WoW has some non-instanced dungeons, in a way. Stromgarde and the Elite Troll temple thing in The Hinterlands are probably as close as you would get I think. The gear rewards are missing but if you fill it up with really great quest rewards, like the Hinterlands example, it would make for a nice compromise.

All of those locations are non-elite in 2.3, I think a few like Deatholme and whatever area the Draenei get for the elite quests in that 18-20 range.

The only mob to avoid the elite-downsizing...was Hogger(And yes I'm serious).

If one combined:

1) The storyline elements of Deadmines
2) The size, scope, and feel of BRD
3) The mobs that react to players "invading" from SH
4) The excellent tuning of most TBC 5-mans
5) Bosses with some personality and meaning ala Rend in UBRS

One would have a new level of 5-man instance excellence. This is just by combining elements that we all know and love from current and old 5-man dungeons. Now throw in some things that would be new but fairly easy to implement:

6) Better quest markers, triggers, etc. so that you don't need WoWHead open on 3 screens to know where you're going like in BRD. Trapped NPC's, multi-step mid-instance quests, and so on can all help with this.
7) An instance that might be different depending on what step in a multi-part chain the group leader is on. Clear the underground city once? The denizens have changed this time around...leading to an entirely new set of objectives and some different bosses to kill.
8) Better pacing of pulls -- as noted, trash completes the feel of a populated BRD...but one can make most of it non-elite or simply easy enough that players can cruise through most of the instance, slowing perhaps for an elite guard pack, or to carefully plan their assault on a well-guarded hall.

I could go on but I think the point is clear that 5-mans could be a lot better than the TBC room-hall-room formula.

The original published idea of Auchindoun being a sort of capital city and dungeon in one might still be an interesting twist for a BRD-style 'city dungeon'. Imagine a huge underground BRD-style lost Titan city, with various factions (Scourge, uncorrupted Nerubians, the Red Dragons, whatever) fighting within the city. This would create 'dungeon wings' in the style of Stratholme, where helping or killing factions determines the final phases of the dungeon (faction-specific endbosses or faction-specific 'safe zones' with token turn-ins). This would probably require some sort of 'instanced reputation' system, where your reputation for these factions is reset for each instance.

But I think something the scope of BRD would actually better fit the new 10-man raid dungeon crawls. Imagine how BRD would've been as a lvl 60 10-man, leading up (lore and difficulty-wise) to Molten Core and Onyxia.

Well, if they just took a normal instanced dungeon and made it non-instanced, I would agree. That was the point of my 'pvp objectives' where you can close off parts of the dungeon, or have a faction specific instance if they can't figure out a clever and fun way to do that. Like, if horde enter, they all go into the same one, and same for alliance.

I understand that guk worked because EQ wasn't ffa pvp. There would need to be some changes done to make it work, but I think it would be quite awesome if they did.

The majority of people agreed that 'Camping' spawns was unfun. However, the reason it was unfun was people did not like sitting around doing nothing at all. If the place was 'overcamped', you waited 10mins for the corner of the dungeon you had claimed to respawn. When there was only 1-3 groups in lower guk or SolB, it was one of the best places to hang out in. I was never in the first groups to clear guk, when a single group could have the majority of the dead side to themselves, but I did visit there on off days and could see why that was so great. I remember coming there during an off time and not realizing there was mobs that spawned in a certain room, because any other time I was there, someone had that camped and always cleared it.

Standing around in a specific zone also allowed the community to develop. Make the place big enough, with dynamic spawn code and/or additional instances if it gets full, and you solve half of the problems people attributed to 'camping' from EQ. Give the place daily quests and 'boss' spawns that come every 5th spawn wave (or whatever, once every X minutes to limit the influx of the loot accordingly) with BOP loot that's not DEable so people don't farm it. Give people a reason to hang out there, with a higher chance to find a group there (who the hell has ever zoned into an instance and found a group in general chat in WoW?), and you will promote more community interaction.
Make the place give good exp and gold, and people will find each other as they level. Once those friendships and connections are made, they can tackle the harder instanced content together. The place can serve as a testing ground for PUG skill. You group with people there while leveling, find good players, and run other instanced stuff with them later. If you can't find any of your friends online for an instance, go hang out in the non-instanced zone and see if you can find more non-shitty players to do stuff with.

I'm not asking for a return to EQ's style. WoW is an improvement over the old way, no doubt. But, there was certain things EQ got right that WoW has overlooked, and this is one of those few examples. If you took BRD, made part of it level 55-58, the other 58-61, and tuned the difficulty down a little, un-instanced it, I think people would use it a lot more even now. Take those ideas and design an entirely new zone with them in mind from the beginning, and you could potentially have a great dungeon.

