◊ Vaccine

I think its a good idea in principle but your suggested implementation would fail badly.

One thing I would like to see is tiered 5 mans. That is similar to your suggestion that the TK instances would be a step above normal 5 mans, and drop appropriate iLvl blues to signify that.

The same for heroics, have 2 or 3 tiers of heroic difficulty instead of just the 1. The benefit of this is that non-raiders get a form of progression. Rather than just hitting 70 and wham you've got 7 dungeons to pick from, you hit 70 and you have 3-4 dungeons to choose from. Once you've farmed these up for gear you're okay to go into the next 3. Then you get heroic keys and the same happens there.

Another thing I like is the idea of the SWP/AQ model of releasing a 5 or 10 man alongside a 25 man, that has a lot to do with it both in looks and lore. I think this cuts down on development time (if you're designing two dugneons to look similar you can skimp a lot on desigining the mobs and archtiecture as there is a lot of crossover, same with quests and lore) and it also helps prevent any one style of play from feeling ignored.

I'm not saying that 5 mans should scale with difficulty right up to iLvl 151 stuff, I do think 10 man should.


I like the idea of concurrent releases of 10 and 25 man dungeons that match each other in progression. It allows a progressional path via 10 mans that is currently not possible (KZ->ZA is hardly a path).

Imagine the following scenario for TBC:

-Karazhan is on farm, Gruul and Magtheridon receive continual retuning and SSC gets heavily nerfed. Thats all what happened in the first few months. But lets say TK was locked at this point (the entire place, not just the eye).

-The cutting edge guilds hit Vashj a few months later. Blizzard monitors this closely and decides that once the 100th guild to kill Vashj has killed her 4 times, thats when they will push the next content. The world first guilds might have had her on farm 6-8 weeks, which I think is an acceptable time to wait. The large majority of current Illidan killing guilds will probably be on Vashj when the new content comes.

- Content patch! With the defeat of Lady Vashj the Cenarion Expedition have been able to once more lend their aid to the Naruu. In turn this has freed up enough Aldor and Scryer troops to reinforce the Netherstorm garrisons and make a push on reclaiming Tempest Keep. First daily quests added involving disruption of the mana forges, eliminating air defences on and around TK and gathering resources from the eco-domes to feed troops. Something is amiss in the Arcatraz, the place has drifted from the main keep and is now outside of the protection of the Eye's defences. Dailys in the Arcatraz 5 man and heroic become immediately available with the patch.

- The dailys are more as a way to make the player feel more involved than as a deliberate cock block on progress. They are not excessive and on any medium pop server the dailys should be completed inside the first week. The completion of stage one gives a fly point (somewhere near the goblin outpost now, which wouldn't be there), a few more dailys and access to the Mechanar normal and heroic (disrupting the mana supply has meant the eye cannot stay at full power, and can no longer protect the Mechanar).

- Players venture into the Mechanar whilst continuing in the only week old Arcatraz and continue to get new drops and the like. Unlocking the Mechanar has also opened a new boss in the Arcatraz, lets say one of the Forge Master things that hold the keys in Mech. (encourages people to still go arc as new boss drops new loot).

- Another week (earlier on high pop servers) and enough dailys are complete to launch the final assault on the Kael's forces. Lets say this involves multiple bombing runs ala Halaa runs and taking out the remaining defenses on the Botanica and the Eye. Completion opens the Eye, the new 25 man dungeon as exists today. Bosses would be slightly harder to make it more of a progression from SSC but none as hard as Vashj bar Kael.

- The completion also opens The Botanica, a brand new 10 man dungeon which is a direct continuation of Karazhan and parallels TK in the progression line. Tough bosses, timed loot runs (the ZA system of timed loot is an excellent pacing and reward mechanism) and enough content to last a fair while, longer lifespan with timed runs for the final chest. Drops are 75% blue quality items of identical iLvl to TK items (iLvl 128 armour, iLvl 134 blues). Warpsplinter, the last boss (could make a rock solid warpsplinter using current mechanics for 10 man) drops a couple of epic items equivalent of pre-Kael TK loot (128 epics). They get nice rewards but will find it impossible to make full epic sets from this. Thats the idea. The dungeon will have a rep associated with it and eventually a really hard over the top unlockable boss (think Viscidus or Ouro style) that drops kael level (141) blues and a few epics like the previous ones (128). This is the pinnacle of 10 man raiding and is hard. The idea here is to make a TOUGH 10 man raid that rivals the current endgame 25 man.

