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

[Deletedaccount1]

Those were very fulfilling dungeons since they took a long time. They made content seem more prolonged because of the sheer length of time that it took to complete them. Good on you Blizzard.

[runedhill]

Because people need to gear up through heroics. If that's the only way you can gear up for raids, no one will pay money to have to spend countless hours and unnecessary effort just to be able to play the part of the game that matters.
5 mans aren't supposed to be end-game. Stop trying to convert them into it.

They just added a ridiculous amount of health to trash and made them hit much harder to make it seem like they added more content.
More time required =/= more content completed.

[Vankrys]

Those were very fulfilling dungeons since they took a long time. They made content seem more prolonged because of the sheer length of time that it took to complete them. Good on you Blizzard.

don't forget there were 15 of them

and none of them were a rehashed dungeon from vanilla.

[Stevegasm]

Some of the best times me and my friends ever had in this game was doing 5s, 10s, and the one 15 man dungeon in Vanilla. TBC made it even better with brutally challenging heroics. I'd love it to come back to that again more than anything. The anti-social nature of a lot of the game's systems makes that hard to do though. Also, the playerbase seems to value gear more than a gaming experience.

I think when it comes to LFD, it should have a minimum wait of 5 minutes. Well, I mean 5 minute queue blocks. Basically gather people for 5 minutes, and shovel as many players from the same real together as it can before divvying up the rest.

[Venziir]

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)

Forcing? Hm, you rarely get very far by using sheer force - However, you should've done the instance or a quest inside the instance before being able to do the heroic version.

[Ater]

I love Challenge Modes, progressing a better time in a Challenge mode is almost as fun as progress raiding to me, so as long as they keep Challenge Modes I'm fine with the non CM mode version of the dungeons is easy for some quick JP farming.

[Vankrys]

Because people need to gear up through heroics. If that's the only way you can gear up for raids, no one will pay money to have to spend countless hours and unnecessary effort just to be able to play the part of the game that matters.
5 mans aren't supposed to be end-game. Stop trying to convert them into it.

it was a different time. For some players, heroics dungeon were not the obligatory, boring step toward the endgame.
People actually trully enjoyed the dungeon. I remember running them needing absolutely nothing from dungeon or badges, only eventually the BOP nether void for blacksmith crafting to make gold.

For some people, heroics man and karazhan WERE the endgame.

[Venziir]

don't forget there were 15 of them

and none of them were a rehashed dungeon from vanilla.

Eh, Old Hillsbrad kinda was honestly, as it was just the Hillsbrad Foothills zone with different mobs and non-destroyed buildings. However, many of the TBC instances looked the same or alike (the Hellfire ones, the Auchindoun ones and the Tempest Keep ones comes to mind - granted it makes perfect sense, but still they all used the same interior design more or less)

[Duronos]

Some of the best times me and my friends ever had in this game was doing 5s, 10s, and the one 15 man dungeon in Vanilla. TBC made it even better with brutally challenging heroics. I'd love it to come back to that again more than anything. The anti-social nature of a lot of the game's systems makes that hard to do though. Also, the playerbase seems to value gear more than a gaming experience.

I think when it comes to LFD, it should have a minimum wait of 5 minutes. Well, I mean 5 minute queue blocks. Basically gather people for 5 minutes, and shovel as many players from the same real together as it can before divvying up the rest.

Some of the heroics weren't too bad after people understood them but there were still quite a few that were. Heroic Magister's Terrace was so fucking hard, I mean that was like a raid for 5 people.

[Vankrys]

Forcing? Hm, you rarely get very far by using sheer force - However, you should've done the instance or a quest inside the instance before being able to do the heroic version.

you haven't played BC have?
you needed the revered reputiation to buy the key of heroic dungeon.
typically, you should be honored if you have done the quest of the area, thus from honored to revered was about 5-6 normal dungeon. and no, incase you ask, tabard didn't award rep.

[Deleted]

I share OP's opinion. I think the heroic's difficulty at the start of Cata was just about right.
It posed a challenge, and I felt good when I got to beat them.
Of course, people who were too used to Wrath's aoe pulls would not go far, hence the nerfs.

[Venziir]

you haven't played BC have?
you needed the revered reputiation to buy the key of heroic dungeon.
typically, you should be honored if you have done the quest of the area, thus from honored to revered was about 5-6 normal dungeon. and no, incase you ask, tabard didn't award rep.

Uhm can you read?
I am very well aware of how TBC worked - I played it - so stuff the assumptions please.

My post was simply a rebutal to the "FORCE PLAYERS!" and then a counter solution - not an analasys of the TBC hc model.

[Confirm Deny]

I agree with the OP. Also, I actually never got tired of the entry heroics in Cata. It's fun to teach people when you're so overgeared you can carry people through stuff! (I've tooted this horn before, but also playing a shaman at the start you could carry people with your super quick Wind Shear CD. Man, I'm glad I don't play anymore and have to remember that nerf every time I press that button)

[Stevegasm]

it was a different time. For some players, heroics dungeon were not the obligatory, boring step toward the endgame.
People actually trully enjoyed the dungeon. I remember running them needing absolutely nothing from dungeon or badges, only eventually the BOP nether void for blacksmith crafting to make gold.

For some people, heroics man and karazhan WERE the endgame.