Whatever, blizzard will never do it, but it's fun to dream it up.

Not even having a new reputation system, a lot of things could still be done with the old one.

The bar in BRD was a good example of something they could do. An entire city shouldn't be a warzone like Sparta or 1944 Berlin. The bar was a nice change of pace because you could drink, you could piss off a few bosses, you could talk to the reputation dealer, or you could go all out and piss off the entire bar if you felt like it.

Imagine a reputation for a whole sprawling instance sort of like that. What if the Thorium Brotherhood was actually a huge network of greedy capitalists that could have their trust earned even though their leader says you should be killed on sight?

Right now reputation for the dungeons are good for... some items and a heroic key. A lot more could be done. Imagine that at baseline, BRD is the same as always, everyone hates you, you start at the whole dungeon hostile, hated reputation. When you climb to neutral with the Thorium equivalent, a few previously hostile mobs now allow you to access secret elevators or passages that let you skip a ton of the boring trash. When you get up to friendly, large parts of the town have been bought off by Thorium bribes, making the whole initial part of BRD like the bar, neutral mobs but still piss-offable for loot. (The sons of Gruul questline is a great equivalent that already exists, it turns the ogre deathzone of elites leading to Gruuls Cavern into what I'm talking about here.)

The "raw" part of the dungeon leads up to... oh, Ragnaroses ambassador dude as the end boss (with the Senate/Emperor being paranoid as hell and still secure.) When you've finally gotten to Revered or Exalted, essentially the entire trash population is at peace with you and gain your key to access the Lyceum/other sensitive government areas and finally slay the emperor. (I think, in a very rough form, this existed with the ogre suit stuff in North Dire Maul, and from what I saw both NDM instance slugouts and tribute/minimalistic runs both peaceably coexisted in the LFG channel)

You could even have the Trials of the Naaru style quests for hardcore gamers open up much more fluidly than the rather abstract seeming get-a-certain-rep complete-irritating-overworld-5-man and talking to Khadgar or Adal to get something... when you get up to honored or revered, you could get the actual quests for the dungeon inside the dungeon itself from disgruntled officers/sellouts who took the bribe about sensitive information in the dungeon itself.

I think my example system satisfies any complaints I can think of...
1. Creates a real sense of progress with getting rep, as opposed to the milquetoast obsolete blues & a few valuable enchants rep rewards in TBC
2. Allows massive dungeons full of trash without the headache of a fresh, full BRD each time (as you could walk through a lot of the trash and just deal with the bosses & maybe 3 or 4 "republican guard" units of loyal elites that never become neutral to you)
3. The still-piss-offable nature of things, like the bar, allows you to still surgically strike that mob that the druid only agreed to do to get the specialized loot from, instead of being unable to do it because your tank can't engage a friendly mob or something
4. The secret gates/passages/elevator benefits someone gets (while not mandatory like UBRS (which is nigh-impossible to find anyone at 60 with a key for now) allows one person who is higher repped to allow people with vastly lower rep to still bypass content, eliminating tension that would emerge from having to clear massively more trash just because someone is lower-repped and you had to fill the group at 1 AM
5. Different areas becoming available at different reputations allows people to still be virgins for certain parts of the content long after they've run the dungeon (whereas with BRD, you very well might have done everything up to the Emperor your very first run and seen it all, leaving just the soul-crushing vastness of it in your head when you have to run it again, or the problem in TBC with heroics where badges/loot were basically the sole motivating factors because you knew it was the exact same dungeon in heroic mode with the same encounters and same progress path for the most part, just inflated to be *harder*)
6. As to getting lost in a sprawling metropolis, well, the neutrality of the trash would turn a botched memory from "oh god we lost 30 minutes killing the wrong trash" into "wrong way guys, lets go out and find the right path." You could also have a few select corrupt policemen serve like the guards in capital cities once you were friendly, telling you where the bosses you wanted were with a mark on your minimap and a rough style set of directions to get there from here.

I believe what I have dreamt up is both possible without major new conceptual additions (everything just being combinations of things I've already seen in WoW) and a good/fun system taking into account the human element as well. If anyone likes my idea, or can spot a huge flaw I have completely overlooked, I'd surely like to hear it =)

Well, what happens if one player in your group is Hated and another is Exalted?

It'd probably be like heroics. You group with people of equal reputation. The idea while great, would need to have reduced numbers of levels, so you can actually find parties. Like hated, neutral, and friendly, or even just hated/friendly. You either do the instance on the "good" side, aka hated to the evil bad guys, or on the "evil" side, aka friendly with the bad guys and fucking up some druids or whatever's close that's being too carebearish happy. It's also a good way to reuse content, which blizzard seems to like doing. You have 2 dungeons, but you can work on 50% of it shared, and 50% on each side, leading to only having to design 3/4 of 2dungeons.

