Will we ever see nonlinear dungeons again?

#0 - May 3, 2010, 6:15 p.m.

I was thinking about what's bugging me so much about WOTLK and even TBC. Now that we're supposed to farm the same instances for emblems for the past year, it's painfully obvious how linear they are. UP, UK, HOS, etc....you're just running around either in a line or a box and there's no "size" or variety to them. I know the goal was to bring runs down to 1hr or less, but is there any chance we'll see deeper dungeons someday?

I'm an old EQ player and I remember back to long days in a zone called Chardok. It was really a gigantic cave with several distinct pathways to the bottom. At some point, the pathways converged, but they did have very different "chambers" where unique gear dropped.

To me, I see no difference in offering the option of running a super HUGE dungeon vs. running several smaller dungeons. In fact, I think the sheer repetitiveness of the smaller dungeons would lead to burnout, which is what I've experienced for awhile now. I'd much rather go in with a group (most likely a guild group, since they'd be more interested in a deep run), and then explore a much larger place. I know BRD is considered the example of what to do wrong, but I'm sure there could be a happy medium.

Will we ever see bigger five-mans, or is WOTLK the blueprint upon which all future dungeons are going to be built?

Bornakk

#7 - May 3, 2010, 8:11 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I was thinking about what's bugging me so much about WOTLK and even TBC. Now that we're supposed to farm the same instances for emblems for the past year, it's painfully obvious how linear they are. UP, UK, HOS, etc....you're just running around either in a line or a box and there's no "size" or variety to them. I know the goal was to bring runs down to 1hr or less, but is there any chance we'll see deeper dungeons someday?

I'm an old EQ player and I remember back to long days in a zone called Chardok. It was really a gigantic cave with several distinct pathways to the bottom. At some point, the pathways converged, but they did have very different "chambers" where unique gear dropped.

To me, I see no difference in offering the option of running a super HUGE dungeon vs. running several smaller dungeons. In fact, I think the sheer repetitiveness of the smaller dungeons would lead to burnout, which is what I've experienced for awhile now. I'd much rather go in with a group (most likely a guild group, since they'd be more interested in a deep run), and then explore a much larger place. I know BRD is considered the example of what to do wrong, but I'm sure there could be a happy medium.

Will we ever see bigger five-mans, or is WOTLK the blueprint upon which all future dungeons are going to be built?

Never is not a word we like to use, but currently I would say that we will continue to follow the "WotLK blueprint" for dungeons. You see no difference in offering one super huge dungeon versus several smaller dungeons, but it ends up impacting the game a lot.

You point out that to do the larger dungeon you'd mainly want to do a guild group which can automatically affect a fair number of players who either aren't in guilds or don't have enough people on to run the dungeon consistently (or maybe their 2 healers are already locked.)

What we aim to do is create an epic experience in a smaller dungeon so players aren't locked to a 3-5 hour run that ends in bickering over which bosses should (and shouldn't) be killed. For the larger experiences we break those up into smaller wings but keep the architecture so it feels like a big experience but you can do it one bit at a time.

Bornakk

#21 - May 3, 2010, 8:21 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Am I reading this right? Or is it Monday?

*whistles*