The phasing idea is an interesting one. I’d actually like to see it fully realized.

What if there was a zone that was essentially a weekly quest hub. The zone was being terrorized by some big baddie who would appear from time to time to cause a ruckus. Naturally, all of the quests that would appear in a “he’s not dead yet” phase could be about fortifying the place and setting up obstacles or what not.

Once a player participated in a group that killed him, however, they enter a phase where the baddie has been vanquished. The weekly quests convert to quests around cleaning up the place, helping the wounded, etc.

What I don’t think we want to see, however, is a world boss who is always on. That might sound great, but then he really isn’t a “world boss” he’s just an instanced boss presented in a different way. Part of the mystique of the world bosses is the fact that you’re never really sure when they will pop and assembling an emergency group to get them down.

I think it would make sense for the boss to pop each day, remain active for a couple of hours, and de-spawn for a few hours. If the boss is not killed on a particular day, he may re-spawn on that same day for some more shenanigans. If he is killed on a day, then he’s done. This will limit the number of times he’s able to be killed and will still create some of the “Oh snap! We gotta get our stuff together” moments that we saw in vanilla.