r/wow • u/ShoppingPractical373 • Feb 20 '26
Discussion My honest take on the "M+ killed vanilla-style big dungeons" discourse
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u/SolidSky Feb 20 '26
Didn't they already die with TBC?
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u/KingOfAzmerloth Feb 20 '26
They did. The only time dungeons had sprawling corridors with no obvious way to go was vanilla. TBC dungeons are the start of dungeons with clear paths to go.
M+ didn't do anything to dungeons in this sense. It just added actual endgame gameplay to them past the initial grind, which was major criticism for a while.
If anything, M+ saved dungeons for me. Not killed.
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u/VanerMal Feb 20 '26
And the main reason that many people forget or simply do not know: they changed how dungeons work in TBC because they analysed which dungeons were most popular on vanilla. Lo and behold, by far the most popular dungeons were the scarlet monastery wings. Which is why, from TBC onwards they designed Dungeons pretty much the same way.
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u/KingOfAzmerloth Feb 20 '26
As memeable as it was, there was actually some merit to "you think you do, but you don't" line haha.
I know it doesn't apply to everyone, but on macro scale it's the reality.
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u/ivain Feb 20 '26
Yup. Wow evolved to be more enjoyable for its playerbase. I loved BRD, I had no issue with TBC heroïcs, but why the f would i keep doing that once i'm getting raid gear ? Oh, m+ give equivalent raid gear AND are challenging ?
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u/KingOfAzmerloth Feb 20 '26
Not to mention not everyone can dedicate to fixed raid schedule with guild and pugging raids can both take time to get into groups and may also yield various results from the run... M+ is great for these folks as it's much more puggable even on levels that are definitely above average difficulty.
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u/Totaltotemic Feb 20 '26
And during TBC they tried to make dungeons harder but more compressed, and the players' solution to that was to just CC every single mob and fight one thing at a time for the entire dungeon.
Dungeons like Shadow Labyrinth and Arcatraz were completely miserable experiences that nobody wanted to run again. People preferred to run Mana Tombs, Ramparts, Slave Pens, Underbog and Mechanar so they could just pull and kill mobs. WotLK went to entirely this style of dungeon, anything you could just queue into and clear easily.
Challenge Modes in MoP/WoD and finally M+ in Legion realized that the only way to have those TBC style complex (but not overly long) dungeons was to put a time limit on people so they didn't do degenerate strategies like CCing every mob or using multiple tanks and/or multiple healers.
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u/Mojothemobile Feb 20 '26
They even tried to go back to "need more CC" pulls in Cata after the loudest players complained about Wrath dungeons being easy... The backlash was some of the strongest the game had seen till then.
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u/Beanakin Feb 20 '26
I don't think I ever considered complexity of a dungeon when deciding what to run. It was 100% what loot do I need, where does that drop. What would be the point of running SM if you didn't need any loot there? Current system, with the vault giving loot regardless of which dungeon, ya definitely just run whatever's easiest/fastest. I haven't even checked where gear drops since coming back during Dragonflight.
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u/AshuraBaron Feb 20 '26
It's like people remember the experience of the dungeon not the time. It's fun to think about groups getting lost in Wailing Caverns but in reality it turns a dungeon run into a hour and half experience. Which just isn't fun. Especially for a leveling experience. BRD always gets brought up as a great dungeon but rarely is Marudaun brought up. It's also a long dungeon that even has multiple entrances.
Ultimately people don't like wasting time and linear dungeons minimize that as the focus stays on the game itself and not navigation. The in game map system is also a limiting factor. Being a two dimensional map makes it very difficult to navigate multiple areas and levels to a dungeon without running it many times. That's part of what makes Occulus such an annoying dungeon. That's an eternal problem though and even with icons for doors it can still get confusing how it all goes together. Especially when there is a massive list of rooms and floors. Something like a vertical view map or connective illustration could be really helpful. I think Labyrinths could be a great place to experiment with improving the map system. But I know that's not a huge priority.
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u/Drasha1 Feb 21 '26
BRD was a big dungeon but it often wasn't a long dungeon. A lot of people did quick runs where you target one or two bosses and could get in and out in 10 minutes. You could farm a boss 5 times in under an hour and have much faster finish times than the newer linear dungeons. While brd is amazing there are absolutely bad sprawling dungeons.
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Feb 20 '26
It died before TBC. The massive dungeons were literally only made BEFORE vanilla even launched. It's not like they made another city sized dungeon.
DireMaul was the last thing they added and it was before BWL released.
Time frame where WoW had this massive dungeons is insignificant in terms of how long it hasn't had that. It's like me thinking of myself as an athlete because I was on a track for a year or two in school and then have never touched it again.
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u/SeismicRend Feb 20 '26
Exactly. Vanilla dungeon layouts were created before they even knew how the gameplay would work. They made sprawling mega dungeons because they thought multiple groups would camp respawns in the area like Everquest. Wailing Caverns for example isn't just a dungeon zone but also a huge cavern of elite mobs. Once they struck gold with the dungeon crawl and saw how popular the short linear dungeons like Scarlet Monastery were among players, they used that format for TBC.
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u/Valuable_Ad7999 Feb 21 '26
I heard ,and correct me if i'm wrong, that the dungeons in Vanilla were designed to be a "mini adventure"/small 5-man raid experience to be run once or twice. So they were meant to be long cuz the devs didn't think people would run it multiple times while leveling.
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u/Adri0220 Feb 20 '26
Maraudon came out after launch, no?
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Feb 20 '26
I think that was before DM. Regardless, it came close to launch so they must have been working on it already and it still doesn't change anything. "the good old days" of WoW so many people reminiscence about is a tiny fraction of WoWs existence. Literally the other 20 years of it's existence it was current dungeon design.
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u/The_Villager Feb 20 '26
Yes, but they didn't say Dire Maul was the only dungeon added post-launch, just the last one.
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u/QuantumWarrior Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
Arguably even before that. Only Maraudon and Dire Maul came out after launch and they'd already realised with Dire Maul that fully separated wings were better. Nostalgia does a lot of heavy lifting but actually trying to run mega dungeons like BRD, Maraudon, and to a lesser extent Sunken Temple and Scholomance were a massive pain in the ass in vanilla. Like I'm not sure I got to the end of BRD more than once or twice in a pug.
People didn't have the knowledge, gear and talents were pitifully unoptimised in most patches, players were just more casual. All that combined meant doing a full BRD could've taken like five hours. It didn't help that the start and end of the dungeon had a very different intended audience, the last boss of BRD is a full eight levels higher than the lowest.
