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  1. #1

    In Cata, at the start I think they got the 5 mans right.

    I really enjoyed the 5 mans at the start of Cata, looking back...I thought they did decently well.

    Looking back even further, Dungeons like Strat, BRD and Scholomance I really loved. They had there own personalities, lots of cool quests and very farmable for a long time.

    I am at a loss of why they (Blizz) have the current model of gather everything up and nuke in a pile. Does anyone seriously like the current model? Forget about Raids for a moment, what would you like to see in 5 mans? Either brought back, an added feature, difficulty levels, gear for starting normal raids, rep grinding etc?

  2. #2
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    The problem is that nowadays dungeons have to be grinded, i.e. run again and again to get valor points and this has to be done with random LFD groups. This means that long dungeons (BRD) or challenging dungeons (TBC or even 4.0/4.1 heroics) aren't viable anymore. In Vanilla and TBC dungeons were endgame content for many players, you ran them to get powerful gear and completing them wasn't guaranteed. I blame Wrath for shifting the model towards badge grinding ad nauseam. I honestly preferred the first model much more, but I think that LFD+VP grind and real dungeons don't go well together.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stannis View Post
    The problem is that nowadays dungeons have to be grinded, i.e. run again and again to get valor points and this has to be done with random LFD groups. This means that long dungeons (BRD) or challenging dungeons (TBC or even 4.0/4.1 heroics) aren't viable anymore. In Vanilla and TBC dungeons were endgame content for many players, you ran them to get powerful gear and completing them wasn't guaranteed. I blame Wrath for shifting the model towards badge grinding ad nauseam. I honestly preferred the first model much more, but I think that LFD+VP grind and real dungeons don't go well together.
    "Nowadays"? People have *always* grinded the instances, be it for gear, rep, badges, marks, points or achievements. Nothing new.

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  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    "Nowadays"? People have *always* grinded the instances, be it for gear, rep, badges, marks, points or achievements. Nothing new.
    Yeah, but in TBC you mostly ran your daily heroic and that was it, with "grind" I mean run shitloads of dungeons to quickly gear up blowing up everything, this philosophy wasn't there before Wrath. In fact the only way that Blizzard has found to bring back some challenge in dungeons are Challenge modes, i.e. removing the need of grinding completely.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stannis View Post
    Yeah, but in TBC you mostly ran your daily heroic and that was it, with "grind" I mean run shitloads of dungeons to quickly gear up blowing up everything, this philosophy wasn't there before Wrath. In fact the only way that Blizzard found to bring back some challenge in dungeons are Challenge modes, i.e. removing the need of grinding completely.
    And it actually felt good when you completed them, I'm looking at you heroic Arcatraz, that place took hours to do and when you finished it you were like "fuck yes!". But also you had dungeon sets that built into raiding too, badge gear was alright but you had sets even from dungeons and it all worked together perfectly.
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    "Nowadays"? People have *always* grinded the instances, be it for gear, rep, badges, marks, points or achievements. Nothing new.
    Back then, you got the majority of your raiding gear from 5 man's mostly, not valor or badges. Add in that resist gear (and special buffs) was needed too.(so sue me..I miss resist gear fights) The difficulty level was also much better.

    ---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 02:07 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Aang View Post
    And it actually felt good when you completed them, I'm looking at you heroic Arcatraz, that place took hours to do and when you finished it you were like "fuck yes!"
    It was a really good caroot on a stick format and you did feel good on finish, logging out you felt accomplishment and you had a great time doing it.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grogo View Post
    Back then, you got the majority of your raiding gear from 5 man's mostly, not valor or badges. Add in that resist gear (and special buffs) was needed too.(so sue me..I miss resist gear fights) The difficulty level was also much better.
    I kind of shed a tear when I hear things being "too hard" in WoW, the games difficulty has gone down overall and the grind really isn't a grind to get into raiding.
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  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aang View Post
    And it actually felt good when you completed them, I'm looking at you heroic Arcatraz, that place took hours to do and when you finished it you were like "fuck yes!". But also you had dungeon sets that built into raiding too, badge gear was alright but you had sets even from dungeons and it all worked together perfectly.
    Yep, I hate to sound nostalgic or to QQ about current WoW model, but tbh I really had a lot of fun as a new player getting for the first time into real endgame. Those heroics were intense and rewarding, plus properly introducing yourself into raiding.

  9. #9
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    I'd prefer to go back to the old system of end game dungeons with armour sets to get you ready for raiding, and tiered progression raids. I haven't played MoP so I can't speak for its end game, but I never liked WolK and Cataclysms system of doing the same dungeons you leveled through over and over again to get gear to go straight to the final raid, skipping everything else.

  10. #10
    They were good pre-Ifd.

