8 Old Dungeons We Need in The War Within

[00:01] trying something a little different today 2024 is going to be a crazy year car before the storm that's a lot of reason for you to be excited but for your humble content creators it poses a serious Challenge season 3 is very

[00:15] about the war within is ages away nothing to talk about there and even schedule where there's nothing to talk about on that front either so you know what that means it's time for a cynical filler episode but like you know as far

[00:29] old dungeons that I'd want to see in the W within I thought that was a great idea about it like you know I had it pitched and approved Without Really picking any immediately pulled up a list and within about 60 seconds I produced this list of

[00:45] candidates do you see the problem that's right there isn't one it's a good list right there isn't one it's a good list made up of popular dungeons it's save a 20-minute video explaining why these dungeons are good would be a

[00:58] nightmare to watch and perhaps more importantly it would be a nightmare for me to have to write so for those of you here for a sensible list here it is those people can leave but you and I we're not like them we're intellectuals

[01:12] we're connoisseurs of content those NPCs can have Halls of atonement we don't need it in fact we don't need any of these because I don't know how to break it to you but I don't get to pick the keys I my this this list doesn't matter

[01:25] so let's indulge in just some freakish ideas and have some fun for a few easier by showing that they're willing to refurbish old dungeons that get added we're allowed to fix some of the problems with these dungeons so the

[01:40] has received has varied from instance to instance so we're going to make an objective sciency scale on the left we have Wess Mana which didn't need much work at all really just some surgical tweaks and a thorough tuning pass on the

[01:54] is a stealth remake almost everything is new but it all feels like how you dungeons on the table just to flesh it out I can hear my cat throwing up in the out I can hear my cat throwing up in the other

[02:14] controversial pick but it's interesting to talk about more of souls is one of on its face but it's even more impressive when put in context prior to Legion it was universally accepted that dungeons were subservient to raids raids

[02:29] serving as a stepping stone this me that raids commanded the majority of production resources legion's Keystone system would redefine W's endgame dungeon content will now occupy its own branch of w progression on the surface

[02:42] that just means that dungeons drop better loot but crucially players would be experiencing these instances a lot more than previous expansions dungeons had never had the production value to indulge in true spectacle and that would

[02:54] need to change to illustrate what I mean let's compare more of Souls and grimal Depot they seem similar a glance because of the whole vehicle thing but beyond that there's no comparison grimal Depot ends with you fist fighting a random orc

[03:06] kind of nasty cut scene meanwhile more of souls ends with a showdown with Helia as she tears up the ship underneath you high production value sets up a future raid encounter super thematically appropriate all that good stuff more of

[03:19] souls wasn't a dungeon it it was a statement as strange as that sounds you know we talk about how like the modern era of wow began with Legion and it was like you know more of souls represents a turning point in the development of

[03:33] World of Warcraft it was where our present day truly began that's awesome and yet more of souls hasn't as much as been added into Legion time walking why well the easy answer is to say that its Legacy was tarnished by artifact power

[03:47] players subjected themselves to truly degenerate dungeon grinds and more of souls with its 24 Minute Timer is by far the shortest key ever made this made more of souls the Keystone of choice for grinding and the two became synonymous

[04:01] spreadsheets would measure artifact power in terms of the necessary more runs that did tank the dungeon's perception for sure but more of souls is far from a perfect key its short length is a genuine issue a 24-minute timer is

[04:14] short but most runs were much faster some of the highest more runs ever came in under 20 minutes it feels less like a keystone and more like an old challenge mode the dungeons setting an environment are goated but the boss fights

[04:26] themselves have not aged well from a combat point of view particular the problem as bosses in darkot Thicket and black rock cold just two few abilities cast too infrequently this is a universal theme for basically every boss

[04:40] pre well dawn of the infinite really dungeon bosses inherently feel a bit undercooked and they only get more raw the further back in time you go so you know I'm not I'm not a game designer right like look at me but I I have an

