---
title: 'Why Turning Old Dungeons Into Keys Is... Bad?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=68OO7opv7gk'
video_id: '68OO7opv7gk'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 894
---

# Why Turning Old Dungeons Into Keys Is... Bad?

> Source: [Why Turning Old Dungeons Into Keys Is... Bad?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=68OO7opv7gk)

## Summary

This video critically examines Blizzard's decision to recycle old dungeons as Mythic+ keystones in World of Warcraft. The creator acknowledges the popularity of re-releases for adding variety, but argues that this practice raises concerns about content quality, difficulty imbalance, and the risk of a 'creative death' for the franchise. Drawing on comparisons to maintenance-mode MMOs, the video makes a nuanced case for both preserving and innovating.

### Key Points

- **The Old Dungeon Debate** [00:01] — The video opens by discussing which old dungeons would make exciting keystones, citing Throne of the Tides as a controversial example—despite major rework, it remains an unpopular keystone.
- **Old Dungeons Define the Meta** [00:44] — Re-released old dungeons have been the majority of keystones for the last 1.5 years, for better or worse shaping the Mythic+ experience.
- **WoW's Content Rot** [01:25] — Blizzard's live-service model rotates content into obsolescence, which made sense when tech leaps were huge but now produces diminishing returns.
- **The Numbers Behind Re-Releases** [02:31] — 20 of 24 dungeons in the Mythic+ rotation since August 2022 are re-releases, adding variety and sparing players from the same dungeon for years.
- **Affix Fatigue and the Appeal of Old Dungeons** [03:26] — Affix rotations create instability (good/bad weeks), and old dungeons arrive without seasonal affixes, making them a welcome alternative.
- **New Dungeons Are Discarded Too Fast** [03:53] — Dragonflight's dungeon set will rotate in under a year compared to BfA's 25-month seasonal content, showing new content is underused.
- **Mythic+ Difficulty Is a Slider** [07:01] — Difficulty is not about boss complexity; it's about applying a difficulty slider to already-known dungeons. Old bosses have one ability that hits extremely hard.
- **Old Dungeons Are Difficulty Extremes** [08:35] — Snapshot data shows S-tier easiest keystones are exclusively old dungeons; lower tiers are clogged with them—they're either free IO or keys to avoid.
- **Caretaker Mode MMOs** [09:34] — Reusing old content evokes MMOs in maintenance mode (like SWTOR), where development slows to seasonal events and asset recycling, raising fear of creative death.
- **Legion's High Bar** [12:50] — Legion felt special because of its sheer content volume and production value; leaning on old keystones risks betraying that promise.
- **Hope vs. Creative Death** [13:33] — The creator doesn't fear WoW's literal death, but a creative death—re-releasing old dungeons can coexist with new content, but it's spiritually risky.

### Conclusion

The video argues that reusing old dungeons as keystones is a double-edged sword: it brings short-term variety but risks long-term creative stagnation. The creator ultimately hopes Blizzard can balance nostalgia with innovation.