    Now with LFD? Never again. Very few players want to put the effort into a random group, and it's almost impossible to progress in a difficult 5 man when people are going to be constantly dropping out. As much as I enjoyed the Cata heroics at the start (I didn't mind taking a bit longer to wipe/redo) the majority of the player base was turned off hugely by them. You can't make a boss in a randomly queued group too hard, else they become a major pain in the ass to kill (see: Lei Shen and Garalon)

  11. #11
    Heroics in Cata were fun at the very start, up to about 3 weeks in. After that, they got more and more painful as less committed/skilled people started using LFG. Running them in a guild group and using vent was fine, but once all my guildies had everything they wanted from them they stopped running while I still needed a trinket, so LFG was my option so as not to be a burden on people who didn't need to run them.If you have a decent group, hard dungeons are fine, and that is why there are challenge modes. When you don't, they are painful and better off skipped IMO.

    The simple fact is Blizzard had so many complaints about the difficulty they changed them very fast, which is uncharacteristic of the company. Regardless of your opinions about Blizzard, nerfing the dungeons as much and as quickly as they did when every other change on that magnitude takes them months to implement surely tells you something about the pressure they were under to do it. Your opinion, which granted is along the lines of many posters on this forum, is in the vast majority of the playerbase at the time. With the subscriber drop since then it is harder to say, but my opinion is that it still holds and it seems that Blizzard believes that too.

  12. #12
    Elemental Lord Duronos's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stannis View Post
    Yep, I hate to sound nostalgic or to QQ about current WoW model, but tbh I really had a lot of fun as a new player getting for the first time into real endgame. Those heroics were intense and rewarding, plus properly introducing yourself into raiding.
    I did say to myself that I wasn't going to do heroic arcatraz again even if my rogue headpiece didn't drop from last boss... It actually dropped and I was just overjoyed. I ran Heroic Shadow Labs quite a few times back then too, I enjoyed that instance. The hard ones that come to mind were (all in heroic mode ofc) were Shattered Halls, pretty much every Netherstorm one, Opening the Dark Portal (that one is quite hard if your group didn't get too the portals fast enough), and Magisters Terrace (possibly the hardest, I never finished it on heroic, I may have I can't remember).

    ---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 10:14 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by ribald View Post
    I'd prefer to go back to the old system of end game dungeons with armour sets to get you ready for raiding, and tiered progression raids. I haven't played MoP so I can't speak for its end game, but I never liked WolK and Cataclysms system of doing the same dungeons you leveled through over and over again to get gear to go straight to the final raid, skipping everything else.
    I've said the same thing so many times, skipping tiers of content for what? Didn't people say they wanted to see everything? Well what if you never raided tier 1 but you tier 3 is out and you are able to go there, you just missed 2 tiers worth of raiding.
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  13. #13
    Also, and some may disagree....WoW seemed much darker compared to now. Which was great in my opinion.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grogo View Post
    Also, and some may disagree....WoW seemed much darker compared to now. Which was great in my opinion.
    Darker as in physically such as night or darker as in lore etc.?
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  15. #15
    The pain of some of the old dungeons also added the effect of gearing up and coming back for pay back.

    ---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 02:19 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Aang View Post
    Darker as in physically such as night or darker as in lore etc.?
    Darker as in more menacing and evil.

  16. #16
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    2 schools.

    fast and easy dungeons, in 2 hours times you do 4-5 of them. (average 4.5)
    long and difficult dungeon, in 2 hours times you do 1-2 of them. (average 1.5)

    if the rewards per hours (not per dungeon) were the same, pick your path.
    i choose 2nd in a heartbeat as far as i'm concern, i'm here to play my toon, to the fullest.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stannis View Post
    Yeah, but in TBC you mostly ran your daily heroic and that was it, with "grind" I mean run shitloads of dungeons to quickly gear up blowing up everything, this philosophy wasn't there before Wrath. In fact the only way that Blizzard has found to bring back some challenge in dungeons are Challenge modes, i.e. removing the need of grinding completely.
    Nope - you still grinded them in TBC to get rep and items.

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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    Nope - you still grinded them in TBC to get rep and items.
    Exactly, I never really used the badges except for a few things. You barely made enough in the first place and it was kind of just to fill in some void gear you weren't lucky enough to get in raids due to RNG. Reputations were huge, you needed them to get access to heroics in the first place.
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  19. #19
    I enjoyed dungeon running back in Vanilla, but I was a different man then, accustomed to a different gameplay experience. At some point, around the AQ patch, I grew tired of the game and stopped playing. I came 6 months late to TBC and played it in very small bursts, running only some dungeons. It wasn't until Wrath that my interest to WoW returned and then I got accustomed to fast & easy 5mans. So when Cata offered the harder model once more, I simply stopped running dungeons after a couple of nightmarish attempts, as I couldn't be bothered to learn tacs and especially to endure other people who couldn't bother to learn tacs. I think it's great that Blizz decided to return dungeons back to how it used to be for MoP. The past days of hardship and learning to play through the hard end are over. WoW merely interests me now for its rich lore, I get my fix for engaging gameplay in other games.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    Nope - you still grinded them in TBC to get rep and items.
    this is something they really should have kept.

    forcing people to run normal mode until you get to revered make sure that
    - people knew the instance in normal (at leat one of the trio)
    - people were decently stuff un blue (unless they're really unlucky with /rand)

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