Oaklin

The most reassuring thing about WOW's evolution in TBC and WOTLK is that you can see the conscious effort by excellent designers to fix, improve and innovate on every aspect of the game with each patch and expansion. Its easy to criticize some of their design choices with the benefit of hindsight, or from a tunnel-vision perspective that cares only about one's own personal playstyle, but actual glaring mistakes from the developers that should have been foreseen are rare (they also tend to get fixed, eventually). I'll use raid pacing as an example.

Short history on TBC raid pacing design choices
All signs suggest Blizzard has learnt from the above. WOTLK starts with 1 major raid (Naxx) and has another major raid planned for each of 3 already scheduled patches (Ulduar, unnamed and Icecrown). First raid dungeon (Naxx) is easy and will allow the vast majority of the customer base experience it. Similar improvements and fixes can be seen in nearly all areas for WOTLK - art/city design, the 10-man raiding track, rated BGs (blue says they're working on it), profession/buff/debuff balancing, consumable usage control .. the list goes on.

I'm just going to end with a short list of the major failures and innovations of TBC

Failures - Content pacing, class/spec balance (the actual balance was better, just the consequences of imbalance much worse), Pve/PvP itemisation/upgrade-speed/effort-reward ratio.

Innovations - Dailies, Heroics, Flying Mounts, Arenas

 

Randyll

In the beginning of TBC, especially during the first month(s) after launch, the level 70 instances were badly tuned to players that had just hit the level cap. Heroics were really hard, too, I remember when the best gear you could have were blues and a few epics (which were equal in terms of power), the timed heroic instances, namely Shattered Halls and Shadow Labyrinth were really hard to complete.

Overall, dungeons and raiding improved a lot in subsequent patches. The nerf on consumables was a significant improvement. The addition of badges to all bosses seemed a bit overkill, as getting them became a tad too easy... I see they've learned from this in WoTLK with the separation between 10 man & heroic and 25 man dungeons.

The connection to lore was an improvement to vanilla but still mediocre at best. You could feel a connection to the lore only in places like Shadowmoon Valley, in the other zones that connection was obscured by the presence of other, redundant, stuff like the random Burning Legion encampments in Netherstorm or the ghostly Draenei villages, even if those had their own reasons for existence they were still too thin compared to the environment in Shadowmoon Valley, where everything was designed around BT. Overall WoTLK design reflects the importance of this 'connection' element and so far every zone has a central theme that is strong enough for the smaller 'side-plots' as I'd call them to not overlap with them.

 

• Falk

On Outdoor Raid Bosses:

There are 'clear rules' on what constitutes griefing on ORBs, differing from PvP to PvE servers. Unfortunately though, the line is in most practical situations a gray area and it's impossible to determine 'fairly' what acts falls on what side of the line. The interesting thing though is that they've sort of 'preserved' the idea of bosses you have to fight over while avoiding having to deal with the live-support-related mess above with the Archavon/Wintergrasp model. Once the PvP's over, the winner(s) gets to attempt the boss (pushover or not, *shrug*) without any further interference.

Too bad there's only a single example of this (so far) in WotLK though.

Also, I for one completely hated the ORB bosses in Classic and TBC. Scrambling in the middle of the night when bosses popped then wasn't fun. That and the fact that you can't really make the bosses anywhere near hard/challenging/complex due to the PvP factor is pretty shitty.

 

katholas

I think this goes to show exactly how much people can differ in taste. I feel almost the exact opposite of this view. I HATED BRD with a passion. It was way too long, had way too much trash, and none of the encounters were particularly fun. In the new 5 mans I will grant that they could have done some non-linear stuff but they kept them short, though most still had way too much trash, and some of them had bosses that actually required more than tank and spank. I don't particularly care about the atmosphere or lore of a dungeon if the encounters in it are boring. Those things are a nice perk but i will take a fully loreless dungeon that is made of a single untextured white hallway that has innovative boss fights and interesting trash over a lore filled epic looking tank and spank fest every single time.

Fortunately blizz seems to agree with both of us cause in WotlK, while there are not any truly non linear dungeons, most of the boss fights are interesting and all the dungeons are tied into the lore quite nicely and you never feel like you are zoning into an instance for no reason like with auchindoun.

