What's Your Take on Dungeon Design?

[Lazy Gecko]

I liked the designs of BRD, Stratholme, etc thanks to their large, sprawling nature. It also allowed players to plan specific routes (or boss runs, as they're more commonly called) so you didn't have to clear everything in one go. The narrow, scripted event-ridden rollercoaster rides we've had since WotLK are completely uninteresting to me and I've largely ignored 5-mans since Cataclysm. Blizzard seem pretty set in their ways now in how their dungeons are supposed to be design so I have no hope for interesting 5-mans in the future.

The topic of dungeon design is very interesting to me since I create my own dungeons in Elder Scrolls games, and I really want to evoke the same feelings as I got when exploring the best vanilla WoW dungeons.

[Deleted]

Getting lost in Sunken Temple was even more fun, not only was that place confusing as hell but everything looked the same. The fact that you could get lost in those instances itself was fun, except when you'd end up pulling the whole instance running back to your group lol

Except that you can't get lost in there now either...they removed the entire bottom floor when they redid everything for Cata.

BC heroics were well-tuned because a larger portion (not everyone, but the majority) running them when they were really important were organized - I NEVER pugged heroics when they were important for gearing for Kara - I ran everything with my guild for a short bit until we were good to go and it was because they were stupidly hard and who the fuck wanted to run Shattered Halls without people you KNEW WITH CERTAINTY were intelligent/skilled/etc/blah and would get you through it.

Except that they revolved heavily around "bring the class, not the player" and contained the most blatant example of the aforementioned statement (360° cleaves anyone?). So they weren't well-tuned, simply for the reason that half the specs were excluded from them unless they had a raid guild that needed to push them through the T5 attunements. (everything else was fine though, they were hard enough to the point where they did feel heroic and it certainly kept the bads out)

However, if it was done today (where every class is identical in all but name) it would probably work fine.

[Kalmah]

CC is dumb, pulling an entire dungeon as a tank is fun. Challenge mode have the the right kind of difficulty in that they encourage / require to pull as fast and as much as possible.

If I want to run content that requires a pre-made group and several hours, I can raid.

[Deleted]

CC is dumb, pulling an entire dungeon as a tank is fun.

Different folks, different strokes. I loved doing CC on hard pulls - it is the opposite of dumb; it requires strategy and the group to actually interact together (and communicate beyond the initial "hi"). Pulling an entire dungeon is not fun for me - I can't find any enjoyment is ridiculously outgearing content.

We also understand that it doesn't scratch the challenging heroic itch for all players because of the speed emphasis.

At least Blizzard are starting to get it.

[Deleted]

Simply put, i love dungeons and have always considered them a core part of WoW. Whereas scenarios are nice upgrade from old group quests (which is how Blizzard initially explained scenarios to us) and i do those occasionally, they are no replacement for good old dungeon experience. Lack of any new 5 man dungeons during the course of MoP has been one of the main setbacks of otherwise excellent expansion.

The only time i really really disliked 5 mans was when Blizzard introduced dumbed down ZA/ZG in Cataclysm and 'forced' you to run them over and over again on all your alts due to item level difference. As if going back to those zones wasnt bad enough for oldtimers who had already raided both to no end in classic and BC.

[AbsolutePitch]

Different folks, different strokes. I loved doing CC on hard pulls - it is the opposite of dumb; it requires strategy and the group to actually interact together (and communicate beyond the initial "hi"). Pulling an entire dungeon is not fun for me - I can't find any enjoyment is ridiculously outgearing content.

At least Blizzard are starting to get it.

Completely agree. Zerging through content means there's no strategy involved, no coordination, no planning, no challenge. CC is integral and should be critical to instanced experiences.