[WoW]Wotlk:Raid instances to have 10 and 25 man versions, Death Knight starts at 55

[TKarrde]

Not sure if I'm a fan of 10/25 man. Heroics always seemed to me like a good idea - for recycling content.

Now it's taking base raid content, and recycling it for hardcore raiders.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

The guy hit the nail on the head dude.

The instance was full of faggy gay trash (dark iron dwarves were gay in Uldaman, lets put some more in). The design was mediocre at best, it only stands out because most WoW dungeons sucked back then. The dungeon sucked for xp, sucked for quests (especially that alliance one), and sucked everytime we had to go through it to get to MC before the attunement was implemented.

With a PUG.

BRD was a very good instance with a guild group, or non retarded people in general. When I leveled a shaman as my first alt because I was alone at 60 at launch, I caught up with some people in the guild at around 50. We did Sunken Temple, which sucked, then leveled a bit more and decided to do BRD, at 52. We completed everything there was to complete in one long afternoon on a saturday. We had the tank that was to become our guild MT up to nefarian, the best pvp rogue on the server, me and my friend I was coaching through an intense high speed leveling session(I got his ass to 60 in about 6days) and a random priest in the guild.

At the end, we were 54 and a half, which is better xp than anything you could find back then(and still is). All you need to have is one person to lead who knows exactly how to do all the quests in an efficient way, including prereqs in burning steppes/badlands/searing gorge. At 54(average level, the priest was actually 52), we managed to kill the emperor while saving the princess. It was hard, and fun. The whole run was fun and challenging. Obviously if you do BRD at 60, you don't find it fun, it's just insane tons of useless trash that gives shitty xp. You do it at 52, while it's still insane tons of trash, it gives good xp, and the 5mobs pulls aren't that easy, and patrols make it even more fun.

BRD is definitely a nice instance. Visually and difficulty wise, at intended level. Or was, it was nerfed when they compressed the level ranges and such in 2.3, and with new xp it's worthless to do dungeons really. It offers lots of bosses, that dropped decent loot back then. Hell some of those blues were on par with stratholme crap. The mail chest or legs from the 7dwarves event, the epic 1h from the emperor, the goddamn trinket from commander, the plate helm from the rare golem etc.


I wish they'd have at least one instance that could compete with brd in terms of size, I understand the concept behind split instances and stuff, so casuals can play 1hour and complete their instances, because they're fucking retards and can't tell when their parents come home or that they have to go to bed at the same fucking hour everyday. Hell for some of them even 1hour is too much. But having one big instance would be fun. The thing I liked about vanguard were the dungeon crawls, they were huge, you'd go deeper and deeper and find more stuff, and you felt like you were actually exploring stuff, not running from Start point to End point with rails on your sides.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

This sounds a lot like the arguments about why Guk sucked or did not suck.

Rose colored glasses?

[FoghornDeadhorn]

...I also had to run BRD about a hundred goddamned times at level 60, as horde, because there was loot in there people needed. I'm sorry if your friends were too goddamned retarded to understand the power of some of the items in there, but to imply that it was unused? That's just ignorant.

And I started playing the morning of release. I guess not all oldschoolers have a clue.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Itzena

That's The Wakening Land Sholazar Basin, the world PvP zone. And yes, it's pretty much the same thing as Un'Goro but the actual Titan zone is Ulduar - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Sholazar Basin looks nothing like Wakening Lands...

[Chrisb3]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

...I also had to run BRD about a hundred goddamned times at level 60, as horde, because there was loot in there people needed. I'm sorry if your friends were too goddamned retarded to understand the power of some of the items in there, but to imply that it was unused? That's just ignorant.

And I started playing the morning of release. I guess not all oldschoolers have a clue.

What are these awesome items in a non endgame dungeon? Itemisation was crap until Dire Maul so I can't understand how there could have been any must have items.

This just sounds like the whole masochist everquest attitude, where if something doesn't punish you in some way then it isn't worth doing. I bet you love Gnomeregen as well.

[Twobit Whore]

Someone made a list just a page ago.. did you skip it?

Some of the notables that were still very useful at 60 and into MC would be:

Barman Shanker thanks to how dmg/speed etc. used to work.
Hand of Justice and Second Wind trinkets.. even the defense one was nice.
Random blue FR gear
Emperor ring
Ironfoe
Pally set gloves

and quite a few more.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Someone made a list just a page ago.. did you skip it?

Some of the notables that were still very useful at 60 and into MC would be:

Barman Shanker thanks to how dmg/speed etc. used to work.
Hand of Justice and Second Wind trinkets.. even the defense one was nice.
Random blue FR gear
Emperor ring
Ironfoe
Pally set gloves

and quite a few more.

Hell, Hand of Justice was still one of the best trinkets in Naxx for sword rogues.

[Creediki]

BRD the zone, the layout, and the bosses still stand as one of the best dungeons wow has come out with. From a pacing perspective, I think it's valid to ask why something so awesome was a level 52-56 dungeon. It was certainly better than BRS, lower or upper. Not that BRS was bad, but BRD was epic. Problems with the loot stem from this, and from the lack of ... a clue when they were itemizing back then.

