Hi everyone. I’m a “Vanilla” WoW veteran. I recently returned to WoW Shadowlands after a nine year break. I just did my first Shadowlands dungeon and my first dungeon in 9 years and I gotta say, I’m pretty disappointed in how dungeon queues have changed normal dungeon groups from what they were in the original release of the game.
In Vanilla WoW, it was possible to move somewhat quickly through a dungeon but you had to calculate your mob pulls. You didn’t just run in and rape through everything in 5 minutes, leaving adds behind to attack your ranged dps. A player who attempted such in Vanilla would have been called a moron and kicked from the group.
But now with dungeon “speed runs” you get pally tanks who just want to run in and rape through every mob in 5 minutes. There’s no discussion of boss fights before the fight like there was in Vanilla. In Vanilla, the party would discuss the boss fight and any special mechanics before running in so that everyone (even new players) would know what to expect during the fight.
But now everyone just runs in with no planning ahead? I’m extremely frustrated with the new dungeon system. World of warcraft used to be fun but it isn’t anymore.
Is anyone else experiencing the same frustration?
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If you want the calculated dungeon pulls, you won’t find that until you hit mid to high Mythic + dungeons. Even in that environment, prep before pulls is 30 seconds at most since you are racing a timer.
Right now normal dungeons are really only used to level alts. Personally, I don’t have a problem asking my level 60 friend to queue with my low-level alts and absolutely obliterate normal dungeons. Though there’s still some talk about boss strategies in normal since the expack is still so new and there are people who have been busy and not learned the dungeons yet. But that seems to be the growing minority.
I see normal dungeons as a means to get to the place where dungeons really get fun in M+. But I also understand that not the entire playerbase shares the same opinion which is fine.
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I don’t like the current state of dungeons myself, but let’s be real here, this wasn’t a thing. Vanilla dungeon bosses barely even had mechanics to begin with.
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@ Lunavale : That’s not true at all! Vanilla dungeon bosses absolutely did have boss mechanics! This game has always had boss mechanics.
Yes, the experience was frustrating when it came out back in…Cataclysm days?
Well it was fun when different classes had to use their cc’s …sheep, trap, sap, etc.
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you had to run out of one AOE and face a boss away from raid.
serious stuff.
ozruk the pug-killer. has less abilities than the easiest LFR. you just have to do them.
the good thing about the classic experiment is that we can point out that… no.
people didn’t discuss boss mechanic before going in. It does help that the vast majority of classic bosses don’t have any worthwhile mechanic to talk about.
it also seem you’re doing normal… or heroic. because in high M+ ( where the cool kids are) every pull , every CD, every defensive is planned… it 's a thing of beauty.
oh and… you played 9 years ago? so… a wrath baby, moreorso? or late-TBC? yeah, both of those era were very much dominated by speedrunning heroic dungeons. don’t lie.
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Back then each individual player’s cc ability ws important and all you had to know really was not to pull aggro off the tank. Which modern players do ALL THE TIME. Playing tank made you feel more important back then.
and what version of the game is that?
cause the current one have you burn down one target while interrupting 2 healers on your focus target, splitting one mob off the pack so you don’t get a pridefull elemental in the middle of the pull, dodging tornadoes non-stop while trash mob cleave nearly one-shot melee despite the tank kiting more often than he stands still… and that’s before we talk about dungeon-specific mechanic, like all the tools in necrotic wake.
And the classic experiment kind of showed us that CC in a dungeon is… not really a thing.
so I’m kind of confused as to what era you’Re talking about where group actually used multiple CC every pull, and why is sapping-sheeping before every pull somehow interesting?
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thanksfully, the extremely slow-paced, EQ1-style of gameplay where you CC everything but 1 tank and spank mob while letting the tin-can warrior tank get 3 sunders before doing anything is an extremely unpopular playstyle.
Sorry it was the playstyle you liked… EQ1 is still around.
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Never played Everquest…I guess I’ll go try it.
Well I’m really surprised at the lack of support for my post. Thought a lot more people would agree with me.
I got accustomed to a different style of dungeoning when the game first started and for me it just will never be the same although I try to get as much enjoyment out of WoW as I can.
I think heroics and elitism ruined the game for the casual player.
Full CCs was a thing in TBC heroic dungeons. Without it, your average pug tank either couldn’t keep aggro or couldn’t survive a pack of 5-6.
It was commonly just assumed that as much CC as possible would be used on a pack, and the 1-3 you fought usually wouldn’t be dead before CC ran out, so it had to be reapplied. Managing that CC could indeed be enjoyable, though more for some (hunters) than others.
That said, I think mythics did do a lot to re-introduce additional responsibilities, especially for DPS, and the aforementioned fun.
The speed run mentality is annoying and has become pervasive even in normal and heroic dungeons where it is not needed. The number of idiot tanks that have wiped the group trying to do skips they’ve seen in the mdi is infuriating.
If it’s not an M+, just clear the dungeon and move on nothing fancy required.
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Dungeon journals exist now. Read them and you won’t need to discuss the strat.
I agree with you only in the sense that the core style you described is boring. Just slapping through content without thinking or following mechanics is horribly boring. The issue I have is your tying it to speed running and the overgeneralization of all content. Everything you seem to want exists in this game, in the form of Mythic Plus. Albeit instead of stopping before a boss fight to discuss the mechanics, you do it before the run, or in an easier key where you aren’t worried about timing it.
In fact, M+ content is vastly more difficult and requires far more coordination than any classic dungeon… and this is coming from someone who is only just seriously getting into M+ and has been playing some iteration of vanilla or tbc for almost a decade now.
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I ran my second SL dungeon just a couple of hours ago. It went better than the first and was a cohesive group, but still the same issue with rushing through every fight.
I miss the old days when a dungeon meant a one to two hour journey into a deep labyrinth where almost every mob was killed.
The dungeons I did today were finished within 15-20 minutes and we were running through. We mounted up at least 5-6 times and were literally racing through. Couldn’t keep up with the tank, he had already pulled the next mob nearly dps’ed down before the rest of us got there. It was ridiculous.
But most importantly, it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t that mysterious journey into a deep, dark labyrinth that I was speaking about earlier. It was, frankly, boring! All those folks saying that Vanilla dungeons were boring must have a very different definition of boring than I do!