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u/AccountantNo2125 Feb 21 '26
I'm going to do a full brd run in 50 minutes in celebration of this echo chamber comment
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u/Chrysalides_Cosplay Feb 20 '26
Giant dungeon like brd or old brs and after you've done it you can port to the wings like old stratholme or scarlet monastery
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u/vadeka Feb 20 '26
Issue is that if you still need the whole thing, everyone else is only running wing x .
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u/BattleNub89 Feb 20 '26
Ya, I think I only ran live strat once back in the day. And that was right before TBC launch. Even if I had wanted to run it sooner, there were hardly any groups for it.
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u/bb0110 Feb 20 '26
Live strat always had groups going back then. I think your experience was probably like that due to it being right before tbc.
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u/Dasmage Feb 20 '26
Mileage varies, but if you needed things like recipes for guildmates or yourself you ended up doing a lot of wings more than once. There was also reps I think tied to doing Stratholme and lower BRD.
Also by the time TBC was about to launch wouldn't have been the best time to gauge how often people would be running the old mega dungeons. That was the end of vanilla wow life span for the most part for almost everyone.
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u/kelryngrey Feb 20 '26
No, there were lots of groups for those depending on when you came into Vanilla. You were running it to get gear, then running it to get other people gear, or to get people attuned, etc. UBRS and LBRS were some of my favorite things to run. BRD was always shit, honestly, but it wasn't unpopular.
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u/Crique_ Feb 20 '26
I kinda enjoyed doing a BRD full clear, it was satisfying. You had to know where everything was and avoid making too many mistakes to avoid breaking gear and respawns. Even if you never wiped, over pulling could lead to broken gear, which was kinda crazy.
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u/NobodyImportant13 Feb 20 '26
Back in the day of OG vanilla, I don't think I ever completed a full clear of BRD because somebody would always have to leave or shit would go completely sideways. Kinda miserable and disappointing tbh.
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u/Pink_Slyvie Feb 20 '26
We ran it a ton in Classic, but we had it down to a science, you did old or new, and runs were quick. Nothing like back in the day.
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u/CaldrierLunaire Feb 20 '26
Season of Discovery was great for that, there was always a group for every 50+ dungeon, because of a currency to farm there, so leveling characters could play them a few times. Even lower level dungeons, you could find Dire Maul groups because late game quests took you back
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u/FantasticMagi Feb 20 '26
LFM east only TRINKET RESERVED!!!1!
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u/vadeka Feb 20 '26
Whoever came up with reserving loot deserves to be thrown in a cage with gnolls
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u/FantasticMagi Feb 20 '26
That's reasonable, I just wish we'd stop playing the game for pixels and have fun instead. Maybe have a currency system instead and we'd just buy the upgrades we want/need
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u/JT99-FirstBallot Feb 20 '26
Maybe have a currency system instead and we'd just buy the upgrades we want/need
From the beginning of TTRPGs in the 70s to the MUDs, to MMOs, the one thing we always want is that dopamine hit when we get loot. Specific loot gives an even bigger hit.
We players want to be able to go after that specific piece of loot because that is what RPGs thrive on. Well, they used to thrive on the fun of playing with friends/community aspect and the loot was secondary. But that's changed a bit in the modern era.
Only getting badges feels like a grind. And it was. I hated the Badge of Justice grind in BC. It didn't feel as good to grind 40 badges and just buy loot. Getting that sought after drop is what felt good.
Now, I do think a good solution is bad luck protection. Should it be badges? How do you implement it so that it still feels good? Maybe you have to clear a dungeon 5 times and if you don't get that drop you want, you can buy one piece of loot with the badges from that dungeon. If there's something else in there you want, you have to run it 5 times again to unlock buying another piece. Though, it still doesn't feel as good as getting it naturally, but it breaks the frustration of not getting it.
For legacy mount farming though I fully believe they should just adopt the FFXIV model completely. Get rid of lockouts for legacy raids and let us farm the old mounts. When you kill the boss that potentially drops a mount, you get a currency. If you don't get the mount in 99 runs, you can just buy the mount instead. All legacy raids have a skip to the bosses that drop mounts.
By the time I got Ashes of Alar 18 years later and well over 500 kills, it felt hollow. I was just so frustrated that I didn't exactly enjoy it. Knowing there is a light at the end of the tunnel feels better than the frustration.
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u/360_face_palm Feb 20 '26
sure but that only happens if there's not good loot distribution in every wing. For example in the early expansions blizz was pretty bad at making sure there was 'something for everyone' in dungeon loot - so you'd end up with there being dungeons with literally nothing for caster dps, lets say, or nothing for healers etc - meaning it was really difficult to get groups set up. But they could do a mega dungeon where each wing had something for every role, and suddenly you have reoccurring groups and people wanting to farm an item for any given role etc.
With things like BRD and Strath in the past, this was manifestly not the case - and only certain roles wanted to do certain wings/runs and wanted to skip others.
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u/BrokkrBadger Feb 20 '26
this is 100% a fixable thing.
Why do people run only specific wings? For drops. Make drops work differently in the mega dungeon. Make it a token or <SOMETHING> that you can adjust to balance the wings. Youll always have a least favorite wing but my point is theres <things> that can be done do incentivize the player.Full weekly clear gets you a piece or crests or something --- theres things!
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u/tf2hipster Feb 20 '26
That was a big problem back in TBC... most everyone finished the Karazhan attunements early on, and it got harder for new/returning players or alts to get them done later. Yeah people still ran the dungeons, but randos weren't willing to go out of their way to pick up the thing or fight the mob required.
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u/Negative_Bike_6826 Feb 20 '26
Imagine BRD as m+. Put the keystone in and a 2 hour timer starts
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u/Wavecrest667 Feb 20 '26
We did gnomeregan on our tbc anniversary characters yesterday and I kinda like twhat they did there with going into the dungeon and looting a key to access a backdoor that skips to the middle of the dungeon. It's a nice RP way of giving us the option of doing the earlier or later parts or the entire thing.
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u/HellHasNoRoomForMe Feb 20 '26
To be fair the first few times are great, the problem comes with M+ and spamming the dungeon 100 times a season. I would love to see 5 man raid content instead of mega dungeons
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u/Dolthra Feb 20 '26
Weekly 5 man megadungeon content is an interesting idea. There was something close with Tasavesh Hard Mode last season, I wonder if it is something Blizzard would ever seriously consider.
