You know what really grinds my gears in Warcraft retail? Tanks who think they’re too good for dungeon content! Seriously, what’s the rush, folks? We’re here to explore, to conquer, to savor the challenges of these dungeons, not to blitz through them like they’re some sort of speedrun record attempt.
I get it, efficiency is important. But come on, is skipping half the dungeon really necessary? What happened to the joy of discovery, the thrill of facing every boss and overcoming every obstacle? It feels like some tanks are more interested in loot drops or completing a quest than actually enjoying the journey through the dungeon.
And don’t even get me started on the lack of communication! It’s like some tanks have forgotten that there are other players in the group who might actually want to experience the content. How hard is it to ask, “Hey, folks, are we speedrunning this or taking our time?” That simple question could make all the difference in ensuring everyone has a good time.
Look, I’m all for efficiency and getting things done, but not at the expense of fun and camaraderie. Warcraft dungeons are meant to be experienced, not just rushed through like some chore on a to-do list. So next time you queue up as a tank, think about the players who want to enjoy the journey, not just the destination. Let’s bring back the thrill of dungeon crawling and leave the shortcutting behind!
Your premise we are here to explore, conquer, and savor the challenges of these dungeons is HIGHLY flawed. I’ve done explored most of these dungeons years (some even decades) ago and quite literally for some, hundreds of time.
Normal dungeons also have NO actual challenge and deserve absolutely no feeling of praise or satisfaction in completing. They are there to be efficient XP chunks combined with dungeon quests that compete and supercede leveling traditionally. At best they are practice playing classes/specs in trivial content.
Also I’m not your friend. You’re a glorified NPC to me. I almost certainly won’t see you again or even remember if I do. Don’t take that to mean I dislike you…I’m just completely indifferent to your existence and if I’m in queue content, you can be 100% sure I’m just there to get the job done and over with.
It bothers me when it’s arbitrary skipping for the sake of skipping.
Like I had a tank hard stop in a dungeon and with like a minute for a patrol to go by and then skirt the edge of their aggro to do a skip. Bruh we could have blown them up in 20 seconds and moved on.
Like there is a time and a place for skips, and I’m sure in high end content like M+ and what not there are some critical time saving ones.
But at this point in the xpac, just blow through stuff. I’m lvl 68 and have 2 more bars to go, I could use the XP >.>
Skips that require communication to succeed and are punishing if failed to execute properly are NOT my jam in any kind of pug. They often smack of “hey I just watched MDI and aren’t I so clever?” Looking at you two-bear skip in Darkheart Thicket.
My wife and I recently returned to WoW about a month ago and I haven’t done any of the BOA, SL, or DF dungeons. We aren’t greenhorns by any stretch but we respect the content when we aren’t familiar with it. We’ve played since vanilla off and on.
The experience was extremely conflicting:
On one hand the dungeons you know very well you end up with people who have no clue what to do, get lost at every turn even in a linear dungeon, and die on every trivial mechanic and on the other you end up with people who have ran that dungeon 100s of times across dozens of characters who just want to get in and out.
If your the tank and you know the dungeon your getting asked to slow down even when you know the group even with its mixed comp can handle the pace your moving while at the same time if you take your foot off the gas and the needle drops blow ludacris speed you also get people complaining to pull bigger and in most cases they pull for you which causes other issues.
This experience continues all the way up to M+ where suddenly as a player your:
Expected to know the dungeon.
Know and execute the mechanics.
Run it at a beatneck speed to meet the timers imposed by the dungeon.
Then when people complain that they aren’t being given the opportunity to learn the dungeons as a result of the recent changes…
“Just learn in +2 get gud”.
But when they jump into the +2 explain they don’t know the mechanics and then you wipe 2-3 times on a boss…
People leave and complain you don’t know how to play.
I don’t consider myself casual and I don’t consider myself hardcore I consider myself mid-core. In the 3 weeks at the end of last season we actually did M+, we managed to both get 2k io.
I feel real bad for new players and/or casual players in the current environment.
If the goal is to make them feel included and welcome the current trends and changes are not it. If Blizzard wants to continue to see those subscription numbers rebound they better realize the answer isn’t to swing the pendulum back around in the direction they came from that drove those numbers down in the past.
Unless half the group wants to take their time and the other half wants to speed-run. Not everyone enjoys playing the same way and if the tank wants to speed run it but you don’t then one of you isn’t getting what you want. If you want to ensure that the tank is always going at your preferred pace then you need to be the tank
It’s a side effect of the new game loop paradigm. Tanks are self sufficient and don’t need the group to survive. So they behave like they are self sufficient and don’t need the group to survive.
I’m pretty tired of people who think it’s their moral obligation to do whatever it takes to make the run a full clear. I see the last person pulling up the rear, look away for a second, and they’re taking a shortcut through a pack of mobs or aggroing something that should NEVER be aggroed.
I just got out of an Uldaman where I discovered while tanking the last boss that the rogue had me on follow.
The other-side of that coin is tanks who rely on healers for health - which means healers don’t get GCDs to heal DPS who fail mechanics. While I like that general principle I’m willing to bet the 60% of the game population that is DPS would either start blaming the healer, the tank, or complain it’s too hard to do content.
That’s sorta what you sign up for when you decide you want to tank. It’s not all perfect M20 groups and ice cream. Especially if you pug. Sometimes your going to get good groups and sometimes you are the short bus driver just trying to get to the next bus stop.
When I started writing this post, aside than mine, you have one like.
This guy just dehumanized everyone he’s ever run dungeons with and, when I started writing this post, he has five likes.
If you read the posts on this board, you will find the majority of players, posting here at least, aren’t about the journey, and the fun and camaraderie to be had along the way, they are about completion and rewards (which is why they find the game so unfulfilling and are here constantly complaining about it, but I digress).
This is why I play completely solo. Besides the fact that I don’t want to play with people who don’t even see me as human, I can take my time, sightsee, explore, enjoy the ambiance, appreciate the theming, do quests, figure out the tricks of getting to/activating/killing bosses on my own and just have a great time experiencing everything.
I soloed the Legion raid The Nighthold for the first time yesterday and was in there for close to two hours. It was so worth it.
Would it be more fun to do it with like-minded folks?
Of course. But they appear to be thin on the ground in WoW.
