History ThatOneLevel / WorldOfWarcraft

*** Trash-wise, the mobs from the start up to the second boss were notorious for requiring large amount of Crowd Control effects to disrupt otherwise unavoidable damage sources, on top of needing a lot of interrupts. Most players [[NotTheIntendedUse used some careful jumps around the second boss area]] in order to warp straight to the last 2 bosses so they can skip the trash after second boss without issues. The trash itself after that boss wasn't hard per se, but it was inefficient and thus better to just skip it as much as possible. The skip itself would eventually be patched by the time Season 4 of Dragonflight rolled around, with the caveat that you now need to pull the trash after second boss or you won't have enough enemy forces % to reach 100%. On the plus side, the difficulty of the trash was reduced greatly and the timer was slightly increased to accomodate for this.

*** The Raging Tempest and Balakar Khan are both infamous for mechanics that are both high damage and compromise the amount of space the group can work with, to the point its advised to always cast heroism/bloodlust on this bosses and hopefully kill them before the healer runs out of mana. The former consistently slaps the group with massive circles that deal high damage to the player and any nearby allies. It's a difficult encounter to heal for casters that rely on players to group up (like Shamans, for example). On top of the lightning storm mechanic which forces healer to utilize the lightning balls mechanic to its fullest in order to have any hope of healing the massive group damage. The latter, meanwhile, is a tank-buster similar to Kokia, coupled with mechanics like a spear+. There's also a follow-up charge that forces the player to move instantly or they will be killed within two seconds, on top of a inter-phase with four dangerous casters that must be constantly interrupted or crowd controlled and quickly burned down.

** Trash-wise, the mobs from the start up to the second boss were notorious for requiring large amount of Crowd Control effects to disrupt otherwise unavoidable damage sources, on top of needing a lot of interrupts. Most players [[NotTheIntendedUse used some careful jumps around the second boss area]] in order to warp straight to the last 2 bosses so they can skip the trash after second boss without issues. The trash itself after that boss wasn't hard per se, but it was inefficient and thus better to just skip it as much as possible. The skip itself would eventually be patched by the time Season 4 of Dragonflight rolled around, with the caveat that you now need to pull the trash after second boss or you won't have enough enemy forces % to reach 100%. On the plus side, the difficulty of the trash was reduced greatly and the timer was slightly increased to accomodate for this.
** Pretty much every boss minus the third one were especially notorious for the high amounts of unavoidable damage. Leymor's stomp punished you if your group failed to clear all the trees before each stomp, Azureblade's interphase happened too often,disrupted kill timer and was notoriously difficult to heal, even more when some affixes like grievous were in play. Umbrelskul's Miasma mechanic slowed your group down whenever they tried to move, which was problematic when most of his mechanics required the group to move in order to dodge them, not helped by the crystals summoned by him at certain points which demanded high aoe damage in order to kill them in time before they wipe the group. All of them were subject of nerfs with reduced damage, Azureblade's interphase happening far less often and being easier to heal, and Umbrelskul's Miasma mechanic was ''removed'' on top of making so each time the crystals spawns, they spawn as a group to make it easier for the players to kill them together.

* The Temple of Atal'Hakkar / Sunken Temple simply due to how ''long'' it was. What's worse, before you are able to get to all the quests that take place here (as well as the bosses that drop items you can use), you must clear the top half: Which is full of nothing but EliteMooks and minibosses that seem to do nothing but waste your time. It caught a lot of players loading it up in Classic by surprise - since ''Cataclysm'' changed it so that you ''start'' in the basement and during ''Burning Crusade'' and ''Wrath'', players largely skipped Sunken Temple due to how far out of the way it was. (Alliance players also had to fly to another zone and risked running right through a Horde guard)

** Rube Life Pool:
*** Bosses gained notoriety in tyrannical for being DPS races with high damage mechanics that strained healer and punished players who were even one second late in terms of reaction times. The damage of the first boss, Melidrussa, was so gross that her damage was nerfed by '''80%''' via hotfixes because it was mathematically impossible for healers to keep up no matter what, Kokia was notorious for shredding tanks in seconds (especially blood death knights) on top of several mechanics that compromised the available room of the fight, and Kyrakka's fight demanded not only high movement, but also high amounts of healing due to the damage of the debuffs. Even though all three bosses got nerfed to an extend, Kyrakka is still difficult to heal as a whole and Kokia is still capable of destroying tanks in higher keys.
*** The trash is no slouch either, with Kokia's trash in particular demanding a high amount of instant Crowd Control spells and interrupts to keep the trash from wiping the group with high damage spells, on top of the unavoidable damage that gets even worse when fortified or bolstering are up that week.

*** The Raging Tempest and Balakar Khan are both infamous for mechanics that are both high damage and compromise the amount of space the group can work with, to the point its advised to always cast heroism/bloodlust on this bosses and hopefully kill them before the healer runs out of mana. The former consistently slaps the group with massive circles that deal high damage to the player and any nearby allies, which makes it difficult to heal for casters that rely on players to group up (like shamans), on top of the lightning storm mechanic which forces healer to utilize the lightning balls mechanic to its fullest in order to have any hope of healing the massive group damage. The latter, meanwhile, is a tankbuster not unlike Kokia coupled with mechanics like a spear+ a follow up charge that foces the player to move instantly or drop dead within 2 seconds on top of a interphase with 4 dangerous casters that must be constantly interrupted or cc'd and killed fast.

