I think the crack factor just hit...

Managed to get a pretty solid group for WC this morning, logged in expecting to kill an hour and run a quest or two. But, managed to get running though an WC instanse and I didnt want to logoff..but alas, I have school to head to and an assignment to hand in (if it wasnt for that, I would of skipped, lol)

a level later, a number of nice upgrades and now having a gold saved up (ah, the joys of being low level when 1 gold seems like alot)

starting to rather get into the game now.. only level 16 :P

who knows, maybe by time I hit 60 (it'll be awhile, I only play like, 1-2 hours tops once every other day or so), they'll have the level 60 content and advancement stuff out :)

And WC is widely regarded as being one of the least fun instances. You're in for great things.

I never understood how WC was one of the least favorite. the end event on that was amazing, true it did take a bit to get through, but there was diff strategy and mob types in each section, and lots of minibosses for lewt whores.

personally, I'd hafta say RFK, and Uldaman both left me less impressed than WC, with the exception of the staff opening the door in uldaman, that was neat.

I never quite understood that one myself. WC always seemed pretty fun.
Is it because people get confused by the cave layout? (admittedly labrynthine)
Did it used to be buggy as hell or kick babies or something?

It's roughly the same type of setting as Deadmines (which no-one minds at all), and has an escort event and defend event on top of the vanilla pull-n-kill.

Sure, deadmines has a neat setting change from cave to foundry to boat, and the cannon/door thing is kinda neat -- but I don't see that making it all that much better.

It does helps the Deadmines that VC serves as a bit of a dramatic payoff on the Defias storyline. WC's story is rather a one-off - but does the lack of build-up make it less fun?

I liked WC the 2 times I did it.

As to the crack thing...the first time we made the mistake of starting on a weeknight...at 1:30am we finally called it...that was a rough workday the next day. :p

Man, I love Uldaman. I don't think it has the replayability of Gnomeregan or Deadmines or Scarlet Monestary, but I think it's got a great non-D&D style of play (that seems so obvious in retrospect now that someone has done it), a cool throughline in the quests, a good mix of somewhat linked villains and a kickass lore payoff at the end.

WC is hurt by being HUGE and the fact that repops can sometimes make it hard to figure out what wings you've done before. If WC was 25 percent smaller and there was a clearer differentiation between wings, and people could reliably get to the end event without sinking hours upon hours of their life into the dungeon, especially after they already knew it, it'd be great. I think it's cool visually, I like its overall story, and I think it has some very neat bits.

WC is really buggy. I did like it when I was there, however I went with people who already knew wth they're going. I don't like caves, though, and I think caves need ot be used sparingly. sadly most of the kalimdor dungeons are some sort of cave.

RFC is a fiery cave but a mini-instance for quest, so I guess it's comparable to Stockades, the prison
WC is totally a cave vs Deadmines leading to factory/harbor
BFD is (iirc) more caves vs SFK the fortress
RFK is another cave vs Gnomeregan the cool gnome city
RFD is a dark cave vs SM which has... the cathedral!

after this the "kalimdor vs EK" division goes away, ie you have strath scholo brs and brd all in EK.

it is an interesting design decision. all of kalimdor's dungeons except for 1(ZF) are big caves. much more creatitivity went into the EK instances than the Kalimdor ones. In fact, this seems to hold for most of kalimdor which is basically one giant wasteland aside for the extremities, while there's much more variety in EK. Perhaps it's another reason why alliance is more popular...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Istari

WC is really buggy. I did like it when I was there, however I went with people who already knew wth they're going. I don't like caves, though, and I think caves need ot be used sparingly. sadly most of the kalimdor dungeons are some sort of cave.

RFC is a fiery cave but a mini-instance for quest, so I guess it's comparable to Stockades, the prison
WC is totally a cave vs Deadmines leading to factory/harbor
BFD is (iirc) more caves vs SFK the fortress
RFK is another cave vs Gnomeregan the cool gnome city
RFD is a dark cave vs SM which has... the cathedral!

after this the "kalimdor vs EK" division goes away, ie you have strath scholo brs and brd all in EK.

it is an interesting design decision. all of kalimdor's dungeons except for 1(ZF) are big caves. much more creatitivity went into the EK instances than the Kalimdor ones. In fact, this seems to hold for most of kalimdor which is basically one giant wasteland aside for the extremities, while there's much more variety in EK. Perhaps it's another reason why alliance is more popular...

You missed one.

:p

Dire Maul is in Kalimdor, and is not a cave. With ZF, that makes two.

But its new, so forgetting about it is understandable.

My favorite is still Scarlet monestary, but DM is quickly surpassing it. I just love winged instances, it takes so much of the stress out of things and provides you with more choices (especially with the twist on the north wing, mad props to it's creator).

I think the confluence of EK/K instances to alliance/horde popularity is flawed.
The alliance/horde instance breakdowns look quite different than straight EK/K -- there's no magical rope that keeps all the alliance on one continent and all the horde on the other.

I also see no variety that EK has that K doesn't. If we itemize the zones on each continent and their setting, we'll find quite similar variety. I also think you're giving quite similar EK zones a break on their similarity, simply because you prefer their base visuals over Kalimdor's. (durotar/barrens/1kn are not less distinct than ellwyn/westfall/redridge)
And again, the Alliance/Horde breakdown looks different than EK/K.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ringo Flinthammer

And WC is widely regarded as being one of the least fun instances. You're in for great things.

Huh, this struck me as odd too, I love WC except for when the escort part would get buggy. My favorite is SFK, but I always enjoyed WC.

Glad you enjoyed it, I have found the instances to be one of the best parts of the game :)

I hate WC. Always have, always will. I dread going through it with new characters. I'm in love with Dire Maul though, talk about a fun instance. Gotta love wings!

Quote:

WC is hurt by being HUGE and the fact that repops can sometimes make it hard to figure out what wings you've done before.

I think they may have dropped The Repop rate then -- I did this last weekend, Now granted we didn't have many deaths, but still we went all through it - wiped on the "Awakening" managed to come back and kill the boss and complete it, but there were no "repops" to deal with.

I concur with Melcar. I've been through twice recently, and didn't notice much in the way of respawns at all. It was decidedly inconvenient too, as I still needed a few more deviate hides for the belt.

Quote:

I concur with Melcar. I've been through twice recently, and didn't notice much in the way of respawns at all. It was decidedly inconvenient too, as I still needed a few more deviate hides for the belt.

I think you can get those Outside the Instance too.

Well yeah, but it's much faster inside, and without the annoying 'in combat' bug hitting you constantly.

Luckily I was the healer and a couple of the lower-levels in the group didn't mind resetting the instance and doing some more clearing.

Yeah, I hate WC too.

Shadowfang Keep rocks though ;)

repop on WC is actually 3+ hours, minus the wandering goos. those repop every 30 mins.

honestly, I've never had problems with respawn in WC, 3 hours is more than enough to do it less you're incompetant. my groups tend to do it in closer to 90 minutes if people aren't dumb.

They've changed things. We never took three hours to do a wing, but more than goo used to respawn.

Quote:

You missed one.

Dire Maul is in Kalimdor, and is not a cave. With ZF, that makes two.

But its new, so forgetting about it is understandable

actually I stopped the comparisons when we got into the "high end instances" since I think the idea of 'world division' is pretty much gone by then.

I think DM is the epitome of all of blizzard's instance design experience and feedback. The way everything is done there is just fabulous.