Deadmines Nostalgia?

[salate]

Well... Sometimes making your way to the entrance was a challenge aswell.

I still remember when I joined startholme run... And wiped 4 times on 1st pack...
Not to mention that mailbox which killed... everyone :|

[Hammerfest]

Can someone tell me if its nostalgia or actual fact that Deadmines was somewhat of a challenge?

For new Alliance players, that was the first dungeon available in Vanilla. It's worth noting that most players back then were terrible. You had warriors thinking they could tank it with a 2h, Hunters running out of ammo because they couldn't plan ahead, Mages hitting things with their staves, Priests using their offensive spells and wiping, and Hunters rolling need on everything. Couple all of that with the respawn timers and, yeah, it was challenging... but not necessarily because of the dungeon's design.

Edited to add: I like the story of the original Deadmines better than post-Cata version. The Defias Brotherhood was an interesting villain.

[garicasha]

I still vividly remember getting in to a fight with my friends after wiping in Deadmines a bunch of times. The whole thing, though...it was a good time :-P

Over the many years this game has been out there's only a few things I point to and say "With the info available at the time they made the decision, this was a stupid decision."

Making Deadmines a dungeon with level 12-13 mobs out front and Van Cleef (originally) being level 25 was stupid. Who the hell was the dungeon tested by and how did they not realize that "Hey, any group that can finish this dungeon is going to have the first third of it be gray to them."

In fact I still to this day disagree with how hard the penalties are (were) for fighting orange and red-level mobs.

It was still an amazing and iconic instance though.

(And random other gripe...giving Pallies Ardent Defender in Wrath where they didn't have to press any buttons to avoid a death was also silly given the info at the time.)

[God Save The King]

Most of the dungeons/game came down to controlling the size of your pulls. There wasn't a lot of AoE spam, and the classes that had AoE quickly ran out of resources by spamming it. Tanks could only hold a few mobs, healers went oom at a much faster rate, and needed to rest between pulls.

Pulling two groups was likely a death sentence, unless everyone was on their toes. That is compounded by everyone being a low level, so their toolkits were very small. In classic, everything was a "challenge" if you pulled too much. Beyond that it was fairly straightforward.

Also remember that Deadmines was the first alliance dungeon available, so it was crowded with newbies who were all terrible at the game, since they had just started a few hours beforehand.

In a veteran group, who knew the dungeon, has proper gear (no intellect warriors or agility priests....), has proper builds/specs, I imagine the dungeon would be fairly trivial.

[Ragnarohk]

I'm excited for DM, ST and mostly BRD

[Azarak]

Dungeons are still a challenge. Doing heroics are not, as designed, but doing any mythic 15 or higher can be quite challenging. Leveling dungeons were never hard if you didn't try to pull the entire room, and currently that's still the case. Ive been leveling lots of allied races and most tanks will fall over instantly if you pull a lot at once.

TL;DR if you want hard dungeons stop doing heroics and actually do the hardest difficulty dungeons, in which now there literally is no limit in difficulty.

[Chaelexi]

I don't think it's a secret that the Human zones were the first zones they worked and the ones that received the most work.
Elwynn / Westfall / Redridge (And to certain degree Duskwood) tell a more or less cohesive story about the Defias, corrupt nobles and how this plays into the hand of the invading Orcs and their dragon masters.

Other races zones are just:
Some shit has been corrupted, kill it.
Evil faction X has a holdout, eradicate them.
Look, some animals, go hunting!

Night Elfs were fairly well laid out for the first 2 zones, after that the overlap with horde stuff gets ugly

- - - Updated - - -

For new Alliance players, that was the first dungeon available in Vanilla. It's worth noting that most players back then were terrible. You had warriors thinking they could tank it with a 2h, Hunters running out of ammo because they couldn't plan ahead, Mages hitting things with their staves, Priests using their offensive spells and wiping, and Hunters rolling need on everything. Couple all of that with the respawn timers and, yeah, it was challenging... but not necessarily because of the dungeon's design.

Edited to add: I like the story of the original Deadmines better than post-Cata version. The Defias Brotherhood was an interesting villain.

I remember a hunter in BFD rolling need on a strength mail piece because in 15 levels he will be able to wear it and he needs to start preparing now

[pappaslop]

As a horde player in TBC i would run to Deadmines meeting stone with a friend to summon the rest of the people
It was an insane task to acomplish.

From what i remember i would swim from STV all the way to the meeting stone.

I did this several times. Thats how much i love Deadmines

Ikr

I definitely participated in more than my fair share of Deadmines runs but sticking to WC was far easier for the time invested

[Orby]

Dead mines, for me, like a lot of people was the first dungeon I did as Alliance. I just remember passing on all loot because I was scared people were going to give me shit. In fact everyone in the party with me was very nice and friendly. They even helped me out when I told them it was my first dungeon WoW hadn't been out long but everyone as in the same boat and willing to help.

[Powerogue]

I mean it was a noob's dungeon and probably one of the easier ones due to that but you still had to deal with people being quite new at the game, respawning trash, and people getting lost running back.

Oh, and getting kicked for rolling need on a +2 agility +7 int ring as a rogue when you don't have any ring. Good times.

[Deleted]

Can someone tell me if its nostalgia or actual fact that Deadmines was somewhat of a challenge?

