Troll Instances Part I

There's very little in World of Warcraft that summarizes lazy design better than the yearly troll instance. Created from a race of people who honestly believe in the inner power of spiders, bats, and snakes, troll instances epitomize what happens when you give your design team very little creative room to work. Every year, like a strange Halloween gone wrong, Blizzard forces another dose of Troll Instance Terribleness upon the unsuspecting denizens of Azeroth.

Here's a quick list of the Troll Instances to date, see if you find anything similar about them:

• Zul'Furrak: A Square Outdoor Temple Habitat with multiple trolls and a summon-able beast boss. Features a boss that summons adds, a gauntlet followed by a boss encounter, a large summoned lizard in a pool of water, and of course, snakes.
  
• Sunken Temple: A Circular Temple Habitat with multiple levels in which one can find Troll and Beast bosses, and, well, snakes.
  
• Zul'Gurrub: A Square Outdoor Temple Habitat with multiple trolls and a summon-able beast boss. Features several bosses which summon adds, two bosses with a gauntlet mid encounter, a large summoned lizard in a pool of water, and of course, snakes.
  
• Zul'Aman: A Square Outdoor Temple Habitat with multiple trolls and (surprise) no summon-able beast boss. Features two bosses which summon adds, this time with the gauntlet included, two bosses who shift states, and the first actual troll figure of lore to be present in one of these travesties. (You kill him, of course)

In an effort to make this portion of the entry shorter, I'm going to go over the only good items related to troll instance design to date. If an item didn't make this list, you can safely assume it is terrible to barely adequate, when in doubt err toward terrible.

Troll instances are generally outdoor instances that allow the full use of outdoor only abilities, are sized accordingly, and have high production values in scenery as a result of having a sky. This is a good thing, as without those extra abilities many players would realize they were in hell. A strange hell filled with snakes, ancient ruins, and a distinct lack of Indiana Jones although his comedy sidekick is filling in. In addition to allowing mechanics that you often won't see, their outdoor nature tends to force the blizzard developers to come up with meaningful amounts of scenery. Especially appealing is the attention to detail in the artwork for the various locales, although I do wonder how the trolls preserved Zul'Aman right next door to the ghostlands. That said, what they pick up on the swings they lose on the roundabouts. Troll instances tend to be very similar in terms of pathing and boss placement, which in turn inspires similar boss design. Additionally, instead of using the extra space to create interesting patrols, meaningful crowding, and lend the illusion of habitation, they tend to just clutter empty space randomly with static packs of mobs that stand in place for hundreds of days at a time, sustained by sunlight alone.

The following fights are well designed and interesting encounters that happen to take place in a troll instance. Most of the remaining encounters in troll-ville are repetitive and bland. Personally I suspect these few were designed for some other instance and didn't quite make the cut for whatever reason. A short dose of rasta, bad voice acting, gaudy coloring or moody lighting and they were ready to go for troll-ville:

• Zul'Aman: The Dragonhawk Encounter (Jan'Alai)
• Zul'Farrak: Gahz'rilla
• Zul'Gurrub: Jin'do The Hexxer
• Zul'Gurrub: Hakkar
• Sunken Temple: The Statue Summoning (Atal'alarion)
• Sunken Temple: Malfurion's Story, or OMG a Dragon. (Eranikus, Tyrant of the Dream)

Troll instances actually make an interesting story the first time you hear it. The trouble is that it's the same story every time, and the people involved are frightfully stupid. Unlike other major lore items (The Scourge, The Burning Legion, The Illidari) trolls are stuck in the past, with no clear vision for the future. It makes designers lazy. For those of you who've missed the troll memo, here's the standard narrative on why our heroes must go out and eradicate troll-ville:

Long ago, the Trolls of ruled a vast and powerful empire. Then, during the great calamity during which the Trolls of performed some dark and terrible act, the empire fell. Now it is up to you, brave adventurer, as rumors are rising that the Trolls have returned to and only you can prevent their calamitous acts. Save Azeroth, Kill the Trolls.

The NPC telling you to go out and kill trolls will vary, but that's the official party line. Generally, if you see a group of trolls together for any length of time, and especially if one appears to have a tame beast or certainly if a snake is nearby, they are up to no good and should be immediately attacked with overwhelming force for the security of Azeroth. In fact, I'll wait while you go run a quick check to make sure no troll gatherings are ongoing. This lack of motion in the troll storyline causes all sorts of problems when it comes time to design the various encounters, since you're tied into an increasingly small area of design. The entire idea of a troll leader kidnapping a gnome and setting him to work on building a giant mechanical army is probably impractical, but at least it would be new and interesting. If you go to troll-ville (and you will, once a year) then you can expect to fight bats, cats, snakes, and a whole heap of stupid trolls armed with obsidian and flint who can't even bother to build some functional domiciles and clear away the ruins before they start praying to dark forces and generally living like savages.

Troll instances tend to have a germ of an idea that if polished would improve the game. For instance, troll instances previewed the loot by token system. They've added bosses who's difficulty depends on player choice (hakkar). Additionally, while their encounters may suffer greatly from their afterthought release schedules, their itemization picks up a noticeable boost to provide a reason for players to go into these holes. That said, most of the interesting ideas that show up in troll instances are rough versions. They lack polish and feel very rushed and often disappear when the next version of the troll instance arrives. It seems a shame that we get to repeat the formulaic bits of the dungeon without seeing meaningful improvement in the parts that were actually innovative an interesting.

Now, for many dungeons I'd have a much higher list of what was done right, but that's about it for troll-ville. The dungeons are generally unique looking, with meaningless boss encounters minus a few exceptions, a similar lore pattern to the last troll instance, some great idea that needed additional tuning with a few pieces of best in slot loot to tempt you into them, even though you know it's a bad idea. What's noticeably lacking?

Fun.
Uniqueness.
A Troll worth talking to, ideally sans rasta.
Something to care about.

I found more enjoyment in the lore, pacing, and boss encounters of Gnomeregan (widely believed to be a fairly terrible instance as things go) than I did in any of the modern troll instances to date. They are insipid, and I really wish blizzard would stop making them if they can't be bothered to polish them.

Please note that I do not hate trolls. I hate what blizzard does to me every time they introduce the trolls. It's always painful, bordering on hopelessly so, and I really want it to stop. If we can't be bothered to think up something epic and wonderful (along the lines of karazhan) for the trolls on the next dose, could we just admit defeat?