[04:52] to do with like fairing The Souls of the damn right so what if we had like a had to protect and it was literally just a halandras bombb like not not a metaphoric mechanical like it was the Ghost of a halandras bomb which we must

[05:07] carry through the instance and if it detonates the group instantly wipes I I imagine you have an issue with it I think this solves all of the dungeons issues a 20 minute halandras bomb Gauntlet that seems about right to me I

[05:22] say I say we do it I say it's a slam dunk onet the Old Kingdom we already feature the nerubian so a head would be a perfect fit thematically I thought I idea and then like a micr later it occurred to me that we're definitely

[05:36] within we only have the names to go off right now but old city is almost certainly a new take on onad so this idea is probably a bust but honestly man potential this place has as a key I never particularly liked anahad in fact

[05:50] on a bad day I might even say I dislike this place but God damn if it isn't a Triumph of level design in terms of dungeon routing it's in the goldilock zone it's not a feature a sand pit nor is it a linear hallway you have a few

[06:02] from and with the tech that's been developed over the years your options to build a route here are truly insane just look at this room don't you just want to and if you're really freaky there's seven more spiders as we walked past to

[06:16] as well or you can swing the complete other way and shroud all the way to the from there you can either make up the count in either of these side rooms or perhaps do additional trash here or here if anything this is probably too much

[06:30] Freedom nothing in this instance has true sight so Rogues can run just so on that note we'd want to give this place the full Throne of the tides refurb in 2024 this 5-second Shadow blast is it's just condescending really

[06:44] place either with four or five bosses when blizzard re-released everbloom they cut Zer tact from the key the difference here is that Zer tact was one of the worst fights of all time while the mushroom guy here owns personally I

[06:58] weird to say out loud but it feels almost like onad was wasted in Wrath of built with so much flexibility and so much um so much sort of players were so with it and approach it however they liked and yet we we used that freedom to

[07:15] dungeon and it was the exact sort of behavior that the the Keystone system was built to deter right like you know forces a mob count and make sure we do all the bosses and that sort of thing I feel like On's best days might still be

[07:28] ahead of it if we make it into a keystone and that feels insane to say out loud but like that's that's what I I sincerely believe that and it's strange skolan the new one I would argue that OG

[07:43] skolan is the only time wow has truly embrace the horror genre skolan was Wow's first true and only horror maze it was claustrophobic and disorienting and was claustrophobic and disorienting and this bloody hot bait

[08:01] about but do I think that the lfg system should drop five unsuspecting noobs into this place no no I do not so blizzard wisely made the decision to remake Skol man in Mr pandara the Remake deliberately toned

[08:15] they play up the school for necromancer's idea but play it more for comedy it's a lot less subtle look it it kind of sucks but I get it it's fine it's fine beyond that the Remake did all

[08:27] the right things Skol man was a ring multi-level maze the Remake takes the most iconic rooms and Staples them into a linear order it sounds lame but it did the job the new Skol isn't much smaller than the original but simply removing

[08:40] the backtracking makes it feel so much tighter on the whole I like the updated challenge mode system in mind skola may be the best example of the subtle old challenge modes skola man's had a 19-minute gold timer and it feels fast

[08:55] in part this is because almost all the trash in Skol is gimmicky or weird like it's quicker if I just show you the entirety of the first boss

[09:09] seconds to engage the first boss these bone Weavers deeply suck and need a rework the following trash is built around manipulating this damage amp and they basically kill themselves and the board students might as well do nothing

[09:21] don't have enough going on each fight only really has one idea all of this worked well in challenge modes but they red flags in keystones for that reason I think we need an extreme rework here I think we pull that 19-minute timer up to

[09:36] 30 to match a tazar that would mean doing five bosses in 30 minutes no other key is like that but the speedrun vibe defines this dungeon so I say we embrace it as a feature rather than a bug the fights have to be fast so they're

[09:48] allowed to be a little bit crap new Upper Black Rock Spire if I had one word to describe nuas it would be forgettable dungeon any favors it is surprising ly inaccessible even on normal mode like

