I don’t know because I’m no game designer. I only know what I consider a good dungeon, and that’s generally having a good theme, good boss fights and no annoying layout or gimmicks.
Only issue with WoW dungeons i have is “skips”.
Multiple paths are great, but when you can skip something, usually by aoe stealth, pixel precise sneaks or pixel precise jumps then it’s usually a recipe for disaster and flaming whenever someone fails cause it screws up for everyone else and time is now lost.
Though funny enough the skips in Azure Vault were actually great. Because they were just optional paths. Either do first part and skip the last or skip the first and do the last. Whatever the group would prefer. Yet that one got nerfed…
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“I don’t like the idea of of forcing me to finish the dungeon so I can finish the dungeon”
Exactly.
So a game designer. It takes a game designer to know.
And if you’re making many dungeons, then it takes many game designers.
But if you don’t have a big budget, then you can’t hire many game designers.
And if you don’t have many game designers, then it becomes difficult to make 8 good dungeons – let alone more.
So you cut some corners, make do with what you have.
And then you get something like The Nokhud Offensive where many corners have been cut.
Individual players may still like it. We all have different preferences.
But from Blizzard’s perspective, what makes a good dungeon, and what purpose you hire a game designer for, is more to make something like The Azure Vault and less to make something like The Nokhud Offensive.
There’s no need to beat around the bush here. In response to the OP, the Dungeons are what they are because it’s what Blizzard were able to make with the resources they had. And they were obviously sparse.
Right… so, I’ve read a lot of comments here and I’m really grateful for so much great debate and feedback.
Disclaimer: I did not actually know about the “Dynamic Flying” staying past Dragonflight. I expected it to be like Azerite and Artifact Power. I am not the biggest fan of it as it feels far too gimmicky to me but if they are going to unlock those talents for everyone, that makes the grinding in Dragonflight to get them rather pointless. Now that I’m 70, I have no intention of going back to the Dragon Isles as I really did not enjoy this expansion personally.
DF has had a “WoD feeling” to me, the story, the zones etc seem designed by A.I. then actual humans and it feels absolutely designed to waste my time, similar to Warlords of Dreanor which ended up being almost wholly irrelevant to the story. Everything is way too clustered together, annoying NPC’s follow you around in some quests and get in the way. The geography is just annoying as well.
I think DF dungeons are symptomatic of WoW’s declining playerbase. The level of quality has gone downhill, the Azure Vault is just a rehash of The Oculus, but less annoying now and The Nokhud Offensive is just a zone turned into an instance, as was mentioned above.
I really hate all the skips because you are NOT playing the dungeon if you do that, Blizzard might as well remove all the mob packs from Dungeons if they are going to bow to player demand for “faster content”.
Dungeons used to feel epic and in some expansions, even mobs pulls were dangerous but it feels that everyone tries to rush through these days and nobody communicates. I can certainly see why legacy players do not want to play Tanks and Healers anymore, the entire party is led by a DPS mindset of “pull, pull, pull”, “faster, faster, faster”.
why
???
dragonflight has the fastest traversing since forever
Blizzard shot themselves in the foot with Mythic dungeons, I think. They are not allowed to experiment with more exotic dungeons these days or the mythics get very upset.
Then what nokhud offensive is if not an exotic dungeon
What I mean with the whole “designed by A.I.” thing. Is that the expansion feels to me, formulaic, like Legion was where you have exactly the right mobs, in the right places, for the right quests. It’s hard to verbalise but it feels artificial, rather then being a living breathing world with its own ecosystem or dynamic people groups.
There really is not much encouragement to do exploring other then the Dragon Glyphs and that’s only if you care about cosmetic alterations for your dragon. The Dragon Isles just does not feel real… The geography of the place feels like it was designed by A.I. to accommodate the new Dragonriding mechanic, with long falls and high mountains.
It just does not feel like a real place, to me.
it feels formulaic because they do the same formula since tbc, it’s not a df’s unique feature, every expac is the same several new zones, dungeons, raids, side content unique for expac that will become irrelevant after expac ends, etc.
Nothing changed.
and what is this supposed to mean.
\
It’s the first decent incentive to explore that i know, oh also flags that give you assassin’s creed style turn around, very cool feature.
