How can the WoW Azerothian Archives be improved?

The Azerothian Archives is the newest Dragonflight group event to arrive with patch 10.2.5 and after finishing the epilogue quests it’s pretty much the only new thing to do in game until patch 10.2.6 arrives in a couple months. The Archives are themselves two sets of events: world quests that are unlocked after completing the initial quest chain, and the “Big Dig” which is a Community Feast-style event. Like every other Dragonflight group event there are good things — I actually do enjoy it despite the criticisms I’m about to level — and bad things about it, so let’s make it better!

Of course anyone who has participated in the Archives so far knows that the World of Warcraft development team needs to do first: fix all the bugs! The word “unplayable” has been used a lot to describe the event, and considering some of the worst bugs are at the start of the quests it’s not a good look. While there have been some improvements since the patch arrived I’m hoping that everyone gets a chance to participate after reset this week.

Besides the bugs though there are some odd choices that need addressing. First off, the cost of the items purchased with the Mysterious Fragment currency is way too high; I’ve been grinding the Big Dig all week and between that and one world quest that rewards Fragments I still have less than 10% of the total currency required to acquire all items. If this was the final patch before The War Within I wouldn’t have an issue with it, but short of dedicating all time in game for the next 10 weeks doing the same event over and over and over and over is craziness — especially considering patch 10.2.6 should arrive by then.

Perhaps increasing your reputation rank with the Azerothian Archives should add a Fragment multiplayer or something, especially since it currently does nothing — at all. No new items are unlocked to purchase. No new quests become available. It’s a completely empty reputation system; I have to think the original plan was to lock the quest chain behind reputation, and while I’m glad that’s not the case it’s very bizarre that they kept it in game with nothing to do.

The Big Dig could stand for some improvement as well. Besides the fact that you can go the entire event with only one of two tasks — why the Community Feast doesn’t have this issue but the Big Dig does is a mystery — many of the activities are ridiculously basic. Having to fly five meters to a nearby NPC to ask for a generic item (the speech option doesn’t even mention the item!) and then flying back isn’t compelling gameplay. Of course, the more advanced tasks are bug-ridden with slow respawn rates or criteria that doesn’t register so maybe it’s a good thing there are more simple tasks otherwise none of the tasks could be accomplished.

I know it sounds like I have a lot of issues with the Azerothian Archives events and quests but I do think they’re fun. There’s a strong core idea here, it just needs some serious improvements to live up to its potential.

What do you think? Have you been able to get past the bugs to do the Azerothian Archives quests and Big Dig? What do you think of the new archaeology mechanics? Do you hope to see the NPCs make a return in future expansions?