[10:01] walking it's almost like Blizzard's ashamed of it or something so I'm functionally no memory of this place even from transmog runs I say we movie where everyone forgets all about the Beatles except for that one guy who

[10:16] republishes all of their songs as his own I propose something similar if we re-release nuas most people won't even notice that it's old content that part of the plan is Flawless but beyond that we do have some problems mainly that

[10:29] we do have some problems mainly that nubas sucks pretty hard see more of basically nothing else is worth preserving nuas has the opposite problem all trapped within this 20-year-old environment just like skolan Ubers is

[10:45] massive but unlike the remake of Skol mans the new Uber kept the same map it is an enormous dungeon with a short timer you move through this environment at a break neck Pace as a consequence the instance has a major problem with

[10:57] would want to see this place re-envisioned like motherload imagine this place just teaming with optional trash built to encourage big pools I want plus 20 no lever keys to look like MDI runs open this door remove this boss

[11:11] RP and we've immediately solved the most painful parts of this dungeon the goal time for this key was 25 minutes so we definitely need to pull that up nuas is a five boss dungeon so if we bring in some other five boss dungeons to compare

[11:23] I think 35 minutes feels reasonable you know I I liken the W version of UBS like a like like a kitchen whose best quality is that it's cheap to rip out if that Property Owners watching who'll appreciate that um it's almost it's a

[11:37] blank slate that a smart designer can like impose modern Keystone principles interesting because I think if if done correctly we end up with like a kind of that sounds really exciting to me and if you don't like the idea of a kind of bad

[11:53] lower car with Orcs maybe don't attend my birthday party this have a birthday party which will be akin to lower caraz I'm with ORS I don't know if that if that scans the Black Rock Caverns a surface level evaluation of

[12:08] Black Rock Cavs would tell you that it's just a bland cave but my friend you cannot survey the depth of a cave from the surface you have to go deeper the dungeon is essentially a smuggling Network Deathwing carved out a passage

[12:20] Twilight cultist are using it to travel back and forth and cause Mischief cataclysm was all about blending iconic wow imagery into something new and this place is a great example of that the tunnels are evocative of the molten core

[12:33] palette the Twilight Hammer are all various shades of purple and this is all Mountain so we get a lot of dark iron dwarf architecture so what ought to be a generic cave actually does have a unique visual identity you can pick black rock

[12:47] cavins out of a lineup I particularly adore this image of the nether Drake hanging from the ceiling it looked great in trailers and it looks great 14 years we'll put Black Rock Caverns alongside thrown our refurb Spectrum but really I

[13:01] than Throne was again the bosses all have solid core ideas but would need a lot of supporting material one major challenge with this place is what to do Raz after the first boss and he goes on a rampage clearing out Elite Twilight

[13:15] cultist and that sort of thing Raz has always been buggy like here he is bugging out while I gather footage as much fun as Raz is in concept I think the best solution here is the boring one minimize his influence make him passive

[13:28] and remove any Trash that he's expected to kill it suckss but it's preferable to we kept him as is now the last matter to address is the topic of cataclysm before the war within comes out cater

[13:41] by season one of the war within honestly that sounds like a you problem this idea is awesome and definitely happening so consider this you notice King's

[13:53] rest now wait before you freak out just just hear me out for a second the first dungeon that I want to put here is King's rest just just heem me out for a second we are now sitting at a combined total of 88 deaths in this dungeon let

[14:07] think we'll ever see something like this again maybe I get again maybe I get it I know they're going to deplete this to call the local authorities cuz there's a Mass Slaughter going on right

[14:21] now between these two teams from Shadow of Zuul he has just taken names King's rest was Notorious in BFA particularly in the expansion early life in season 2 three levels lower than the overall highest key because here's the thing I

[14:37] know how to make King's rest good we Nerf it a lot because the issue was always tuning uh King's rest has been overtuned for more than a year now in King's rest but I think again that's

