Bashiok
Well the limited attempts made it one of the longer races to be sure. Whether it was more difficult than others, maybe not(?), but difficulty is in the eye of the beholder. We've had bugged or overtuned bosses in the past that were essentially impossible to beat, but for those not involved sometimes that turns from "impossible" to "an epic struggle!"
Probably most important though is that while the world first race is awesome and we all love watching it and seeing who wins, we still want the fights to be possible for high-end progression raids that are not vying for world firsts. We're not trying to make boss fights impossible for the sake of tripping everyone up and laughing as no one can kill them for months. We can make impossible bosses. That's not the point, though. Bosses are made to die.
They talked about this very thing last night on Legendary, I thought they had some fairly astute things to say about it. Mmmmm, looks like that episode isn't live yet though.Bashiok
Dungeons and scenarios just aren't equal in the time and effort required to create them. Dungeons and raids, however, are equal in the time and effort required. When looking at the current progression landscape we have to say ok, is it worth cutting down on the size of the next raid so we can have a new dungeon? Is that what will benefit players most and create the best experience? When you consider the progression path right now, which requires a few dungeons and then hop-skip-jumping to Throne of Thunder in about a week, what is to gain from additional dungeons, and does that warrant cutting large amounts of content from future raids?
I don't think there are any silver-bullet answers to that, different players want different types of content, but we make decisions on what we believe the majority of players will benefit from most, and what is overall best for the experience of the game. Certainly some people will say they don't care about raids, or they'd prefer a raid be half the size so they can have a new dungeon. There's not going to be a full consensus on these kinds of things. On anything, really.
With Heroic Scenarios we can give some of that dungeon experience with difficult encounters, they require coordination, there are some stretch goals, and competitive rewards. We'd like to see if we can take the experience of a dungeon and present it in another way, and see if it scratches that same itch. We'll be interested to hear what people think once they try them.
The majority of people coming in mid-expansion want to try to catch up to where everyone else is. You can take your time, if you like; really experience everything the expansion has to offer up to this point, but we want to ensure people can catch up in a relatively quick amount of time if they want to so they can have fun with their friends/guilds - or at least see some of the newest content.
Because those examples remove the context of time. A lot of the content that released through the lifetime of BC and Wrath was in development before those expansions released, and was intended as launch content. It was delayed and finished off later. Not to mention the life cycles of those expansions was just much, much longer than where we are now. I think there's a misunderstanding that development cycles are much shorter than they actually are, or that we don't begin work on the next patch until the current one is released. With 5.2 we heard that people wanted to see some additional dungeons, but even if we began working on them then you probably wouldn't actually see them until long after 5.4 where they wouldn't make sense any longer.
But we can make Scenario content relatively quickly, we think Heroic Scenarios can get at that same kind of gameplay, and we'll have to see how everyone likes the additional challenge. Like I said we don't think it's a silver-bullet answer, or will appeal to every single player, but we hope it's something everyone will at least try and we look forward to hearing what you think.Draztal
On patch 5.3 scenarios are getting some cool upgrades (such as heroic mode) as well as new and improved rewards, so hopefully that'll make them more attractive for you Stono.
We still like 5-man dungeons and there will be more in coming expansions, but right now, the developers feel the content they're currently working on (raids with their varying difficulty modes (LFR, normal, Heroic) normal and Heroic scenarios, world bosses, quest content...) for this expansion's cycle is more attractive to a bigger number of players.
I just wish more of the dungeons we have would be available when leveling.I'd rather see every single scenario out of the window for 2-3 more 5 man dungeons. Scenarios all come down to the same thing: You kill some stuff, do a few objectives and that's it. There are no real mechanics you have to deal with (Oh you mean those big elite 'bosses'?). It's outright boring, and adding a Heroic mode and giving it more rewards will definitely not attract more people to this obnoxious form of PvE.
