Random Dungeons and Heroic Lockout

It's not that you don't get saved to a Heroic dungeon when using the Random Option in the tool; rather, the Random Option will ignore your Heroic lockouts if you continue to use it, though it will attempt to weight the chance of being randomly selected for a Heroic dungeon to which you've been saved lower than those to which you have not, provided there are enough people in the queue to fill a group for an alternate instance without making you wait an excessive amount of time for a dungeon you have yet to do.

5-Man Dungeons Loot Quality

We tend to provide better loot for forward progression, not the other way around. So you'll see better loot in the three Icecrown Citadel five-player wings (which will include the chance to embark upon the epic quest line to obtain Quel'Delar) given that the dungeon is tuned for higher gear levels than Oculus, just as you see better loot in Trial of the Champion than existing Wrath of the Lich King dungeons today. I'd prefer it if you didn't call it an act of laziness either, as there are plenty of new items with unique art being added in the 3.3 content update.

In any event, given that Oculus will award Emblems of Triumph in patch 3.3, two Emblems of Frost if it's your first Heroic dungeon of the day run via the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon system, and two additional Emblems of Triumph if you complete the Heroic dungeon via the Random Dungeon option each time after that, you're technically provided access to better rewards -- and a faster accumulation of emblems -- than you are today.

Oculus difficulty

It's funny. Last week several community managers, developers, encounter designers, and quality assurance folk logged in to the test realms to try out the Dungeon tool by playing in pick-up groups with players via the Random Dungeon option. One of the encounter designers was hit with Oculus first. In jest, we all had a good laugh at the choice provided him for his first go. No one left the group and they cleared it in a flash, I believe getting the 20-minute achievement as well. This was before creatures and bosses were tuned down a bit, and vehicle gear-scaling improved on the test realms.

It's anecdotal to be sure, but players certainly didn't shy away from enjoying the time running the dungeon with a Blizzard employee; and they had little trouble clearing it. It's one of the faster dungeons in Wrath if done right. Maybe we should implement a system where, every time Oculus is selected for you in the Dungeon tool, a Blizzard employee is put in your group. :p

[...] This might not fully address your question, but part of the reason the changes were made to Oculus was due to the fact that players were shying away from that dungeon while testing the Dungeon system more often than they were from other dungeons. This is the type of data we're watching on the test realms, particularly when features such as this come along.

Are the test realm players a typical sample audience? Perhaps not. But in the grand scheme of our World of Warcraft player base, I wouldn't even say those regularly running Heroic dungeons are a good sample audience. This is a large game and people enjoy many different aspects of it, some more so than others.

Vault of Archavon Difficulty

The vault bosses are designed and meant to be very puggable so pretty much anybody can do them (within reason of course). The problem this brings about is what gear they can drop. If we put tokens on them then they are guaranteed loot for everybody in a very easy way - when gear is this easy to get we generally wouldn't want it to be as good. By making it so it's basically a lottery on what drops/what you get we feel we can put some top notch gear on the bosses and it doesn't cause any big issues.

Quote from: Zarhym
Since our first test went so well, we’d like to invite everyone out again for round 2! Come join the fun on the PTR; and instead of looting the PUG blues, you could end up with a PUG blue (see what we did there?). Members of the Development Team (including the encounter designers themselves), the QA team, and the Community Team will be on the PTRs to test out the new dungeon system and want you to come join in the fun.

To have a chance to group up with one of us, just queue up for a random Heroic through the Dungeon tool. We will be playing both Alliance and Horde, and since the Dungeon tool allows players to group cross-server, it doesn’t matter which of the two PTR realms you join from.

Join us Wednesday 11/11/09 at 4:00pm PST. We'll see you then!

Oculus nerf in 3.3

As is evidenced in this thread, players have strong opinions on Oculus in contrast to the majority of the other Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. With the implementation of the new Dungeon system and Random Dungeon option in patch 3.3, many players were asking for the ability to black list at least one dungeon from the selection pool. If a large number of players want to black list Oculus because they don't find it enjoyable -- and it can often times be a pick-up group killer -- we view that as a problem. We do not, however, see a viable solution in giving players the ability to simply remove any dungeon they want from the Random Dungeon rotation. That takes away from the idea of randomness. In addition, we feel the benefits afforded players when running random Heroic dungeons (extra emblems, the chance to run a specific Heroic instance more than once a day, etc.) are too good to let them narrow down the list as they see fit.

As a compromise, we've made the standard fights in Oculus a bit easier, and increased the benefits of item-based vehicle scaling to make the drake combat less cumbersome. We hope these changes deter players from deserting a random dungeon when it happens to be Oculus.

Pugging in 3.3

Just a couple of observations from our point of view:

1) Players who don't pug dramatically underestimate the number of people who do.
2) Players often assume every realm has the same dynamics that their realm has.

Pugging is something an awful lot of players do and our (frankly inadequate) tool didn't facilitate that experience very well. The new tool is pretty fast and simple. If you enjoy pugging (or don't enjoy it but do it anyway ) the new tool should let you spend less time organizing and more time killing (or wiping ).

If pugging isn't your thing, that's cool. We're not trying to push you into it... unless you really like pugs (by which I mean the pooch). The tool will also benefit premades.

Dungeon System

1. You can run with whoever you like. You can /invite or have the tool find random players to fill it in (it is pretty smart in who it finds too). If you find random people, we place some restrictions on your group to discourage griefing.

2. I don't want to get into this too much in this thread because the discussion has already gone on and on regarding this topic. However, an old style LFG channel doesn't make much sense (because 1, the tool finds groups pretty quickly, and 2, we don't like people lurking in the tool and messing up matchmaking just to use the chat channel). Making a new LFG channel world wide would instantly become the new channel of choice for gold sellers, spammers or people who are bored and want attention. Making a second city-wide "trade" channel might at least draw some of the legit LFG lookers from the traders.

Will the new members be warned, say, that they’ve been chosen to join a dungeon already in progress with X bosses dead and be given an option to join or wait for a fresh run?

Yes.