f13.net

So, um, What are they gonna do with it ?

As a level 60 instance it is currently completely and utterly pointless.

Anyone any news or ideas ?  Personally, I see it getting divided up and nerfed to a winged 10 man instance.

I see it collapsing and being only referred to the same way as one refers to a removed cancer.

Honestly, they have a half hour of art assets, maybe a minute of voice acting and while Ragnaros is cool the rest of the instance to be honest, sucks balls.  Seal it off to save future generations.

Yeah, very little of the content in there has merit, unfortunately. I see it as Level 60 Twink Instance!

Turn it into some sort of giant PVP battleground.  Or just seal it off like Shav said.  I hate that fucking place.

I'm not much of a WoW expert, but won't that zone still be useful to the many that don't purchase the expansion? 

Just a thought.

That's assuming enough people don't buy the expansion to run the instance.

I mean, with 3 people you're gonna be hard pressed to get that far.

Yeah, it's a bit too early in the game's life for nostalgic people to form "Old School" guilds which refuse to participate in any expansions.  There were a few of those in EQ that liked to pretend Luclin never happened, they were funny.

The expansion is too goddamned good to not get.

I may have made some bad assumptions: 

1) Many WoW players are under the age of 18.  They may not be able to purchase the expansion for some time.

2) A bulk of WoW subscriptions aren't in the US.  Availability and cost may limit sales in the east leaving many in the older zones.

3) New players playing the 1-60 game for the first time. 

I know that there are still people in many MMOG's playing the original zones.  Yes, they are a minority... but they're out there.  Admittedly, I don't know mych about WoW past level 35... so I openly proclaim my ignorance.

 

Thing is ... why? Why would you want to spend ANY time in Molten Bore as a level 60 [even as a fresh level 60], and do the following:
- find 39+ other people in the same boat as you
- get attuned to the instance, and other lv60 raid instances like onyxia and bwl
- run some 5-man instances over and over for fire resistance gear, spend a lot of gold getting FR gear crafted

in order to:
- "learn" the instance over the course of 3+ months, wiping many many times (a typical full MC run takes 5 hours when you have most of it on farm status)
- outfit your raid with said FR gear with the drops you get during this time
- eventually 'clear' MC

and you'd end up with
- some level 60 epics that are surpassed by level 58 greens from outland
- a whole lot of wasted time in one of the most mind-numbing instances of the game

when you could be
- levelling up to 70 easily
- getting a lot better loot on the way, and experiencing a LOT of varied and interesting content
- doing dungeons at 70 that are shorter, a hell of a lot more interesting than MC, and don't require a 40-man raid group


Soo... no, I don't see anyone doing MC anytime soon, unless it's for retro reasons or a crazy 'no-expansion' guild. :p


-- Z.

Take it as read that No-one will ever do MC again as it stands.

It is a totally fucking pointless exercise in futility.


Seriously.

They're going to leave it there to fester, unused.  Perhaps in a few years they'll revisit it the same way EQ went back to revisit their old, unused zones.  For the time being, it's there for folks who want to see it just to see it at 70, with far fewer people.  The same with BWL and Naxx.   Doing it AT 60 is absolutly pointless, as outlands quests and green drops are far better starting at level 58, rather than 60.

Doing it at 70 also means no "gearing up" phase.  FR gear from greens is far, far better than any MC shit or even BWL stuff if you want to even bother with it.   As for 5-hours, my guild got it down to 3 1/2 once wearing only MCgear and a few pieces off Razorgore, but everyone was focused and wanted to get done quick.   

I imagine you'll be able to run MC as fast as UBRS with 20 level 70s.  (Some of the blues the 68/70 people in my guild are finding are letting warriors do things like white-crits for 2k damage.  There's a 93.6 dps axe out there with 3 red sockets that's a quest drop.  :-o)


Just a few bad assumptions. 

