Project Lore

In late March it was revealed that Blizzard is hard at work on a new Battleground for an upcoming patch.  Just shy of a month later and not one, not two, but three separate blues announced plans for a new 5-man dungeon.  Being Blizzard employees, there wasn't much to the announcements.  All that we know for sure is that the dungeon will be part of an upcoming patch - you'd be insane to think the BG and instance will come in the same patch - and that it "can be compared to what we saw with Magister's Terrace."  Naturally, we have no idea if the comparison that can be made refers to the scope, size, difficulty or a combination of the three. New content is fantastic, and I can't wait to see what direction they take the instance.  Will it be released alongside a raid?  Will it have anything to do with the growing Arthas storyline?  Is it going to contain machinima like MgT?  An endless amount of questions, with a catch.  Sadly, the announcement of the new 5-man content has shined a light on the current crop of 5-man instances and their heroic alter egos.  Frankly, they are beginning to feel incredibly stale. It is this very reason that I bring up a topic as old as heroics themselves, heroic Old World instances.  Blizzard, if you can't get new content out fast enough, I am sure that many of your subscribers wouldn't mind revisiting some retuned old content.  Just think of the advantages of doing so.

• A large percentage of the players joined World of Warcraft after the launch of The Burning Crusade.  Therefore, a good amount of the old world instances - especially the mid-range instances - were ignored by the playerbase.
• Retuning is far less time consuming/costly than creating a new instance.
• Trickling out retuned old world instances would keep players busy between major content updates.
• Many old world 5-mans are far longer - and larger - than the current crop of dungeons.  The varied length would likely cater to the hardcore audience who tend to be fond of more diverse and deeper offerings.  There's no reason to expect that the casual players wouldn't enjoy it either.
• You've already recycled content in the past (Naxxramas , Caverns of Time) and that was accepted.  No need to worry about that stigma.
• The old world would see a (small) population increase, rather than its current state of being largely abandoned.  Essentially, more than just Northrend would be relevant.
• Come the next expansion, you could sprinkle retuned TBC instances amoung the content patches.
• Being "old school" is still hip...or so I tell myself.
• You'd shut me up.

Just think of the possibilities.  LFM Heroic UBRS - Rend Run.  The return of Dire Maul ledge walking.  More Barman Shanker grinding.  Discovering the secret boss in Blackfathom Deeps.   Getting lost outside of Maraudon, only to be farted on when you finally get inside.  Van Cleef.  I'm giddy over the prospects already. Many of us have run Wrath's heroics dozens, perhaps even a hundreds times.  The question is, would you have the any interest in the four year old content or are you content waiting long periods of time for all-new encounters?

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