Of course it' rendering old content useless, It's an expansion! what did you expect? You can't keep the old instance still viable, the game as a whole would grind to a halt, it has to keep progressing, content patch after content patch doesn't work after a while, as happened with vanilla wow, the gear you could get at naxx was ridiculous for the level requirements.

My name is Montellius and I am the guild leader of Shadow Allegiance on Madoran. Our guild was built shortly after TBC launch to specialize in the old-world raids, to see and conquer everything WoW has to offer and to give anyone who hadn't had a chance to do the older stuff the opportunity to get their fill. Mostly all I get while I'm recruiting is "Why do you do the old junk?" or "All that gear is obsolete!" Many people just can't grasp the concept of doing something just to do it, just to see what's there and what challenges it presents. It is things like this that make my guild's growth and incentive struggle.

Pre-TBC I pushed many hard months on my Mage, Onyxius, with my old guild on Hellscream to get ZG, AQ20, Ony & BWL on farm. We were about half way to getting Nef on farm then !!BAM!! 2 months before the launch of TBC new talent trees were introduced and almost EVERYBODY dropped everything for the prospect of level 70 & 10-25 man raids rather than 20-40 mans. "Yeah! We don't need most of these people anymore, we won't need to work as hard as a team!" Many, many players got tossed into the wind in the middle of their raiding prime while shiny new epics and lower requirements for raiding effort were introduced. But what happened to most of these pompous bastards who abandoned their guildmates and friends to get Kara loot before everyone else? They failed miserably! From what I saw, and have seen, only those guilds who worked hard to push Naxx on farm and be truly prepared for what TBC had in store prevailed in raiding. Only until a couple months ago did most older guilds start getting Kara completed and start attempting SSC while those who truly strived to wreck every challenge presented to them already had most of the T5 raids on farm and were readying to enter The Black Temple.

Now although I have nothing against the thrill of working hard for a chance to get a new Epic upgrade, it's rediculous exactly how greedy people get and how badly they're willing to screw over their colleagues and community over something that will easily be replaced in time. Now the prospect of newer and better items is always a great incentive to get most raiders going but that isn't all that should motivate activity. Like I said earlier there's a great satisfaction of working on a raid and completing it successfully with your guildies and friends. With WotLK on the horizon we may possibly, or likely, see a repeat of the events that came when TBC was launched. All the older fun stuff just fades away. Perhaps Blizzard could go back and rethink some things to revive what originally made raiding such a great experience.

Many people on this thread share many of the same Ideas that I have. Make heroic modes for the Pre-TBC raids and such, but why not go a step further? Why not have multiple Heroic settings? How about Heroic level 70 & 80 runs for Azeroth instances and raids as well as an additional level 80 Heroic mode for all TBC runs? This would help preserve the challenges that were presented in the past while presenting new challenges and giving everyone a reason to experience the older raids at level cap. In the beginning it would take a decent overhaul to properly balance the older runs to make them a suitable and fun heroic challenge but in the long run it would benefit everyone as far as players having great time and Blizzard reaping the benefits of having their players spending more time in game to go back and relive the old Lore that made WoW what it is today.

While I don't have the space to recant all the tales from all the runs getting pre-bc attunements accomplished, I can say those were the good ole days!

IMHO it is tragic to get into level 60+ content and be in groups where not a soul knows how to play thier character inside an instance. How should this be addressed? Maybe getting into Outlands should require an attunement. Maybe as part of a characters class training, he should be required to run specific instances. Similar to most classes having to run Sunken Temple for thier level 52 class quests.

Of course Blizzard would have to cap instances similar to the way they cap summoning stones so we don't end up with millions of people that have been "run through" those required instances.

Give the old world raids heroic levels and new attunement requirements. Cant be that difficult for Blizz to do.

I think their stance is pretty simple - look and move forward with new content and new challenges. Develop the game further instead of wasting time revamping the past. The old Strath, MC, BWL, etc has been around for years now... they've become classics. When Blizz runs out of ideas for new content I wouldnt be surprised if they do make some revamp. But till then Ill enjoy the new content that keeps the game fresh thanks.

In the meantime, those of you who so love the old content can play the old content - its still around. Of course the reward isnt the same though and never will be because the higher end stuff has higher rewards, as it should.

Frankly Im so tired of all the old dungeons - learning the fights and the strategies took a lot of time and as soon as they were on 'farm' it killed my enthusiasm - farming the same content week after week in 'hopes' the item you wanted drops is mind numbing! Seeing loot getting sharded from raid bosses because the same stuff drops weeks in a row while other classes sit in blues killed me! At least with PVP you can definately choose the item you want and theres a definite amount of time&effort required to get it - the goal posts are set and the reward is guaranteed to be relevant. I wish the dungeon loot system could be calibrated to give a similar degree of relevance.

