30-33 minutes or so, anything longer becomes such a massive slog. It’s a huge factor in people leaving too. You get to Fenryr on Tyrannical with 15 minutes left, you’ve already run a standard SMBG and still have 3 bosses to go, with probably not timing.
There is a pretty large portion of the WoW playerbase who run keys mostly because committing to raids is too much of a time sink. If you’re running your own key and get Halls of Valor or Nokhud, you could easily spend over an hour assembling the group, getting there, and finishing the key (that might not even finish).
Reduce number of mobs, health, something. No key should ever be more than 35 minutes, preferably close to 30.
I’d say 36 at absolute maximum. But I think the dungeons are just too vast to be indoors… AV, even with it’s 35m timer or w/e feels like it takes forever because all the ground you have to cover, skips or not. I’m, by no means, saying that dungeons should be created like violet hold, but I think a compact open air dungeon like freehold feels shorter then it actually is.
20-30 mins IMO. 3 bosses max, and more outdoor zones. Eye of Azshara was awesome - it felt like an adventure and gave you a lot of room to make your run creative.
Leave the king’s rests in the past. good riddance.
Personally, I kind of like the variance in dungeon length. As long as the key takes it into consideration, I’m generally ok with it. I’d imagine that trying to force every dungeon into a similar time limit would probably have an impact on design creativity as well.
Just my personal preference here, but this isn’t something I actually mind. I don’t get a key and go “Oh man, this is a long one.” However, when it’s something like Azure Vaults and I know that the time limit is extremely unforgiving, that I do groan a bit about
Honestly, I truly love the long dungeon crawl experience. BRD is probably my favourite dungeon WoW has ever produced, with UBRS and LBRS being right behind it. Could you imagine if they merged the dungeon design of Vanilla with the fight mechanics and aesthetic design of modern WoW?
Yes please!!
I know that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I would absolutely love that. Even mega dungeons, while awesome, are still not what I’m looking for. I don’t think Blizzard would ever do it though, which is a huuuuuge shame. Even something like that being introduced in some kind of Classic+ is pretty unlikely.
Not for M+. The mega dungeons are great and fun but this is a discussion of M+. The biggest issue with the mega dungeons is they need to continue to have a reason to run them. Tazavesh was one run for fun and then that’s it, Mechagon at least had some cool achievements to get.
It really makes a huge difference when you get into higher keys. Getting a 22 Tyrannical HoV means even if you time it, you have to devote over an hour to just that key between setting the group up, getting there, and actually doing it. And that’s if you time it; it feels so bad to do a high HoV or NO and miss the timer by a few minutes. Just spent over an hour for a vault slot I could have gotten in a 20 minute SMBG 20.
Yea Mechagon was probably my favourite overall mega dungeon. I never got to experience Kara as a mega dungeon and the wings in M+ for the rerelease didn’t jive with me. Tazavesh as a mega dungeon was ok, but when it split into wings I didn’t like it at first… but it totally grew on me.
Completely agree that it’s better than a super short Ruby Life Pools, but I’m painfully aware of the mega dungeon design being one that will become two separate smaller dungeons for M+. I in no way want them to stop doing them, I just feel like it’s a bit limiting in terms of the adventure. Still, since BRD will never happen again (still sad!!), mega dungeons are nice to have.
One thing that’s a bit of a bummer though is that in Vanilla, BRD never really stopped being a place people wanted to go. There were tons of quest, even some raid ones that people wanted to do, along with a lot of pre-raid best in slot items. It remained active for most of Vanilla. The current reward structure of retail though means that mega dungeons don’t stay relevant for long. In the season where they are a mega dungeon, players quickly outpace their rewards and move on, and then in the subsequent season they stop being a mega dungeon.
I’d be nice if Blizzard could find a way to keep them relevant, but I’m not sure how. It only worked in Vanilla because the difference in gear tiers was pretty small until AQ40/Naxx, though it totally depended on the slot, class, and even spec.
