A. Nothing they are all about the loot!
Yeah!
I have seen a fee posts about the blogshpere about people craving longer instances again. This is probably a push back against ToC in particular, but also the move to quicker instances that started in TBC, but was honed to 1/2 hour – hour runs in WoLK.
I have even read posts about posts about shorter instances. In fact it was while replying to one of these that a thought struck me…
Q. What’s the difference between a 20 minute Instance and a boosted instance…
A. Nothing they are all about the loot!
It’s all about rapid access to loot via drops or emblems.
But first, let’s take a journey back in time, back through 2 expansions to Vanilla.
Vanilla Grind
Back in Vanilla instances were long… I mean long. You might as well be raiding. Often the instance was far from civilization with little chance of a quick repair (why do you think Mage portals and Warlock summons were so coveted?).
Not only were the instances long but they were filled with tough mobs, lots of tough mobs, lots of patrolling fast respawn mobs.
Of course to offset this there were plenty of players leveling toons: for the 1st time; as an alternative to their main which didn’t live up to it’s promise; to get that missing class from the 40 man raid group; or as relief from the long hard grind of raiding 4-5 nights a week and grinding every other spare moment for the mats essential to start a raid, let alone finish it.
Back then greens were coveted, blues fought over and purples… there were purples? Only for the most 1337 of the elite.
Boosting was quite rare and generally is was a guild power leveling someone’s alt to fill the gap to allow raiding to continue.
The loot mattered, but only in so far that it would get you to the raid faster. Once raiding the loot mattered because you wanted to clear at least one new boss (not raid) a month.
TBC arrived and we all cheered…
HOORAY!
The big instances were a thing of the past. They had been split up ala Scarlet Monastery into wings. Now with a good group you could knock over an instance in an hour and a half, with a great group one hour and with a raid geared group (or a Pally and a couple of Mages) the instance run could be a speed run, coming in under an hour.
Black Morass was a wonder!
You would be in and out in 40 minutes. You could set your watch by it.
But still, the instances were still longer and even the badge collectors choice of The Mechanar would clock in around an hour.
The loot wasn’t the key (but ummm the keys were “loot”), it was running a well oiled team through a maze of mobs. Picking off those that needed to be removed and avoiding the others.
Badge runs became more popular later as did boosting your mates to get them ready for Kara or Gruul.
Still, it remained a grind, a rewarding grind in gear, rep and experiences.
WoLK in the park
WoLK arrives and you can buy the gear from the AH, you can cut your 5-man teeth on Heroics, you can walk into Naxx on your 1st night at 80 and you can clear Ulduar in blues.
The instances are quick. So quick that people don’t set aside a night for an instance and even when pugs form the question gets asked…
Chain run?
Let’s do 3 or 4 instances in a row… Why?
To gain something approximate to the epicness of a Vanilla instance. The total immersion of being on your toes for two hours with the same group of people.
Boosting is significantly more common too, from level 10 to level 80, there is always someone ready to put their purples to the test against mobs that run from green.
To run vanilla instances you need to find a booster as it’s unlikely you will find more than 3 takers for an instance and most likely you will be lacking a tank or a healer… But don’t worry, everyone has a DK, you just get the loot.
The loot
At 80 we have quick half hour loot pinatas, not just VoA, everything is a loot piñata, and ToC is the grand daddy of them all.
At lower levels when boosted, the booster runs ahead and decimates the foes, while you straggle along behind desperately trying to pick up all the loot.
The loot
Not the experiences
Not the challenges
Not the opportunity to home skills
Just…
The loot!
Gnomer and Out!
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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/08/31/
q-whats-the-difference-between-a-20-minute-instance-and-a-boosted-instance /
Have we lost our sense of adventure?
Raid or die was protested, so Blizzard threw ‘casual epics’ at the masses. Being learning creatures they are figured that loot was what mattered, so they went after that more, forgetting about running new instances or seeing something that took their breath away; they ran like rats around the basic mazes of heroics while the scientists threw epic cheese down from above.
Somehow casual content became epics for running the stuff you already ran when you were leveling up. Is it no wonder leveling is seen as such a terrible grind when the level cap ends up being just the same but with more loot to trivialize it?
“Somehow casual content became epics for running the stuff you already ran when you were leveling up”
Yep, run ToC so you can run Naxx faster so you can run Ulduar, so you can run Naxx faster…
I’ve been running my sweetie’s druid through instances as she progresses up to them. It’s been an unspoken agreement between us that she’ll work at getting the preliminary quests together on her own, ‘get’ the lore behind them, and then when all is in readiness, my warlock goes in and drags her through by her lower lip
But at the same time, we’re back to back in the computer room, so I get to explain the fights, what’s going on, and what it’s all about. She gets some, limited, sense of the context and scope of it all.