I have no ambition to ever step foot in the old farmed content again.

I see lots of people yell about how they want Blizzard to revamp Azerothian instances from their days of old and I wonder if anyone remembered what Blizzard said about Caverns of Time... How if they are going to revamp any old instance it would most likely be through there.
Wouldn't it be nice to join Prince Arthas and his army when they marched on Stratholme, rather that kill the undead invaders and Baron Rivendare in Stratholme at lvl 70 or 80 difficulty with no new encounters?
There are many places steeped in lore that we'd all like to have stories for that we can reinact or play out... while getting mad loots.

A probable idea would be to make MC, BWL, Ony, and AQ a smaller sized dungeon. In theory make them lvl 60-65 dungeons at a 10 man instance like UBRS was. Possibly add more quests to them through various areas throughout Azeroth (additional hydraxian quests for MC?).

With that idea this would give Blizzard the chance to, like a previous post had mentioned, add quests that would test new TBC players to run these dungeons and get a real feel for how their class is played. Adding class specific quests with superior or epic loot as the incentive.

With the loss of these great dungeons we lost two fun quests, crafting the Thunderfury and Fist of Rag. They are still cool weapons and I believe they could make them more useful in TBC as well. Adding Legendary "Upgrade" quests to make them worth having past 60+.

Even after that, I loved the Tier 1 rogue armor, Nightslayer. I'd like to see more people running around in all tiers of armor, not just pvp armor or tier 4-6. I realise this is the upgrade, the norm for the "Now era" but for those people who don't have a raid guild that tears through Kara and higher instances, it would be nice to still have a set to call your own without having to pvp your face off.

I've been playing the game since beta and frankly I don't care if they leave the instances alone. I don't see why people hold such sentimental value to them anyway. I sure did have fun in them when I raided them awhile ago, but do you know why I had fun? I enjoyed the company of my fellow raiders. The "good times" for me were not the dungeons or raid instances... my god, those were horribly designed in many cases... but were laughing on vent with fellow guildies after killing some boss or wiping because someone made a dumb mistake :P. All of my fun times were with my friends on the server, not with Ragnaros... Onyxia... Nefarian... C'thun... Kel'thuzad.

Now, why shouldn't Blizzard just make a heroic level for the instances to placate the people that want it? Well, this is development time that could be spent elsewhere. Blizzard is essentially giving you a bone by redeveloping Naxxramas for Wrath of the Lich King (and it is slated to be one of the first raid dungeons by the way). The way I look at it, people already complain that Blizzard does things like reuse models and only give 'em a new paint job. A green version of warrior T2 (Wrath)... players balked at such a thing! Will reusing an entire instance really receive critical acclaim from everyone? I highly doubt it... especially if these instances are to be passed off as "new content."

I kind of agree with a user that posted below... TBC was an expansion and WoW was expanded upon. If Blizzard did not raise the level cap (essentially making these old end-game instances not-so-end-game), there would be extremely little room for improvement as levels provide a chance to introduce new spells progressively, new talent builds (since more points are available), new areas progressively, etc. Ask yourself this, if Blizzard did not raise the level cap... what would TBC have been? More like a patch than an expansion.

I don't think it's wrong to want to do these instances as they're kind of sitting in the corner collecting dust. But do I think TBC was a huge blunder because it removed these instances from the limelight ... not at all. I predict that within a year, I will be responding to yet another post lambasting Wrath of the Lich King for killing people's chance of ever stepping foot in Karazhan.

I haven't read much about WLK but I am kind of hoping the Death Knight class will be designed in such a way to be like the Paladin and Druid class in the sense it can forfill any role required by a dungeon group; Tank / Dps or Healer. I am also hoping it will be limited to level 60, that way people get to try the new class but the "old school dungeons" will become popular again. I am sure this will never happen but I can dream can't I :).

Im only level 19, but I wish i could experience that glory, man./....
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i hope blizzard thinks of some way to bring them back.\\\

content being lost is upsetting, godddamit

i'm more then sure that the TBC instances and raids will become dwarfed when WotLK comes out but when TBC came out isn't that what we wanted? many of us who have been playing since the beginning remember running strat, scholo, ubrs, mc, and bwl so many times we didn't ever want to go in there ever again. Sure we all have good memories of stupid things that happened and the rush of downing those bosses for the first time. But for those of you that were in large guilds back then. I'm sure you remember the pain of having to get people to come do strat or scholo when they were in full epic or even zg and aq20 for that matter. people were tired of doing the instances and seeing no reward for going. TBC brought out something the game needed more then anything. To fully get away from the old instances. If they hadn't brought out TBC many people would have quit this game. I think they could have revamped them a bit to make them more playable for new comers. such as getting rid of the attunement quests for the instances and maybe even reducing health, resistances, armor, and dmg done by the bosses and trash to make it alittle more playable for a smaller raid. because when are you ever gonna have 40 60+'s in mc ever again? it's very rare...only a few guilds still go in there either for fun or to gear up some 60's and maybe so some people can craft a thunderfury and hand of rag for aesthetic purposes.