One thing that lacks in wow imo is you rarely can choose "bad" reputations. You can kill bootybay guards for hours to end up getting a parrot and a pirate hat, but that's really limited. They should add opposite reputations, like aldor and scryer, but with one evil and one good, instead of 2 neutral doing their own stuff their own way and not being right or wrong. I'd like for once to have to kill Cenarion idiots, or Argent dawn knights. Obviously, it'd have to be totally new reputations, and be built around it entirely, in the current game if you had a reputation against Cenarion, it wouldn't make sense to be able to go to silithus or zangarmarsh.

I definitely think the current reputation system is a bit lame, you should be able to piss off factions and fight them and stuff. I loved your post too Opoid, sounds like it could be really interesting

One thing I've been wondering is how long the beta will last. Just as long as the TBC-beta or longer/less or even none at all? It seems logical to me to have longer because of all the issues with a new class and all, and the general public needs to know how the Death Knight performs as either DPS, tanking or both.

If Death Knight proves to be fun, innovative and a good class, who do you think will reroll? Prot paladins, or paladins in general? I've been wondering if I'm going from Shaman to DK after WoTLK hits the shelves if the feedback on the class is positive.

(Oh, and sorry if this is a thread necro.)

The thread is destined to get necroed anyway as "soon" Blizz release more info

Probably around the same length as TBC beta. Dont think a new class matters much here.
The length of the beta in the end will probably more be determined of when Blizz see the perfect time for release, rather than the perfect amount of testing.

Except for end-game in TBC which never received much testing, most other stuff was pretty bug free and working fine quite some time before release.

I think its certain that they will be required for raid encounters.

I also think you are vastly underestimating how long it will take to balance and tweak an entirely new system of using abilities.

All this faction possibility discussion brings back some fun EQ memories.

Specifically the Three factions in Velious and being able to become non-KOS in Chardok

But the more I think about it the more I remember that the only reason I was fond of those elements of EQ is because grinding was what MMO's were about and I accepted it because I liked playing MMO's.

For instance I can't imagine having to grind mobs/instances for gem drops that I have to roll on against group members and THEN have to go to whatever raid instance my guild decided to align against for drops to combine with the gems I just grinded for items.

Now I realize Blizzard probably would not make it this harsh but what it really all boils down to is that all these faction ideas seem to me to come back to that same concept. Grinding faction. And in all honesty if they make the faction easy to gain rep with then why even really bother with factioning?

If they do it I just hope they K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid). As in they have two factions. Each faction has an instanced city. If you are aligned with faction A you can use their city to buy and hang out and you go into faction B's instance to kill/pillage/loot/get shinies. And vice-versa. Maybe have a few faction rep goodies. Nothing more.

I get a headache when I remember people fighting over gems in Velk's lab groups.

I fully expect them to start out either massively clumsy or sickly overpowered. Probably the latter, as I doubt Blizzard is going to risk having their expansion centerpiece for the masses stink up the joint on release and the list of BC talents, skills, and specs that were initially granted and later nerfed significantly is a very long one.

Blizzard would probably be willing to sacrifice a great deal of WotLK polish on everything except the 71-78ish content and the Death Knight. There is too much riding on their having the "masses" content kick serious butt on release.

Whether most people can or will play it well is an entirely different question. Most people (WoW-wide) don't play warlocks anywhere near their full potential.

There will be a positive glut of deathknights when the option becomes available. I can't help but desire that your character who unlocks the DK must be consumed during the creation of the deathknight but that goes against the fundamental Blizzard premise in WoW that nothing is permanent about your character except your race and your class.

Considering how Blizzard has dealt with balance issues when TBC came, I agree that the Death Knight class may be overpowered at the start. At least, I expect it will seem this way to most people until they've learned to cope with it. And as usual it will take quite some patches later before give the issue attention.

The Death Knight will be a strong, easy to play class for the masses (solo PVE, standard raid BG) and will have a large number of challenges to make them worthwhile in progressive raid groups and arena.

Sounds kind of standard I guess, but that's my speculation. It'll have an easy-mode tanking behaviour, because it's likely that people not well experienced in advanced play will be subjected to the tanking position and if this proves to be too difficult, the class will be rejected by the large mass. And that's perpendicular to Blizzard's wish to meet the needs of the large playerbase.

Whilst Blizzard will want it to kick ass and be a really good centre piece, they must be wary of balance in terms of % of population playing healers especially. Otherwise they are just trading one problem (current lack of tanks) for another (in lack of healers) if the class is so good that it gets a lot of full time rerollers. Paladins especially because many are disillusioned that they rolled the class to be a sort of Warrior Priest who kicks some demon butt in combat and occasionaly knocks out a quick heal to help him or his group. In reality they turned out to be full time FoL spam bots and that upset people. I think many of the Paladin class (and most Retadins) will reroll DK unless theres some seriously good stuff for Pallies at 71-80 ability wise, especially something to make Pally raid healing more interesting and Retadin's more raid viable/accepted.