 

pdpi

I'll pitch in on the dungeon discussion with this: To me, it's not so much a matter of linearity as it is a matter of instances looking like actual places.

When you do the Blood Furnace, you are at all times reminded you're on top of Maggie's prison. Never mind the cool factor (which is there), you're on top of Maggie's prison. You look around and see the strange tech used to make the fel orcs, you have the holding cells where the nascent fel orcs are held, etc. So what if it's completely linear, and the design doesn't actually make that much sense? It's more than enough to hold to cursory examination while you're running the instance, and doesn't wreck suspension of disbelief. When you later do Magtheridon's lair, which is a single-boss, handful of trash packs affair, the instance doesn't actually need anything else to make sense either, because it's just his dungeon.

In that aspect, I'd say that TK and SSC were the worst offenders. You're telling me that the great fortress of the Naaru has four rooms connected by hallways, and that's it? SSC just felt random and arbitrary. All the bosses you kill slowly unlock the drawbridge to Vashj... why exactly? Why is Lurker there? What's the whole point of that place? It's arbitrary and unconvincing.

Reversely, Hyjal was linear because we were following history that has already happened. Anybody remembers the old quest for BWL attunement, with the text ending in "have fun storming the castle"? That's what BT felt like. Enter the sewers through a crack, sneak into the courtyard, kill the gatekeeper, you're inside. I'd personally just have changed the sewers section to have more "sewerish" trash and a lurker-like boss rather than naga guards and what would appear to be one of Illidan's lieutenants.

Karazhan was just the epitome of an instance that felt like a living place though. the boss and mob placements made sense all around (except eventually Terestrian and Aran). The quests, though simplistic, made sense. All in all, I consider Kara one of the best pieces of instance design produced by Blizzard.

 

david0925

Adding on to the fact that some people don't like the fact that dungeons are linear. My personal feelings go towards both sides: the "lore" part of me likes complicated dungeons with many hallways and dead-ends. The gameplay side of me wants to be done with instances as far as possible.

I think a possible solution to this is to link all the dungeons internally, much like BRD> MC, Dire Maul, LBRS and UBRS, BRS>BWL, etc, but keep the separate entrances. This way each dungeon in terms of gameplay can be separated into sections, but the grand scheme of the place will feel a lot more epic.

Maniq is my hero

 

Kjallstrom

I haven't played in Dalaran in beta, but I have looked at the map and asked beta-keyed friends about it, and it really does look like Dalaran incorporates the "best of both worlds" in terms of city layout. Like Ironforge and Shattrath, it has a roughly circular layout, allowing for short arcs or straight lines between any two areas of the city (compare getting from the Mage District to the tram in Stormwind). At the same time, it's more of a hub-and-spoke design, which should help spread out players into the relevant districts.

I wonder how many people will be sitting at the fountain going for the fishing achievements, at any given time? I've noticed at least 4 or 5 fishers in Ironforge every time I pass through the Folorn Cavern, so it's motivating at least some people.

 

Randyll

Your friends pretty much nailed it. The design is pretty compact, in fact, the width of the city is no larger than the central part of Shattrath. The real innovation therein is the "two-story" approach, that is, the sewers and the main city itself. The city feels definitely like a live city, as there's named NPC's giving you directions should you need them.

The no-fly restriction was a really good idea too. That said, Shattrath needed flying mounts as it was huge and the Aldor elevator probably killed more players than any NPC. In Dalaran to get from one side to the other you'll spend 10-15 seconds at most. My only complaint would be that the city is actually a bit small, I'm not trying to be funny, but the reason is a technical one: I once talked to a GM after our server crashed on racial leader raid, and he mentioned that 'small' zones can hold up to 100 before the place starts to lag due to server load. Of course this is completely anecdotal and even if it's from an 'official' source the truth of it is disputable.

The point being that Dalaran is a small zone and as the city I fear there might be lag issues because there will be 100 people there at any time on even medium populated servers, I shudder to think how the situation would be on high-pop servers at prime time. On EU beta, during the most active phase (august-september), the place was really laggy.