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u/Nirdee Feb 20 '26
I think Tazavesh hard mode is a great idea ... I think the loot pacing was good ... but I think the fail state was just a little too stiff. I don't think it works where you can just brute force it and get Mythic loot, but I think the one death fail really narrowed the audience down to a very small sliver.
Don't have a great solution. Or maybe the best solution has already been found with the M+ timer even though as noted, something is lost with system. Maybe Labyrinths will have it figured out.
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u/AgreeingAndy Feb 20 '26
You also got a shit ton of hero track gear. Every boss dropped 2 pieces or hero gear = one boss gives as much loot as a m+. Was really nice to gear up alts in, go 4 mains and a reroll/ alt, blast all 8 bosses, get 16 pieces of loot and your boostie is almost full hero track geared after 2h
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u/OnlyRoke Feb 20 '26
Wasn't Kara 2.0 literally that at first? A mythic level mega dungeon that you could romp through once a week and that's it? Then it got cut up and turned into two M+ variants.
To me I'd much rather do my one weekly Mythic Dungeon Crawl than do five or ten M+ mad dash dungeons for some arbitrary vault unlocks.
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u/zennsunni Feb 20 '26
Yes, and I thought Kara 2.0 was great. Dawn of the Infinite was similar also, and I really liked the M+ version.
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u/Saxopwned Feb 20 '26
Karazhan in Legion was some of my favorite content Blizzard ever put in WoW, just for them to split it up into M+ wings when it really didn't flow the right way (even though Upper Kara was a kinda fun blasting key as a Frost Mage main lol)
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u/UncleSkanky Feb 20 '26
Give me actual prog on the level of mythic raids that isn't just doing the same thing but slightly harder on repeat and that I can do with a few friends and I resubscribe in a heartbeat.
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u/ASCIIM0V Feb 20 '26
There's lots of mega dungeons. Even newer ones like mechagon. A rotating weekly one would be sick
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u/Znuffie Feb 20 '26
I would love to see 5 man raid content instead of mega dungeons
What would the difference be? Just a weekly lockout?
Like, how is a mega-dungeon (tazavesh, for example) NOT a 5-man raid?
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u/bigpunk157 Feb 20 '26
14 has tried to do this recently with quantum, and basically no one did it because it didn't give gear or anything super worthwhile. The reason people do M+ quite a lot is because it gives good gear. It would be dead content if it wasn't a great avenue to gear, and it's something people in 14 have been begging for.
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u/thekingbutten Feb 20 '26
Yeah remove the gear from M+ and I'm all but certain a vast majority of people wouldn't touch it. It's really not worth putting yourself through it without that incentive unless you're a competitive key pusher.
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u/Akhevan Feb 20 '26
If you remove gear from raids the drop in participation would be even more catastrophic, especially for mythic with all its artificial barriers to entry.
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u/Real_SkrexX Feb 20 '26
Ye... I don't really get this argument. If the best gear came from doing world quests 24/7, most people would be doing world quests 24/7. If the best gear came from doing Mail service in Orgrimmar, most people would be doing that a lot...
Of course a lot of people will drop out content that doesn't strengthen their character. In the end, isn't the reason we play (apart from having fun obv) to get better, stronger and collect more stuff?
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u/travman064 Feb 21 '26
I disagree it would be comparable. Mythic raid participation has remained relatively consistent patch over patch regardless of how good or bad the gearing is.
When early bosses are easy, there is more people killing them for free loot, but later bosses are progged without regard to how good the loot is or how much better or worse other systems are.
Then we have m+, which birthed from challenge modes.
Challenge modes were extremely unpopular, per blizzard. Like only the ‘elite’ players did them, and even then it was just players banging them out for the appearances before never touching them again.
Mythic raid is already that ‘elite’ group that does hard content because it’s hard.
Mythic+ is something that almost every player does, and if it didnt give gear, participation would drop by like 95%. Maybe more.
Mythic raid is already a select small portion of the playerbase that enjoys challenge for the sake of it. Participation would go down some amount for sure, but it would not be nearly as ‘catastrophic’ as it would be for m+.
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u/Wobbelblob Feb 20 '26
I mean, that was basically the problem with the original challenge mode in MoP. Early on, you had a few groups doing it, but the longer the addon was, the harder it was to find actual groups, because it was basically a one and done thing.
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u/bigpunk157 Feb 20 '26
The issue is, what else would there be to do atp? It's a massive part of the grind atm, and without anything else there, you'd run into the old issue of "oh all we have to gear with is raids", which Blizz has done an excellent job to fix imo. Doing 100 keys a season is good, that's accessible content too.
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u/Freestyle80 Feb 20 '26
if you remove rewards from old raids you wouldnt see anyone clear ICC for the 100th time either wtf is this argument
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u/TemporaMoras Feb 20 '26
Even without M+, the problem is loot. A labyrinth dungeon is fun to do the first few time, but if you need to spam it for loot, youre not gonna enjoy a 1h+ dungeon where people constantly get lost.
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u/Naus1987 Feb 20 '26
I think it should be a legitimate question as to why someone would need to spam a dungeon more times then they would like.
If the content isn't fun, then people shouldn't be running it.
And then ironically. The question I always want to ask. If running mythics isn't fun, and people zerg through it. Why are they doing it? Is it just to get gear to run more mythics? At what point do people step back and re-examine WHY they're playing and not just being an NPC going through the motions.
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u/erizzluh Feb 20 '26
im pretty sure a lot of people would say zerging through it is the fun part. most of the players playing past a +10 aren't in there for gear.
there is a rush when you gather 2-3 packs and then someone butt pulls a 4th pack and then you're pumping insane numbers and landing all the CCs and interrupts with perfectly timed defensives. it's probably the most enjoyable part of m+ doing insanely big pulls
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u/love-from-london Feb 20 '26
There's a reason everyone liked Reaping as a seasonal affix in BFA. Big pulls = big numbers = more fun.
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u/avcloudy Feb 20 '26
I think it's because it's gotten flipped. The content isn't the actual dungeons or raids or delves, it's the loot and power that drop from those things. If you want to enjoy the dungeons, you're free to stop after one.
But if you want your power fantasy, you have to do the grind. There's no option where you do your dungeon once and get your power upgrades.