Yes becuse at that level peopel did not have proper gear (think this is in the begining and peopel have not strat to feed alts) so the healer did go OOM during a long boss fight (low dps longer fight) the mobs did have a bad habbit to flee if they was to hurt and pull new packs of mobs.... you know how murlocks love to do,.....

Was it super hard... no, will veteran player who have 10+ year experience totaly destory the Deadmines yes... but peopel will wipe a loot becuse the tank did pull 2 pack om mobs at the same time out of habbit (or a impatient DPS did pull the extra pack) or peopel forget the annoying pack of mobs that patrolling.

Do not forget the evil fireball caster OUTSIDE the Deadmines.....

[Deleted]

Deadmines was never a challenge. The only challenge in Deadmines lied in the fact that you could get the Van cleef quest around 15-16ish level but most mobs in that dungeon was +20 towards the end.

That meant that you had groups of 5 people in the 15-17 level range trying to beat down red mobs towards the end making the dungeon impossible for most people. In recent days pretty much all groups require +20 level minimum and that makes the dungeon a breeze

[Deficineiron]

I still vividly remember getting in to a fight with my friends after wiping in Deadmines a bunch of times. The whole thing, though...it was a good time :-P

Over the many years this game has been out there's only a few things I point to and say "With the info available at the time they made the decision, this was a stupid decision."

Making Deadmines a dungeon with level 12-13 mobs out front and Van Cleef (originally) being level 25 was stupid. Who the hell was the dungeon tested by and how did they not realize that "Hey, any group that can finish this dungeon is going to have the first third of it be gray to them."

In fact I still to this day disagree with how hard the penalties are (were) for fighting orange and red-level mobs.

It was still an amazing and iconic instance though.

(And random other gripe...giving Pallies Ardent Defender in Wrath where they didn't have to press any buttons to avoid a death was also silly given the info at the time.)

SFK has a similar issue - to kill arugal, most the the stuff rethligore and before will be grey. That is something I am almost certain will be rectified.

[voidillusion]

Long story short, it takes a while, and the last pulls on the boat may be somewhat delicate.

And god forbid you bring a guy too low lvl that agroes those mobs on the boat, they will all come at once for your ass.

[Super Kami Dende]

It wasn't that it was hard. It was just that new players would run ahead and pull more Mobs than what some groups could handle at that level.

I swear it was harder just trying to guide people through the Barn to get to the actual entrance than it was to do the actual Dungeon.

[Deficineiron]

Do not forget the evil fireball caster OUTSIDE the Deadmines.....

someone, somewhere, did a piece about the pillagers(?) that you refer to - they had set locations, but if one of the points did not have a mob (pulled away, dead), adjacent mob(s) would eventually path to its location, with the possibility of aggro vs whatever was going on that removed one mob.

really creative work, considering that these were some of the hardest-hitting outdoor mobs vs level, with classes not having full interrupt toolkits yet often.

[BuckSparkles]

Do keep in mind all the dungeons will likely have wipes when official classic comes out. Consider: a good portion has never played vanilla at this point. And many people have never played private either.

People will forget:
Threat actually exists and AOE threat can be tricky for a tank to hold.
Mana exists *gasp* Healers will run out.
Aggro ranges are pretty big.
You can't just AOE every single pull and faceroll it.
Unlike current game, where mobs want to hold your hand and help you level, mobs in vanilla wanted to KILL you. They have stuns, disarms, some are immune to certain schools of magic, some can AOE silence. It could get rough.
Mobs run away into other groups of mobs which then just make chain aggroing situations that can be rough for a tank and healer.


I mean, there could be more. But I think Deadmines will have it's share of wipes.

[Deficineiron]

Do keep in mind all the dungeons will likely have wipes when official classic comes out. Consider: a good portion has never played vanilla at this point. And many people have never played private either.

People will forget:
Threat actually exists and AOE threat can be tricky for a tank to hold.
Mana exists *gasp* Healers will run out.
Aggro ranges are pretty big.
You can't just AOE every single pull and faceroll it.
Unlike current game, where mobs want to hold your hand and help you level, mobs in vanilla wanted to KILL you. They have stuns, disarms, some are immune to certain schools of magic, some can AOE silence. It could get rough.
Mobs run away into other groups of mobs which then just make chain aggroing situations that can be rough for a tank and healer.


I mean, there could be more. But I think Deadmines will have it's share of wipes.

or you just replicated a list of things blizzard hopes to FIX.

[Understarmor]

Old Deadmines (not sure about current) also had annoying patrols that came from behind you (I think they were triggered after a boss went down). And if you weren't looking out for them, you would be caught between fighting the mobs in front and behind.

yeah and those fuckers patrolled the ENTIRE INSTANCE not just one section either, they went all the way to the fucking ship and since they did the whole dungeon your timing of where they were was thrown off and they ALWAYS got the drop on you lol

[JustRob]

It was hard because most people doing it were newbs to dungeons, usually it was your first dungeon, and there was a lot of fluctuation between player levels who wanted to get in. I think the final boss was a lvl 20 elite, but you had people lvl 15 and below who wanted to get in as well.

There were a lot of tricky parts, patrols, etc. Especially on the ship you could get screwed easily because the mobs were in such close vicinity, and even if you stayed on the lower level of the platforms, you could pull the mobs on the platform above if you stood in the wrong spot. Right at the end, if you stood at the wrong place at the wrong time, Captain Greenskin + two adds would come running towards you and pull along the additional mobs just before the ship that you hadn't cleared yet. Instant wipe.