Setting up the key and getting there should be roughly the same time investment for a Halls 20+ should be roughly the same as a Shadowmoon 20+, especially because if you’re doing over 20 folks probably have their portal already. So the only difference is the run itself.
What you’re describing though seems a lot more to do with how lenient the timer is, and how easy the dungeon is. Shadowmoon has a very forgiving timer and is a very easy dungeon. Comparatively, Halls has a much tighter timer and takes a good bit longer. You’re just not likely to miss the timer on a Shadowmoon unless the key you’re running is just way above your level but Halls is tightly tuned, so you can play your heart out and still miss that timer by a very small amount.
This speaks more to the balancing of dungeons than to the timer duration. Would Halls still feel as bad to you as a longer dungeon, but with a much more forgiving timer? Only you can answer that I guess, but to me the problem really seems to be the wild swings in difficulty from dungeon to dungeon, not so much the time it takes to complete one.
Don’t get me wrong, I get wanting a shorter dungeon experience. That very thing is why we went from BRD-style dungeons to the short, circular, winged dungeon style they took in TBC. The circular style has stopped but dungeons have remained short. It’s not my preference but it does seem to be what most folks want.
I checked and yea, this is more or less correct. There are actually 8, but one is a rare, another is mostly for a pattern (but does drop a few pieces I think), and another is a summon that was added later in the game.
I tend to consider LBRS/UBRS as a whole when thinking of large dungeons because it’s all connected. People tended to do those two separately, but those looking for a large dungeon crawl could do them together. Still, it was much more discretely tackled by players. BRD could be, and was, tackled in smaller chunks, but most people tended to consider it as a whole.
I guess Strath goes on this list for me now too, since you could tackle both live and dead, the dungeon was huge! But most people tended to do one or the other.
Do we actually have any gauntlet fights in modern WoW? I can’t recall any at the moment… but I suppose it could. At least you’re fighting stuff instead of listening to NPCs RP at you while you stand around for several minutes
They reworked UBRS in Cata though to be much more in line with modern expectations, didn’t they? Man I wonder if that will make it’s way into a M+ season in the future…
Yeah I do think part of it is relative difficulty, but I also think part of it is just that even if the timer is a bit more forgiving, longer dungeons have more opportunities to mess up and wipe, and I find that most people in pugs are more inclined to leave if anything goes wrong early in longer dungeons because gambling on the timer after that point is such a larger investment.
For me specifically though, Halls might be the most painful grindy experience I’ve had in a while, specifically in trying to get a Hunger of the Pack. You have one of the longest dungeons on top of the sheer amount of loot in the pool, and I say this as someone who didn’t start gearing feral until after I had already timed a 20 halls as resto (I didn’t have to fly out every time).
It absolutely is not the same time setting up. Even at the +22 and higher level you get so many more good applicants for SMBG, COS, and even RLP. People running for score will avoid the long timers on tough weeks since you only have so much time to run. I’ve sat in queue as a lone DPS with a 22 HOV for 10 minutes before anyone decent (meaning they had at least timed it on a 20) even applied.
Interesting. I’ve found that while, yeah, I have more applicants for SBG/COS, the overall quality of applicant is the same/less. Of course you don’t really need to be picky in those dungeons so yeah it’s 100% easier/quicker to fill, but I don’t think he was saying that it is equal across the board, rather it should be.
I guess what I’m asking here is, does this have to do with the long timer, or the difficulty of the dungeon. If Halls was much easier, do you think people would still avoid it even though it’s longer?
Like I said, I didn’t actually notice the timer on HoV was longer… like at all. This conversation is the first time I’ve thought of it. I did notice the difficulty difference though. My group got through it a bit earlier than others (Vaults was our holdout), but it was for sure on the harder scale.
There may be something to this, especially in DF Season 1 where there is so much emphasis on “perfect play” (ie, you make a mistake, you die, timer is tight, key is now dead… /sadface).
It doesn’t really change my preference, but I understand your perspective a bit better.
Out of curiosity, is there a list of what the key timers are for every dungeon? Some very quick googling has let me down. I’m wondering what the differences actually are.