3 months later...

- So Kael has been beaten, Warpsplinter too. Both the 10 man elite and raiders in or finished TK are still running Botanica for loot, rep and the timed run rewards (good epics maybe, phoenix mount/pet, use your imagination).


-Blizz starts the cycle again. Mount Hyjal is released within 6-8 weeks of the top guilds getting Kael down. Okay we're gonna save a bit of dev resources here and not link the new 10 man to Hyjal. (though it would be easy to do lore wise). Hyjal is for the raiders, Zul Aman gets released for the non-raiders. There are no world events or the like for this release, just a new dungeon to explore. The dungeons are identical to as they are now. Zul'aman follows the same loot forumla as Botanica. ilvl 141-151 blues, ilvl 141 epics from Malacrass, Zul'jin and timed chest box 3. Malacrass and Zul'jin drop 1 blue if 1 timed chest was unlocked, 2 blues for 2, 1 epic for 3, 2 epics for 4. If no boss was killed in the timed run time, Malacrass' door won't open that reset. Difficulty is tuned up due to the addition of Botanica after Karazhan.

- A few months after Hyjals release BT is pushed live. BT is a cut down version of what it is now. Players start at the Deathwsworn base inside. The sewer section up to Supremus is used for the 10 man BT, lets call it The Karabor Sewers. Again no daily quest effort to open but a fair bit of lore. Lets stick 4 bosses in the 5 man initially. We already have Najentus and Supremus. Both these bosses are considered a fair walk over as far as 25 man bosses go, but the thing is they both scale down to 10 man with little or not effort. A slight tuning in hp, dmg and possibly hurtful frequency and both bosses are completely fine with no additional ability tuning. Then we add in a couple more. Lets add one before Najentus off on one of the sewer side paths that no one ever goes to. He can be a nice Water elemental boss, we don't have enough of those. Then after Naj you can add a Nether dragon rider as a boss at the trash before Supremus in the corner. Flies about, commands waves of attacks etc... possibly Rajaxx v2.

- Once Illidan has been downed on the server, the large gate behind Supremus opens up and unlocks one additional boss. Another tough optional kind of affair, with lots of "status" rewards instead of pure power ones. This dungeon is going to be shorter than the previous ones, thinking of dev time and the like.

- Present day: Magister's terrace (10 man) and SWP(25) are currently being tested on ptr.


That would be the way I'd do it.

Pros:
- Clear progressional ladders for 10 man raiders.
- More content for small groups as well as offnight for 25 man raiders content.
- Linking dungeons in theme/design cuts down on some dev costs and time.
- 10 man based rep and dungeon drops help flesh out missing items from 25 mans and offspec loot too.
- For the large part art can be reused. Think of how Rank 7 gear was like smaller, less flashy versions of Rank 14 stuff, or how BS weapons grow in model stature. The same could be applied here, the 10 man stuff could be small cut down versions of the 25 man stuff, less flashy but still good looking. Cuts down dev time in making two new models.
- Tieing themes in helps smaller groups of players feel like they are contributing to the ongoing plotline.

Cons:
- Dev time in R+D would definately increase some.
- More balancing to do.


Think about this though. Had they done it as I've suggested there there would be very little extra dev/design time needed. Sure you'd have to do the quests for the TK opening event. But the dungeons are/were already created. Botanica needs very few changes to turn it from 5 to 10 man. It has a lot of bosses already for a 5 man, the mobs have interesting mechanics already. A few boss tweaks to 10 man, more trash and an additional boss and you're there. Rest of TK is unchanged. MH is unchanged. ZA is unchanged (loot would have initially be designed different but no extra effort). BT would be cut a little but no desing is needed, just a bit more balancing of the Karabor Sewers section. No one would miss the Botanica really. I don't find myself thinking "I wish there was an extra 5 man at level 70". With all the reused heroics of leveling instances and the like, there is tons of choice. They could even have done the Bot/Eye thing with say Underbog (10 man) and SSC.

This is what I'd like to see for the expansion. At present we have 8 level 70 dungeons, + those 8 on heroic, + the 7 leveling dungeons on heroic. If we're looking at similar numbers for the expansion, I'd love if they could hold back one of the level 70 dungeons and one of the leveling dungeons and turn them into 10 mans in a progression chain. I can't see a downside whilst I can see many many positives to it.