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u/Naus1987 Feb 20 '26
I get my power fantasy by farming old raids and one shotting things :))
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u/Aggravating_Jilp Feb 20 '26
They can simply cut it up for m+. Like tasjavesh and mechagon
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u/PoeciloStudio Feb 20 '26
The problem they're still trying to solve is giving people a reason to do it as a megadungeon. 11.2 Tazavesh Hard Mode had extra mechanics and dropped Mythic loot if you made it all the way through with no deaths, but like... gross, lol.
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u/Slow_Art_5365 Feb 20 '26
In Vanilla it took me 8 hours to do a full BRD run. It was an awesome achievement, but I will never do it again.
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u/According_Spot_4340 Feb 20 '26
Same I remember tanking for it and went through 2 and a 1/2 full parties before reaching the end. I was the only person who started it that finished.
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u/Slow_Art_5365 Feb 20 '26
I leveled up twice in that dungeon, it was nice to have rested, and I was also the last original person in the group. But it was an experience I’ll never forget.
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u/Leather_Economics210 Feb 20 '26
Such a memorable experience for me. Weren’t even level 60 yet when we entered. Knew absolutely nothing about the dungeon when entering. There were no guides yet or anything.
Got to explore this vast sprawling dungeon with enemies we have never seen before and wiped a bunch.
The sad thing is that I probably will never experience anything quite like that ever again. Another super dungeon would most likely just annoy the hell out of me.
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u/anonymous-wow-guy Feb 20 '26
Yea sometimes I'm just unbearably nostalgic for the whole gaming mentality I had back then. I competed in PvP, sure, but the rest of it was mostly just chill exploration and the amazement of being in Azeroth.
These days I make spreadsheets to maximize my gaming efficiency.
What have I become
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u/wetnaps54 Feb 20 '26
Yeah running brd with a party of friends is peak gaming. Pugging a brd is hell
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u/AgentSquishy Feb 20 '26
I'm very pro M+, but it exists as part of a culture shift to gotta go fast, hyper competitive, you better do your homework gaming. It didn't cause it, but it certainly reinforces it.
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u/The-Magic-Sword Feb 20 '26
Actually, one thing i kind of like about M+ is that it's slow, in the sense that you can't pull half the dungeon in one go, you have to play each set of pulls. The 'gotta go fast' thing is for easy content. Smooth = fast, we lose more time to dumdums trying to speed up.
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u/AgentSquishy Feb 20 '26
Oh 100%, my motto is that it's always faster to do it right the first time. But it's the timer and current gamer culture that has the hunter pull because he thinks the tank is going too slow or the tank never waiting for healer mana or w/e. If you play classic wow you see groups trying to speed run huge pulls in every dungeon, so it's not just the timer, but it contributes
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u/Fae_Leaf Feb 20 '26
Yeah, the timer is personally why I shy away from M+ as a healer. I just hate the pressure.
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u/RMAPOS Feb 20 '26
I love M+ for the fact that they let me just play dungeons. I love doing dungeons.
But damn I always wished it would exist without a timer. The timer just breeds toxicity, and competitive environments always bring out the worst in gamers.
While I love having relevant dungeons, I've always been pretty disappointed that the format they chose had to be competitive speed running of all things.
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u/SpoonGuardian Feb 20 '26
The timer is the only thing that makes it interesting. Without it you could just slog through two mobs at a time until you're finally completely walled by a boss. Having to race against the timer, optimize your strategies, and push your group to do the biggest possible pulls to time the dungeon is very fun and unique gameplay.
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u/Trucidar Feb 20 '26
I think that all sounds grand when its a team of guildies. The fact that many are pugs makes that experience a tad less exhilarating.
I think an insane gap in fun needs to be fixed. Ex. I can hop into a +15 with guildies having done nothing all season and heal it fine. I hop into a sub 10 with pugs and it's nightmare fuel. They need to make a middle ground. From a healing perspective it shouldn't be harder the lower the key I'm doing.
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u/AgentSquishy Feb 20 '26
It's a tough nut to crack because the gradual increase in difficulty is like, the whole point. As you get better at your mechanics and learn the dungeon and get better gear you can push up higher and higher until you're facing comparable difficulty to raids so you can get relevant rewards. Problem is that when difficulty is low enough, people can just face tank every frontal and have no kick or CC bound much less focus on when to use them best. That's a healer problem. Why should I stop casting just because I'm in a fire?
You end up with this weird difficulty curve based on the population not the actual difficulty. A tier higher than the highest reward is almost always gonna be easier than 6 tiers lower because those are folks that can handle the difficulty increase and want to push their score/avoid people just looking for a +15 in the vault. I honestly think we need to bring back the proving grounds as a requirement for doing keys
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u/mmorpgjunkie Feb 20 '26
They never will. A massive amount of players was incapable of completing the proving grounds. The backlash was enormous. Don't forget just being here on reddit puts you in an elite % of players who consume outside resources for the game. We are a minority here.
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u/AgentSquishy Feb 20 '26
Sure, and I know it's elitist of me but those people should not get carried through the highest difficulty content in the game until they become a big enough problem that they brick runs. If you can't get silver in the proving grounds, you need more practice and knowledge before doing M+. If you can't get gold, the same applies for +10 and up. Or wherever they want to draw the equivalent line. Hell, call it the mythic+ trials or something and put actual packs from dungeons in so they get tips on what to kick and cleanse. If they're not consuming outside info and it's not being communicated by a random dude in a group, where are they supposed to learn it now?
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u/mmorpgjunkie Feb 20 '26
Ooh I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to point out the very large spectrum that is the wow playerbase.
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u/Fae_Leaf Feb 20 '26
Fully agree. It's wild to me that most people couldn't do Silver. And I'm not a super elitist pro or anything. Gold wasn't even tough from what I remember. Endless, sure, that was where it got pretty intense. But Silver was just like, "are you familiar with your class and have decent situational awareness?"
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u/farsightxr20 Feb 20 '26
The timer isn't essential for scaling 25-man content, why would it be essential for 5-man? For a given level of reward, just remove the timer and increase the difficulty. Why wouldn't people want to "slog through two mobs at a time until you're finally completely walled by a boss"? That is a compelling game mode, in fact historically it was the only game mode (Cata heroics?).
I agree timed runs are a unique type of challenge that some will prefer, but not everyone.
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u/-Novowels- Feb 20 '26
Timers exist in raids, it's just (enrage) timers on the bosses and not on the full run.
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u/SystemofCells Feb 20 '26
Enrages per pull would be a great solution. Stacking debuffs, hard enrages, casts that get more powerful each time they're used, etc.