## Transcript

topic of old dungeons that would make for exciting keystones as part of that I went on and on about how impressed I was with the updates made to throne of the tides in season 3 there was however one Minor Detail that I admitted people hate
the new Throne of the tides I hate the new Throne of the tides for all the work that went into it and all the flowery Pros last week it's just not a particularly fun Keystone and like this isn't a quirk unique to throne if I just
got re-released in Dragon flight there's some stinkers here this is relevant some small experimental thing being done on the side they've been the majority of keys in the rotation this expansion they have For Better or Worse defined
keystones for the last year and a half so as fun as it is to get alter nostalgic at the prospect of doing the steam Vault plus 20 we should probably steam Vault plus 20 we should probably scrutinize this because we're we're both
smart people we could solve some amount of problems if we felt like it so let's have today a a facts and logic debate a rational discussion about the merits of old dungeons today people typically love old dungeons being used as keystones and
look I'm not one to brag but I was saying this stuff years ago I swear that's true I logged into the BFA beta and I saw they removed the the legion keys and I was like ah but I wanted a 30 dungeon set World of Warcraft was a
Trailblazer in online gaming and the Modern Life service model owes a lot to w the celestial Steed walked so $25 fortnite skins could run but one Dynamic unique to wow is its enormous content rot blizzard will release a raid it will
be the singular raid for 6 to 12 months and then it's rendered obsolete by the gotten off a bit better but it's the same idea necrotic wake is released we run it for 2 years straight until we hate it and then it's banished from
relevance this made sense in like 2006 when each expansion included a leap in technology so vast that it genuinely made content feel kind of obsolete in just 5 years we went from maradon to the forge of souls but there's been
diminishing returns on this for a long time does the underrot feel 5 years older than HS of infusion not really rather than being banished for being crap but we banish content now as part of the routine and that does not deliver
shareholder value and and thankfully blessedly even Activision Blizzard King has has picked up on on this in recent years blizzard toyed with the concept of shadowlands and they seemingly fell in
have been in the Mythic plus rotation since August of 2022 20 of them have been re-releases this seems to have been enormously popular amongst players the dungeons add variety to the expansion's fiveman content it spares us from
running the same dungeon for 2 years straight this has somewhat increasing disdain towards Keystone aexes historically it was aexes that was whether it be sanguin tyrannical a seasonal AIC like beguiling or all the
simultaneously that was your variety whenever you ran to theore however it's dungeon runs to be defined by the aex rotation because in practice variety becomes instability it's good weeks bad weeks and annoying edge cases public
sentiment towards aexes continues to sour and blizzard has responded by making the fx's less impactful old dungeons arrived on the scene just in time to fill that role and spare us from having to run Legacy of tear for 2 years
that even the courtesy of a seasonal a effects but in a strange way we've swung aggressively from overusing dungeons to now underusing them battle for Azeroth seasonal content ran for around 25 months that's 25 months of valal daar
Waker Manor and so on season 1 and two of dragonflight average out to around 5 months each with season 4 unlikely to go any longer even if we count season 4 as a genuine season that we'll see genuine engagement I don't because it won't
Dragon flight's dungeon set will be in rotation for less than a year I'm sorry are you telling me that that's value for the shareholders real on God we sort of hurried these dungeons out the door didn't we and that was so we could enter
year three of dark heart Thicket or the under Rod good keys for sure but dungeons that players have seen a lot the problem is that this solution deliberately phases out new content for old Bracken Hy Hollow was kept fresh by
bringing in black Rook hold the variety argument begins to break down if Bracken hiy hangs around it it has to go to the farm basically but maybe you're picturing Halls of infusion right now so you you love all this but how about ALR
be an alltime great it's hard not to feel like we kind of wasted it so in the short term it worked rotating dragonflight dungeons out prevented us practice Still Remains we're still going to discard these dungeons like any other
only real difference is it feels like these dungeons still have quite a bit to give in terms of shareholder value of course but then maybe they don't okay I got to be careful with how I phrase this next part game development
is hard blizzard like many AAA Studios has a culture of crunch and systemic layoffs stuff only gets made if developers are assigned to make it so blizzard assigning production resources
those dungeons had to stand up to scrutiny for two full Gregorian years suck you were stuck with them until he made new ones and you know like as a thought exercise hypothetically maybe even if you knew these dungeons would
only be in circulation for 4 to 6 months maybe you'd be okay telling yourself that it's okay if they're a bit [ __ ] maybe deep in your heart you know that created but you have other things to worry about and besides it'll be
few months and yeah maybe the vortex pinnacle isn't good either but players months and it'll be replaced with dark heart Thicket which yes isn't very good maybe it's just me but it feels like a lot of the the excitement around old
lot of the the excitement around old dungeons is specifically rooted in
traditional sense it would refer to the complexity of the combat so like Arron with all his mechanics in his multiple phases is more complex and thus more difficult than raran despite erron arguably being the most complex dungeon
boss of all time garron's fall was consistently among the easiest tanal difficult aren't synonymous when it comes to Mythic plus this is intuitive learning to kill the bosses is not the objective of Mythic plus arguably it's a
prerequisite M plus is taking dungeons you are already familiar with and seeing difficulty slider and that causes tuning to get a little weird we want to cover we're going to keep it broad for this video but if a boss only has one ability