Overall, the city felt like the thing I imagined it to be back when it was surrounded by a big dome. A lively, magic-filled city with architechture like in Warcraft III.

 

Duilliath

The point so far appears to not to be that people don't like linear dungeons. They (or, at any rate, me) don't want them to feel linear.

A path left or right, ending at the same spot is fine. Stratholme was fine - it had bits n pieces that looked like you skipped something. You could go through the service entrance instead of live. Essentially you have two different instances, they were just linked together. Even though Undead Stratholme was pretty damn linear, it didn't feel like it.

Even BRD, whilst it might appear like a huge maze, isn't extremely wild. If you want to go somewhere, there's a clear path to follow. There's too much in that place, but its base design wasn't bad.

Blood Furnace was okay. You could see Magtheridon, his cries ringing through the instance. It could've been a bit better, but it was okay. Shattered Halls is just plain daft. Mana Tombs, similarly, is just plain daft. Mech is okay in its design of at least the bottom bit. You could go left, right or skip half the place and you'd still be fine.

While we're not asking for a massive dungeoncrawl like the old Eye of the Beholder days of yore, we would like to have some choice, rather than a preprogrammed path. Remember ole Zul'Farrak? You had plenty of space to go round but in the end you still had to do the Stairs event to get to the last boss. That's all cool.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Darian_TruBlade

One thing I've noticed is that having a convenient exit goes a long way to diminishing the linearity of an instance. There's nothing like a long walk back to the entrance to expose how direct an instance was. Additionally, having an instance double back on itself creatively also reduces the "long hall/haul" feeling. Mech and Botanica are good examples of that, with Warp Splinter and the Bridge to Panthaleon being in clear view through much of the instance, coupled with a convenient exit. Arc felt much more linear if only because running back out was so monotonous.

I definitely think the Zul'Farrak design is a good case study in non-linear, straightforward design. There's a feeling of freedom even though 90% of runs are identical. However, I don't think BRD had very clear paths to follow. My aforementioned horrific experiences in that place were caused in part by the labyrinthine nature of the instance. Noone in my group was a particularly experienced player, and so none of us knew where to go. I even looked up a map on thottbot and had to really scrutinize it to figure out how to get around (maps have since improved, splitting up the sections ala wowhead).

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Unity

Overall I liked BC better than classic, but it has weaknesses and there are parts of the original game that I miss.
What I'd like to see more of in the future:
- Storylines and antagonists - a reason to go beyond loot.
- Good environments - the look, the theme, the names and appearance of loot. Instances should feel like invading a real place. Valve is good at this - the Half Life games are almost completely linear but the enviroments still feel like thay were built for the NPCs to live or work in instead of for the players to assault.
- A variety of instance lengths and layout - there's a place for both BRD and Shattered Halls. If the large and complex ones are too much for a PUG that's why you have guilds.
- Growth of the small group game with patches - partly for freshness, partly so there is always something that provides a reasonable challenge, partly to keep up with PVP as a source of starter raid gear.
- Generally more responsibility/challenge for 5-man DPS.

 

Kleopatra

One of the things that Blizzard improved upon is their approach to heroic keying. I was fine with requiring revered reputation for heroic keys, but can see that the requirement could be challenging for some. It meant that even after all the questing and grinding, players generally had to have run the level 70 instances several times. However, having honoured reputation meant that for most, you never had to step foot in a faction's dungeons before being eligible for the heroic. Before the heroics were nerfed as much as they are now, it could be stressful to have a PuG member in your group, and find out upon starting that they had never seen the instance on any difficulty, having no idea of what to do for any fight. The idea for heroic Magister's Terrace - that one has to complete a quest in normal difficulty to be eligible for a heroic key - was more attractive. It means that any person in the heroic had experienced the content at least once in "easy mode." I liked that in TBC, Blizzard found a way to address the receiving of heroic keys before the player is possibly ready, and I hope that the learning will not be restricted to Magister's Terrace.

 

Kjallstrom

I was recently visiting the Dalaran crater (while running to Lordaeron for the Hallow's End quests), and it struck me how small the crater was relative to Shattrath. It sounds like Dalaran is scaled so that you could believe it was teleported out of that crater. I know WoW is full of "lolore", but that's a nice artistic touch. I'm looking forward to the new "style" elements we'll see in Wrath (especially after 2 years of pink crystal everything).