[14:52] plus scaled it over the course of the close the gap between it and the rest of the BFA dungeon set I think what it needs is a really good shooting pass and a few specific annoyances addressed for

[15:05] it should be replaced with your more traditional spawn point the four King's Gauntlet here is fairly iconic I guess but I would overhaul it shadow of Zuul was stupidly overtuned blizzard was big into nasty final trash PS in BFA and

[15:19] Zuul was the most unhinged version of that he needs a baseball cap to the King's dress was particularly sensitive to certain aexes like these little where this happened I I'll pull the MS cuz

[15:33] otherwise they will travel to the other side a few moments later the [ __ ] how do he get to Big H the B string you don't have spend a lot of time TR I got me lead for 1 million there was a ton of this sort of thing

[15:47] the Nerfs to bolstering bursting and so on all represent Nerfs to King's rest list I thought I was being really contrarian but the more time passes the rest is a modern highquality dungeon that was hamstrung by a few very

[16:01] specific things with the benefit of hindsight and a doover there's no reason this can't return to the rotation and if King's rest comes back and is dramatically overtuned well that's that's what skill cap.com is for baby a

[16:14] it's overly linear and you know sure I'll I'll pay that but like what do you expect we can't just keep re-releasing freeold over and over freeold over and over again unless

[16:26] freeold I know what you're thinking we just had freeold it's been like 4 months that's way too soon to re-release it I have two things to say to that one the war within is still like 6 months away so it'll be 10 months and second go 4

[16:38] then try telling her that it hasn't been that long it is all relative Freehold within because really why should we limit ourselves to only one Revival tour been re-released were chosen specifically because they were the

[16:54] greatest keystones of all time free hold has stood the test of time the elephant of good keys to re-release my list from earlier isn't exactly brimming with first round picks guys put another way do you want to do freeold again or would

[17:07] you rather a re-release of shrine of the storm I know which one I want now I admit that freeold is a cowardly pick in fact it's a very un inspired way to approach Mythic plus so let's end with my most insane but most sincere pick the

[17:20] steam Vault the steam vault is old it is a Max Level dungeon from the burning Crusade dungeons like shadowman burial ground felt old in season 1 and it's a spring chicken at age 10 compared to the steam Vault 17 years of age so off the

[17:34] refurbishing as we can get away with but I think it's worth it because I really do believe there's an excellent key here what's the plot the nagar is stealing water to swim in it or something we're here to disrupt the palps doesn't matter

[17:46] in terms of layout it is a three boss dungeon where the two bosses must be killed in order to open the door to the final boss this first area is analogous atonement dungeons that begin with large Open Spaces before coming linear later

[17:59] on you have about five flavors of nager and various groups that litter the room groups of water Elementals patrolling the Center PATH similar to onah the but players naturally found an efficient route that bypassed as much trash as

[18:13] possible in this case players ended up hugging walls and missing a lot of perhaps best remembered for this primitive Tech where players could like emerg like the intro at a middle Gear Solid it's a unique concept but it's

[18:27] decisions in the name of ease and efficiency if this would get remade today I'd treat it like thron's elevator and add like a scripted boat rod or the route open occasionally we'll see discussions on Twitter about turning

[18:41] the shattered Halls did the rounds a while back but due to its layout I is the only TBC dungeon that could really Excel as a key again it would before it like personally I would go so far as to add a fourth boss encounter

[18:56] right here one of those big bruts Main could be area denial think blight bone or chrom car or fight that just needs like a lot of space for you to deal with room these bosses are so basic that they aren't really worth talking about but I

[19:09] interesting basis for a lot of these fights I think you could do some in a room the small we haven't seen a lepo encounter in I don't even know how long and this guy or I'll be honest I've got nothing he's a random Naga warlord

[19:24] this point you may be asking the obvious question why why should so much Dev time be devoted to an update of the bloody steam Vault supporter of video game preservation I agreed with the philosophy of a # no