that ability needs to hit hard for the fight to be dangerous this tends to be old boss fights look at a boss like ever Bloom's ancient protectors the entire drop green circles and you kick every possible cast would you remember sh of D
molding on Twitter for weeks that was the boss's only mechanic in phase one it was absurd both of these fights come down to fundamental skills kicking skilled coordinated groups this isn't
difficult but the margin for error was non-existent you either kick every cast face this has really weird implications for Dungeon difficulty creating huge variances from boss to boss the last three dungeons have ever Bloom are all
brutal but then you have just with a bark chilling at the front AAL desar the new Asma who might actually be the in fact if we look at some snapshots from subc create God rest at Soul we can
difficulty we can see how the S tier is made up exclusively of old dungeons every season re-release dungeons are the easiest key and at the same time the lower tiers are disproportionately clogged up by old dungeons now given
that we're being objective here this data has been selected for maximum rationality there are no flaws in my methodology and I will not be taking objective data shows is exactly what a lot of us feel intuitively old dungeons
biased toward either being too easy or too hard they're either free IO or the key you avoid shadowman burial grounds or ever Bloom and rarely anything in aren't inherently more balanc than old dungeons but if blizard can't get thrown
they put into it maybe all dungeons are just cursed you know and and look at all those dungeons in the a tier a for awesome if blizzard just makes a new dungeon it's guaranteed to be balanced just look at the D the data is
honest man this this isn't facts it's not even logic that da roun it's stupid don't don't do that it'll get you thrown out of school but you know most I don't know like the stock was deal 6 months ago do they even have shareholders
anymore like Ian if you're watching this do you still answer to the shareholders shareholders are like and you can tell I don't care because this was the best outfit I could come up with on short note who mixes these three colors
Jesus old dungeon scare me I'm ashamed to admit it because it's not rational but it's genuine and and let me tell you why you ever play Runes of Magic no dark ede of Camelot not ringing any bells how about fiest online tell me you've at
least played fiester online no it's fine don't worry about it I I did the and many more like them and let me tell you they have a a weird energy about them MMOs have enormous upfront development costs for years we saw
companies Risk Everything to create the mythological wow killer an easy example would be Star Wars the Old Republic that was BioWare fresh off of Mass Effect making a Star Wars MMO for EA its $200 million budget made it one of the most
expensive games ever made over the course of its life the Old Republic has profit but as the years have gone on the game has been serving an Ever shrinking user base as a result development of the game has slowed and in 2023 EA shifted
development of the Old Republic from BioWare to a company called broadsword company who specializes in maintaining old MMOs they take these expensive games the games running for the benefit of what players remain when an MMO reaches
a company like Daybreak or broadsword development on that game functionally ends the a republic had its last expansion in 2021 and it will not get business model is taking something built by a lot of people and maintaining it
with a small number of people so these are companies that specialize in you and they'll maintain you know as many MMOs as they can as they can possibly some new content just to give the game some sort of pulse but they do so
typically seasonal events coupled together by recycling assets like this footage from dark ede of Camelot will be very familiar to any wow private server players not that I would know of course here Runes of Magic had a clothing
here Runes of Magic had a clothing Festival going on whatever that means inside Runes of Magic you can tell that it's dead but you also feel that there's someone outside doing chest compressions fighting to keep the blood flowing for
just another fiscal period it's not that I dislike old dungeons being reused as keystones or wow classic or season of Discovery it's just when I when I look at them I'm reminded of these MMOs in caretaker mode and that's not logical
particularly fair to the people who make the game it's not a reason to not do it just I look at Activision blizzards Contin ous massive layoffs and worry that some [ __ ] in a suit is going to quietly wind down the dungeon Dev team
by leaning more and more on pre-existing content and what if he already has what if in in the false banquet of recycled dungeons we just haven't noticed yet I had very similar anxieties coming out of WS adrano and what made Legion feel so
special for me personally was how completely silence all of those concerns about the game's future um it was expansive and and expensive um and we were bombarded with content you know constantly the quality of the
debate like you know I won't say it was all it was all top shelf um but I think projected enormous strength around that souls made a huge statement about the production value of Mythic plus as much
as I would love my onka head or steam Vault Keystone they aren't sexy they aren't powerful they almost betray the promise made by more of Souls rather than getting to do my favorite old dungeons as Keys what I want is for my
dungeon that I want to run for two years straight as we're editing this alleged been leaked they seem to suggest that wow is in the strongest position it's been in in a long time and it's gotten there off the back of recycling content
whether it be wrath classic or reusing keystones like Dark Age of Camelot wow is not going anywhere I don't fear Wow's literal death I fear a creative death physically there is nothing stopping Blizzard from re-releasing a TI desar
and making the next great key for the war within those two things can easily war within those two things can easily coexist physically but is it spiritually possible how does a band release their best album after the greatest hit
CD this video is propaganda you just watched propaganda why because at skill Captain we specialize in offering highquality subscribers to the next level every season out team is at the coal pH to
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