When WotLK comes out the TBC instances and raids will become useless but i still see kara as something being done because of the low man power requirement. maybe not so much the 25mans but kara and za may still see some action.

The thing is I wanted to Raid those places you mention, so I can get some experiance what pisses me off everyone is so focus on Kara that I can't even get a chance to get a group for the Classic places you mention.I was told most of the Gear in those Raid Dungions suck and not worth the effort I wanted to go to those places to see if its worth the effort but not many people want to go there.

SCALE UP THE INSTANCES BASED ON LEVEL CAP.

I am not sure why they don't make Instances "Scale UP" with the levels... it seems like the next logical step. Not only make things heroic, but make them scaleable. It would add a new flavor for all items, boss's and instances.

Example...do it like they do the Battle Grounds, where you can join based on your level cap.

Molten Core 50-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 75-80
Where Items gain a Normal Factor for the 1st tier, then scale the equipment by +2 to a max.

Also, if they do this, it will breath new life into old tier sets....make everything fresh again, and make that Black Wing Lair, and Naxx all that much more appealing again.

Modu - Trollbane Horde.

I have many nostalgic memories of the old world instances. I remember when no one on my server had downed Rag and Drak was "serious business."

I also remember one year later when I was so bored with MC/BWL that I wanted to gouge my eyes out. The duty of an expansion pack is to push the game forward, and that means leaving old experiences behind. Still, redrawing the loot tables for these old instances wouldn't be a bad idea. They've already done it in the Deadmines and other low level dungeons.

Imagine my shock when I suddenly found that that white piece of vendor trash Rhakzor's Hammer is suddenly blue, with twice the DPS and 11 stamina. My God, I would have killed for a hammer like that back in my early days. But be that as it may, I think redrawing the dungeon set 1/tier 0 loot as being at least on part with Hellfire Citadel and Slave Pens/Underbog gear might help spur some interest into those zones. The only downside is that they would have to rework UBRS to be a five man zone, which, in my mind, isn't worth it. 15 (and later 10) player pugs were that zones charm to be sure. But it would have to be an exp zone now, and 10 man raids won't cut it for that.

I do understand the premise behind the nostalgia here, but it is nothing more than the inevitable cycle that must go on or the game will begin it's own demise.

MC, Onyxia and such were the holy grails for questing at the time, because they were the end game raiding instances. Players were capped and that was what they had for a challenge and worthwhile reward. There simply wasn't much else to choose from.

Then came the expansion and the raise of the level cap. It opened up new challenges, new experiences and more progression. The older raids became just that, older raids...raids that were no longer for capped players, as new raids for the new cap were now available. The old raids no longer had a long lifespan with the players for the simple reason that they now had bigger and better things to aspire to, whereas pre-expansion they were the biggest and baddest things.

The fact that these old raids may be dying out in popularity is due to people wanting to progress beyond them, not hang around and stop progressing. The expansion brought about the desire to continue on, not reminisce about the past. It's a staple of every game that remains for awhile and is successful.

Even revamping the old raids to scale by level will not really overtake the desire to seek out the greatest and toughest raids in the game designed for current end game content. Nor will they override the disire to experience and conquer the new, rather than re-experience and re-conquer that which many have done over and over in the past. In a dynamic game world, the designers cannot rely on static old scenarios to sustain the game and generally players will frown on it if they do...new content is a must, tougher content becomes desired, etc. Old raids will simply be just that, an old raid...no matter what they do to try to make them new, they will still be yesterday's raid.

The only saving grace are those who enjoyed them and desire to still experience them, and those who have never been able to experience them. The compounding problem though is since Blizzard made leveling from 1-60 much faster thank before (to get people into TBC before the newest expansion comes out), means that people will be in the proper level ranges for these old raids a shorter amount of time, and many simply want to get into the Outlands anyways. So their popularity may be dying out but in the end it is still the same...people will seek out the end game contint in droves. It once was these old raids, but they have been replaced with the new outlands raids...and when the latest expansion comes out, the outlands raids will also be replaced by new end game raids. It's just the same old cycle...the old will always be replaced by the new.

I dont think Blizzard is trying to get rid of the old ones, we just have new and better things to do now, where as at one point the old ones were the end game, and the end game has simply moved ahead.

I have spent countless hours mastering solo runs of BRD and Scholomance, and I must say one of the things I have enjoyed the most about BC / lvl 70 is the feeling of being godlike in what once was hard for a full group. To solo Scholo is still quite a challenge and a very good way to improve your skills as it really pushes you to the edge all the time. I have not managed Strat yet, though it should be quite doable for a decently geared hunter or a very well geared warlock (t5, s3 gear), but I have had some really great times running BRS and Strat with my brother, playing as a warlcock / durid dynamic duo. Running strat with a full party these days is just too insane to be anything but a definition of imba.