I do agree with the above poster though, I feel they will make Deathknight tanking very simple and still maintain a high DPS (like Druids pre nerf at start of TBC). Maybe even as simple as hitting a single target aggro generation ability every time their Rune mechanics let them.

Was discussing with some Feral Druids this morning that had worries that DK's would make Ferals obsolete. I don't have any of those fears, (speculation incoming!) the Death Knight being unable to use a shield will likely have very low armour compared to the other two plate tanking classes and nothing on a Druid. Low armour, even with high mitigation, means you are going to be taking a lot more damage from multiple sources as well as from big heavy hitters like Morogrim. Very spikey. That means its unlikely to steal Ferals current role of heavy physical damage tanks or a Pallys AoE tanking role. I think that their "speciality" will be tanking magical fights. Just speculation at this point but well reasoned speculation if I do say so myself.

I can't find the reference right now, but I am 110% certain that they have already stated clearly that this won't happen - creation of your Deathknight leaves your original character untouched and unscarred. What you get is a new character with an independent life (or death!) of its own.

While I have no clue what DKs will 'specialize' in tanking, I do know for a fact that I'm going to give one a serious looking at as soon as my Druid hits 80 (or, if they're available from the start of LK in some manner, right away) simply because there are so many... how should I put this... itemization issues with regard to Ferals, especially tanking. Sure, it's slowly getting better and more items are coming out with the 'correct' tanking stats; however, 'traditional' plate tanking gear is just damn well designed at this point, and won't be getting any worse in the future (hopefully).

What I'm hoping for in DK is a class that, like the warrior class, can accomplish its two main roles with a minimal amount of effort; however, if one wishes to excel in their assignment (Tank/DPS), the class should have a very nice depth and at least some breadth with which to accomplish it. Easy to Learn, Hard to Master & whatnot. I'm perfectly fine if Blizz errs on the side of making the class weak, at least initially--for whatever reason, be they itemization holes in BC content or simply slightly-underpowered abilities--as long as they show promise in the long run. If the 'masses' want the shiny new hero class to be, well, shiny, I have no problem with that either; something can be made shiny & awesome-looking without making it overpowered as well.

I guess what I'm looking for is a Tank/DPS hybrid that has good depth to it, has no horrendous itemization/ability/talent oversights at launch, and, at the very least, shows long-term promise; if all of those criteria are met, I'd be happy to swap my Druid to resto, full time (rather than part-time as he is now) and use the DK for my Tanking/DPSing needs. Even better, as a bonus, I'd have two simple gearing paths that are already well fleshed out which will allow me to feel less like I'm scrounging for Tanking/DPS gear and more like I'm getting it like everyone else.

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Addendum: I'm really hoping that DK brings 'avoidance tanking' back to WoW; while the current model of "soak everything up via stam & DR-type mitigation (resist/armor/block/etc)" is working well enough, avoidance-mitigation puts more responsibility on the tank's shoulders and I'm a fan of that.

That was his point....If it takes nothing to earn a deathknight at high level, then everyone WILL have one, if for no other fact then it's easier then leveling a gather character/alt from level 1. Hence the glut. He kind of wanted you to have to pay a price to get the death knight, so not everyone and their grandma would have one.

Starting at higher level + being new = recipe for 75% of population being death knights for a time. God help the economy for plate gear at that point.

I'm concerned how this will affect my guild actually, I can easily see 10+ people playing DKs, which means i'd probably have to recruit 7-8 new people to fill the healing or whatever spots they left in the raid. Not looking forward to having 7 DKs on the bench every night.

Hopefully most decent raiders will be smart enough to keep their DK's as alts, and then maybe, if they really want to switch, do it later. Right after release is a dangerous time to switch over, to a class thats destined to go through a few major patch alterations.

Surely going to make myself one as alt of course, as I bet most others are. Its pretty much a free char. Although it would be nice if they gave TBC the same speed up buff for lvling as they did with Azeroth, not because TBC lvling is slow, but in Wotlk, when lvling even more alts up, its limited how fun TBC content is the 5th+ time around. Especially when the areas will be empty for groups.

Blizzard had a very pragmatic reason to push a choice on players, they needed to spread out the population inside Shattrath so the concentration of players in one inn or one bank wouldn't crash the game engine.

Create a couple different factions, spread them out around the city, give them mostly the same but slightly different rewards and you've greatly lessened the load of handling huge numbers of players simultaneously.