The Clueless - PuGgers of the Lost Instances

[krasgoth]

So, you're levelling your toon, and you've played the game for a while. You start up the nifty dungeon finder, and you find yourself a group. Only trouble is...

You've zoned into an instance that no one does or knows how to play. This includes Sunken Temple, Maraudon, Black Rock Depths, Lower Blackrock Spire, UBRS, Scholo, Strat, or basically anything from level 45-60.

The players in your group are absolutely lost. None of them has ever been here before. None of them know where the graveyard is when you wipe. No one knows how to zone back into the instance. And certainly, none of them ever know where to go inside the instance.

Now - This should be a lot of fun. Exploring new territory, learning new things, that kind of deal. Except for a couple of small, eensy little problems...

The mobs are tough. Witch doctors sheep your tank and gib your terrible damage while your priest flails helplessly, not knowing if he has dispel or not. Apparitions in DM West Frostbolt your tank in a fury until he dies while the rest of the ghosts aoe furiously. Mana Apparitions explode, so on and so forth.

People get hopelessly lost. You creep slowly into the darkened depths of instances, only to realize your group has all wandered off in 4 different directions, and the only one that's still with you is the rogue who's gone afk and put you on autofollow.

So, what happens?

_______________________

The Occulus Problem:

People zone in, they see Dire Maul, and instantly leave. They see BRD and leave. You'll have a paladin, who through the 90 minutes of BRD, insists that "We should skip right to the end for the bag ok?". You'll have a wandering dps in Dire Maul who gets mugged by lashers because he's traipsing off to bag a ghost mushroom.

This wouldn't be so bad, if people knew how to RUN BACK. The problem is, they get lost on the way and have no idea how to zone in. Maraudon and DM are the worst. People are simply clueless of what to do.

How do you folks inspire your neophyte Indiana Jones(ettes) to actually stay in the instance and come with you? Do you use a leash? Beat them with a stick? Promise them candy? Or do you just level by questing until outlands, muttering to yourself in Eastern Plaguelands about the plague of noobs?

[Deleted]

I put on my STRONG LEADER voice and tell everyone where to go. I love those dungeons (except the first part of Maura) and it's a shame people don't see them more.

[Lugo Moll]

They really should have a "You have to find the instance portal of a dungeon before you can queue for it via dungeon finder"-rule.

Especially with new instances in cataclysm it would really spoil it if you didn't have to physically go to the instance.

[krasgoth]

See this is the only problem with the dungeon finder... It is assuming that you have already done the instance and know exactly where every thing is inside and around it. Hell, I have been around since vanilla and still do double takes in LBRs

Might be cool if you have never been to a dungeon before to teleport you outside to the graveyard and point you towards the instance. Simple, and saves a lot of frustration for new and old players alike.

[krasgoth]

Or yaknow, actually placing the graveyards in the right spot (hell, start with the same Zone) so players who haven't run it before don't have to feel like total morons running back

some of the walks are still moronic and walking 15 minutes to get back to an instance isn't instructional.. Simply tedious. If we wipe it's often best to Rez sickness and reform the group. No joke. It will take 20 minutes to guide sheep back anyways, so..

[Tylla]

As somone who did all of those dungeons back in the day I think I can safely say that I hate Sunken Temple.

[sycoman2]

One of the main things that annoys me is that in wrath blizzard made CC by players almost irrelevant.
And at the same time they gave mobs in wrath dungeons virtually no CC.

Stuns, fears, polymorphs, curses, poisons, diseases, disarms, nasty or very annoying magic effects....
Vanilla and BC instances where full of these, wrath virtually none.

Most people have no idea what dispelling, purging, and even interrupting is until a raid leader yells at them in a pug.


To repeat what people say daily in the forums.....

Wrath content is just to fucking easy pre raid.
And its breading a whole new group of clueless casuals who have no business stepping into a raid.

[Lucidity]

I see lots of people get lost on corpse runs to Maraudon and Dire Maul. Seen plenty of people who don't know the way in instances (but to be fair, everyone has to start somewhere.)

I find that people never want to do or don't even know about half the content in a dungeon. (Snake chamber in ST, Crocodile boss in Mara, Ironya in Uldaman)

Personally, i've been there properly before but i still get lost really easily in that maze before ST.

[Verth]

This happens to me a lot as well. When i reached my first vanilia toon 58, TBC had already started so i didnt get to do any old instances for lvl 60s such as dire maul and LBRS and as i lvl my toons i reminisce the old times that i lost and wish i had time to spend on these old instances.