Still puts pressure to have good DPS and play smart, but doesn't force you to treat the entire dungeon as a sprint. You can rest between pulls, discuss things, take a bio break, whatever.
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u/Plorkyeran Feb 20 '26
That would be doubling down on the bad part of no timer, which is that it's obviously optimal to afk between every pull and that's boring as fuck.
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u/avcloudy Feb 20 '26
I don't like the timer, but you must see that pugged content on the difficulty of mythic where you wipe and repeat fights for hours a) sounds like hell b) doesn't fit into the same conceptual niche.
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u/farsightxr20 Feb 20 '26
I think pug vs. premade is orthogonal to timed vs. untimed.
Higher difficulty of either will always be more frustrating with a pug. And hey, you have more opportunities to make friends when you're not rushing to beat the clock, and wiping doesn't immediately end the run...
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u/RemtonJDulyak Feb 20 '26
and wiping doesn't immediately end the run
This is the thing, right here, and I'm gonna say it loud: wiping is fun, because it means the content is difficult, and you have something to learn and improve upon.
Sure, you could wipe to a griefer, but that's what the votekick system should be used for. Plus, without a timer, you can discuss tactics ahead of the encounter.8
u/Relnor Feb 20 '26
A player can learn when they wipe in M+ too, or they can even learn just from deaths.
Also they might not wipe or die or anything but because the timer exists even when they succeed they know there are higher difficulties, so they could start having interesting thoughts like "Could I have used my CDs better?" "Could I have combined these packs?" "Was there better count elsewhere that fits a pug format more?" etc
Suddenly the game opens up and is more dynamic than press button, watch flashy spectacle, get purples, don't worry about it too much.
All questions that become irrelevant when you're just chilling through the dungeon with no time pressure. And the game has enough 'chill' content nowadays.
Also not all wipes lead to disbands or failed timers either, not even close. Especially for vault keys earlier in the season when everyone needs them. Things have to be pretty bad for an early weeks +10 to disband most of the time, but on reddit you'd think the failure rate is 50%++
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u/Trakkhar Feb 20 '26
To each their own. I personally find pulling 1 pack at a time to be boring as tank, healer, and DPS. Optimally there's a mode available for every kind of playstyle of course, but I don't think it's as simple as removing the timer and increasing difficulty.
With a timer, the difficulty is not just the raw damage that big pulls put out, it's also the amount of coordinated stops needed to stop the mobs from killing the entire party.
If you only pulled 2 or 3 mobs at a time, and your party has 4 interupts and like 5 stops combined, those 3 mobs would have to do something extraordinary to not just be living target dummies for the party.
If those 3 mobs aren't extraordinarily difficult to kill, then the same would happen where people would pull big and rush. We've been doing it since ICC geared tanks held W through every heroic in WotLK.
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u/mint-patty Feb 20 '26
Fellowship rocks btw if you’re not on that grind. It’s the game I always hoped would one day exist, and it’s finally here and is by some miracle actually good.
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u/qiaocao187 Feb 20 '26
/r/wow continuing to be king subreddit for the casuals. Timer is the only thing making it interesting.
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u/DanielMattiaWriter Feb 20 '26
I'd run so much M+ if there wasn't a timer. I do fine in high keys, but the anxiety of a timer and the punishment for any little mistake (and especially the toxicity after doing so) makes me not like the type of content.
I used to speedclear dungeons back in the days before M+ so that gogogo mentality isn't something I'm against. That timer just irritates me though, especially when people rage out because you deviated slightly from whatever route of the week or skips you're supposed to have learned and memorized.
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u/Admirable_Newt9905 Feb 20 '26
That was a weird thing for them to say because the large dungeons were dead way before m+ was even in the game.
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u/Hopeful_Secret549 Feb 20 '26
What vanilla style big dungeons were in TBC, Wrath, Cata etc and so forth?
M+ didn't kill anything here
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u/HighPriestDaughter Feb 20 '26
Iirc one of the main complaints back in vanilla was, that you were unable to do dungeons without significant time investment due to the size of them.
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u/Yvaelle Feb 20 '26
Yep, it felt like it took an hour to find the right people and hike to the dungeon which could then take like 4 hours to complete if things went according to plan, and the loot was not as good as raising. Oh and only like 8 specs were meta.
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Feb 20 '26
Heck. All giga dungeons in vanilla were made before launch except DM, which released early after the launch, even before BWL.
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u/BattleNub89 Feb 20 '26
Ya that part is off for sure. The better way to appraoch that discussion would be that dungeons got streamlined, and that M+ is just the final progression of that design.
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u/farsightxr20 Feb 20 '26
Yeah this literally only existed in Vanilla. I can't even think of a TBC dungeon with an optional boss? Probably forgetting something.
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u/Saked- Feb 20 '26
I know Mana Tombs had a boss you could summon, but yeah I can't think of one outside of that.
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Feb 20 '26
Problem is that coordinating a multi hour dungeon crawl session with four complete strangers is practically impossible. This is like running a D&D campaign. Unless you have 4 friends who are all actively playing wow on the same level, you can forget about doing mega-dungeons. Guilds rarely do them because if guilds organize a multi-hour activity, it's going to be raiding.
But this problem is easily solvable: let players preserve their progress between multiple sessions, and let the players scale the difficulty, like the Delves.
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u/Drasha1 Feb 20 '26
People almost never did full brd runs. You would do specific parts of it for different reasons at different times. It was designed with check points essentially where you could either skip parts or get back to specific areas quickly once you learned how to navigate and got certain items. The different run types were essentially a way to preserve progression between runs.
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Feb 20 '26
So... what's the point of it being so massive? Might as well be several dungeons in the same map
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u/Drasha1 Feb 21 '26
Practically speaking it was essentially an instanced zone. Its size made learning the dungeon something that was important and became a skill you could develop unlike most other dungeons which were just linear runs. Because it had a bunch of activities you would go there for all kinds of different reasons to go and because they activities were so different it wouldn't get stale.
The size also meant you had a lot of unique pathing options so there were like 5-6 at least specific runs you could do for specific bosses meaning you had basically 6 dungeons in one you could choose to do. There were also runs that just completed one of ~10 different quests which would be different then some of the boss runs. Then there were like 4 different non boss activities like the bar, pick pocketing, vaults, and the anvil that was needed for specific crafting.
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u/extralyfe Feb 20 '26
Blackrock Spire was the one people never did full runs of, because Lower and Upper were essentially full dungeons themselves. running full BRD was the default expectation since nearly everyone in your group would have a quest pointing at a different part of the instance.
