What About the Instances?

One of the many things that Blizzard promised to improve on in the upcoming expansion to the World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King, is their already excellent Instances. Now that the Beta is out and Byron"Messiah" Mudry has run a few of them, he takes a look at the first few instances and how they compare to previous ones. Blizzard promised big on improvements talking about making them more accessible, having easier group requirements, more entertaining encounters and being less time intensive. Byron provides his take on how Blizzard is doing at achieving their objectives in the early stages of the expansion.

The area I am most happy about and where I think Blizzard really learned from past experiences is timing and pacing. The timing on the instances was amazing. The first run through took a bit over an hour to learn, and then after that it could easily be done in 30-45 minutes! To me this is perfect. Also the pacing is almost perfect. The first two instance felt like it was pull-pull-pull-boss repeat. Obviously there were more than 3 pulls between bosses, but it felt like that was it, there was enough trash to establish a feel for the instance and to control pace, but not enough to make it feel dragged out. There were no really long dragging spots in either instance. The third instance, Azjol'Nerub, is very literally pull, boss, pull, boss, pull, boss, done.

You can read all the details in the editorial - Editorial - Instance Construction in Wrath of the Lich King
.