Thus one of the things I look forward to the most with WotLK is becoming a lvl 80 god, returning to the same old OL instances... this time alone. Soloing ZG should then be no problem, heroic SH a breeze and dare I say it? soloing Kara very possible.

Having said that, it is truly a pity that the old dungeons hold so little of interest save for money and shards. How to solve that? First of all make all non-endgame drops BoE. This way we would have a set of very well geared low lvl players and insane new twinkage. Granted, this would have a major impact on the economy, but not so much that it should be a problem. It would also make the leveling up of alts that much more fun.

Blizz have stated that they see twinking as a way to prolong the lifetime of old dungeons and thus support it. More BoE loot would definetly be a way to make oldworld instances that much more inhabited. So away with the soulbinding of useless but good gear.

Second, give us more unique items that are still relevant, odd trinkets like the flute and the peasant caller. Place resistance trinkets needed for lvl 80 endgame in non-endgame instances, say the eye, ssc, hyjal and BT. Gief questchains that gives BoP vanity pets and oddities. More of them. Quest chains appearing post Lich King that give some crap pet wolf for example (you all have that wolf pet from black rock?). Because you see there is still much fun to be had even when you're OP.

I got to agree with Blakbyrd here, it's just these things go.

Myself? I ussually try to do at least all the dungeons once when i lvl a new character, next to that i make sure i get ALL the prequests (except Naxx, waste of money) and i get all the items needed in low lvl dungeons such as Mallet of ZF and the Scepter of Celebras and keys. It's just my way of bringing bnack good old times and not forgetting how the time before TBC was.

Rewards? I sometimes seem to be the only one who knows how to get around in BRD, i know all the boss fights, and yes, this can be rewarding.

What i would like to see? I don't think it would be a waste of time for Blizzard to link high-end pre-TBC dungeons and perhaps even a bit of MC/Onyxia to TBC. This could be done by adding content to these dungeons that would make sure you can level proffesions easily to 300 before starting TBC stuff, money rewards, titels or tabards. Just reward players with things they still use at 70. Maybe add a bit of storyline that tells what happend at those place pre-TBC. At the moment i find the leveling to have gaps such as proffesion gaps (i level so fast these days that my mining is still 240 when my warrior hitted 60, and enchanting mats to lvl 265-300 have sky high prices), but also the neglect of the need of doing instances, seeming you can get a lot of gear and xp from easy quests and last but not least the sudden story-line gap between BRD (where the MC/BWL story starts) and TBC. You cant follow it seeming you dont go to lvl 60 dungeons anymore (except Ramparts).

Blizzard, just level a character from 1-70 and you will see for yourself what we mean. Some moments of leveling have become outdated or strange. The content from 1-50 just needs a bit of adjusting and fine tuning. And from 50-60 you guys have a lot of stuff, and use just a small amount of it, i am sure you can do great things with it!

All and all i think with a minimal amount of effort TBC and Pre-TBC can be linked without wasting a players time at all. It would only make it more fun for veterans to lvl a new character, and everything would seem more logical for new players who understand dont even undestand half of whats going on at 55-60.

I would also entertain the idea that this situation may also be more evident on certain servers and not so much on others. I only play on a RP server now and it seems that many of the original instances are staying relatively populated. Even with a capped character and another on the way, our small guild still does these older instances alot. I suspect part of it may be due to the fact that we are not large enough to be running the end game raids on our own right now.

However, if this situation is becoming overly evident then it would seem that would be due to the idea that the majority of players have moved on from such instances and raids and are doing so because they are old to them, they have progressed beyond them, or they are no longer a challenge or fun.

There will always be players who wish to enjoy or relive the older days for fun or nostalgia, but those kind of players are almost always outnumber by those desiring the new.

The one benefit we have though as being able to be level 70 for these older places is that they are much easier to complete as a 70, and as such you can solo some, and other require smaller groups to do, making it easier to group with like minded friends to go complete. At least at 70 you dont still have to go find a full raid party to go back and enjoy the older classic raids.

Still, though, our guild regularly does the old instances and we've learned them well and they make good loot runs for money without too much of a challenge, but for the most part they are just loot runs for us now and we fly through them.

Seems like they could simply add servers that restrict leveling to 60 and call them pre-bc servers, so that people can experience the times of epic raids. Maybe they could make transfering work so that you can transfer off those servers, however not on to them from normal servers; only between pre-bc servers.

ugg i miss pre bc sp much i was near lvl 20-30 when tbc was out and i always wanted to raid the new (old now) raids the epic gear these days are "epic" as the old raids were i fuckin hate BC i hope WoTLK dose turn the old raids around