currency named Soul Ash which is used to upgrade the Legendary Gear. Every week, you can get so much Soul Ash, so beating the Torghast is something that players need to do if they want to keep pace with their guildmates and take on more hard challenges. The Soul Ash is only earnable when the player successfully completes a run of the dungeon, which can take more than an hour.
Hazzikostas said, “What if instead we had more of a rating or a score, where it was more of a spectrum, a continuum of success and trying to do better, trying to be more efficient, trying to be faster or have fewer deaths, but you have some reward to show for it? You always want to do better, but you’re never leaving empty handed—unless you, like, fail on the first floor and your run ends there, that’s okay.”
Hazzikostas didn’t have much specific information to share, but just knowing that Torghast is receiving an overhaul is a good one.
“We’ll have more to show when the [Public Test Realm] starts for Chains of Domination. We’re looking forward to a lot of feedback and iteration on this system,” Hazzikostas said. “I think our take on Torghast is that the setting is awesome, the gameplay is awesome, the variety of content and experiences there are awesome, but it needs to be a place where we can offer challenge without frustration and despair if the challenge ends up being too much for you.”
