Modern Dungeons suck! I hate what Mythic+ is doing to dungeon design.

[Lanesra]

I love brd. It's a giant underground city with lots of secrets and different themed parts.
The fact that you have options to go different routes makes it even better.

I've spent countless hours in there during classic and gotta say there was a time where i couldnt be asked to go back in there. (Especially after a certain saturday 14hr grind session to get hand of judgement, only for a resto shaman to roll on it and win...)
But now, after a while, i kinda do want to visit it again.
(Maybe if there will be another classic after wrath)

I dont like the streamlined newer dungeons that are designed around the idea of the most optimal route.

They kind of lack something. I dont know how to call it, but it can be seen in revamps like scarlet monastery or sholomance.
They were beautiful creations with so much love put into them.
The new ones just dont feel the same

[Kyux]

They kind of lack something. I dont know how to call it, but it can be seen in revamps like scarlet monastery or sholomance.
They were beautiful creations with so much love put into them.
The new ones just dont feel the same

I think it's design priority. Imo modern dungeons are designed with the metagame in mind. Classic dungeons were designed with fantasy in mind. They were an effort to make DnD virtual. Modern dungeons are an effort to make sports virtual.

[exochaft]

I love brd. It's a giant underground city with lots of secrets and different themed parts.
The fact that you have options to go different routes makes it even better.

I've spent countless hours in there during classic and gotta say there was a time where i couldnt be asked to go back in there. (Especially after a certain saturday 14hr grind session to get hand of judgement, only for a resto shaman to roll on it and win...)
But now, after a while, i kinda do want to visit it again.
(Maybe if there will be another classic after wrath)

I dont like the streamlined newer dungeons that are designed around the idea of the most optimal route.

They kind of lack something. I dont know how to call it, but it can be seen in revamps like scarlet monastery or sholomance.
They were beautiful creations with so much love put into them.
The new ones just dont feel the same

Part of what's lost is that dungeons like BRD were crafted to be an experience that eventually you didn't need to return to (but there was a bunch of different things you could do in there)... and current dungeons are designed to be run over and over for at least an entire expansion. Recreating the feeling you get when you clear a dungeon like BRD is hard to recreate, and time apart from the dungeon can let that curiosity build back up. With how the game is designed now, you have to keep going back over and over every patch via M+, and the immersion/enjoyment factor can suffer from not allowing the experience to breathe and having to continually run the same dungeons over and over.

The closest thing we've gotten to BRD is the megadungeons, but I don't think anything can come close to BRD... maybe they come close to LBRS/UBRS, but I still think they were made with different philosophies in mind. First half of Mechagon dungeon was pretty similar in feeling, which was a step in the right direction, but the back end of the dungeon was completely linear with no optional pathing or interesting things to do/explore in the streamlined pathing.

If I had to point toward a specific aspect, it's the RPG aspect. Take the bar in BRD for instance: on the surface, it just looks like a bar, but there's a bunch of different quests and optional bosses in there, a rep vendor for getting recipes, and progression past that area (assuming you don't opt for swimming in lava) has multiple angles of approach, ranging from brute force to having an NPC help you through. I suppose you could throw in the band now, but that originally wasn't there, it's just icing on the cake now. Such details and options are generally not found in dungeons anymore, and while they don't seem like much on the surface, such details add depth to the dungeon itself.

It doesn't help that the social pillar of WoW is in shambles right now, which doesn't help with the dungeon experience overall. Some of my favorite memories in WoW were of dungeon runs with friends/family as well as randomly people through older content. The mentality that's typically seen in a random group has shifted drastically towards an M+ mentality all the time, even in a normal dungeons with no timers or need for rushing. I was surprised at how often I'd get whispers of thanks and praise after tanking non-M+ dungeons from random people, as I tend to help people with the dungeons, point out mechanics, let people explore, as well as not rush ahead and solo AoE-tank the entire dungeon while random mechanics cause random players to corpse run constantly because they aren't geared or the damage is too great for non-tanks to survive. My approach to a random non-M+ dungeon is akin to how I approached dungeons back in the early days of WoW: I want it to be a fun experience for everyone, and speed-running a dungeon isn't fun for everyone... especially new people to the game.

[Bigbazz]

Theatre of Pain is one of my favourite dungeons, De Other Side is also pretty cool. I don't deny that there are some limitations in making dungeons for M+, but I still think the dungeons are fun. Lets not forget that before M+ Blizzard tried and failed to keep dungeons relevant, people just didn't do them because there was no reason, now dungeons have relevance in the long term.

