This is entry number 7 in the 30 days of WarCraft series of articles.
My least favorite dungeon..? I guess it would have to be The Oculus.
I don’t hate The Oculus necessarily – I’m just not a huge fan of vehicle encounters.
I always grimaced when the random dungeon queue would pop and port me to The Oculus. Some weeks the dungeon finder seemed to love that place.
Having to summon my dragon repeatedly to navigate the instance… players not understanding how the drakes work… players getting lost… someone nearly always aggroing a random drake while on the way to the next platform… and having an end boss I can’t unload on with MQoSRDPS hunter-style… all those things make The Oculus my least favorite dungeon.
I can’t believe no one has said Gnomer!!!
OCC, getting the mechanics down, getting others to understand when to use stop time and not everyone use it at the same time, ugggg. Second would be the one I hate got nerfed so bad, Sunken Temple, I never got that order down pat.
Ugh. Oculus. I remember the first time I entered it, then got lost because the party members all got drakes and took off — I didn’t know what to do and didn’t know where to go. By now I know how easy it is but the first time jitters really got into me.
The blue drake dropped for me though.
I never cared for Mauradon. Always seemed to get lost there and nothing really spectacular about it as an instance.
Wailing Caverns ranks up there as well, pretty much the same reason.
Halls of Reflection and the new Zul’gurub are on my “pick up group destroyers” list. I don’t dislike them, but they caused/cause a lot of groups to disband.
I personally never minded Occ, it was everyone else’s attitude that bothered me. It wasn’t that complicated to navigate, but it was just setup for mouth-breathers to get lost and confused.
Wailing Caverns always seemed too long and too confusing for the level of players typically entering the instance. Not a great intro instance at all.
Opening of Dark Portal and Culling of Stratholme were always super annoying for the scripted events.
Halls of Reflection was super annoying. I hate that the only accepted strat is to stand in the corner and not be able to see anything hoping no one does something stupid to wipe the group.
Sethekk Halls always made me want to pull my hair out. People forgot how painful a lot of the BC instances where when they were level cap, and before they were nerfed into oblivion. Perfect coordination and amazing cc was often still not enough to cause annoying and painful group wipes. Of course that was back when it took 4 hours to even get a group together, so you were pretty much forced to sit through bad comps and bad players in general.
Ha, I hate all the ones where when the group is formed you people complaining and dropping ’cause they hate that instance! LOL Heroic Grim Batol is one my guild loves to hate, but I think I still hate old school Maraudon the most. Just too long and meandering, lots of pointlessnessism. Yes, I just made that word up.
Halls of Reflection. Hands down. I hated almost everything about it. I hated how certain group comps could basically screw you. I hated people’s attitudes when they came in (at the time, I always tried to AT LEAST be positive about it). I hated how people blamed each other for wipes. I hated that if your group made it to the gauntlet that they were usually quite pissy with each other.
I did like the lore aspect of the place and how it really seemed to help progress the story of the LK. I just think that the design of the dungeon came at a bad time, on the heels of the breezy LK heroics. I will only ever go back to farm a QD because I do REALLY want to run that quest line.