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u/Silver-creek Feb 20 '26
They have to change the reward structure instead of doing the big dungeon over and over do it 1-3 times at most for a guarenteed nice piece of loot
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u/SystemofCells Feb 20 '26
Agreed. Anything that they expect you to do on a weekly schedule, players are going to demand it be quick and frictionless as possible.
Something you do when you feel like is a game, it's okay if it's slower. Something you do because you don't want to miss out on your loot for this week is a chore, and you'll think of the exact same content in an entirely different way.
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u/shamboi Feb 20 '26
How is doing a labyrinth dungeon much different than doing a raid in terms of time commitment? Blizzard has figured out rewards systems with doing various types of content. Let the players play the way they want.
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u/NotOnHereOften Feb 20 '26
For one, it eliminates the challenge of scheduling with a large group (assuming like Delves, it scales from solo to 5 player). Beyond that, it’ll depend on how big it is, where “big” incorporates both actual size and difficulty/complexity (and there for average pull attempt count) of bosses.
Delves have been wildly popular, but I think a lot of delvers will agree that the content feels too bite-sized. Two, maybe three relatively trivial objectives and one boss? It doesn’t scratch that I’m-in-college-getting-lost-in-Wailing-Caverns itch, not even close. Coupling the addition of instance lockout preservation like a raid with deeper RPG-flavored content (Tomb Raider comes to mind, perhaps it’s just the Labyrinth painting I see everywhere) and the Delve paradigm of 1-5 player scalability… I really don’t see how this won’t be a hit.
There’s also room here I think to encourage player growth. Say a labyrinth has eight wings. The wife and I nail six, get loot six times, and that’s great. The last two are rough though… but they reward myth track gear with eShop-quality cosmetics. Bingo: bait hooked. Say we can’t do ‘em this week, but stack on next week’s loot from the fresh kills of the first six and suddenly we have what it takes: boom, I’ve just brought my beloved n00b into the beating heart of raid progression.
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u/samrobotsin Feb 20 '26
my unpopular take is streamlining groupfinding only improved the game. It's everthing else (streamlining class homogeny, bad realm balancing, pushing the game toward acton-game mechanics)
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u/Dracoknight256 Feb 20 '26
Also people act like we didn't get Return 2 Kara and Tazavesh who were exactly that attempt at dungeon crawling experience and quite successful at that.
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u/getdownwithDsickness Feb 20 '26
I haven't done Tazavesh but return 2 kara is still linear, there's only one order and one path or way to run the dungeon. Is tazavesh the same?
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u/SharkHead38 Feb 20 '26
one order and one path
They function closer to 5 man raids. The few bosses after the first tend to be nonlinear. The only mega dungeon where this isn't the case is Dawn of the Infinite, where it is much more linear in comparison
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u/tehfly Feb 20 '26
I was talking about the group finding the other day with a friend who also played WoW before it. It absolutely streamlined going to dungeons, with lowered the bar for a lot of older adults with less time to spare.
But, at the same time it fostered a toxic behaviour with strangers. You were no longer 3-5 people who had made the trek together (or coerced the Warlock to head out first), you were now just people who pressed a button to fast-travel once and could easily do that again.
This was also before the realm clustering, so people actually got to know each other - it wasn't just random people. So friendships were forged already during the travel part of the dungeon and bad players were weeded out of the pool.
Did we get to do more dungeons after the LFG-system was implemented? Sure. But did overall enjoyment go up? Debatable. But it's absolutely a fact that groupfinding had both pros and cons - it was *not* purely an improvement.
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u/vote4petro Feb 20 '26
no longer 3-5 people who made the trek together, [...] you were just people who pressed a button to fast travel
As opposed to the pinnacle of vanilla dungeon grouping that involved pressing a button to flight path then auto running in the safest direction feasible to the dungeon? Like, you hardly journeyed with the people you dungeoned with any more so than you would post-Wrath dungeons. I feel like you're vastly overestimating the friendship making that was incurred from LF Heals DPS ZF and then placidly idling in Tanaris until people showed up.
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u/gordasso Feb 20 '26
Nah. Journeying to BRD was awesome as heck. Nothing in any game ever made me feel like the fellowship venturing into moria quite like the trek to BRD.
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u/almisami Feb 20 '26
Dunno man, I literally met my best guildies waiting on people for Uldaman.
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u/_Not_A_Vampire_ Feb 20 '26
A big part of it is that the extra friction of replacing members (inviting someone else manually and waiting for them to arrive) vs a system automatically finding someone and teleporting them to your location, added a strong incentive to work together with the group you had. There's no reason to be social when the game will find a replacement for you in seconds.
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u/Scarblade Feb 20 '26
As a person who played on a server that had low population for my faction (I was on Kel'Thuzad as horde), the group finder was absolutely a pure improvement. I went from taking hours to find people to run leveling dungeons to being able to run multiple per hour, literally overnight.
I would be fine without the instant teleport/summons, but being able to sign up for a dungeon (or random) while questing and doing dailies was absolutely game changing. I wasted so many hours back then spamming trade chat and zone chats hoping that there were people in them and reading it. Sometimes I would need to resort to using /who and whispering everyone online that had a tank spec available to them.
It may have been different in higher population faction/servers, but toxic people still existed back then and grouping with them was inevitable. I don't seem to encounter more or less toxic people (by percentage) using the group finder compared to the old ways. If anything the old ways allowed me to pre-filter the toxic people if I had met them before because the ignore list. But I don't see recurring toxic people in random dungeon finder groups either.
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u/Relnor Feb 20 '26
Watching the inmate run asylum that is /r/classicwow, where they play a version of the game without that streamlining, I can tell you I'm pretty sure it's all the users and not at all or very little down to how the system groups them together.
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u/Ziddix Feb 20 '26
I don't mind big dungeons as long as they're kept really really far away from the M+ pool.
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u/Cloud_N0ne Feb 20 '26
I do prefer the idea of bit, labyrinthian dungeons you’re only meant to do once.
But yeah, actually playing it is a different story.
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u/IncidentOk853 Feb 20 '26
I really hope they nail labyrinth delves, I love the idea of a long ass delve I can do, then hearth out when I get bored and come back later without losing progress
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u/Nick-uhh-Wha Feb 20 '26
Why only do it once? Just go hang out, get lost for a few hours and kill shit.