I was about the say the same thing. I was a hardcore raider in Vanilla. In TBC, I turned casual. I loved it. I did Kara, I did ZA, and I did heroics with the tight group of casuals in my guild. We were all raid backups though. As a casual, I enjoyed the smaller things like that more than the LFR in Cata. 10 mans in T7 and T8 were pretty nice too, as they were easy, which let me play with my lesser skilled friends. Not only that, the introduction of dailies added a lot to my game, as I started to do Skettis, Ogrila, the dragon one, and later on Shattered Sun for nicer badge gear. Not once did I really desire raid gear, or raiding. I enjoyed the smaller bites of game I got.

[Vankrys]

Eh, Old Hillsbrad kinda was honestly, as it was just the Hillsbrad Foothills zone with different mobs and non-destroyed buildings. However, many of the TBC instances looked the same or alike (the Hellfire ones, the Auchindoun ones and the Tempest Keep ones comes to mind - granted it makes perfect sense, but still they all used the same interior design more or less)

there were themed dungeon, undeniably, come mostly in pack of three. THey did that, because i remember clearly a blue post claiming that the community loved and ask for winged dungeon such as dire maul, scarlet monastery, so they went heavy on that design.

They kept the idea of themed dungeon in wolk but abandoned it later.

There were themed, but nothing alike in terme of layout and bosses though.

[Count Zero]

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?

How many people do you know who play this game ? And I mean actually communicate with. A few dozen ? Maybe a hundred or two if you've been playing since Vanilla (assuming they all still play) and have been in multiple guilds on multiple servers ?

Blizz sees the playing habits of a few million people.

Don't get me wrong -- I like dungeons that have a ton of atmosphere, and really feel like a place where monsters / bad guys / etc would actually hang out, and I think that's hard to establish in dungeons that can be aoe-zerged in 10-20 minutes -- but as long as they give us more leveling dungeons in the next xpac, and at least a handful (2-4) of post-launch dungeons, I'm fine with the challenge being left for challenge modes and valor/rep/crafted/lfr gear being the bridge from fresh-maxlevel to entry-level normal-mode raiding, with challenge then again in the heroic modes.

And as far as rep, honestly I'd prefer doing dailies to dungeons/tabards. You've seen a dungeon once you've done it once. The 5.1 and 5.2 daily chains took weeks to play out the whole story, and were interspersed with one-time quests that advanced the plot in ways dungeons just can't. I also think scenarios have siphoned off some of the role dungeons have played (not to mention the upcoming heroic scenarios) ...

And, if as Blizz has said, dungeons actually share resource time with raids ... if getting ToT (compared to Firelands -- in terms of variety of bossfights and environments) is the result ... I'll take it.

All in all, I'll have to reserve my final judgement on this model until heroic scenarios and Siege of Orgrimmar have played out. Again, I do miss, at least in some regards, that some dungeons felt more like raids ... and I think a "dungeon" that takes less than 10 minutes to complete before we're in final-tier gear is a bit silly ... just, I dunno, I feel that overall MoP is a better gameplay experience than Cata was, but it's really hard to compare MoP/Cata/Wrath to BC/Vanilla ... it's a give-and-take between immersion and gameplay, as far as dungeons go ... which goes back to the shared resource time between dungeons and raids ... I can't comment on at-level raiding before Wrath for anything other than Kara, but ToT for me feels more like an "actual" place than anything since, well, Kara.

Although, hrm, I did step into a tiny bit of ZA back in BC ... and thinking about how it felt so much more grand then than it did during its re-launch as a 5-player, I dunno, makes me wonder how much of my different perceptions of things has more to do with, well, just that, my perceptions, and not the things themselves.

I probably rambled way off here, haha, working on zero sleep. Carry on.

[Venziir]

there were themed dungeon, undeniably, come mostly in pack of three. THey did that, because i remember clearly a blue post claiming that the community loved and ask for winged dungeon such as dire maul, scarlet monastery, so they went heavy on that design.

They kept the idea of themed dungeon in wolk but abandoned it later.

There were themed, but nothing alike in terme of layout and bosses though.

Eh, the Auchindoun ones look pretty darn similiar layout wise, as does the Tempest Keep ones. There are a few minor differences, such as shadows, bone piles, a few trees and crystals here and there, but other than that - they look the same.

And they had themed instances in Cataclysm too, heck, it ended with three themed instances - of course it depends on how you define themed.

[Nobleshield]

I enjoy the current heroics. Liked Wrath heroics too.

[Keoren]

5 mans aren't supposed to be end-game. Stop trying to convert them into it.

The TBC heroic 5-mans were my end game for quite some time before I got into raiding. I think it's a progression path that could well be built upon without negatively affecting those who aren't as interested. Granted, it seems that the modern intention is to push every PvE player into raids or at least make the entry easy enough so that the 5-mans become obsolete. Even then the challenge modes do seem to somewhat fiddle around with the idea of having harder 5-man content as an alternative.

[yetgdhfgh]

The problem is that people need to grind dungeons to get gear

Having to CC each trash pack was fun the first time but when you have to spend hours on one dungeon when all you need is just the jp then shit got old real fast

Nobody wanted to keep wiping and wiping in instances designed to gear you up now you can argue people have no patience nowadays and i would agree but thats life im afraid