https://www.wowhead.com/zones/instances/dungeons
I’d have to say The Underbog. It’s just really good nostalgia for me. The zone is full of life and has really good character. The environmental storytelling is on point. I like the story of the trapped Druids. The final boss yoinking you all around was fun too
Pure nostalgia wise…weird choice I know, but Wailing Caverns and RF Kraul. I remember running those with the loose bunch of friends I was playing with when I first started playing.
Mechanics/story wise…I’mma have to get back to you.
Black rock depths. Love the lore aesthetics how huge and maze like it is Love how many things are in there like the prison with prisoners in it the arena a bar to hang out it this place has everything!
The three Well of Eternity dungeons from Cata.
Old scholomance and Stratholme, i’m a sucker for scourge themed dungeons.
Ugh I miss old Scholomance so much… When I found out they were changing it I was like NOOOOOO! Even though the new one isn’t by any means bad all I can think of when I see that dungeon is
(I miss old Scholomance.) Had one of my best favorite dungeon memories there =(
I think it will always be Dire Maul.
I started going there as I neared 60 for the first time in Vanilla for the requisite blue items that I needed for pre-raid gear.
I was doing all of what we called “the blue dungeons” back then for said pre-raid gear (Stratholme/Scholomance/BRS/BRD, etc). Of all of them, Dire Maul was my favorite.
The sheer scale of it – you could spend literally all day in DM – and the color palette that was so soothing…it was magical. There were SO MANY quests from SO MANY different places that came through long chains that terminated in Dire Maul. The stories were huge. The loot was something everyone wanted. There were many layers to it with getting keys and turning in rep items and farming raid buff food, etc.
Dire Maul was awesome in its time, and dungeons just aren’t like that anymore. I still love WoW dungeons, but they haven’t been the same since BC came out and they became simple speed loot factories. There’s no real story and substance to them anymore; not on that scale, anyway.
Funny enough, I was gonna say the Underbog too. Something about it was just perfect - ambiance, open feeling, amount of trash, not hideously long by BC standards.
Since I feel obligated to choose another one now… Shadow Labyrinth was really fun as a priest with all the Mind Control cc we got to do, and that crazy ogre boss. Really miss dungeons/gimmicks like that.
I got my first epic item in Scholomance. Alanna’s Embrace. It was a super rare purple drop off of the lich boss, Ras Frostwhisper. I never saw another one drop for anyone in there, and I did that dungeon at LEAST 50 times in Vanilla.
Blackrock Depths
Still Legion Karazhan. Ataldazar probably second.
I think it’s Eye of Azshara. I personally really like the sea/beach aesthetic. I always enjoyed getting that one when running keys.
Sunken Temple. Ive thought about this. I HATE sunken temple. But those stupid ‘puzzles’. Its so different to wow and fosters coordination and discussion.
Second place goes to Shadow labs for those amazingly stupid pulls with all stuns going out and still needing a kite class just to get to the most fun and silly dungeon boss encounter.
Third place: UBRS. It always felt genuinely epic.
Cataclysm Deadmines for nostalgia. Love that dungeon, love what they did to it with the rework and loved the (Heroic) VanCleef encounter.
Arcway for mechanics. That dungeon was ridiculously fun to do as a Warlock, between killing everyones frames on the first pack with Soul Flame, enslaving the Demon for a perma-lust and all the Haste buffs on the Robot boss.
Honourable mention for Iron Docks, purely for the line, “that’s what I do, I think good”, which I quote daily.
There are a lot of good ones to choose from. I’d probably list it as my favorite per expansion.
Classic: Scarlet Monastery…at least all of it except GY. I like the whole bastion of paladins in the middle of a dying land type vibe I get from it. It also explores the Scarlet Crusade, which has always been a cool faction to me. Plus the final Cathedral set piece is beautiful in its own low res way.
BC: Magisters’ Terrace. I love the blood elf aesthetic and this place is the peak of that. BC didn’t really have a clear central story, so as a blood elf paladin player at the time, the whole story of the blood elves being betrayed by their prince, forgiven by the naruu, accepting the Light, and then finally confronting their price a second time at their ancestral home really resonated with me and made me a belf stan for the longest time. This dungeon was not only fun and interesting (being a mini-TK in a couple ways), but was the perfect piece to end my player story in BC leading up to the Sunwell.
