There’s zero reason they can’t have that sort of experience for either 1) premade groups, 2) content that asks you to delve into a dungeon and explore it while solo, 3) in a system where exploration within a dungeon is rewarded, not rushing to the end boss. It could be argued that’s why they have “mega dungeons” be Mythic-only and only for Premade groups for a patch; it’s just … other things that come in the way.
Looking for Group levelling dungeons are a different beast. Most of the time people probably zone into those dungeons without any idea what the dungeon is about, or how it ties into any lore/objective/whatever.
I agree with you and would love content like this. Unfortunately they seem to design for what they perceive the masses to be and likely consider this kind of thing “wasted effort”
Mega dungeons are closer to the experience I want and like, but really they’re just longer versions of the same thing. They present the illusion of a non-linear experience, but are they? Dungeons fitting into that category currently are: Karazhan, Mechagon, and Tazavesh. All three of these have a large area to explore (in their mega-dungeon format) and some even let you kill bosses in different orders, but the routes are relatively fixed and there’s not really much for optional content. Contrast that with BRD, a massive sprawling environment where you can either spend 2 hours clearing everything, or you can push straight for the end boss and be done in 30 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, I love mega dungeons and they’re probably as close as I’m going to get in retail WoW under the current design regime, but I think they’re more about the complexity of boss mechanics and expectations requiring them to be pre-made only, and less about the exploration and experience of the actual dungeon. That’s just my take on that part though.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately.
You perceive that dungeons need to be easy and linear so that players can PUG them.
Players become conditions to expect easy, linear dungeons.
You design more easy, linear dungeons because that’s what players want.
Honestly, if Blizzard would just embrace Classic+ already they would have the flexibility to pursue different design goals for different versions of the game.
I mean, you’re talking about 2 different things here. When you take dungeons like Mechagon, or Tazavesh, or even stuff like Freehold, or Plaguefall, or even stuff like Ahn’kahet, there’s plenty of room in the dungeon for content, and indeed there’s plenty of actual “content”, in the form of mobs, sometimes events, lore, whatever, that players are not normally going to see. They’re still putting stuff like that in there, and taking time, and art resources, and all that as part of their design - players just don’t really go around playing with it as much.
Which is more of a byproduct of not strictly dungeon design, but player evolution, and other incentive/reward systems. Players aren’t usually interested IN exploring versus spending their time on the most optimal path to their rewards (which often involves skipping as much as content as possible), AND with much more information sharing and so on, come up with very specific ways as “the way” to do things. The routes are often specifically fixed due to player agreement, not dungeon design per se. It arguably doesn’t help that the only actual way difficulty has been added (systematically, so it affects all dungeons regardless of individual dungeon design) is a time trial to the end boss, as opposed to some form of, say, scaling difficulty that incentivises as much exploration as possible.
Taza’vesh possibly has the most obvious issues that came with it. It came out in a time where it was basically already obsolete when it launched, there’s almost no reason for players to want to go in there, let alone explore in there, there’s so much other stuff players tend to want to prioritise since it ties into their personal power even when they do have spare time, there’s very little actually unique or compelling about it (e.g. fun transmogs, etc.). Talking about its dungeon design is almost unfair, since there’s nothing about it that even stood a chance to shine.
Even if you take BC and its “wings” appraoch, all it really was going for was the idea of splitting up a big dungeon into its respective components. The different instances worked on a technical level, was used by them to (try) telling some vagely connected but different thematic or time-dependent story, e.g. the events of Shattered Halls happening after your overall BC exploration in other zones, or Mana Tombs and its Consortium-focused content vs. Shadow Labyrinth and Murmur/Shadow Council stuff.
This is a very naive take on both players and design. The idea of players being conditioned to expect easy, linear dungeons is fairly farcical, just as much as the corollary idea that if they just made harder dungeons/content, people would just “rise up” to meet it or w/e.
In reality, what you’re talking about is shifting groups of players for whom different content works in different ways. Short, puggable dungeons brings in a different group of players for whom long, windy dungeons would be incompatible. It’s 2021 and almost 2022 - WoW’s playerbase is much older, and more people have short bursts of spare time where they can take in content, as opposed to finding it OK to spend 3-5 hours running around inside a dungeon.
Also, idk where you’re tying easy/difficulty into this. Complexity/difficulty has almost nothing to do with that design approach, and you can certainly make any non-linear and complex, or non-linear and easy, or linear but extremely complex and content-packed dungeon as you want. If anything, dungeon mechanics are arguably more complex/harder now than they were in Classic.
tbf BRD has the same thing. You have a non-linear section which is the detention block (although there are some linear elements to it if you didn’t have the shadowforge key) then you had a linear section starting with the west garrison. However that did require the shadowforge key.
Like for detention block you couldn’t get to the Dark Iron highway quickly unless you had the shadowforge key. Otherwise you had to go to the Ring of Law and around that way. Sure it had side rooms with optional bosses but to get to Bael’gar it was still linear.
But I do get what you mean though. BRD is really two dungeons smacked into one. The detention block and the upper city. (For me upper city starts with the West Garrison and not past the Grim Guzzler like it is on live). And you don’t need to do any of the bosses in detention block to do upper city after you have the shadowforge key. Meanwhile for each mega dungeon so far you need to kill a certain number of bosses to get to the “upper” areas of each. Although Return to Karazhan only requires Opera and Moroes. Maiden and Huntsman are 100% optional. Mechagon and Taz don’t have 100% optional bosses though. And I wish they did. However there is a reason why blizzard stopped doing intentional optional bosses are WoD in dungeons. The ones we did get post WoD were secret bosses that did not drop any gear. Blackrock Hold’s one required a key from archeology and only dropped an Artifact power token. Tol Dagor’s optional boss has a chance to drop a pet and it only spawns on mythic.
100% agree. Return to Kara came between EN and Nighthold. ToV was a last minute raid attached to the patch (blizz themselves have said that in the ToV preview). And ToV was not a major raid. Mechagon had the Vision of Perfection essence to encourage people to keep coming back. On top of a flawless hard mode achievement which rewarded rank 4 VoP to show off. Taz has neither of these. It was released alongside a new major raid and it doesn’t have anything to encourage repeat runs or a flawless hard mode with a special reward at the end.
Honestly Megadungeons should either be the main focus of a patch, like it was in Legion or they get released in a X.Y.5 patch alongside a mini raid or something.
