Friday, May 30, 2014

The Winged Dungeon of Yesteryear

During Vanilla, Scarlet Monastery was one of the most popular dungeons. Back in Vanilla, a lot of dungeons were pretty big sprawls. They were actually the size of raids, and often non-linear. Scarlet Monastery could have been like that, and I believe it was originally designed to be one big instance, but they instead decided to divide it into four dungeons - the Graveyard, Library, Armory, and Cathedral. The Mists revamp rebuilt these, combining the Graveyard and Cathedral as well as the Library and Armory. The appeal was that these dungeons could be run fairly quickly. The Armory, for instance, had you fight through a fairly short series of rooms to confront Herod (he of the famous shoulder.) This was in an era when most dungeons were more like Uldaman or Blackrock Depths (Sunken Temple was nearly three times as big as it is now.)

In Burning Crusade, they took the "winged dungeon" concept and ran with it. Most dungeons were built around these wings. You had three Hellfire Citadel dungeons, three Coilfang Reservoir Dungeons, three Tempest Keep dungeons, two Caverns of Time dungeons, and four Auchindoun dungeons. In many cases, these dungeons were linked to a raid, such as Magtheridon's Lair in Hellfire Citadel, or Serpentshrine Cavern in Coilfang Reservoir. The idea was sort of that these dungeons were like the preliminary strikes against the giant fortresses, and that the raid was when you moved in for the kill. Magister's Terrace, added in 2.4, served that function for BC's final raid, Sunwell Plateau. BC launched with fifteen dungeons, and ended up with sixteen.

In Wrath of the Lich King, we still had some winged instances, but there were also a few stand-alones. Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle were in Howling Fjord. The Nexus and the Occulus were in the Coldarra in Borean Tundra. The Pit of Narjun in Dragonblight had Azjol-Nerub and Ahn'kahet: the Old Kingdom. Ulduar had the Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone. And the Culling of Stratholme was added to the Caverns of Time. Later, in 3.3, they would add the three Frozen Halls dungeons, linked to Icecrown Citadel, and built in such a way that you could actually run directly from one to another, so that if you so chose, you could treat it like a single 8-boss instance. Wrath had twelve launch dungeons and sixteen by the final patch.

In Cataclysm, none of the launch dungeons were really winged. Yes, Blackrock Caverns was in Blackrock Mountain, so one could theoretically link it to BRD and BRS. At launch, we only had seven original dungeons, plus two revamps. We would then get the former Zul raids turned into dungeons, and then three dungeons added to the Caverns of Time (and while I recognize why it was convenient, I've always thought it was funny that Hour of Twilight and the Dragon Soul raid were there. I mean, those were set in the present!) In total, Cataclysm wound up having fourteen dungeons, counting the revamps.

And then Mists. Mists did not have a single winged dungeon, and did not have any new 5-man content after the initial patch. Mists only wound up having nine total dungeons, counting the two Scarlet Monastery ones and single Scholomance revamp.

So do we notice a pattern here? Clearly, making Winged Instances allows Blizzard to make more dungeons. Without wings, BC would have had essentially six dungeons. Wrath would have had nine, or ten if you imagine they'd make a companion dungeon for Culling of Stratholme.)

And suddenly, the lack of dungeons in recent expansions becomes a lot more understandable.

The question is: Do we want winged dungeons or not? What are the pros and cons?

On the developer side of things, winged dungeons have one enormous advantage: art assets. Both Utgarde Keep dungeons, for example, use a ton of the same assets. We have the same Vrykul theme of stone and wood, those giant staircases. A lot of the same "doodads" like chairs and cobwebs and such can be reused. Sure, you'll want some unique things like the giant skull-furnace in Keep or the funerary ships in Pinnacle, but it's pretty efficient.

There's also the question of quantity. I contend that more dungeons is almost always a good thing. It was not very long at all before I got to a point where it seemed every dungeon I ran was Stormstout Brewery. Obviously, it wasn't. It was probably somewhere around a ninth of the time. But the fewer dungeons you have, the more quickly you get burned out on them. Just having some variety in there can really mitigate that. In Wrath, I ran those sixteen post-3.3 dungeons a zillion times, and while they did eventually get old, it wasn't that long before Cataclysm.

There's also a sense of progression and thus stakes. For example, Ner'zhul, one of the most important figures in Warcraft lore, will be a boss (possibly not even the final one) of Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, which is going to be one of the entry-level dungeons for leveling up in Warlords. Presumably it will be accessible from the get-go, which is frankly a little disappointing. Contrast, for instance, King Ymiron. We knew about King Ymiron through the quests in Howling Fjord, and while we made our first strike against the Vrykul in Utgarde Keep very early, we had to get ourselves up to level 80 before we could take on the King of the Vrykul. Indeed, it used to be that the dungeons in various zones would be higher-level than the zones themselves. Pre-Cataclysm, you might have finished Desolace at level 40, but you'd have to come back at 47 or so before you could take on Maurodon. Both BC and Wrath did this well, having us get a taste of, say, Hellfire Citadel when we first arrived in Outland, and then paying it off at the level cap by having us return to attack the Shattered Halls. This method also makes the world feel more exciting - yes, you might have triumphed throughout most of Howling Fjord, but there's still a threat there, and you're going to have to explore Northrend and get stronger before you can face it.

And then, of course, winged dungeons are also, I think, a good way of setting the stage for a raid. This is a tradition that dates back to Vanilla, but I think we saw phenomenal examples of it in 3.3 and 4.3 (even if Dragon Soul was a somewhat disappointing raid.) It would have been so cool if we had had some dungeons in 5.4 that involved extra events. Imagine, say, a dungeon where we landed with the Navy and started assaulting Orgrimmar's northern gate.

Now, granted, some people might cry foul about the re-use of art assets, but what I'm advocating for is that they would use new assets, just in multiple dungeons. No one had seen... anything like Tempest Keep before BC, so the Arcatraz was still pretty new-looking even when you also had Mechanar and Botanica to run.

Admittedly, winged instances aren't just a copy-paste level of simplicity for developers to create. A new dungeon needs a new layout and new boss/trash mechanics. But the fact that we've seen so few dungeons in the wake of Blizzard's decision to abandon winged instances suggests to me that these art asset concerns could be the reason we're not seeing the number of dungeons we used to.

And Warlords of Draenor, for all the cool and exciting ideas they're bringing to the table, will only have six, SIX dungeons at launch. And one of those is a revamp (though presumably it will be a SM/Scholo-style one, which means new art assets.) Granted, they've said that they want to bring in more dungeons as the expansion goes on, but unless they bring in like five dungeons per raid tier, we aren't going to see the variety of 5-person content that, frankly, got me really into the game in the first place.

So Blizzard, here's my suggestion: Bring Back Winged Dungeons!

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