WotLK: Forge of Souls. I love the mini-storyline we got through the three dungeons. I wish we would get more of that. It was a tough choice between this and Halls of Reflection as the escape scene from the Lich King is unique, fun, and thrilling, but Forge of Souls gets my vote as it was the first time many saw the inside of the Lich King’s fortress and it did a really good job of providing us a sinister and foreboding start through our journey into the citadel.
Cata: Deadmines. I didn’t really like the cata dungeons, but the redesigns of the classic dungeons were neat. I think some of the cata dungeons had a really cool design to them. Tolvir, Vortex Pinnacle, Stonecore, and so on were a visual feast, and many of the bosses were…interesting, however playing with randoms at the time is such a horrible memory to me and was the cause of me to fall out of love with this game for a long time.
MoP: Uh…Temple of the Jade Serpent. Nice aesthetic which is something most of the MoP dungeons had. I don’t really have any attachments to any of the dungeons as I came back when SoO dropped and all of the dungeons were old content by then. A real shame as they all seemed interesting…except the mantid ones.
WoD: There are a lot of dungeons I love from WoD, but Grimrail Depot is my favorite for the sole reason it takes place on a train. Cool set piece and mechanics that go along with that. This is seriously a hard choice though. I may seem a little crazy for saying this, but many of the dungeons in WoD are some of the best in the entire game.
Legion: A lot of good dungeons to choose from here, but my pick goes to Black Rook Hold. Love the gothic kal’dorei look though admittedly the end of the dungeon is a bit of a sour spot. Overall I would say Legion is right behind WoD in terms of dungeons (in a few cases at any rate), however I might be a little biased in my views as I’m still a little tired of running a select few Legion dungeons.
BFA: Honestly…I don’t really like any of them all too much. Waycrest Manor is my favorite as it continues the Drustvar story (which is the best in the expansion imo) but dungeons in this expansion felt really cramped and the design with M+ in mind is pretty apparent and not in a good way. It seems like they were trying to avoid another Maw of Souls situation, so while we have cool set pieces and fairly interesting bosses, it just feels like they placed far too much trash in each room. I can’t help but feel exhausted after each run, something I haven’t felt since Cata’s dungeons.
I think mine has to be dead side Stratholme.
Must have run that daily for a year. I could run that one all day every day.
lol this is a lie! no one enjoyed that dungeon! haha j/k it was ok
This is the one TRUE king… lol BRD was my jam back in the day…
Vortex Pinnacle and Halls of Reflection, Halls for the aesthetics and cool factor of being chased down by the Lich King and Vortex because I really love the the last boss and the Dragon boss where you stand with the wind at your back and get a massive haste boost. Lots of fun as a Warlock back in the day.
Grimrail Depot.
Nothing like a good old fashioned train heist.
One of the greatest tragedies of WoD is that it has scared Blizzard away from ever attempting anything like that again, as well as soft-banning time travel in World of Warcraft.
I only very recently realized that the Suramar and the Nightwell was simply Blizzard skirting around their own restrictions and giving us Ancient Kalimdor without resorting to time travel - an ancient highborne kingdom with a powerful sorcress queen making a deal with a Legion of demons and there being an outground resistance against her. It’s all straight out of the past but without using time travel.
My one hope, as vain as it may be, is Blizzard finds a way to pull off that same trick but with the Warcraft II kingdoms. I’m hoping against hope that we get a time skip that jumps ahead far enough for many of the long-lost human kingdoms return. Dalaran returns to the Alterac Mountains. Lordaeron restored to former glory. Even the kingdom of Arathor restored to greatness.
Anyways, on topic, Return to Karazhan is probably a clear #1, with Magister’s Terrace as my personal #2. Return to Karazhan is in its own tier - if the best dungeons in the game are S tier, Return to Karazhan is probably S++ tier. Nothing can stop. Nothing else needs to be said.
By comparison, Magister’s Terrace is a firm S sitting among a number of other instances and while it is personally my number two I don’t think it’s so much better that other instances couldn’t arguably top it. For a dungeon of its time Magister’s Terrace it did some really novel things, it looks beautiful, it had a lore-important boss but it didn’t drown you in RP like some of the WOTLK lore dungeons did. I just really like it a lot. And you get a white chocobo which was pretty novel at the time - nowadays anyone can ride basically any other mount but back in the day a race getting a mount from another race was a rare sight.