However i'm a man of the future and i'll say:

This problem is only gonna occur for a maximum of 8 lvls (Mara and ST are also easy to follow up since the paths are clearer so it's actually 4 lvls).
These instances might be going away with cataclysm and blizzard will hardly look upon them at this point when they're still trying to fix game balance and should at least be working on cataclysm.
Just live with it for a while. You can always do bgs and quest if you just cant lead the other players who just had no chance of doing these instances.

[krasgoth]

Oh, yeah, it's not a question of whether I can live with it, it's just the poor guys having to suffer through it.

Me, I'll be in outlands in a day or two of medium levelling and not worry about it. I'm just thinking of the poor folks who are doing dungeons for weeks at 40-60 and have to suffer through runs like that.

[Moridius]

I don't know why Blizzard can't "Super Mario Bros." this thing. Each instance has certain flag points or safe zones. Once you hit these, they are your save spots. If you wipe, you get ported back to that position, rebuff, and continue on. Graveyards have lost their point regarding instances since the random porting of people to dungeons was implemented. As someone stated, running from a graveyard isn't a learning thing, it's just tedious. Now, because of the LFG system, there couldn't be a better time to remove it from dungeon wipes. I mean hell, if they want to stick with graveyards, put them in the instances. Make a base camp or something so the instances don't feel so disconnected.

Regarding the OP, I feel your pain. I did cartwheels around my room when I reached 68 and could do dungeons in LFG where people actually knew where the graveyard was. I thought it was going to get better when I reached Outland. Nope. Wasn't as bad, but was still pretty frustrating.

[Shawoman]

I am currently leveling my priest up as holy only doing dungeons. She is at 50 already. But, I have seen all the above mentioned issues and possibly more :P I myself had no idea how to get back to Mara (purple) when I was in that lvl range. The funny thing is it was a group with 3 locks and my stone wore off about 3 seconds before I died. Yeah. I felt horrible and told them it would take me a while to get back seeing as how I didn't know where I was going. They were all very nice and I think thats why that group didn't split. The wipe was just bad luck because the tank dc'ed so we sat around and chatted till a new one showed up and continued. I have also seen everyone zone in to Sunken Temple and then the tank leaves. So we queue up again and in a few minutes get a new tank. Then a dps leaves. And the new tank leaves. It gets to me and the mage left and they asked why everyone left. I had no answer. I don't mind the place. Its stupid people and/or annoying people I mind. I also have a 66 mage and she is lvling via dungeons. I have had the same luck with people at that lvl as I have on my priest. I have just come to expect horrid groups and be happy when you get a good one.

[mutantboy]

This reminds me of the first time I did AN. I was Lvl 62 priest and had spent all my time in Borean and Howling and hadn't even left these zones (very early into WotLK)
How hard can it be right? Well after a Lock summon I find out.
one of the first pulls a mob webs me. No-one tries to get me out so Tank dies. Web wears off and a few secs later I die (mostly due to my very lolworthy health). I keep the DPS up with SoR and so only 2 dead. But no Rezzer but me - run back time.
Well i got lost. Lucky it's all guildies so they were OK with it. but after 10 minutes pissing ourselves on vent with them screaming "it's a feckin huge hole in the ground - how can you miss it" my mate who invite me ran out and came and got me.

Of course that wasn't the end of it. We killed 2 bosses and had no clue what to do next. One guy suggested jumping down the hole - only to be told not to be stupid. It took us another 15min to find someone to confirm that infact you DO jump down the hole. Why we just didn't jump I can't remember.

I remember that and go easy on lost peeps. I was a clueless nub once too.

[ComputerNerd]

And people wonder why I am so reluctant to level alts.
It was a long time since I did many of those dungeons, very few I did originally at the original level due to time constraints and the excessive time to find a group.
The dungeon finder has made the process quicker, but not improved players knowledge of them.
I bet I would not be able to remember half the boss tactics, nor find my way round something like mara without a guide, since even doing it at 80 for the achievement I was still utterly clueless.
Seeing something like this is certainly an encouragement to perhaps level up alts evenly so I can become familliar with a few dungeons at a time.

[Gunwolf]

Thank god I'm lvling a tank right now so I don't have to go thru this.....but my lvl 40ish Warlock will have to eventually.

Lots of clueless people though.....the WORST are the DK TANKS who don't know anything, especially how to tank or what gear to wear. These people should just que as DPS like everyone else who doesn't know what there doing.

Also.....DK's who DPS in frost presence (I HATE YOU ALL)......and DK's who Death Grip crap for no reason.