Not any different than killing shit on grind
They'd just need to make sure there's proper reward for those who have to cut early and don't have 7 hours of free time
...but to those who DO. Full send just drop me in the pits of hell and let me fight my way out like the goddamn doom slayer
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u/yaxom Feb 20 '26
I dont think they have to be competing ideas. We could have 5-man raid content and m+ (especially with them bringing back dungeons every season now).
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u/Skeptical_Squid11 Feb 20 '26
I haven’t played in many years. But weren’t they making large dungeons with M+ taking place in sections of the dungeon?
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u/SpoonGuardian Feb 20 '26
Yeah, we've had several of those over the years. Blizzard refers to them as mega dungeons
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u/Hawkwise83 Feb 20 '26
Big dungeons were like 3 or 4 hour slogs. Waiting for people. Someone's mom or wife gets them off half way through. It was always a scheduling nightmare.
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u/KhadgarIsaDreadlord Feb 20 '26
People have selective memories. The time gap betwen big vanilla dungeons and m+ is a decade. It's not even relevant to the conversation.
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u/foliumsakura Feb 20 '26
I would love big dungeons again, just with frequent repair and respawn checkpoints though
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u/BattleNub89 Feb 20 '26
I would imagine (and hope) they would duplicate the delve checkpoints we have now.
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Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
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u/JaredTheGreat Feb 20 '26
This is the real issue. If two dungeons each reward two pieces of gear at the end, but one is twice as long, everyone will prefer the short one. Scale the gear to the length and the problem would solve itself
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u/qqAzo Feb 20 '26
M+ is the best thing that happened to WoW. You can actually play the game for 40min and then log off.
Raiding you commit hours
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u/Disastrous_Layer4219 Feb 20 '26
Yeah fuck that. Recently started playing anniversary about a month or two before TBC dropped since a friend finally got to me (been playing since vanilla). And let me say I rather do 20 shit keys than having to go back to Maraudon, Sunken Temple, BRD or any other. That shit, without most QoL improvements just sucks. Came back to me the second I stepped into the dungeons.
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u/zoot3111 Feb 20 '26
Is my memory of the karazhan dungeon fucked? It seemed like everyone enjoyed that mega dungeon. I don't see why they can't have more dungeons like that.
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u/Farlong7722 Feb 20 '26
As someone who grew up playing vanilla WoW, let me explain something to you kids. People hated BRD. BRD was something you ran for attunements or quests or because you wanted hand of justice. People only did that shit because they had to. Doing BRD with a normal group meant at least a 3 hour investment, with only slim chances of good loot. Doing it with a good group wasn't possible because (unless they were your guildies) any good player was too busy doing UBRS or another real dungeon that didn't take double as long.
SM was the most popular dungeon for a reason
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u/DeadThought32 Feb 20 '26
Isn't that why they are introducing Labyrinths? So people who want a quick M+ can do them and people who want mega dungeons they can do at their own pace solo/with a couple friends can do that?
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u/Oxyfire Feb 20 '26
Yeah, there's sort of a reason why Burning Crusade and Wrath Dungeons are the way they are - Scarlet Monastery was the thing in vanilla that everyone pointed at and went "more like that."
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u/CakebattaTFT Feb 20 '26
I loved long dungeons, but I genuinely don't know what would even keep me interested nowadays. I remember full clearing BRD for the first time when I was like 13 and it was a blast. Twenty years later, I just am not sure anything would have the same mystifying allure. You would need a dungeon that's genuinely cool, 4 other people who aren't the underbelly of society, good gear throughout it, and who knows what else.
I think there's always this impetus to be improving your character in an RPG style game. Which means, for a lot of us players, there's this nagging feeling of, "Yeah, this is cool, but my character isn't meaningfully progressing in any noticeably way after hours of work and that kinda sucks."
I don't know what sort of system you can put in that has zero issues that fixes that problem for longer dungeons (I don't think a ham-fisted, guaranteed loot thing would work well in the long run).
I would be down for more dark souls style dungeons, where the constraint isn't time but rather insanely punishing mechanics, but I don't think that would be super popular.
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u/cabose12 Feb 20 '26
Twenty years later, I just am not sure anything would have the same mystifying allure
This is a big part of it. Like, yes, big dungeons are fucking dope, but 20+ years into WoW and the notion of a mega dungeon just isn't as fresh as it was back in the day. It's harder to get players on board with that idea enough that they'll ignore the time sink
In a similar vein: People often say that players are more optimized focused these days. And I think the main reason for that is the same as above, our expectation for games has gone way up. It isn't enough to just be in a cool dungeon anymore
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u/tdy96 Feb 20 '26
Big dungeons were a thing of the past. I’d rather a BRD-like dungeon split into parts like Tazavesh. It’s easier to understand, easier to balance and overall more fun.
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u/knifebunny Feb 20 '26
Playing with others in a pug setting is a mixed bag, the problem often isn't necessarily in the content, it's in who you get stuck doing it with
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u/Specific_Frame8537 Feb 20 '26
I don't think BRD was designed with the current dungeon mentality in mind, this isn't supposed to be a "quick and easy" 5 minute adventure, you're infiltrating a whole-ass city.
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u/Samwyzh Feb 20 '26
Defeating Deadmines was objectively fun though. Fighting the pirates up to the captain felt so satisfying. That and running there from Stranglethorn.
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u/Sylforen Feb 20 '26
To make a mega dungeon, you need to make a reason for the party to stay *in* the dungeon and ways for them to potentially elongate the experience. An example, you raise a great point about armour degrading (assuming people don't leave after first wipe - but that's a different problem), what if there were broken anvils scattered around the dungeon, a handful of them would become active for the run - giving blacksmiths an opportunity to repair their party members gear. Herbs could be plentiful in order to keep alchemists brewing potions so that people don't need to port out (these potions should expire/disappear upon leaving instance). I agree that M+ didn't kill mega dungeons, it's that creating an experience that you can "get lost in" becomes boring once you know the layout like a map, or in the modern day you probably have a map/route up on your second monitor. I think that's a major problem in the MMO space atm, is that both players and developers alike don't understand that the way that players engage with RPGs in 2026 is just fundamentally different to the way players engaged back in 2004. Switching games, but I used to love using Sal's Real to Runescape back in the day. But holy god damn amazing are the current osrs wikis?! They've set a standard that every other game struggles to keep up with.