1)  Surveys have shown that the 15-20 demographic actually has MORE free cash than older people.  That's why so many prodcuts cater to them.  When you're living off mom and dad, all (or at the very least the bulk) of your income is spending cash.  If anyone's hard-pressed it's the college or newly-graduated kids, or the folks who probably shouldn't be paying a monthly MMO sub in the first place.

2) Maybe, but their subs are broken-down into those same worldwide zones.  If one guy in Asia is having a problem getting the expansion, all of Asia would be having that problem.  The same for the US and Europe and in the US, at least, there haven't been any complaints about lack of availability.

3) Unless they want to play one of the two new races, you're correct, there's no reason for them to get it.  Though I expect we'll see a WOW "Battle Chest" in 3-6 months with the old game and the expansion. (Granted, that doesn't help current new players.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see them put in instance scaling for the older instances. They are doing this with all the outland instances, and I bet they end up doing it for a bunch of the normal ones. For now I think it will fester unused, and I cant say im sad. Just seeing red caves makes me stabby.

I would think they will make Nax scale since only about 10% of players (if that many) have seen it, with maybe 1% getting near to the end. The place is huge, and filled with really cool shit, it would be a shame for more people not to get to experience it. Its like Scholo + Strat + crack. I know I would like to see the end.

Turn it into a continuation of the "bombing run" quests in Hellfire Penninsula.  I'd pay gold to toss napalm on that place.

He's the thing Nebu,

1. It's a lvl 60 raid instance.  That means you're going to need to get 39 other folks to do it (well more, attendance is never 100%, especially for learning an instance).  40-60 folks with high end aspirations that DIDN'T buy the expansion.  :-o

2. It's the worst raid instance they've done.  It's horrible, it's boring, and the gear you get out of it is superceeded by drop and quest greens in the expansion.  Quest blues and some greens even outpace tier 2 and outdoor world boss drops.  The expansion loot variety is just fantastic, the loot variety in MC is rather poor and limited in comparison.

3. The learning curve for MC can be long which exacerbates the above.

4.  Removing MC from the overall experience doesn't completely ruin raiding options for non-expansion folk.  You can do ZG and AQ20 in poor gear and they're 20 man encounters, which will be easier to field for non-expansion refugees.

The experience of MC is best removed from the game.  New players or those not purchasing the expansion will be better off from not playing it. It's not a worthwhile experience.

And from observation, there's not many folks that didn't purchase this expansion.. at least in the US.  I'd imagine they're rolling this out to every territory they're in as fast as humanly possible. 

You guys are right... I just read this and got to wondering what would happen to all the people that don't have the expansion.  With 8 million subs, you have to think there are at least a million without the expansion.  That's a lot of people... granted, not on the same servers or time schedule.

I've been wondering the same for all the level 60 instances.

MAYBE the endgame 10-mans (*BRS, DM, Scholo, Strath) will be doable by a tight group of 55+.  I know that it was next to impossible to get into one of those groups at less than 60 before, but now, what's the point when you're 60 of doing not heading directly for Outland?

However, it seems to me that none of the pre-expansion raid dungeons will be worth it.  AQ20/ZG/BWL/MC all have inferior equipment and not super fun boss fights.  As everyone has been saying, MC in particular was amateur hour, with designers fresh from the EQ1 school of "how to punish the crap out of your playerbase".

I guess all these will eventually be itemized on heroic mode for 70s, and then they might see some life again.  Hopefully they do something interesting with them versus the "more bad guys" school of design.

Personally I hope they stay exactly the way they are for a good long time for several reasons.  First off, the 'I haven't done them' reason.  Never got into raiding in WoW, too many idiots.  Each time I tried I looked fondly at my EQ guild that, in comparison with any WoW guild I've been in, looks like it's composed of mensa candidates.  So I want to experience all of the content in those instances.  Furthest I've ever gotten is a couple practice runs without actually defeating anything.