A related size note: I don't know why, but it annoyed me that if you flew onto the Hellfire Ramparts outside the instance, it was about half the size of the instance itself, even though you can see "out" of the instance. I realize there are plenty of good scale reasons it is this way, but my inner engineer went "buh?".

As with the transition from Original to TBC, I'm looking forward to Wrath as a chance for The Blizz to tweak and improve a number of features that the player base finds annoying on a day-to-day basis. We have to give them credit for (generally) learning from their mistakes.

 

healmuth

Zones and Quests
I simply disliked all zones besides Nagrand and Netherstorm in BC. Everything else seemed to me strange and wierd. Shattrath is a prime example - worst city in the entire game - no "home" feeling at all, nothing welcoming, the banks are stupid. The quests definately added a little bit on top of the vanilla experience. Some were very well thought out, some were just the usual kill quests but in general I enjoyed it.

5-men content
Normal 5-mens bored me to death. Heroic were nice at the beginning and at the end it was a semi-decent way to equip some twinks to get them ready for Kara or post-nerf BT.

Raids
Karazahn - Cool idea, Nightbane and Opera were actually cool encounters. Could've done without the rest.
SSC - Simply put, the worst tuned instance ever. Hello Vashj respawn. So bugged, so untuned, it wasn't enjoyable at all
Gruul/Mag - Gruul was just too easy. Not as "epic" as Onyxia. Magtheridon was pre-nerf probably worse than Kel'thuzad. Insanely hard. After the 20 nerfs he became more of a joke like Gruul
Black Temple - Simply the best instance since Naxx. Very good design, some lovely encounters and a great ending
Hyjal - To me, the worst instance of TBC design wise. The Archimonde fight was cool thou.
Sunwell - Great instance, quite easy for the first two and then, holy heck, Twins and on, some of the best and hardest encounter design I have seen from Blizzard. Muru and KJ actually reminded me of the epic fights with C'Thun and 4HM. Great instance overall.


PvP
I do not care for PvP and never will.


Professions
I think it was a good move to give Professions some actual applications besides creating pots etc.. I do think it was a good idea to add epic craftable items. Gave the whole thing a new dimension and "free epics" are always nice. Some of the stuff (PMC especially) was actually quite good.

Misc
-


Best
Blacktemple, 2nd half of Sunwell


Worst
SSC, Gruul, Shattrat

 

basto

I don't agree with this...

I dont think you will ever see a BRD sized instance again. I remember spending 4 hours doing this dungeon and we still did not kill all the bosses... and that was with a good group of friends... and it was exhausting. It gets tiring to many people to spend that much time playing in a single block, personally I have other RL responsibilities and am unable to devote more than a couple hours of uniterupted playtime which would make a BRD style dungeon out of reach for me.

The trouble you ran into with BRD is there were so many bosses that it was nearly impossible to clear the whole instance in one run unless you had all day. I bet you could ask many people who were around in the day of Classic wow if they ever killed Dagran Thaurissan and they would respond "Whos that?".

While I liked the way that the DM instances were all linked it does not necesarily make sense for the dungeons in HFP and Terrokar because they span such different level ranges. It worked for the classic dungeons because the place was all a single level range. It would be confusing to level 62 players if you took a wrong turn in an instance and were suddenly facing level 70+ mobs.

While not perfectly executed in TBC i think they were on the right track in making winged instances that could be cleared in under an hour. It makes the game more accessable to wider range of people.

 

glowacks

The problem with BRD was that there were approximately 10 different reasons someone could be going to the instance, and would likely not tolerate doing much else. Especially for Alliance, with 1 or 2 people wanting to do Jailbreak and the rest wanting to not have to go through it again. It's that kind of modularity that people are not interested in instances and why they've been split up so much. Except for retreiving a quest item in Mechanar for the anti-demon weapon (I think) I can't think of any reason that doesn't include killing the bosses that someone would want to do an instance. That quest item is the only one I can think of that required doing more trash than necessary. Perhaps for Shattered Halls there would be those who were interested in the timed event and those who were not really prepared for it, but I'm sure most people would want a pre-organized group for the timed event.