There is no masochism or lost-love of EQ involved here. There is a love of immersive environments. If you just want to walk in, walk straight through trash, kill a boss, rinse-repeat.. then BRD isn't for you. If you want the illusion of exploring a zone, face some interesting and disparate challenges (prison area, dogs, elementals, the arena, the princess-emperor challenge, the lycaeum.. etc) then BRD is the ideal.

Loot can always be tuned. Once you've designed your zone to run on rails through uninteresting and unconnected architecture, you're done. There are very very few BC dungeons I really remember. While I respect that the 1hour.. ish.. dungeon crawl is something that has improved the game. I don't think that making run-on-rails, short, uninvolved winged zones are the only way to accomplish that. With a little effort, you could figure out how to make BRD into a couple different wings and make it convenient for players.

EQ day 1
WoW day 1

[TheYanger]

I didn't unequip my Hand of Justice until I looted a KotS from Maexxna. That's a good 2 years out of that 'useless' trinket from halfway through BRD.
It never even occured to most people I knew to take more than 5 people into dungeons until we hit 60, and while BRD was challenging people in my guild generally didn't have issues completing it while leveling up. Very fun zone, a lot of the loot did suck but there was enough worth getting. Anyone who says they've never even been to the end clearly just came along later and was shown how to exploit down for MC attunement and stuff, since there's absolutely no reason not to finish the zone if you get that freaking far in legitimately (Or if you had actually been in there at release as stated, would've zerged down there to zone in pre-attunement. Wanna complain about a stupid idea complain about that one). Cut half the trash out and it's bar none the best zone in the game.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

What are these awesome items in a non endgame dungeon? Itemisation was crap until Dire Maul so I can't understand how there could have been any must have items.

This just sounds like the whole masochist everquest attitude, where if something doesn't punish you in some way then it isn't worth doing. I bet you love Gnomeregen as well.

As I said, you have no clue. It's been spelled out twice now. And yeah, I did like Gnomeregan, I didn't find it punishing unless you fucked up, but unfortunately it wasn't worth running more than once in the live game. I ran it many times in Beta and enjoyed it.

[Zerai]

Hand of justice was an anomaly though. As was the fact you had to run it over and over to get the right fucking FR bracer.

[Goliath]

WoW has already started on the path to ultimate easy, retard friendly game. As such all PUG instances should be designed so that they take your average retard on ultimate easy mode 2.5 hours to complete. That way if you're smart you can do it in 1.5 or less.

Now, BRD, even if you were smart, took longer than 1.5 hours and was shit. Anyone that thought BRD was good is retarded or has too much time on their hands. It was literally painful to run BRD. It was like an internal itch of annoyance.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Wall of text inc:

As much as I love wanking about BRD, I'm sorry I brought it up. I just don't want rail shooter dungeons, that's all. One or two mini-dungeons/winged dungeons is fine, but fucking all of them? No thanks.

Let's move on, yes?

My biggest concern with WOTLK will be whether or not people will struggle to keep 25 man raids alive if the 10/25's are just going to be carbon copies of eachother. If they were different layouts with their own bosses just similar 'end guys' so you both kinds of guilds can face storyline characters, sure, all the more power to them.

But if it's going to end up being "Same shit hits harder" as it probably will be knowing Blizzards track record, there's little added incentive to do it 'hard mode.' Sure there's the gear...but the pain in the assness of keeping a struggeling 25 man guild together may be too much for a lot of people. Sunwell is killing guilds as is. If they put in a 10 man version of sunwell with the same bosses, same layout, etc...

People would then get to do it, grats them on content. But it would remove incentive for a lot of guilds to continue doing 25 man content. Especially if you get the set bonuses for it and look of it. Oh noes you'll have 5% less stamina across the whole set!

But then why even bother with 25 man raid content then? Just fuck it and make the entire game revolve around single group and raids being 10 people. And then fuck it, when 10 man's get to the same level of extreme that 25 man's have with needing to class stack...

(I can imagine the crying if they introduced a boss like RoS in a 5/10-man dungeon where you HAD to use a warrior tank. No geared prot warrior in your guild? Looks like you're not raiding tonight kids! Fuck, just look at the HMT arena encounter. So much QQ'ing about it because it's pretty much unbeatable in Kara gear if you don't have a mage or warlock.)

...we'll have people bitching about how 10 man's are too difficult and they should focus just on making generic 5 man content. Doom and gloom perhaps, but you're really starting to dumb it down.

Going from 40->25 just resulted in cutting the chaffe out. The liabilities. Priests that couldn't DDR, mages that did 50% the dps of other mages, warriors that fucking blew at using shield block to prevent crushings, etc...

Going from 25->10 man though you're removing the ability for blizzard to design gimics. You can't have a deaden like mechanic in a 10-man unless you give every tanking class the ability to counter it or, alternatively, make it not mean dick.

Making a DPS burn fight in a 10-man would be brutal due to the nature of class synergies. If you take a rogue, mage, moonkin, spriest and hunter as damage you're not going to do nearly as much damage as a shaman, warrior, 2xrogue, retadin would do.

[Agraza]

Scaling