Second, I think some of those armor sets are still the best looking in the game.  Bloodfang looks better in my opinion than any of the higher tier Rogue sets.  Felheart and Nemesis are both awesome (though the new Corruptor is better looking, they still have their place), Netherwind and Frostfire are both sweet, and so on.  I may not wear them for combat, but I want to -have- them.

Finally, if I can gather a small group of friends (5-10) once we're 70 with decent equipment and go through these instances, I want to at least once or twice.  Back in EQ, that was one of the things that made the game great fun.  Soloing or grouping the bosses of the old days.  Taking down the Avatar of War or Lord Inquisitor Seru with 5 people, or doing a full Vex Thal run with the same.  For some people, doing these sorts of old things with just a few people is much more fun than doing 'current' content.  Granted, level limits on ALL items in WoW make this annoying - in EQ, it was fun to do this to get twink gear for our lowbies - but that just means less reason to do it over and over.  Doing it once or twice for the challenge and to perfect the strategy is still something I want to do.

Thank you.  Damn I kept thinking I was the onlyone who felt this way. Paladin T2 is the only exception to this, but in all I think the T1 sets ALL looked better than t2+ (and look better than t4 and t5 in kind.)   I've vendored all my DS pieces except the pants (can't beat 'em+ the zg enchant yet) but kept the GS just because it looks fantastic.

MC is certainly destined for either the festering neglect scrap-heap or a redesign. It's a horrible instance.

But I also can't see the relevance of the lead up instances either - UBRS, Strat, Scholo. Tier 0 gear is pointless given the new stuff in BC. UBRS and Strat might get run just out of nostalgia/to see them as they're pretty good, but noone will run Scholo now IMO - it's a rotten time-cosuming trash mob nightmare. And without scaling it will not be doable by a group of 55 - 57's. So why bother?

For example - you can run UBRS 2 - 10 times to get the Shadowcraft tunic of Drak (tier 0 rogue gear) (with 9 other people):

Shadowcraft Tunic
176 armor
+26 Agi
+13 Stam
+12 Spi
Req. Lvl. 58


Or you can do a easily soloable/duoable quest at the same level and get (with about 30 minutes effort):

Jerkin of the Untamed Spirit
425 Armor
+23 Str
+22 Agi
+22 Stam

From what i've seen that's pretty typical too. I'm sure a re-work of the old instances isn't very far away...

MC sucks if for nothing else than the fact you had to wander out of your way into a cave completely off the beaten path, kill well over 25 major elite mobs, a couple dozen imps, and take 20-25 minutes if you're good at the place in decent gear, just to see the FIRST BOSS!

In BWL you walk into the place and you're staring at a boss. In AQ40, you pull 5 mobs and you can see the first boss. In Naxx, you clear one room of spiders and you get to the boss room. Those are well designed raiding instances in that capacity. They don't cruelly punish you with worthless mobs at the very beginning, absolutely crushing your soul with respawn rates that make you cry for mercy in your pathetic blue gear when you started.

Well, yes. 

You guys rehash a lot of stuff we already know.  :)

The question is, what's going to happen with it ?

As far as the other instances go (all of them) they're either fun, easy, or questable.

MC is the only one that's none of the above.

The short answer is that nobody knows or can even venture a solid guess.

The smart money would be on nothing, because that's going to be considered "useless" content to upgrade. Remember all those magical level 20-50 instances they've added to the games since release?

PS - If you can't remember, you win. They don't exist.

Except Maraudon.  :-P

But yeah - BWL+ could be rewritten (relatively) easily as Heroic raid dungeons if Blizzard were so inclined. MC would need a lot more work.

MC will be where level 70 Rogues and Druids with mining go for quick grabs at large amounts of dark iron ore.

BWL and ZG had some cool boss fights. They essentially reused a lot of those for the new 5-man instances. As for the raid sets looking awesome (I agree), those graphics are used on quite a number of the non-set armor found in the level 70ish instances like Caverns of Time, Shattered Halls, and the like - albeit with different color (blue and black for Bloodfang, etc) and some look better than others.