On the linearity issue, would you prefer to continuously back-track like in Steam Vaults in order to make the dungeon "non-linear"? The only other way to make it non-linear would be to offer multiple things to do, or multiple paths. The former would lead to the problems associated with BRD or if Strat-like might as well be two dungeons. If there is more than one way to do a dungeon for the same result, usually one way will be found to be superior and the rest ignored. It's very difficult to engineer two different ways to take on an instance such that one isn't preferred over the other. The only BC instance that seemed designed with this in mind was Mechanar, and I actually have experienced two different "standard" ways to clear it. One's more efficient and one is less risky. There's a similar pull of "way too many" Bogstroks that allows one to skip lots of other trash in Slave Pens that conforms to the idea as well - along with lots of skippable trash on the catwalks as long as people pay attention. There's also the packs of mobs fighting each other in SH you could skip completely - as long as no one ever backed into them. Thus, there's plenty of places dungeons can be done in slightly different ways - just not in most dungeons, and not in ways that most peopel care about.

I'm not too worried about the whole organization time to instance time ratio since most people don't stand around waiting for instances to form. While I do admit that at max level you might run out of things to do, there are less max-level instances in LK from what I recall so the average wait time shoudl be less, especially at release. I don't know if you'll always have lots of dailies to do, but from reports it sounds like there will be plenty available to keep you busy. There's also Battlegrounds, something that I'll do only when I'm extremely bored, but I'm sure a very large section of people will spend their time there if they have nothing else to do while waiting for an instance run.

The main positive thing about BC dungeons, something that was spread to most dungeons in 2.3, was the relative uniformity of difficulty throughout them. Every instance had a very narrow range of mob levels, even if some of the bosses were more annoying and/or difficult than others. The longer pre-BC instances had mobs that were hardly challenging at all to a group that would actually be able to finish the instance.

Lastly, the absolute worst thing about any BC dungeon was that the "Shadow Labyrinth" was a basically linear dungeon. At least the dungeons called "Halls" one expects to be hallway-like.

 

Jagiya

After reading the last page or two of concerns regarding TBC dungeons, a few things come to mind.

Dungeons with more "depth" would feel more interesting. (ie. multiple levels such as Sunken Temple, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, Utgarde Keep)

Linear dungeons with a more interactive appearance (ie. Magtheridon in Blood Furnace, Warp Splinter in Botanica) give the dungeon a less linear "feel." For me personally, I remember walking into Blood Furnace the first time and seeing the exit gate and speculating what could possibly be inside and how we open it. It wasn't until we had finished the dungeon and I walked out of the tunnel that I realised it was designed as an exit.

They could take this concept one step further, by implementing "waypoint" gates which give the player easier access to sections of the dungeon once a certain criteria had been met. So for a crude example, imagine that after you had cleared the 3rd boss in MGT, a ramp of some sort allowed you to travel directly down to the area you killed her. I mean, it could be activated by a zone-bound key she drops, or it could be a result of some environmental event. Let's just pretend that when she dies, she explodes, and when she does, she takes out one of the pillars with her - causing the bridge above to collapse and provide the players with an alternative route to Kael'Thas in the event of a wipe. Events such as these would certainly make the dungeon more enjoyable, whilst softening the blow of a wipe and providing a practical - yet breathtaking - means to navigate throughout the instance. Thinking about the possibility of such interactive content is pretty damn exciting - and given their current developments (look at the final phase of the Malygos fight for example), certainly within their capabilities. Of course, it doesn't necessarily have to be so visually demanding. They could always just implement a gate which doesn't open until the first boss is dead, which provides a simple access point from the entrance and nullifies the painful experience of spending 20 minutes running all the way back.

Most importantly, it's a crapload more interesting than, "Oh... you killed X boss. I'll teleport you to his/her room now." Like jesus christ, why didn't you just do that in the first place and we would have won with the element of surprise!

 

Lasie

I did particularly enjoy the changes to 5-man dungeons, with the shortened SM-wing style, and Heroic mode. As well as the introduction of the daily system for quests. Those two things were what really stuck out to me as being the best features of Burning Crusade.