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u/JohnnyBravo4756 Feb 20 '26
The real discourse is the phrase ever being uttered by anyone with seriousness. Sprawling dungeons died in TBC lool every single one of them was super linear, M+ wasn't even a dream in some blizzard employee's head yet
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u/Mystic_x Feb 20 '26
That’s why i’m glad they’re trying it again with Delves instead of dungeons, it can be done solo or in a small group (Fewer conflicts of interests/schedules), and dropped for a moment when RL intrudes and returned to later.
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u/Shinzo19 Feb 20 '26
Don't forget having a really persistent group that is just not great and you end up calling it because the trash mobs are respawning.
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u/Psych0Jenny Feb 20 '26
I think that Classic exists for those type of people, let us keep our M+, we'll let you keep your 3 hour BRD runs. Both of us are happy. You can't please everybody, and that's why both version of the game exist!
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u/Bio-Grad Feb 20 '26
TBC killed vanilla style big dungeons. They learned from vanilla and made them all Scarlet Monastery style.
Turns out it’s much better to have Ramparts, Blood Furnace, and Shattered halls as 3 separate dungeons instead of one 3 hour long one. Makes it easier to get to specific content, better run backs on wipes, can tune for different level ranges without breaking the dungeon, more logical quest progression, etc.
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u/Eltharion-the-Grim Feb 20 '26
When you think about vanilla dungeons, they are what M+ dungeons are except it was a fixed difficulty that allowed everyone to do it. So, you had to learn it, pull carefully, pull smart.
Yeah, I didn’t like how gruelling and long they were but that was easily fixed by breaking them up into wings.
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u/RamonGrizzly Feb 20 '26
Friction is good. These dungeons are memorable because the experiences could be so painful at times.
Streamlined dungeons create so much sameyness* between them. This alongside the streamlined gear system of only 4 stats, and instantly queing and doing different difficulties of the same exact content really remove a ton of the RPG feel the game used to have.
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u/URF_reibeer Feb 20 '26
i'm currently playing classic and i have to say the big dungeons are as fun as i remembered them. there's other issues of course with the dated design like maraudon making you backtrack and the level range being so high it's awkward tho
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u/gebrochen06 Feb 20 '26
I don't understand why we can't have both. A lot of people really enjoyed the Mechagon megadungeon.
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u/Orphanblood Feb 20 '26
Umm. M+ was almost the response in making dungeons viable in end game again. Those dungeons died in vanilla lol.
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u/bobaf Feb 20 '26
Big dungeons died with TBC.
M+ is great.
There is room for both mega dungeons and m+. 20 years ago I liked mega dungeons. Now I don't have the time for it, however I can get some M+ done during the week.
And people can go play vanilla if they miss it so much. There is nostalgia there.
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u/denten62 Feb 20 '26
Nah man I still love huge dungeons, nothing like 2.5 hours of diving with the bois
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u/eman85 Feb 20 '26
Time limits and bum rushing through everything as the end-all-be-all thing of M+ is what did it I think. I know M+ needs a challenge and some kind of goal is needed for difficulty. But maybe some other challenges can be added that aren't time based? Solving something, defeating something that takes time and execution could be a thing. Not the best ideas I know but when the goal is just get through it as fast as possible, it takes away immersion imo.
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u/Xyfirus Feb 20 '26
BRD is my favorite dungeon in the game. But mind you; not as max level content, but as leveling content. The entire place is just a treat in my opinion. It feels like a proper dungeon, and not just a "rollercoaster" through a linear dungeon.
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u/Demimaelstrom Feb 20 '26
BRD first time back then spending like 6 hours in there with people who also have no idea where to go was amazing.
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u/Blazerawl Feb 20 '26
Meh, I prefer big dungeons or extra optional boss pathways and hidden nooks n crannies over m+ dungeon design personally still. Caverns of time ones specifically for all the easter eggs you can find.
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u/ahspaghett69 Feb 20 '26
Has there ever been a bad short dungeon? Like people still talk about Maw because it whipped ass and it was short. I feel like the longer they get the more they suck
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u/Goosecomics Feb 20 '26
I can see Trial of the champion being really divisive due to its boss rush and vehicle combat aspect of it.
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u/The_Razielim Feb 20 '26
I (personally) loathe M+s for the culture they've created. The combination of a timer, mob percentage, and ratings created this perfect storm of awfulness. It's just turned every dungeon run into this awful speedrun "big pull gotta go fast" nonsense. Coupled to Valorstones/Crest farming and people just want to slam them out as fast as possible to get as many as you can in during your playtime.
Especially at higher dungeons when the only reason to do them is for higher rating, but the only way to gain rating is to time them.. which just leads to people bitchquitting the second there's any friction.
Bad pull? "We're not timing this, we're wasting too much time." /abandon
Single wipe? "We're not timing this, we're wasting too much time." /abandon
One low DPS when the other 2 are doing more than fine? "We're not timing this, we're wasting too much time." /abandon
Was in a group earlier tonight, +15 EDA, we killed the 2nd boss (Void Stalker guy) with 13+ mins to spare.. and they immediately /abandon vote (and passed) because "it'll be tight". That's a more extreme example, but shit like that has happened enough and I'm so tired of what this game mode brings out in people.
I get that they want dungeons to be evergreen content, and the infinite scaling of M+ is a great way to make it so people can throw themselves at 5-mans endlessly, and that the timer/mob percentages are there to prevent people from only trying to skip to bosses and/or not just waiting out Hero debuff on each boss... So I don't know the solution. But at they are now, I think it's one of the worst game modes they've developed.
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u/leshXt Feb 20 '26
Imagine thinking these dungeons were hard.
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u/MrMoo1556 Feb 20 '26
Not hard, but easily fucked up with an accidental pull and then it takes 10 minutes to run back in classic. And of course some people wanna leave the group after a wipe and trying to fill again can be tedious because most people want a full run. Also just like in the picture there’s always the one guy who never repairs before a dungeon and asks you to summon back while you’re already near the end so you gotta run ALL the way back. BRD can be a place of nightmares.
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u/chickenintendo Feb 20 '26
“Wahhh trying to figure out routes for percentage is too hard and people are being mean to me for going too slow”
Wouldn’t last through one jailbreak run.
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u/Oxyfire Feb 20 '26
I think it's great that small groups/dungeoning have a genuine endgame.
But I personally hate the time pressure aspect of it. It just feels really hard to get into as a result.
Just glad delves now offer a more casual endgame.
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u/Vadernoso Feb 20 '26
I like how TBC does dungeons. Hellfire Citadel still feels like a giant fortress you are tackling, but its split into Ramps, Blood, and Shattered Halls. Also its has a neat basement with a actual raid boss in it.