Why ?

What the hell for ??

Player housing is MC's only answer. It's true, it's true.

Jewlcrafting maybe? Hell if i know.

Nope, can't even Prospect Dark Iron ore. It's completly worthless now.

"Skull" bosses are going to scale according to the highest level person in the group:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=70809126&pageNo=1&sid=1#3 (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=70809126&pageNo=1&sid=1#3)
So the trash will be easier, but the bosses will be just as hard. Add to the fact that you get diminishing returns and that t3 that you used to farm in doesn't protect you as much at level 65.

They scale but the overall damage they do dosen't.

Or they could buy some level 58 greens off of the AH if they want better gear.

New blue clarification on scaling bosses:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=70809126&pageNo=6&sid=1#106

Yeah people were making wild speculations about all this in my raiding alliance, so I'm glad to have a concrete link now to prove they are all off their nut about the boss scaling HPs and damage.

hmm i never liked raiding much in WoW i quit because of it. The thing is, like someone said the availability problem in some foreign countries (like mine) is preventing me from getting it. Even if it's available the price is kinda high for an expansion (It costs 25% more than the original WoW) so I'm gonna wait a while.

On the mean time I'll just leave my 60 Hunter alone and play a new warlock till 60 without worrying about stupid raids and reaching a green-gear cap status quickly. Money's so easy to get for alts nowadays that I finally can just have some fun trying new stuff without going 'hardcore' on crafting or harvesting just to make ends meet, and lastly no need to plan for raids anymore since I know the greens I could get from soloing would be better. :)

As what will happen to these old instances? Probably left behind for those sadists or beginners who want to know what is it about....Blizzard must be kidding if they even hint about touching these stuff. It's not even worth the effort to unlock. :P I know I won't. fuck VC. Sunken Temple. Maraudon. Let me just explore and do solo quests.

I think I'm the only person who loves Sunken Temple.

nope

Sunken Temple seems to be one of those instances people either love or hate, no in between at all.  A friend I've played with on Horde side ran it all the time with people, long after anyone really needed to go to it, a friend I play my Alliance character with loathes it and tried to warn me off. 

The one instance I have never heard anyone like is Gnomeregon.  I had one aborted attempt to run it once, and it did leave a bad impression.  Of course, it was with a PUG of idiots, so who knows. 

My problem with Gnomeragon is being too big and the damnable alarms.

Sunken Temple is okay, I suppose, but I find it rather boring.

Yes, Gnomergon is too much of a time commitment for people who are still in the leveling mode. 5 man instances should never take more than one hour at the appopriate level range, unless you are a bunch of wiping idiots. However, some are designed so that even the best groups cannot meet these time goals, and Gnomergon is one of them. Also, back during the time of launch when many people had to wander in there, the pathing on the mobs was horrible. Piss one off down low, and it would run all the way around the back of the instance chaining every mob on the way up to you. This would lead to the inevitable wipe and the horribly long run, possibly through a few respawns, just to get back to your corpses lay.

Sunken Temple suffers from a similar problem. You have to go the ass-end way around everything to open up rooms that you can get to in about 10 minutes if you weren't having to open portals and other BS. It's the whole idea of forced cockblocks during leveling that pisses people off, and they tried their best in the expansion not to pull that kind of crap anymore until the top. People will avoid hard instances during leveling because there is always something better to do with your time. At the top, it works better because there really isn't anything better to do with your time than to try and unlock new zones. Thus, you get things like the Onyxia and Mt. Hyjal attunement quest lines, finding various keys to open various dungeons, and the rep grinds to get into heroic modes.

I thought it was fun, but I only ever ran it once, and I was probably overlevelled (the last boss was green to me, and the quests I think were gray).  I was in a bizarre PUG, and we didn't have a healer or a tank (our group was something like mage-rogue-rogue-hunter-warlock(me)), so it was one of the more unique runs I've done.  That, coupled with the atmosphere (and probably the fact that nothing in the instance was really a threat to us) has always made me think of Gnomeregan as a fairly fun, unique instance.

