Blizzcon Cata Dungeon Panel Info

[Mangala]

Enhanced Maps

    * The 2D maps for each dungeon was the first step.
    * Detailed boss info will be added to the map, including loot, lore, and abilities! (Yep, in-game AtlasLoot)
    * You won't have to pull a boss and die anymore to find out what he does.
    * "We're not going to tell you how the boss works, but we want you to have an idea of what you're getting into."
    * 3D Portrait of the bosses will be available.
    * It will work in both Dungeons and Raids.


Patch 4.1.0 Preview - Firelands Raid

    * The Firelands are on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Lava is all over the place.
    * Ragnaros encounter will be completely different. They want to give you an idea of his true power.
    * The instance will have 7 bosses
    * Plane of Fire is an outdoor area similar to the Hyjal Raid (the layout, not the terrible waves upon waves)
    * To the north is Sulfuron Keep, you'll go indoors here to fight Ragnaros. Sulfuron Keep looks very similar to the area in Cataclysm's Hyjal levelup zone.


Patch 4.1 - Abyssal Maw 5-Man Dungeon

    * Blizzard wants to release a 5-man Dungeon with each content patch to make sure that nobody feels left out.
    * It will be a continuation of the story players are going through in Vashj'ir and Throne of the Tides.
    * Abyssal Maw is the Elemental Plane of Water.
    * "Nothing like The Oculus"
    * The dungeon has 4 bosses.
    * "Risen areas" where you fight and then travel to the next


Classic Heroics (Heroic SFK / Deadmines)

    * New quests and encounters are now available in the dungeons.
    * All dungeons in Cataclysm now have their quests inside the dungeon right at the front. They no longer are part of huge quest chains outside of the instance.
    * The instances have been updated and completely revamped, they are not like Naxxramas in WotLK and you can expect a brand new instance. Normal difficulty is also updated.


Classic Dungeons

    * Classic dungeons have been revamped to be made shorter and less confusing. Dungeons such as Maraudon or Uldaman were really really long to get through.
    * For example dungeons can be split into multiple wings. Uldaman will be broken up into 2 wings. Ironaya will be the final boss of the first wing for the Dungeon Finder.
    * Maraudon will also be broken up into 2 wings as well. The dungeon now has a "living" section, and a lower section where Princess Theradras is.
    * Other dungeons will be trimmed. The top portion of the Sunken Temple has been removed and only the bottom floor remains.
    * Wailing Caverns's maze has been removed and bosses have been moved around to just make the instance smaller. Moving bosses wasn't hard because bosses didn't really have their own rooms.


Raid Philosophy

    * Tons of new mechanics have been added to the game, "Try to be as quiet as possible so this big blind dragon doesn't kill you." , "Players flying through the air during the fight."
    * These mechanics are added to the game in bite-sized chunks to make sure that players aren't overwhelmed.
    * One of the most important goal is to have content for everyone, the normal/heroic mode system worked out great in WotLK and they will keep doing it.


Flexible Raid Locks / Difficulty

    * Ulduar Heroic encounters worked fine, Blizzard decided that they could just make the whole instance Heroic (Trial of the Crusader). They decided to make the difficulty dynamic in Icecrown Citadel because ToC was just a pain in the ass.
    * With the new system, you can join multiple raids of either size but you can only defeat each boss once per week.
    * Heroic Difficulty works just like it in Wrath of the Lich King - Once you kill a heroic boss, you're locked to that raid group with that raid ID. However, if heroic bosses get too hard you can kill normal mode bosses with other people. (You can't do the same boss on Heroic and Normal in a week)


Raids & Dungeons Q&A
Q: Will there be a better system to prevent "ninja" looting on the LFG system?
There are a couple of improvements in Cataclysm. The loot system is more strict and people aren't able to roll on something they cannot wear.

Now that 10 and 25-man raids have the same difficulty, how do you balance them and make them the same difficulty?
Balancing is very hard but it's also a very high priority, encounters should be roughly the same difficulty. It might take some time but developers will get them to the same difficulty.

With the flexible raid lock system, is there anything to prevent people from leaving the group as soon as something bad happens?
It will get better over time, as player gets better and get used to the new system you will most likely end up getting a much better PuG experience.

Legendary weapons, with 10 and 25 man lockouts being combined in cataclysm are there any plans to go back to Ulduar and Icecrown citadel in regards of Shadowmourne and Val'anyr
Are we going to go back and change the way fragments drop? That's a good point, will bring that up in the office on monday. It's a great suggestion.