This is very much the same way I feel. It doesn't really matter as much the linearity vs. non-linearity of the instance in so long as there is a compelling purpose or reason for the dungeon to look and feel as it does. Strat and Scholo are relatively linear instances, but they're very coherent dungeons, and have a lore reason and rhyme for being layed out the way they are.

Though there are some cases where the aesthetic can come at the expense of gameplay, which I think BRD is an example of. It's designed to be a dwarf city, and has some rather nice aesthetics, however they filled it up with way too many trash mobs. In their effort to create a "city" atmosphere, they made clearing the trash mobs a rather tedious experience.

So there are times when the aesthetic has to be changed in order to keep the experience enjoyable for the players.

 

saiyajinmaster

I think that's an important distinction with longevity of content in BC, but given the large difficulty gaps compared to classic it would've been murder on raiding schedules. I suspect many guilds that were just killing Vashj/KT were easily able to spend 2 nights per zone due to still having silly wipes and such, and if you were still farming them and trying to progress into BT/MH you'd be completely overloaded. I think the whole 'concurrent tiers' thing is a mistake in that regard.

Look back at classic wow raids, and even when we were working on Rag in say may or june of '05 the rest of the zone didn't have a learning curve that steep, so by the time you were that progressed you could still get the rest done in a single night, leaving you a few nights to progress into the next tier zone. I mean we've all seen Fusion's insanely fast clear videos, but I think it's fair to call sub-2 hour clears of BT the exception pre-3.0, whereas I suspect most guilds were fully capable of clearing MC, BWL, and AQ in a single night by the time they'd farmed it for just a week or two.

Summation: I'd like to see the end boss loot still be relevant, as it was in Classic, into the next zone, but it needs to be realistically paced for you to be able to farm that boss and still have plenty of time to progress too on a 3-4 day schedule for most people. The pacing should be more like classic, where even the lower tier guilds could manage to be near or at the end of an instance before the next was released, and the upper tier had only been farming for a few months, instead of the slew of content out of the gate and then a massive game of catchup for everyone else, and extreme boredom for the elite.

 

Dryssa

Don't forget running heroic Slave Pens just to pick up the SSC attunement (and then running it again just to turn it in.) Thankfully SP is short enough that once you reach the quest giver, there's only about 10 minutes until the end of the instance. It's still a valid concern though, and I hope there aren't too many quests in Wrath where the objective can be found halfway through a dungeon.

 

pdpi

The revered requirement wasn't "challenging" for some. There is nothing intrinsically "challenging" about running the same instance more than once. In gameplay terms, the requirement is easy as hell. What it was was a grind, and a grind of the worst sort at that: You couldn't do it alone. The meta-game requirement is much harsher: Grouping. If you're leveling at the same time as everyone else, it's easy to get groups for level-appropriate instances. If you hit the level cap before the raiding game starts full-speed, you'll have an easy time getting groups for level-cap instances. Once the endgame starts getting settled, any late comers, rerolls, alts, whatever, will find themselves with much sparser grouping options. For some of the shorter instances, the wait time is longer than the actual instance time. In the end, you're arbitrarily restricting people with tighter schedules from accessing much of the game.

Oh, and if you wanted to take two different characters to TK, you were looking at grinding revered with CE (heroic steamvaults), Sha'tar (heroic arcatraz), Thrallmar/HH (heroic SH). Either you're stuck pugging those grinds off-season (as mentioned above), which will take forever and a day, or you bully your guildies into essentially repeating those grinds.

Ultimately, I think that the MgT system was good. One run and you're done. Of course, by the time I got my rogue there, nobody with a clue was running normal anymore when heroic was that much more interesting...

 

pdpi

I don't know how WoW works in this, but I do remember the days of yonder in Ultima Online. Each "server" is not in fact one single server but several, with load balancing done by region. There is some evidence that this is how WoW works too, in that at the very least the world server, the dungeon server, the Battlegrounds and each separate continent do seem to be separate entities that crash or over-populate separately. In this context, a "small" area is not so much one that is geographically small, as it is one that is assigned to a "small" server (or one that shares a server with loads of other "small" areas, versus big areas with a server all to themselves). Thunder Bluff is a low population area, so it makes sense to assign it to a "small region" server. When you get people raiding the place, it comes tumbling down. I can't see Blizzard assigning Dalaran such a slot though.