Sure, she gets XP and lewt, but we don’t keep going back in for the “right” lewt. Well, except Rivendare. That bastige is gonna drop mah pony some day.
The interesting thing we’ve noticed is that the truly epic instances of old Azeroth still have that epic feeling. Mara, DM, BRD, LBRS, and Strat (both sides) all take HOURS to do even with a L80 warlock plowing the road. You just don’t get that feeling again in BC until you hit Kara.
She’s probably going to feel let down by Ramps.
That epic feeling has gone…
While I appreciate the short instance as much as the next person (probably more as my time is more limited than most), I still like to feel that I have run an instance and not just a group daily quest
Remember the scene in Gladiator where the cart rolled by and threw out gold, and stuff to the crowds. That’s Blizz throwing out easy goodies to the masses of hangers on. While some of us toil in the Arena, trying to do something more then easy epics.
What? Are you not entertained?
Baaaahhhh!
Feed them to the lions!
of course the thing is the ones with the easy gold (or easy epics) will become gluttons for the gear, put on a lot of weight around the waist and will no longer be able to raid.
Maybe that’s what should happen with “welfare” epics… maybe we should get a different model… sure still the same design on the gear, but 50 pounds heavier.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with short instances. Frankly, I wish they’d extend the lockout, or have “save points” for longer instances, like BRD. Our group is in 3 different time zones, and on a typical weeknight, that leaves a fairly small overlap to run in.
Boosting: The first guild I was in, when I was leveling my main, I used to *hate* being run through instances by high levels. I wanted to run the instance, not just be a loot wagon. These days, my son’s hunter is lagging well behind us, so when we bring him, he’s usually just able to get into the instance. No matter. He can contribute. When we were in our high 40s, and he at level 35, after our paladin tried to pull, and ended up aggro-ing most of the room, (we didn’t *quite* wipe, thanks to our shamans) I started having my son park his gorilla with us, and go out to do solo pulls, feigning death if he got too many. Worked great, and he felt like he was pulling his weight.
yeah extended lockout would be great…
There are times where you just have to get boosted (have is too strong a word.. but), otherwise you wont see the content until you can solo it, but the loot wagon is no fun.
Huh! I don’t consider a 35 boosted if it’s done by a 40-ish… although in truth it is still boosting. But relatively speaking, it’s an even spread of levels.
You are still going to have to practice some of those skills because you will be close enough to combat.
Likewise, sometimes you just need to give a friend or family member a little boost to get them up to the required level… otherwise they will spend all night in LFG.
We grabbed a level 30 tank the other night for a SM run… none of use expected it to go well… but everything went fine… everyone can contribute.
I have to say I enjoy the shorter instances. I have recently started leveling a druid alt with my son who is playing a rogue. We have done a lot of instances. I have to say once we find a group, I have a hard time convincing the wife that we need another 2 hours to complete the run we started an hour ago.
On the flip side I think that maybe they are too short now days. I would like instances about the length of the TK 5 mans, or SSC 5 mans. I think those were about right.
Skraps.
(I wont go in to boosting, I didn’t like it in classic, still don’t like it now.)
I think short instances definitely have a place in the game, and I would hate for it to all be long. I think TBC had a better mix in instance length than WoLK.
I definitely know how you feel about the wife aggro…
Nothing worse than spending an hour in LFG to finally get a group and have you wife pull the power or network cable 15 minutes in…
Proud to say my little priest has never been boosted. He’s practically a twink with the gear I’ve thrown at him, but he does all his own dungeons.
I think it’s important for Blizz to present a selection of different length dungeons. Maybe one night you have 2 hours to spend and the next barely 30 minutes.
But a guildie of mine ran H Nexus in 19 minutes. Cripes that’s a short instance.
Balance… one of Blizz’s favorite words…
19 minutes… what someone have a smoko or a bio?
Honestly, I think instances are getting ridiculously short. I chain-pull pretty much everything on my paladin in every instance I go to, and average (for example) 18 minutes in UK, 16 minutes in Azjol-Nerub…The longest instance for me is probably Old Kingdom, and even that usually doesn’t take more than 30 minutes.
That said, Blizzard mentioned some instances with SEVEN (if I remember correctly) boss encounters in the next expansion, so hopefully we’ll see some more variation then.