Are you changing BRD as well in Cataclysm?
I've done a pass on most of the old dungeons, trimming a lot of the suck. Things like 20 seconds sleep and 10 seconds disarms and things really really obnoxious. Unfortunately breaking up BRD is very tricky, so what we did do is put up some teleporters, there's a teleport past the bar, in the city, etc ... There are also teleports in Cataclysm dungeons such as Shadowfang Keep, Deadmines. Graveyards are also super close now, all dungeon graveyards are right outside the portal now. Developers want you to do the encounters, not run so much.

I'm concered about encounter mechanics like more hard stuff, my main concern is that the binary sort of thing that certain mechanics are big and flashy or something really subtle or obvious but it wont kill you immediately. Is there any middle ground there?
We talk about that quite a lot, and it's actually a pretty nasty design problem. Tanks and healers have a lot of things on their hands, if you are taking a little bit of damage you're probably going to blame the healer. We're trying to make things more visual and hopefully you won't have to look at a buff stacking for an encounter, one of the new things we have in Cataclysm are meters that the dungeon guys can script to make some of the mechanics more visual and make sure players know why they die. The blind dragon (Atramedes) for example needs you to be quiet, that's visually indicated with a sound bar.

Is there any plan to make a legendary weapon guild bound due to achievements
It's not something we're looking into, there's an achievement for it but we have no plans to make a guild wide legendary. It's an idea that came up but there are a lots of design problems with that, it was more complicated than what it was worth. For the time being, in the future legendaries will be for one person.

Not impressed.

[Mangala]

* Detailed boss info will be added to the map, including loot, lore, and abilities! (Yep, in-game AtlasLoot)
    * You won't have to pull a boss and die anymore to find out what he does.
    * "We're not going to tell you how the boss works, but we want you to have an idea of what you're getting into."

No fun in killing a new boss anymore as half the fun (for me, not necessarily for the 11999999 mouthbreathers) was wondering what they do and how hard they do it.  Yes I know blizz only will give info on the abilities to an extent, but this kinda makes datamining easier now, and so people who read strats etc rather than think on their feet will no more even faster. 

Classic Heroics (Heroic SFK / Deadmines)

    * New quests and encounters are now available in the dungeons.
    * All dungeons in Cataclysm now have their quests inside the dungeon right at the front. They no longer are part of huge quest chains outside of the instance.
    * The instances have been updated and completely revamped, they are not like Naxxramas in WotLK and you can expect a brand new instance. Normal difficulty is also updated.

As long as the look and feel of all reused dungeons stays the same, I dont care what they do inside (well maybe a little bit, as long as its hard, I like it hard ), I just wish they'd rethink the quests thing and have them given from epic quests and so on as it really made instancing a story for yourself rather than the means to an end that the mouthbreathing retard majority treat it as.

Classic Dungeons

    * Classic dungeons have been revamped to be made shorter and less confusing. Dungeons such as Maraudon or Uldaman were really really long to get through.
    * For example dungeons can be split into multiple wings. Uldaman will be broken up into 2 wings. Ironaya will be the final boss of the first wing for the Dungeon Finder.
    * Maraudon will also be broken up into 2 wings as well. The dungeon now has a "living" section, and a lower section where Princess Theradras is.
    * Other dungeons will be trimmed. The top portion of the Sunken Temple has been removed and only the bottom floor remains.
    * Wailing Caverns's maze has been removed and bosses have been moved around to just make the instance smaller. Moving bosses wasn't hard because bosses didn't really have their own rooms.

DEAR FUCKING RAPTOR JESUS SATAN BUSH.

Seriously why split the "longer" dungeons. They were and are great (even Maraudon) in their current form. Its not the fault of the patient amongst us that retards and mouthbreathers and people unable tp plan an evening or an afternoon properly cannot do these things - and hell, even the longer instances dont take a good sensible appropriate level group as long as they used to, pugs on the other hand...  Retarded change is fucking retarded to put it simply.  And thank god at least one of my chars has ran through ST before it gets raped.

[Goatboy]

I dub thee: Kiddiecraft!

[Jarkko]

How many times did you run Maraudon from start to end in one go? I thought it was pretty standard to split it up in two even before; first to get the sceptre and then some other session use the sceptre and finish the second half of the instance. I have never run the Maraudon instance in one go, always half and half.

Likewise, I think I ever ran Uldaman through in one go only once. Usually "just" go until the giant lady first time, then some other time enter through the backdoor to the second half of the instance.