There's about 35 minutes to kill before Blizzcon opening ceremonies as I start to write this post, so I thought I'd touch on something I've been thinking about.
In Legion, we're going to have a new Violet Hold dungeon. But from what we've heard, this Violet Hold will presumably be in a different Dalaran - the one at the Broken Isles. Blizzard's clearly gone in the direction that suggests that when we go to an old expansion's territory, unless we're on a new quest, we're essentially traveling back in time. Dalaran is, lore-wise, no longer in Northrend.
But this is actually good news, because it means that the Dalaran of Wrath will be able to remain. And that most likely means the Violet Hold in its prior incarnation will continue to exist.
Since Wrath, Blizzard has gone back and revamped old instances to update them to serve modern players. It's great to be able to go back into these places, but we do lose the old ones. Sometimes, the dungeons retain the old feeling they used to (the Scarlet Monastery revamp was probably the most successful in this regard, given that the old four dungeons were already very linear, and the new bosses had a kind of 1-1 correspondence with the old bosses, only with more interesting mechanics.) But there were a couple, like Shadowfang Keep, that feel totally divorced from their original incarnations. SFK used to be the Worgen dungeon, and now the only Worgen in there are either ghosts summoned by a single boss or friendly NPCs if you're there on an Alliance character.
Transmog makes it harmful to remove old instances in the interest of revamping - you can't get a lot of the old Zul'Aman weapon models anymore. But I also think that dungeon revamps are basically obsolete now that Timewalking is a thing. We'll never need a revamp of, say, Shattered Halls, as we can run that periodically when the BC timewalking event comes up.
The goal is to gradually expand the various timewalking dungeons per expansion - we're getting six Cataclysm timewalkers and adding one dungeon each to the BC and Wrath events. Presumably we'll eventually get Mists timewalkers and even Warlords ones, and add dungeons to each list along with expanding into other expansions. So it doesn't seem too unreasonable that the original Violet Hold could become a timewalker of its own.
I'd say that if Blizzard wants to revisit old instances, the far better option is the "sequel dungeon." Blackrock Descent is very much a modernized version of Blackwing Lair (well, modern meaning like half the game's lifespan ago,) much as Blackrock Caverns was a kind of sequel to Blackrock Spire.
When we talk about revamping Karazhan, or other beloved instances, I'd highly recommend that instead we see the creation of sequel instances. Let Karazhan stand as it is - a relic of an earlier time in instance design, but also a really fun place to solo and explore. Instead, just put an instance portal in the crypt and let us explore some other area of the vast, magically-bigger-on-the-inside wizard tower.
I'm really curious to see how Violet Hold mk. II. winds up. Hell, it might not even be the same style of "door defense" (actually, please make it not be that style. I don't really like it.)
Anyway, 19 minutes left. Decent amount of time killed.
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