5-man raidlike progression.

[Chenghiz]

Call me crazy, but I think that introducing a 5-man instance progression alongside the new 25-man raids would be a worthy and interesting addition to the PVE endgame. Currently people who don't raid have a bit of a progression, from level 61-69 to 70 nonheroic to heroic 5-man dungeons, but at heroic 5-man dungeons the game effectively stops for them unless they participate in large-scale raids. Adding long 5-man instances that go alongside things like Serpentshrine Cavern and Black Temple could allow people who don't want to poopsock to experience the story content that continues after the casual has quit or resorted to pvp and farming/grinding.

I don't know about you but the fact is pretty annoying and quite frankly downright wierd that there are now four 25-man raids with end bosses that have pretty large significance in the lore of WoW that I and the casual WoW player will probably never see.

[caladein]

Probably the easiest way to go about this (without adding a lot more 5-man dungeons) is to upgrade the loot tables in the level 70 Heroics (Shattered Halls, Sethekk Halls, Shadow Lab, Black Morass, Steamvaults, and all of Tempest Keep) to epics (iLvl 95-100, Kara-equivalent). Currently in these instances, every boss outside of the last has the same exact drop table as they do in normal. Outside of Mechanar or Shattered Halls (which adds a boss in Heroic)... there's no reason to even go there. You could even make them drop two badges/boss similar to how bosses in Sethekk/SL drop two Spirit Shards when you have the towers.

It would create a decent progression of: 60-68 instances -> 70 instances -> 60-68 instances on Heroic -> 70 instances on Heroic.

The only question is: how to balance these instances without requiring the ideal 5-man group for each, which is nearly the case in Heroic Underbog for example. If the changes they're making to Heroics in the upcoming patch actually tune these to some consistent level, maybe then we talk about a Dungeon Progression, right now, Heroics are all over the place in terms of difficulty.

[Fabricated]

I'd just like to see some more 10-mans myself. You sure as shit aren't pugging Heroics right now until the casual/unguilded players get mostly outfitted in level 70 blues, and 10-man raids are a good excuse to cram a shitload of loot and content into an instance.

Who knows, maybe it'll happen. There's a LOT of old-world areas where instanced content can be added. I have no idea if Blizz is saving that stuff for the next expansion though. Like, in the old world alone theres:

-1 or 2 more unopened gated in the Caverns of Time.
-Uldum (I really want this one. Uldaman's lore was some cool shit.)
-Grim Batol
-Current-Time Hyjal
-About 6-8 unfilled map areas between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms alone.
-The Maelstrom.
-The "Slam", the Max Security prison in the center of SW.

And that's all I can remember. There's more but I can't reacall them right now.

[Chenghiz]

The problem with continuing the heroic thing is that the heroic dungeons are essentially just hard versions of the old ones, while Johnny Raider gets a brand-new 25-man dungeon with brand new fights and gets to kill some legendary Warcraft baddie at the end. And yeah, I'd be happy to see them just add more 10-man raids.

[CassandraR]

My dream is that they eventually make all the instances soloable but maybe we could see some of the epic raid content come down to five man groups. Which would definitely be more fun then larger ones.

[MrHat]

It's a good idea.

I feel the implementation of heroics as it stands is a step in the right direction.  They just need to be retuned.  It's actually pretty cool to be fighting a boss you've fought before, but all of a sudden he busts out a new ability.  As Blizzard says, retuning and adding epics to all bosses is going to make these worth doing for me.

Also, they really need to go back and add heroics of the older dungeons.  I'd love to do a heroic SFK.

Oh, and take the lock out timer off Kara already.

[Ironwood]

Level 70 SFK with epic drops.

.
.
.
Fuck Yeah.

[Merusk]

It's a good idea.

I feel the implementation of heroics as it stands is a step in the right direction.  They just need to be retuned.  It's actually pretty cool to be fighting a boss you've fought before, but all of a sudden he busts out a new ability.  As Blizzard says, retuning and adding epics to all bosses is going to make these worth doing for me.

Also, they really need to go back and add heroics of the older dungeons.  I'd love to do a heroic SFK.

Oh, and take the lock out timer off Kara already.

The lockout timer is there for the explicit purpose of tracking boss deaths.  Dump it and you get saddled with a full respawn every time you go into Kara.  Do you REALLY want to sit there for 12-14 hours straight to get through the whole instance? Or - for the majority of us - only ever get to see up to Moroes/ Opera because the MOST you can set-aside in large chunks is 3-4 hours once a week anyway.

[MrHat]

Wasn't it suppose to be winged anyways?

With like a flight path in it too?

[Fabricated]

Wasn't it suppose to be winged anyways?

With like a flight path in it too?

There was supposed to be a flight path and more ways to get back into the instance from various places, but that kinda went by the wayside. I recall a Blizzard dev saying that doing a flightpoint into the instance was "hard".

[Kail]

My dream is that they eventually make all the instances soloable but maybe we could see some of the epic raid content come down to five man groups. Which would definitely be more fun then larger ones.

I'm kind of surprised they didn't do this.  It was probably the biggest, most consistent complaint about WoW I'd heard, the whole "You can solo to sixty, but then suddenly there's nothing to do but raid" thing.  So they reset the equipment gap, polished the hell out of the new grind, and so on, but there's still nothing to do at seventy but raid.

[Merusk]

and PvP.

That's their endgame as it stands, and that's how they're developing it.  BGs, Arenas and PVE Raids.  Oh, and farming and Heroic 5-mans if you REALLY want PvE stuff.  If you're not interested in that, yeah, it's game-over.

There's plenty of ways to get phat epics solo.. most are tradeskill-based atm, all requiring tons of farming.

[Threash]

Wasn't it suppose to be winged anyways?

With like a flight path in it too?

There was supposed to be a flight path and more ways to get back into the instance from various places, but that kinda went by the wayside. I recall a Blizzard dev saying that doing a flightpoint into the instance was "hard".

Why is it hard? its not like it had to be INSIDE the instance.  Make an exit near the top, put a fp there.  You can't fly up to it since its in the world, problem solved.

[SurfD]

The flightpath was just a suggestion tossed around about how to reduce time running back to point x after a wipe / stopping at a certain point.  That was all rendered moot with the back door entrance (your entry point after finishing up past Opera Event) and the Doorman porting you to Aran's room (your fast return point after killing Shade)

I will second the idea that they REALLY should add Uldum as a 10 man raid instance.  They really need more of them.  Call me crazy, but I actually miss the days when Scholo / Ubrs were 10 / 15 man dungeons.  With what their raid team seems to have learned about designing raid content, adding 2 or 3 more 10 man raid dungeons would be really nice.

[Fabricated]

The flightpath was just a suggestion tossed around about how to reduce time running back to point x after a wipe / stopping at a certain point.  That was all rendered moot with the back door entrance (your entry point after finishing up past Opera Event) and the Doorman porting you to Aran's room (your fast return point after killing Shade)

I will second the idea that they REALLY should add Uldum as a 10 man raid instance.  They really need more of them.  Call me crazy, but I actually miss the days when Scholo / Ubrs were 10 / 15 man dungeons.  With what their raid team seems to have learned about designing raid content, adding 2 or 3 more 10 man raid dungeons would be really nice.

That and it'd give really small guilds and people with semi-tight regular pugs (there were a handful of people who ran really well organized ZG/AQ20 pugs. I was in on a lot of smooth clears of ZG/AQ20 because of these guys) things to do. Or the more hardcore places to sidegrade/gear up in while other content is on lockouts (or if they just fucking hate a specific raid).