Dragon glyphs upgrade your dragonriding, cosmetics are a drop from various activities.
Yes, but BC was better because you have much more room to navigate, the Dragon Isles feels far too small and cluttered. Take the first time you get there at level 60, the path to the first quest hub is blocked by smarms of dragon mobs so you have to run through them constantly after completing the quests at the landing.
I agree the DF dungeons are ALL terrible!
when i first time played wow in WoD and got to the TBC zones i wanted to pluck my eyes off when i realised that i need to navigate this, ehm, terrific zone called hellfire peninsula that is basicaly a big red minecraft flat map with mobs and questgivers planted on it.
Drop chances and quest designs made me want to quit, i did quit btw, came back in legion tho.
tldr i like modern wow level design much better than whatever this thing was pre wotlk
The largest expac zones, bigger than everything that was before
You are literally getting a dragonriding mount on 61, 60 level is introduction
A fair few people seem to agree with me as well, I was surprised because with modern internet discourse, I would have expected for everyone to call me names or something for feeling this way and being disappointed with the quality of DF.
The difference is that in the old days Blizzard had an outside-in design approach, whereas today they do it inside-out.
John Staats wrote a book that goes over the development of the release of World of Warcraft, and it presents the development process quite well.
Blizzard basically just had a bunch of guys make the world of Azeroth and fill it with dungeons and towns and cities and such.
And then afterward the game designers came in and made all the quests and put in all the NPCs and such.
In modern WoW it’s the opposite. Blizzard has the game designers work in close collaboration with the zone artists from the start, so that every area of a zone is made precisely to the needs of the quest that the game designer wants to implement.
That’s why players tend to say that the old world felt more living and breathing. It’s because it was made as a world alone.
The newer continents like the Shadowlands and the Dragon Isles, they’re more theatric in their construction. Everything has a place and a purpose in the theatre that’s unfolding.
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Every expansion, there is a John or Jane who dislikes current expansion and writes on the forums. Wotlk had it, TBC had it. The first Doomsayers arrived late Vanilla with their “TBC will kill WoW prophecy”.
The cycle will continue as always. War within will have its own dislikers…same as midnight and the 3rd saga expansion…whatever it was called(titan…something?)
Except back then, playerbase numbers were strong, not so much these days sadly due to Blizzards own scandals sadly. I remember when Blizzard were a quality-led company, who pulled a Starcraft game because it did not have the level of quality they deemed appropriate for their image.
Would they do that now?
It’s actually really explains much.
I don’t quite understand it.
For example every modern zone has much more sense to it, looks much more natural in terms of landscape, how zones transition into each other and such, it usually feels like place that tecnhically could exist.
While vanilla locations regularly don’t make sense, elwynn forest abruptly turns into redridge mountains with rocky terrain for no geographical reason, many locations (not all of them) look like what i would’ve made while playing with assets in unity map editor.
MMO genre is on a decline, accept it
WoW is literally the biggest mmo on the market with second to it being ffxiv, every other mmo is niche or dead
If you do every quest in Dragonflight you will have seen all of the Dragon Isles.
Because the zones are made to fit the quests and the story that’s being told.
If you do every quest in Vanilla WoW you will have seen perhaps 50% of Azeroth.
Because Blizzard just made the quests up at random here and there.
So when a player plays through Dragonflight it feels formulaic, because one thing you do takes you to the next thing you have to do.
In Vanilla WoW you can end up in the Karazhan crypts without being told to go there or having any reason for being there. It’s just there.
So modern WoW tends to be described more as linear and formulaic because the design process lends itself to that kind of game experience.
The old WoW is often said to be more of an exploration and adventure, exactly because it is an unknown world that you have to journey through on your own in order to see.
Which is better and which is worse? I don’t know, but Classic does seem to enjoy a modicum of success and excitement that Retail does not…
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Makes sense, still not a fan of a game design like this.
Imo games must be like deus ex where game design must be functional and work in tandem with narrative, this way there are no disjointed feeling between gameplay and story, and to be fair there are few hidden secrets around isles that you can find on your own, like hidden isle with crab boss.
Classic is just more fun to watch and twitch is a prime hype motivator for many current warcraft players.
Classic release was hyped too, but you can’t play same thing for a long period of time.
Also SoD is something really new.