TBC is the greatest example of this, a guy making a thread about how he struggled for hours to get a dungeon group in TBC on the 2nd highest population realm in EU, Gehennas (aka the Horde megaserver). Why? Because there is no reason to do normal dungeons for most people at this stage of the expansion, even Heroics have limited value with badges dropping from Kara/ZA.

[ifrah]

The game has changed, as have the rewards used for flexing purposes. In the UBRS/BRD days, yea having a full purple and tier stuff was considered a feat, not so much today. Today it's about your rating and/or your mythic raid clear rank(raiders might enlighten what matters there).
Megadungeons were cool (past tense), and from design perspective they still can be neat, but how many of the player base would still be up to regular clears of such multi-hour ventures? Take off those rose-tinted glasses and once people were either lucky enough to have those rare drops (reed, hoj and such) from those instances, or just got fed up with them sooner than later, those places were as dreaded as another farm raid to get people attuned.
I loved BRD from its design point of view, and the lore/RP side, but as a group gaming experience it was nauseating pretty much after the first clear.

Call me whatever you want, but my memories of old heroics crumbled down quite hard when I had my quick nostalgia trip on the TBC classic. Once your tank could take the hits without getting gibbed, nobody gave a toss about any sort of CC. Need for interrupts wasn't much bigger than their general availability either. The "funniest" mechanic of course was to way too often pull the packs miles away to avoid any unlucky fear to pull 5 extra packs. Exciting times.

[enigma77]

I kinda wish something like BRD could co-exist with the streamlined, smaller dungeons.

I like both, but BRD like dungeons just don't exist anymore. The mega-dungeons come close, but they're quickly obsolete and that's that.

BRD is basically a 5 man raid and I wish we had something like that again. Make the new mega dungeon be really hard and drop loot slightly below Mythic raid loot, maybe? And keep updating the loot, without turning it into M+.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I kinda wish something like BRD could co-exist with the streamlined, smaller dungeons.

I like both, but BRD like dungeons just don't exist anymore. The mega-dungeons come close, but they're quickly obsolete and that's that.

BRD is basically a 5 man raid and I wish we had something like that again. Make the new mega dungeon be really hard and drop loot slightly below Mythic raid loot, maybe? And keep updating the loot, without turning it into M+.

Yeah it's actually pretty weird that the mega dungeons are obsolete the moment they are in the game. We did taz hardmode the first night then literally never went back the entire patch because there was no point.

Maybe they just need a mythic mode or something at the start, something where it could at least drop the same ilvl as 15s and maybe even count for a vault slot if you finish it.

[jeezusisacasual]

The problem with mega dungeons is that the game is so figured out due to so many outside media that everything is in the min/max mindset and will continue to be not just for warcraft but almost every online game. What purpose would they serve the community? Is the dev hour spent on them ( if they are not in the M+ pool right away ) worth it? What would be the most effective way to gear ( they should have allowed valor upgrades on the gear atleast ) with them in mind?

Even in classic almost no one ran them once they got most of what they wanted because the gaming landscape has changed, there is no sense of wonder because its all figured out before its even released.

[panda040]

Honestly, my biggest gripe with Shadowlands is just how lackluster dungeons feel. They felt so sterile. "Each zone has two dungeons, one is leveling, another is end game, they all feel the same with their semi-linear path, and feature no interesting or fun optional/bonus encounters or side quests." Why, because Mythic+ is forcing design into a very narrow path. You cannot have dungeons like Upper Blackrock Spire or Halls of Origination under this new system; design-wise, the philosophies behind them contrast one another. This is why they are limited to one-off 'mega-dungeons' once per expansion. The target should be a Tazavesh or Mechagon, and not in regards to its length, but in terms of feel.

Dungeons used to feel like dangerous places with secrets to uncover, truly non-linear in giving the player control on where they wanted to go, and which bosses to kill, places that felt lived in. I think back to the greats and can't help but look at just how shallow these modern dungeons have become. It sucks, and I hate it.

I agree with this alot, and I'm someone who enjoys m+

I do miss the feeling of dungeons feeling like, well DUNGEONS. Now they just feel like a leveled instance you hop in and out of in 20 minutes and you can just make it harder. I don't know what the best answer is but i agree with your sentiment.

[exsanguinate]

not reading all the comments but todays modern dungeon are way to linear and theres nothing to explore

[Diaphin]

not reading all the comments but todays modern dungeon are way to linear and theres nothing to explore

They've been this way since the first expansion, actually.