ONLY 4 new dungeons for M+ initially

[Nymrohd]

Really hope new Deadmines and Scholo make it in.

While I love the new Deadmines, Vanessa's nightmare phase will be an actual nightmare in M+.

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I think Ion said in the Asmongold Interview that MoP would be the earliest dungeons that would fit the m+ design. All dungeons before that would need a big revamp to be usable for M+. Although i think some Cata dungeons would be alright. For example Stonecore. I could see that work in a M+ setting.

I think Throne and Vortex Pinnacle could also work; they look great and they have great variety in bosses and mobs. Vortex in particular with those tol'vir packs that move through the defensive fields would be very interesting to see. Plus Elementals was the big theme of Cataclysm far more so than Dragons and with those three we get 3 out of 4 Elemental planes.

And given one of the early enemies in Dragonflight is Elemental Dragons, using Elemental plane dungeons would also fit thematically. Vortex and Stonecore both have elemental drake bosses that drop mounts.

[Coldkil]

Does this mean we'll see 4 entirely new dungeons in season 3 though?
4DF+4old s1>the other 4DF+4old s2>new 4DF+4old in s3?

They should have the time for that by season3

Fpr sure we're going to have a megadungeon in 10.1 or whatever it is, and that will change into two new m+ for 10.2 as it is now usual. Maybe they can squeeze in 2 more standard dungeons and we would have 4 new DF dungeons each season. Which doesn't sound impossible and actually quite good.

I mean, if they have less shit to deal with with the removal of crappy unmanageable systems, they could use the time for new dungeons.

The point/smart thing to do is actually aiming for small changes over time and not to pretend they're going to revolutionize the game. I assume that reworking old dungeons to a m+ format is not an easy task as one thing is to make the dungeon, but making so mechanics are actually working in a perpetually scaling environment is another thing.

Anyway, they could just save time by making 1st season just run with the DF dungeons. They're all new, so the "burnout" issue cannot really appear. Yes, you would have "duplicates" the following seasons but if it's 4+4 it shouldn't be bad and an improvement anyway over the current format.

[Caprias]

Fpr sure we're going to have a megadungeon in 10.1 or whatever it is, and that will change into two new m+ for 10.2 as it is now usual. Maybe they can squeeze in 2 more standard dungeons and we would have 4 new DF dungeons each season. Which doesn't sound impossible and actually quite good.

I mean, if they have less shit to deal with with the removal of crappy unmanageable systems, they could use the time for new dungeons.

The point/smart thing to do is actually aiming for small changes over time and not to pretend they're going to revolutionize the game. I assume that reworking old dungeons to a m+ format is not an easy task as one thing is to make the dungeon, but making so mechanics are actually working in a perpetually scaling environment is another thing.

Anyway, they could just save time by making 1st season just run with the DF dungeons. They're all new, so the "burnout" issue cannot really appear. Yes, you would have "duplicates" the following seasons but if it's 4+4 it shouldn't be bad and an improvement anyway over the current format.

I always find this line of thinking a bit weird, obviously I don't have insight in how the WoW dev. teams are structured but only because of simpler/less systems we won't get more content, those are very likely completely different teams.

As for SL lack of content compared to BfA and especially Legion I'd rather put it on the pandemic and internal turmoil then "systems", in many ways Legion was a lot worse on that too (i.e. 36 unique artifacts+legiondaries)

[Coldkil]

I always find this line of thinking a bit weird, obviously I don't have insight in how the WoW dev. teams are structured but only because of simpler/less systems we won't get more content, those are very likely completely different teams.

As for SL lack of content compared to BfA and especially Legion I'd rather put it on the pandemic and internal turmoil then "systems", in many ways Legion was a lot worse on that too (i.e. 36 unique artifacts+legiondaries)

I don't really consider SL aswell because it's literally the perfect shitstorm of poorly thought content, zero feedback listening and external issues that likely impacted badly the whole design/deliver pipeline.

But in the end Legion turned out what it was because they literally axed the whole team of D3 and merged them into the WoW team. M+ are an iteration of D3 Rifts. WQs are an iteration of adventure mode in D3. Legiondaries are literally D3 legendaries in how they worked. You could really see how the team merging impacted a lot the game design. It was a really hot topic at the time especially as a huge Diablo fan because i was watching my beloved franchise being butchered by terrible ideas first (RMAH) and then axed because it couldn't meet whatever expectations management had about it. There was a second expansion programmed but it just got cut (and the playable bits of it released as new zones plus the Necro DLC, probably to cut costs).

I am sure the team is not a unique blob but they're segmented in different departments. But if you have let's say 20 people that were responsible for the implementation of Covenants and Soulbinds that suddendly don't have to work on a similar thing for DF, you can move them onto other depts to help them out dish their content. They will have other things to do for sure, but again the people moves around the team where there is more workforce needed - so it's not unfeasible to think they can move more horsepower onto dungeons for example.

Anyway it's not a guarantee as you said. It can even be that given the les design needed for the game, people gets moved onto other projects entirely and the WoW team gets reduced. It's basic company management and we don't see anything about that, we can only guess and hope. I'm fine with current content pipeline. I need to see if they're planning for more stuff happening in the open world or they're sticking to the usual cadence (which basically works fine).

[Eurhetemec]

Fpr sure we're going to have a megadungeon in 10.1 or whatever it is, and that will change into two new m+ for 10.2 as it is now usual. Maybe they can squeeze in 2 more standard dungeons and we would have 4 new DF dungeons each season. Which doesn't sound impossible and actually quite good.

The reason that 4 dungeons per .X patch unlikely in the extreme is simply that art is usually the limiting factor for new dungeons. If Blizzard lowered their standards to the levels of earlier expansions, where it was obviously acceptable to have some pretty similar-looking dungeons with heavy art/asset re-use, rather than an art style basically being used twice at most (and often only once, as with De Other Side, for example), then they could probably slap together dungeons at a higher rate, but I think there would be a lot of complaining and accusations of "cheap"-ness and so on. Long-term I think it would work out positively because people stop caring about that eventually, but short term it could be kind of rough.

[Coldkil]

The reason that 4 dungeons per .X patch unlikely in the extreme is simply that art is usually the limiting factor for new dungeons.

What i meant is that the new season pool would possibly have 4 new dungeon per season. With the 8 releasing with DF we'll have the first two seasons covered. Very likely we're getting a megadungeon for 10.1, that is going to enter the M+ pool in the 10.2 patch split in two as we got for three expansions so far.

So for the total count (of 12 DF dungeons) we only miss 2, which is a possibility if they're interested in that. Though they need to be designed from scratch which is obviously more work for the team and we don't know if they have already planned something else. I'm not pretending for 4 new dungeons each patch, which as you said is completely unreasonable.

[Nymrohd]

Honestly I wish they did more "companion" dungeons to raids, using similar environments and mobs. Tell part of the story in a dungeon (or a megadungeon) and part of the story in the raid. We've had this concept happen numerous times throughout WoW and I think they should make it a common or even constant design.