Originally Posted by
Zellviren
A couple of times I've asked people (Firefly, IIRC) to look over at WoW Progress and see just how raiding numbers have fallen off a cliff since WotLK. Another reason for doing that is reminding people just how small a part of the playerbase actually raids at all. That being said, I'll tell you what else has fallen off a cliff in Mists of Pandaria; the number of dungeons.
Although the number of heroic raiders is pitifully small in the grand scheme of things, I have a hard time believing that anyone who plays for a month or more doesn't, at some stage, go into a dungeon. Personally, I love dungeons - they're a small place where a group can go in and experience both some shiny loot, and a specific part of the story. In the history of WoW, I think dungeons are probably the most stalwart content the game really has (anecdotal, of course).
Unfortunately, as hinted by Injin earlier, when people ask Blizzard about dungeons, the response is typically this:
"Sure, we can do more dungeons, but would you not rather have more raids?"
On the forums, a lot of people nod their head and think that, actually, that's a fair trade off. Gief moar raidz, plox. But then I think that if Blizzard were to canvass the opinion of the entire current playerbase (impossible probably, but humour me) on whether they'd like more dungeons or more raids, I'm pretty certain that the choice would be more dungeons.
Overwhelmingly so.
I've argued many times that players of all stripes just like their toons to develop. Scenarios (even heroic ones) appear much too random in reward for me, and challenge modes don't develop characters in any way. Heroic five-mans are too easy and the gear is rubbish, so...
Maybe Blizzard have badly underestimated just how important dungeons are to players. And maybe, just maybe, challenge mode difficulty (as in, Burning Crusade) with proper rewards would have been a huge hit for those who want to develop their toons, but don't care much for raiding.
Guesswork, of course. I still think it's an interesting thought (and a bit of a tangent from what melodramocracy was saying).