A dungeon causes frustration and annoyance in World of Warcraft – groups break apart and often the instance isn’t completed at all.
In World of Warcraft, there are many endgame contents, but the most important one in Dragonflight is the “Mythic+” area. New and old dungeons are equipped with affixes and a time limit to allow new difficulties and to drop really good loot.
However, since the introduction of Mythic+, there have always been keys and corresponding dungeons that are referred to as “dead keys.” And week after week, this leads to frustration and problems.
Which dungeons cause problems? If one remembers the first season of Dragonflight, everyone loved the dungeon “Shadowmoon Burial Grounds.” The dungeon was manageable even with several wipes, and even major mistakes allowed players to get through with over 10 minutes remaining on the clock. The situation was different for the Ruby Sanctum – even one mistake could mean that the dungeon was lost and the group already fell apart.
In the third season of Dragonflight, the role of the “hate dungeon” basically switches to a different candidate each week. While at the beginning of the season, the “Evergreen Grove” was especially torturous on Tyrannical, the “Throne of the Tides” quickly followed suit. Now, “Murozond’s Rise” is the most despised dungeon – and there are several reasons for that.
What makes Murozond’s Rise so annoying? The dungeon has several mechanics that make it pretty exasperating for the player base.
On one hand, the dungeon is not clearly structured. It is not obvious which path to take, which bosses still need to be defeated, and which path is the correct one. There is a lack of markings and announcements from the game. While one can compensate for this through practice, there is another peculiarity that causes frustration:
The “gauntlet.” Here, heroes must evade a constant barrage of enemy attacks while reaching a target point, without getting hit even once. If one fails, it goes back to the starting point. While this is a “breather,” it offers completely different gameplay compared to what one is used to from other dungeons. Since the progress only continues if at least one hero completes this task, it can easily take 3, 4, or even 5 minutes before someone succeeds in activating the saving portal.
Especially “randoms” often have little patience here – if the portal isn’t opened after a minute, the group will disband.
In principle, the criticism from the PTR has been confirmed. The dungeon “Twilight of Eternity” is a great experience as a cohesive mega-dungeon – but offers little joy as a split Mythic+ variant.
Can this be backed up with numbers? Yes. When looking at the evaluations of completed dungeon runs, it becomes clear that Murozond’s Rise stands out significantly (via bestkeystone.com). Only 77% of all keys are successfully completed here – that is over 10% worse than the next dungeon, Throne of the Tides, with 87%.
For comparison: The currently easiest dungeon, the Kronsteig estate, has a successful completion rate of 94%.
The fact that Murozond’s Rise is so far behind is, by the way, not only due to the current combination of affixes – they are actually quite simple. In every single week since the start of season 3, Murozond’s Rise has had a value that hovers somewhere in the 70% range. Even smaller nerfs and adjustments haven’t helped.
Which dungeons do you have problems with? Where could Blizzard improve and how can they prevent certain dungeons from always being unpopular?
At least – the next patch 10.2.5 is already near, so there may be further adjustments.