The All-Cloth Five tried to run it at the appropriate level, and had to call it because of time. (Lock, Lock, Mage, Mage, Priest -- who needs a stinkin' tank?). We did beat Blackfathom Deeps at roughly the appropriate level, and we were doing fine about 1/2 through Gnomer.

There is that backdoor route that lets you bypass a lot of trash, though.

I tried Gnomer once, with my first toon, and subsequently decided to permanently boycott that hellhole.  It's just so... blah.

I do actually enjoy Sunken Temple for some reason, I like the art/atmosphere and the layout.

I found Gnomer to be way too busy.  After an entire evening spent in there (and it does take that long when you are of the right level) I had a headache from it.

I will forever love Gnomer just because of Hydrocane...

I liked Sunken Temple for the same reason I liked Shadowfang Keep, Undead Stratholme, and (to a far lesser extent) the Stockades. They feel like real places... not just carved rooms and passages. The architecture is meaningful and tightly arranged. Everything has a purpose.

Shadowfang does it the best, it feels like a walking-tour haunted house. The courtyard, the banquet hall, the ramparts, the tower.

Compare that to the arbitrary room layout of the Scarlet Monestary. Yugh.

If they put as much thought into All the Instances as they did for SFK, I'd be a happy man.  Aweseome place.

Gnomeregan! How I loathe thee!

No, it's not that its a bad instance per se. Being an engineer, I liked the specific things in there just for me.

Every week or so, I probably do 1-3 Gnomeregan runs. I go through the back door and solo all the way to Thermaplugg. Kill him and loot. To this day, probably done it about 100 times. And have NOT SEEN THE FIRE DEFLECTOR SCHEMATIC DROP ONCE!

Thottbot says it's just a low drop rate. It's the only non-raid pre-BC engineering schematic I don't have.

Fun stuff in Gnomeregan:

Techbot and his customer service sayings
The Sparkle-matics and cleaning stuff
The CROWD PUMMELER!
Thermaplugg and all his sayings: "Explosions, I need more Explosions!", "GNOMEREGAN IS MINE!"

I remember when the Arcane Robots in there reflected hunter shots, like Aimed Shot and Arcane Shot. And when the mines the Dark Iron Dwarves dropped did 200 damage when they exploded.

Worst/Funniest thing I ever did:

I used the engineered Remote Control to run a robot off a cliff. It survived and brought the whole zone back on my group. At the time, I had no idea why that happened.

I have two of the reflectors -- one dropped in BRD, the other in Live Strat. I didn't know one dropped in Gnomer. I go there to get mats for repair bots.

You never saw the flame reflector drop there because it drops off of Solkar Flamewreath in BRD.

Oooh, burn!  If only you had that reflector....

Not talking about the Flame REFLECTOR. I'm looking for the schematic for the Flame DEFLECTOR.

The reflector sends it back at whoever shot it at you. The deflector simply absorbs it.

I have all 3 Reflectors.

I have the Ice Deflector, but not the Flame Deflector. Stupid Thermaplugg.

And the flame reflector schematic drops in UBRS anyway (Solakar is the boss of the 'father flame' event), not BRD. :p

My [and my guild's] least-favorite-dungeon has to be Uldaman. Bad memories of doing it sometime in early 2005, and wiping at the last boss over and over and over for hours, having to reclear the trash in the dungeon TWICE because of fast respawns [and geez, there's a lot of trash].
This was before they nerfed the encounter and removed a lot of the spawns, mind. Uldaman is serious business.


-- Z.

nah, uldaman is messed up because the last boss is over-leveled for the instance.

Its like 2 levels higher then everything else in the place, so when you go in with an appropriate level party, he hands you your asses cause all you get is glancing blows and resists.

the thing that always buggged me about uldaman was the stupid neclkace quest that requires you to run the place like 4 times to finish the thing