[19:40] changes classic because it would ensure that vanilla wow was preserved in a pure back into the steam Vault ready to have a Dos of nostalgia and it didn't hit the same how could it the instance is old it was made for an audience on dialup

[19:55] internet it was made for a world that doesn't exist anymore Pres conservation is not the same thing as relevance we have preserved the original schol mans but we do so for the benefit of art Scholars and Weirdos the remake of Skol

[20:07] man and UBS were big and showy they were an attempt to fix the perceived floor in the original dungeon they were too old too long or too boring it's not impressive the blizzard remade Throne of the tides for season 3 of dragonfly

[20:20] what's impressive is that they didn't most players did not appreciate the extent of the changes made to throne and because all the changes felt right the relevance without disrupting the essence of the dungeon radical yet subtle we

[20:34] Skol man but it's very hard to mourn the loss of the original Throne of the tides because what have we lost exactly oh no kid tail will never know weirdly empty what we may have missed in our

[20:49] pursuit of # no changes is that maybe it's okay to admit that the steam vault is too lame to enjoy in 2024 and that intelligent designers with a de hand can relevance without losing what made them resonate in the first place I I want to

[21:04] like a lot of the people in my life right now are going through some flavor of midlife crisis and it's coming from weird places it's coming from seeing the careers of YouTubers it's coming from you know uh my my my fiance had to do

[21:20] assigned to do cross country so she's being introspective about her old school because she's assigned to do cross country and and you know I I thought I was above it all but the steam Vault has triggered

[21:33] know these these memories of doing it as a child um so this idea of like a child um so this idea of like introspection versus versus full-blown uncritical Nostalgia has sort of been at the back of my mind

[21:48] the back of my mind recently um and so to to see you know the Throne of the tides and and vortex pinnacle and like these dungeons get get these these very taste for refurbishers it just has me sort of conceptualizing

[22:02] of I'm trying to articulate now I don't know if it's worked at all but there's about it you know to sound like a complete wanker for a second there's something that I found I found profound about this idea

[22:18] found I found profound about this idea of you know like maybe these dungeons like that we celebrate the Artistry that we celebrate um is uh is not so rigid we celebrate um is uh is not so rigid that it has to remain

[22:32] it into the video right that's that's getting cut right that was good though maybe I'll just leave it in put another way we aren't re-releasing Ona head because our best days are behind us we're doing it

[22:45] because our best days are still ahead because to be honest this list of dungeons doesn't excite me this list of keys represents a kind of creative stagnation World of Warcraft is not developed by civil engineers uh I do not

[22:58] want to making safe choices if we must be re-releasing dungeons like this I want to use the opportunity to do something interesting something bold you halandras bombb for the entirety more of so I'm telling you it's a good idea you

[23:12] just you don't understand it just once you see it it'll make sense just green light the project and we we'll deal with the particulars later hi you made it to the end of the video and there is a man mowing right over the fence so I will

[23:24] not linger here too long um what did you make of that that was that was a weird video right um obviously that was like you know deliberate shock to the system here very different video from skill cap um we want to Pivot the voice of the

[23:36] channel just a little bit and um and the goal was to try something very different did you make of me as a voice Talent what did you make of these on camera what did you make of these on camera segments um was that any good um we want

[23:50] obviously so if people didn't enjoy that if you didn't enjoy that um we want to know so please uh don't don't don't be horrible don't don't bully me on the internet but um but please you know

[24:03] can't get out of here without doing a quick shout out to sko cap.com there's a lot of exciting stuff going on over there in the runup to season 4 and and the war within in particular I'm very excited to see all that stuff bear fruit

[24:16] to work through um and they're doing this little extra offer where if you sign up now you get a a free V review with a pro player every month um which that's that's kind of uh it's kind of an insane offer I don't know how they're

[24:29] making that work but um just to be clear I'm not one of the pro players you don't they've got actual experts you get to sit down with um but but Brian if you're that work how do you square that Circle cuz that doesn't the math doesn't check

[24:44] out for me uh have a good