Edit for emphasis: This thread is for thoughts and feedback about how the writhing fortress is designed, NOT for feedback on the bugs that stop it from working as designed, there are lots of other threads about that where you can and should share your feedback about the bugs.

I was one of the many many players (OK, I have no idea how many of us there were, but it felt like an army) on PC/NA who entered the writhing fortress immediately when it opened last night and brought the spire down, and I wanted to share some thoughts and feedback about it, and maybe start a discussion about how people feel about the writhing fortress itself.

First off, the elephant in the room is how buggy it is, like everything else about the writhing wall event. I was lucky enough to get an instance that didn't have any progress-blocking bugs, but I've seen all the reports here and in guild/zone chat about bugged instances, and that's a serious issue. I don't want to pretend that the bugs aren't a big problem, but I also don't want that to be a focus of discussion in this thread purely because there are already multiple threads devoted to the bugs, and I'd rather keep this focused on what the writhing fortress is like when things are working.

My primary takeaway from the writhing fortress is that if you get a non-bugged instance (which is a big if), and if you get an instance that hasn't already been mostly cleared by other people (again, a big if), it's chaotic and half the time I had no idea where we were supposed to go or what we were supposed to do, but overall it's actually pretty cool. The writhing fortress itself is the only part of the writhing wall event that I haven't found to be underwhelming, disappointing, and frankly boring.

Things I like about it:

• Chaotic mass assault: sure, I didn't really know exactly what was going on a lot of the time, but it was fun to be part of a huge group of players swarming into a daedric fortress.
• Grapple points: I love dungeons and fights that make good use of grapple points. It's just fun to grapple over from one place to another, especially during a fight when you need to rapidly get from one place to another. Grappling from platform to platform to get to different heights and spots around the battlefield is cool, and I love to see things like that.
• Ballistae: I like that siege engines were incorporated into the mechanics of the writhing fortress. It's a game mechanic that you almost never get to use outside of Cyrodiil, and I like seeing it in other content, especially when it makes sense that you'd need siege engines to accomplish things, like it does in the writhing fortress.
• Multiple paths that need to be completed by different groups more or less simultaneously: this feels appropriate for a mass assault on a huge daedric fortress, and it's good for replayability, because you're simply not going to see the whole writhing fortress if you only complete it once.
• You can't just burn and ignore mechanics: I don't mind that there are a ton of fights in dungeons and trials where if your group DPS is high enough you can pretty much just burn and ignore mechanics, but I also like there to be fights where that's simply not possible, and writhing fortress has those (thanks in large part to the ballistae being required).

Things I don't think worked well:

• Chaotic mass assault: yes, this is also something I liked about it, but at any given time it was usually pretty unclear exactly what we were supposed to be doing, which made it too chaotic as people were constantly running around trying to figure out where they were supposed to go and what they were supposed to do. It was still fun, but a few lines of NPC dialogue telling you what to do in very vague terms that you can barely hear because of all the combat noises just isn't enough direction to give. Not a huge issue, but room for improvement.
• Ballistae: again, this is something that I liked about it, and I don't have a problem with the "repair a ballista with ballista parts to use it" mechanic in theory, but having a ballista only last for 2 shots before it falls apart made it feel like too much of a chore. Having a siege weapon deteriorate and fall apart like that doesn't really make sense from a logical point of view (IRL a well maintained ballista isn't going to fall apart during a siege at all, and even a hastily repaired one shouldn't either unless you really mucked it up, and if one does come apart the sudden release of all that stored up energy is going to make it fly apart and possibly kill anyone standing beside it), but I understand it's a mechanic added in for game balance. It's just that 2 shots, repair, 2 shots, repair ad nauseum is a little much. 4 shots before a repair is needed would feel much better IMO.
• Wait, what do we target?: this is a bit of a combination of the first 2 things on my list of things I don't think worked well. When using the ballistae most of the time it wasn't clear exactly what we were supposed to target, and it was almost impossible to determine if the shots we were taking were having any effect on anything. One notable exception to this is the phase on the big harvester fight where the fire ballistae have to target wards of one colour, while the coldfire ballistae have to target wards of the other colour: this part was done well and it was both clear what we were supposed to be shooting at and we could tell that what we were doing was getting results. Other times we were using ballistae? Not so much. Like, OK, I get that we're trying to bring down that barrier over there, but are we supposed to target the barrier itself or the tower thingie beside it? If we're supposed to target the tower thingie, what part of it are we supposed to target, or does it even matter?
• Likelihood of getting an instance that's already partly or mostly cleared: this was actually the main reason why I decided to get there and be amongst the first on the server to enter the writhing fortress. I wanted to be sure that I got at least 1 opportunity to do the whole thing. I very much dislike the idea of popping into an instance and finding there's barely anything for you to do. Maybe they could have implemented something where there's a specific schedule for when new instances of the writhing fortress open up (like every 30 minutes), and there's a muster area that's it's own instance just before actually entering the writhing fortress, with a countdown to when the assault will begin while the NPCs "gather the troops" or something. IDK.
• Limited time only: OK, sure, if the writhing fortress stayed in the game permanently it wouldn't be too long before there just wouldn't be enough people doing it and you wouldn't be able to get it cleared without a big guild group or something, but with the replayabilty inherent to the design of the writhing fortress having it available for only a single week doesn't seem like long enough.

I'm neutral about the rewards you get for completion of the writhing fortress. The memento you get the first time is kind of cool, and I honestly couldn't even tell you what drops I got from actually doing the fortress, but I really didn't (and don't) care what the rewards were, I just wanted some content that was fun, and I (mostly) got that. I wasn't motivated in the slightest by what rewards you get, but of course other people may feel very differently about that.

I'm curious to see what other people's thoughts are about the writhing fortress when it's not bugged out.