Torghast needs loot

Torghast brings a fun roguelike element to World of Warcraft, and it’s reminiscent of design elements like Diablo 3‘s Nephalem and Greater Rifts. There have been some difficulties in tuning and in player expectations vs. the dev’s intentions, which has me mulling over what players actually want from Torghast, and what the solo-to-five player group instance with procedurally generated layouts could learn from its predecessor in terms of player engagement.

One word keeps popping up in my head: Torghast needs gear.

Not Soul Ash for making a Legendary — that’s great, we all like that. We all would like a Legendary. It’s great that Torghast makes that possible. And the Corridor Creeper mount is fantastic, and we all like cosmetic rewards. But none of that is gear. There’s a possibility for Boss loot in the dungeons, but that does not currently appear to have gone live. And I think that’s the key difference between Rifts in Diablo 3 and Torghast. Soul Ash for Legendaries is great, but it lacks that certain feeling of a loot explosion when you kill the boss at the end of a Greater Rift.

Just look at the image after this paragraph. Tell me you don’t immediately feel a certain excitement looking at all that sparkly goodness. That’s exactly what Torghast needs.

Torghast needs loot.

The dopamine hit of sparkly treasure is greatly missed in Torghast

I understand that WoW is not Diablo. Really, I do. You can’t just port systems over willy nilly from one to the other. But to my mind Torghast really suffers from just being a means to farm a resource. Yes, we want Legendary items and we want to make them stronger, and that means farming Torghast like we’re saying goodbye to city life in the intro to a somewhat sexist sitcom from the late 60’s that even I don’t actually remember. But as much as that is a powerful motivation, it’s not one that comes with the visceral rush of striking down a boss and seeing sparklies explode out of their body and rain down around you.

Now, the WoW loot system lacks the fun of Diablo, and that’s a separate issue that could also use some looking at. The current direction of World of Warcraft is to make loot harder to get, when in my opinion it should be to make upgrades harder to get. A subtle difference, I understand. But you should never have a situation where someone is item level 160 and wearing a 11o trinket from a quest because nothing better ever came along, and Torghast is an ideal place for a solution to that problem. Imagine if every boss kill in Torghast dropped four or five items at the same ilevel as your character — it would ensure that offspec gear would be available, that random holes in your itemization would get shored up.

But also, while we’re at it, come on, let them drop good stuff too. I mean, if Ion’s argument that you should be at a certain gear level to complete specific levels of Torghast is to be accepted, then those players that don’t do other content but do push Torghast need gear commensurate with that goal. If we expect people to be this tall to ride the ride, there needs to be a way that people who only want to ride that ride can get that tall. If Torghast is to remain an experience that can be soloed indefinitely, then it needs gear to drop from bosses that is at or around the power level required to clear said bosses, as well as progressing further into the dungeon.

Torghast is currently simply lacking in this department. Aside from your Legendary, there’s really no other reason to run it, and it ends up feeling like a chore. There’s no dopamine hit for success, and the difficulty ramps up but your reward feels like just more grinding for powdered dead people to sprinkle on your fancy new shoes.

In short? Torghast needs loot.