Also.....SLAVE PENS. For the dungeon that was probably the quickest and easiest to run in BC....one would not expect so much trouble.....but BAD, DUMB DPS always finds a way. DPS in Slave Pens that don't know what the SKULL is for and so AOE ALL THE TIME instead of focus those ray's that chain fear the party into other mobs or the soothsayers that will MC me, the tank, causing all my mobs to go to someone else.


Aside from all that though......I absolutely love the new dungeon LFG especially the loot bags at the end, makes leveling way more fun on alts and can just chain run dungeons to 80.

[Nirual]

They really should have a "You have to find the instance portal of a dungeon before you can queue for it via dungeon finder"-rule.

Especially with new instances in cataclysm it would really spoil it if you didn't have to physically go to the instance.

On the other hand this would be pretty exploitable when you just avoid finding the instances you don't like.

Anyhow, some of the old dungeons just don't mesh with the new system very well. You'll get into instances you've never even seen before (Deadmines for horde, for example), they didnt get maps yet, and worst of all some of the longer dungeons got split into seperate "target areas" for the random feature. This works alright for Mauradon (although it doesn't work well with the quests if you are interested in them) but for BRD it's just confusing.
And yes, some of the corpseruns are atrocious, even if you have been there before.

I'm certain they are improving these things for Cata. The current implementation the finder, in some ways, strikes me as a mandatory betatest to see what issues might arise and how to fix/avoid them.

This includes dealing with problems such as dungeons with a bad reputation (Oculus), how to handle RP in a way that it doesn't become tedious after a few clears (Stratholme) or even the general rules of the system.

And lastly some of these elements are just part of the general vanilla experience. Those long corpseruns? Yeah you get them outside of instances too when there are just 3 graveyards in the entire zone (and no swift flying corpse runs either). And clueless players are everywhere, you just don't have to play with them outside.

[op3l]

Welcome to the horror that is classic instances.

I freaking hated BRD and have ever only fought the last boss one time and that was when I was level 70. I hated Dire Maul with a passion and only did the tribute run a few times. Instances were impossible to do with no mage, shadow bolts hit for upwards of 1.8k when the typical level 60 tank had around 3.5k to 4k HP(Non epic geared which was the norm back then.)

Yea... it was challenging but boy was it tough.

On a side note, once way back when we did a guild leveling run through the Armory in SM. Our mage and warlock are both new players and as such are bad players. I marked out the sheep target and we pull, the mage promptly sheeps the target as I rush in and starts tanking the mobs and such. Throughout the whole fight, I kept hearing "Mehhhhhh" "Mehhhhh" "Mehhhhh," the sound of polymorphs.

So we finish kill the 3 that wasn't CCed and I turn around and this is what I saw. The mage was diligently sheeping that one target the ENTIRE time while the idiot warlock doted up the sheep with her full set of dots. Yea... I about died from laughter from that.

Then once in ZF, the same mage on an AoE pull did something strange... He ran into the middle of the mob and instead of using the all powerful arcane explosion, he stood in the middle of the mobs with their cleves and stuff and used Blizzard... Needless to say he died very quickly. He had 1.1k HP at level 50 using full "of the Owl" set

[kassy]

worst part about old dungeons via lfd is the lack of maps. people who go afk or die and actually manage to run back have no clue where to go and will leave the group after 2mins of spamming "GUISE WHAR I GOO!?!?!?!?!" luckily for me the last char I leveled was a warlock, so I could just summon the clueless nabs in DM and BRD etc :>

but yeh, I do hope for cata they'll have some sort of "attunements" for dungeons or something, a quest outside the portal would be enough, like the one outside AN to kill 8 (?) of the nerubian thingies... something like that :P tho I do hope all dungeon quests will be found inside dungeons like in UP and CoS tho, frustrating to use the lfd, then having to run halfways across the globe after just to turn in the quests anyhow.

[Ultralisk]

On the other hand this would be pretty exploitable when you just avoid finding the instances you don't like.

Just like you can exploit it now by just... not queuing for those instances? I don't see how forcing someone to do a dungeon they hate is going to add to their gameplay experience (and that's the paradigm now, 'add to their experience', not 'make the bastards work for it').

I'm certain they are improving these things for Cata. The current implementation the finder, in some ways, strikes me as a mandatory betatest to see what issues might arise and how to fix/avoid them.

I agree - although really, everything in WoW now is a beta test for how it'll be in six months' or a year's time. They're constantly tuning and evaluating everything, and stuff that doesn't work gets chucked out and replaced.

That's one reason there will never be a "WoW killer" the way WoW was an 'EverQuest killer'. WoW now has TEN YEARS of continuous development time behind it. To make a game better than WoW would need a similar investment, and it's just not possible to bankroll ten years' worth of development in the hope that by the time it's finished, the game will eventually be profitable.