 

Mideci

Here's the way I come down on the instance problem, having recently re-run all the vanilla instances of note while leveling my paladin tank and also power-leveling some other miscellaneous alts.

BRD is too big, yes. It had too many objectives, yes. It's also freaking fantastic. It's epic. It's got a plethora of bosses. You can go kill a few of them on a run, rather than all of them. You can bypass content on purpose to farm a specific boss.

There is not a single instance in TBC that was fantastic. Probably the closest was Old Hillsbrad for me, which was a great concept, almost realized. The original heroic version was stupid in that you couldn't really use melee dps on the first two bosses and, well, the dog patrols, yeah... Black Morass was also good, challenging (again the original heroic was the bar that few could cross, although I guess in that case I'd argue in a good way).

There is simply nothing to recommend in Hellfire Citadel, Coilfang Reservoir, Auchindoun or Tempest Keep. Before we all outgeared the instances, many were ridiculously out of proportion difficulty-wise. But ignoring the overriding flaw, they were completely and totally uninteresting from the first to the last. The boss fights weren't marginally memorable. Nothing approached the feel of killing the Emperor, Drakkisath, Baron, Gandling.... In fact, in many ways they reminded me a lot of Dire Maul. A sense of "why the hell is this here?"

The endless piles of trash after boss #1 in Underbog and Sethekk, the utter uselessness that was Auchenai Crypts (which, in fairness, had one of the few good end boss battles)... The over-tuned bosses (fire boss in heroic Mech post-exploit, pre-out-gear/nerfs, hydra boss in heroic SV without warlock)... The you-must-bring-this-class-and-if-you-do-congrats-you've-trivialized-this business (warlock in heroic BF, SV; mage in way too many places).

They're never going to bring back BRD. I get it. It's a tragedy. It's probably about the same size as the incredibly bad and non-navigable Maraudon, which, 3-years later I still find the instance portal an adventure to locate in and of itself. But a BRD with multiple portals, some ridiculous elevator, a permanent version of the mole machine to get to the bar after completing some kind of quest, skilled lava jumpers, etc. would be farmable and also bite-sized.

What recommends Mechanar or Ramparts by contrast? They were quick and they were easy. And yet people still whine for a warlock in Mech. I won't miss a single instance in TBC. I doubt I'll be able to name most of the end bosses in a few months. Van Cleef? A name I'll never forget.

 

Tel

I would argue that the biggest problem with BRD wasn't its size, or its layout, or how long it took to do all the quests there.

It was the fact the vast majority of it was a level 50-55 instance with a level cap of 60. Everyone want's lvl60 loot once they hit level cap, therefore besides lore / quest concerns there was almost no incentive to run BRD.

I'm sure anyone that farmed a hand of justice can tell you what a nightmare making groups for it was, not because people hated the sprawl (because you were just going in for the one or two bosses), but because there was literally nothing else anyone needed from it. If it'd had strat/scholo/ubrs level of loot in it, you could have guarenteed people would have been making parties for it left right and center.

I think BRD was a great instance, but Blizzard really dropped the ball on making it non-level 60 for the most part.

 

bdew

As a rule of thumb - if you get a loading screen when entering somewhere - it's a separate server (either as in separate piece of hardware, or a saparate server process). So TB is in the same server as the rest of Kalimdor (this vas very visible when AQ gates event was going :P), and Dalaran is probably on the same server as the rest of Northrend.

Also the GM probably refered to an unrelated problem - if a zone is geographicaly small - the ammount of updates that a server needs to send out grows quadratically with the number of players...
10 players seeing each other = 100 updates
100 players -> 10000 updates

As a side note - Silvermoon, Exodar (sp?) and the respective low level zones are on the same server as Outland. on TBC release this added to the instability and lags when that server got zerged by both BE/Dranei rerolls and lvl60+ players leveling... i hope they did learn from this failure and will not put DK strarter zone on the Northrend server.