Dungeons then and now

[Fraza]

The Wailing Cavern change got me to think what it was like to run dungeons back then.. and what it is like now.

Then: (a route I used to take, YMMV)




Now:

[Ionite]

Remember the Sunken Temple. I'll never forgive them for that. Wailing Caverns redesign also incoming.

But the thing about high-level dungeons - there's less need for exploration, so I guess it's okay as long as they keep their hands off the old low-level content. Although at least one complicated high-level dungeon would be nice.

[Kaneiac]

I also remember getting extremely frustrated because people would manage to get lost in BRD and take 10 minutes to get their bearings.

I don't miss that.

And ugh, Ionite, don't mention that name.

My mind is full of "WHAT LEVEL R U GUYS ON I THINK IM ABOVE U" for Sunken Temple.

Also, the start of linear dungeons started in Burning Crusade, something a lot of people look fondly back on.

[gamma Ray]

It was nice taking 2 hours to finish BRD back in the day... oh wait. That kinda sucked... :/

Yeah it was really cool when you finished the whole thing, but its rare that people actually wanted to do the whole thing. It doesn't work out with the LFD tool either. There are just so many problems with a dungeon that size, its hard to go into them all here without the TLDR posts that would follow.

[Zka]

Yeah thanks for reminding us how awfully unnavigable BRD/WC/Mara/Uld were.

[Fraza]

Although at least one complicated high-level dungeon would be nice.

Yes. Have at least one dungeon where you could say "it's okay, I know the way". One dungeon, that doesn't center around spoonfed content only there to serve as a temporary obstacle for loot.

This is what the dungeons have come to.

[Tasttey]

My mind is full of "WHAT LEVEL R U GUYS ON I THINK IM ABOVE U" for Sunken Temple.

Only thing worse than that was missing one of the trolls that kept the barrier up and having to run all over the damn place tryin to find his scrawny ass to keep going.

[BHD]

Only thing worse than that was missing one of the trolls that kept the barrier up and having to run all over the damn place tryin to find his scrawny ass to keep going.

Didnt someone yell or showing an emote in the chat when you killed all the trolls, like "omg guys, I'm vulnerable now, please don't kill me!", or am I just remembering it way wrong?


I kinda miss having to explore a big dungeon, at least if it's a cave like WC or buried deep in the mountains like BRD. Makes no sense for everything to be linear. But it was indeed annoying after doing them a few times, so I guess it's all for the greater good.

[Ionite]

My mind is full of "WHAT LEVEL R U GUYS ON I THINK IM ABOVE U" for Sunken Temple.

Yes, exactly, wasn't that fun? :>

But yes, I suppose it's less annoying if you grind your way through dungeons, but... I don't see how that is good either.

[Deleted]

can remember one time in vanilla when i gathered some friends to go to BRD (i think it was 10 man back then) ... and we decided to do all the quests which are inside the instance ... we met on saturday 12 a.m. at the entrance ... never wiped ... went out at 12 p.m. ... and didn't finish all the quests lol

[killars]

I still today have not completed a full BRD run in one sitting. Someone always had to go randomly, most likely due to having killed the boss they wanted or doing the quest they were missing and they didn't want to stick around for the rest. The place was just so big for it's time and required a lot of effort. I'm much more happy with the current 5 man content, but I do have some epic memories and pictures from those vanilla days working hard to get full dungeon set (Shadowcraft).

[Niter]

I prefer the newer design myself. Since TBC it became a lot more linear. Not only does it make playing the game easier, but it also makes more sense. People exploring, getting lost and taking hours to finish a single run is fine when it is a pen and paper RPG. For MMORPGs I think that linear dungeons are better. Maybe they could make it less linear, but definitely not the extent that places like BRD, Gnomeregan and WC were.

[Mammoth]

The problem is we have PuGs that don't talk to each other. Back when levelling the first time, I would go into these places have a chat with the guys I was with, get us all lost a lot, go fetch the dungeon guide book, work it out, finish it.

But now people don't talk, if you don't know the way you just get shouted at, nobody's willing to give anyone time to work out the right route, the only boss that matters is the final boss, so if you head towards something optional you're wasting time, and everyone must navigate the dungeon in the standard path that the community has picked.

So if BRD came back as a 5 man HC, we wouldn't take that route, we would skip every boss possible.

[Deleted]

My mind is full of "WHAT LEVEL R U GUYS ON I THINK IM ABOVE U" for Sunken Temple.

Oh god that's so true, identical stairways circular rooms and multiple levels and bosses that HAVE to be done in a linear fashion were such a bad combination. Stuff that would happen includes
1) Missing one of the six troll mini-bosses and having to circle around for ages till we found him
2) Taking the wrong stairs at the entrance and hitting a dead end because the bosses need to be done in order.
3) Having the class quest for the boss at the bottom and no one else wanting to do it. And they say people skipping optional bosses is a new thing.
4) Missing one of the dragonkin packs and having them show up during the Eranikus fight.
5) Someone wandering off and getting lost, or dying and not being able to find the dungeon entrance, or not being able to find the rest of the group when they got back inside.
The place has "how not to design a multiplayer dungeon" written all over it.

[Deleted]

I think the new dungeons are better, they might not be as hard to navigate but nothing sucks more than trying to level and your tank doesn't know where to go. I rather get done with it quickly and fight my way through it, then search for 30min or wait until that person got a key so we can continue!

[Sahjar]

What you really have is a difference between linear and non-linear dungeon designs. Places like BRD and Sunken Temple were environments, they were grand in scale and immersive because of it; they also could be a huge pain. More modern design seems to lean toward a gauntlet style, which gives you a linear path from start to finish with challenges along the way.

The only dungeon I can think of off the top of my head that sort of breaks that mold is Halls of Origination; it has non-linear aspects (basically a bunch of optional bosses), but still falls short of being a "micro zone" in the same way that BRD is/used to be.

[zeralol]

. It doesn't work out with the LFD tool either

I wish they would remove that tool! WoW mutated to some kind of CS.

Today: Login -> connect to a server (in our case use the lfd tool) -> play a few minutes and leave without saying anything.

Back then: Login -> search in /2 or /4 for some people. Sometimes a guild was necessary. You had to find some friends on your realm. Thats when social contacts were made


The whole server-wide thing messed WoW up pretty much. (off topic)!

[ralphie]

Yea, I miss the good ol' days when doing a 5man took over 1hr.

Right!

[Faenskap]

I'm happy it's changed. It's finally possible to navigate around those dungeons for us without photographic memory. I have been playing for over four years, and had it not been for those maps, I still wouldn't where the fuck to go. Now I just don't know where to go, so yeaah, I'm a lost cause But it's nice with maps and linear dungeons nevertheless.

Also, in the age before the LFD, I can't say I remember talking much with the strangers I grouped up with from trade. We were there for the same reasons: do quests and kill bosses, not having a little teaparty.
I doubt you spent time in a capital city, looking for four random people, dragging yourself down to a summon stone (after arguing who would summon) on a 60% speed mount, kill trash, perhaps die, having a looong walk (I want to add more os) kill all the bosses, then light a campfire by the dead final boss and talk about your lives and other topics.

[nevermore]

Out of all the changes made to the game lately, I mind this probably the least. A dungeon doesn't necessarily need to be a maze.

Wailing Caverns, Sunken Temple... oh the horror. I mean sure, after you've run them a hundred times you probably won't get lost, but as a newbie in Vanilla they were really annoying :/ And I guess they still are for new players.