so...who asked for heroic scenarios

Dungeons and scenarios just aren't equal in the time and effort required to create them. Dungeons and raids, however, are equal in the time and effort required. When looking at the current progression landscape we have to say ok, is it worth cutting down on the size of the next raid so we can have a new dungeon? Is that what will benefit players most and create the best experience? When you consider the progression path right now, which requires a few dungeons and then hop-skip-jumping to Throne of Thunder in about a week, what is to gain from additional dungeons, and does that warrant cutting large amounts of content from future raids?

I don't think there are any silver-bullet answers to that, different players want different types of content, but we make decisions on what we believe the majority of players will benefit from most, and what is overall best for the experience of the game. Certainly some people will say they don't care about raids, or they'd prefer a raid be half the size so they can have a new dungeon. There's not going to be a full consensus on these kinds of things. On anything, really.

With Heroic Scenarios we can give some of that dungeon experience with difficult encounters, they require coordination, there are some stretch goals, and competitive rewards. We'd like to see if we can take the experience of a dungeon and present it in another way, and see if it scratches that same itch. We'll be interested to hear what people think once they try them.

When you consider the progression path right now, which requires a few dungeons and then hop-skip-jumping to Throne of Thunder in about a week

So we faceroll content for a week and jump to the last tier? I hope I don't strain myself in this epic adventure.

The majority of people coming in mid-expansion want to try to catch up to where everyone else is. You can take your time, if you like; really experience everything the expansion has to offer up to this point, but we want to ensure people can catch up in a relatively quick amount of time if they want to so they can have fun with their friends/guilds - or at least see some of the newest content. It's going to really come down to drops. One week is probably unlikely for many.

The majority of people coming in mid-expansion want to try to catch up to where everyone else is. You can take your time, if you like; really experience everything the expansion has to offer up to this point, but we want to ensure people can catch up in a relatively quick amount of time if they want to so they can have fun with their friends/guilds - or at least see some of the newest content.

Why is creating large raids AND lots of 5 mans so hard now compared to the Wrath/ BC days?

Because those examples remove the context of time. A lot of the content that released through the lifetime of BC and Wrath was in development before those expansions released, and was intended as launch content. It was delayed and finished off later. Not to mention the life cycles of those expansions was just much, much longer than where we are now. I think there's a misunderstanding that development cycles are much shorter than they actually are, or that we don't begin work on the next patch until the current one is released. With 5.2 we heard that people wanted to see some additional dungeons, but even if we began working on them then you probably wouldn't actually see them until long after 5.4 where they wouldn't make sense any longer.

But we can make Scenario content relatively quickly, we think Heroic Scenarios can get at that same kind of gameplay, and we'll have to see how everyone likes the additional challenge. Like I said we don't think it's going to be a replacement for dungeons, or will appeal to every single player, but we hope it's something everyone will at least try and we look forward to hearing what you think.