*** The bosses in neltharus are infamous for depleting keys due to their extremely punishing mechanics and insanely high group damage, even by M+ standards. Magmatusk and Forgemaster especially so, to the point they received numerous nerfs over Season 2 until they became somewhat tolerable, and even then they are STILL the hardest obstacles to beat in Neltharus during tyrannical weeks.
*** The trash mobs in Neltharus are rifle with tankbuster mechanics, high group damage and multiple ccs/interrupts being required in order to kill them. This issues are further exacerbated during fortified weeks to the point the tank is essentially forced to pull as big as they can in order to have any hopes of timing the dungeon at all. Tellingly, the trash was subject to health nerfs in Season 2 as well due to the tight timer which demanded large chain pulls in order to beat it, and even then, the trash remains some of the hardest pulls ever for mythic dungeons, easily on par with Lower Karazhan.

*** The Raging Tempest and Balakar Khan are both infamous for mechanics that are both high damage and compromise the amount of space the group can work with, to the point its advised to always cast heroism/bloodlust on this bosses and hopefully kill them before the healer runs out of mana. The former consistently slaps the group with massive circles that deal high damage to the player and any nearby allies, which makes it difficult to heal for casters that rely on players to group up (like shamans), on top of the lightning storm mechanic which forces healer to utilize the lightning balls mechanic to its fullest in order to have any hope of healing the massive group damage. The latter, meanwhile, is a tankbuster not unlike Kokia coupled with mechanics like a spear+ a follow up charge that foces the player to move instantly or drop dread within 2 seconds on top of a interphase with 4 dangerous casters that must be constantly interrupted or cc'd and killed fast.

*** The trash is no slouch either, with Kokia's trash in particular demanding a high amount of instant CCs and interrupts to keep the trash from wiping the group with high damage spells, on top of the unavoidable damage that gets even worse when fortified or bolstering are up that week.

*** Moroes is another prime offender. He applies a permanent DamageOverTime bleed that makes healing a complete pain, even more so on Grievous and/or Tyrannical weeks. His adds, meanwhile, needs to be crowd control and killed one by one before he reaches 50% HP, or else they will destroy your group. While his add rotation varies per week, some are notorious for having obnoxious mechanics, like a whirlwind that forces melees to stay away and be unable to DPS him, another with a huge frontal cone area of effect to dodge, as well as another that can heal other adds and Moroes or drain your healer's Mana and stun him. It reached a point where Blizzard had to step in and nerf some mechanics, by making adds sightly weaker and removing the permanent aspect of Moroes' garrote debuff (it now lasts only one minute instead), in addition to slightly reducing its damage.

* Trial of the Crusader has only six bosses and no trash mobs. The latter would seem like a welcome change of pace, considering that some raids get criticism for long, boring or [[BossInMookClothing difficult]] trash, but it means that there's no world drops or normal encounters to break up the boss fights, and makes the raid even shorter, making it hardly worthy of a raid tier on its own. Not helping matters was the fact that this tier introduced the revamped Heroic mode system, which gave [=TotC=] a 10N, 10H, 25N and a 25H version, each with separated lockouts. Due to the fact that all 4 raid modes had valuable items (emblems of triumph, crusader orbs, Trophies of the Crusade and crafted gear recipes), [[ScrappyMechanic guilds were essentially forced to run this same raid four times]] ''each week'' in order to stay competitive, even if the gear drops of some of the modes were of little interest to the players, to the point this was changed in ICC so that 10N share lockout with 10H, and the same applies to the 25 man modes, which was further changed in Cata so that ALL non-LFR modes share lockout. While some of the less popular raids have their fan bases, almost no one likes [=TotC=].

* Trial of the Crusader has only six bosses and no trash mobs. The latter would seem like a welcome change of pace, considering that some raids get criticism for long, boring or [[BossInMookClothing difficult]] trash, but it means that there's no world drops or normal encounters to break up the boss fights, and makes the raid even shorter, making it hardly worthy of a raid tier on its own. Not helping matters was the fact that this tier introduced the revamped Heroic mode system, which gave TotC a 10N, 10H, 25N and a 25H version, each with separated lockouts. Due to the fact that all 4 raid modes had valuable items (emblems of triumph, crusader orbs, Trophies of the Crusade and crafted gear recipes), [[ScrappyMechanic guilds were essentially forced to run this same raid four times]] ''each week'' in order to stay competitive, even if the gear drops of some of the modes were of little interest to the players, to the point this was changed in ICC so that 10N share lockout with 10H, and the same applies to the 25 man modes, which was further changed in Cata so that ALL non-LFR modes share lockout. While some of the less popular raids have their fan bases, almost no one likes [=TotC=].

* Trial of the Crusader has only six bosses and no trash mobs. The latter would seem like a welcome change of pace, considering that some raids get criticism for long, boring or [[BossInMookClothing difficult]] trash, but it means that there's no world drops or normal encounters to break up the boss fights, and makes the raid even shorter, making it hardly worthy of a raid tier on its own. While some of the less popular raids have their fan bases, almost no one likes [=TotC=].

* The ''Mists of Pandaria'' scenario A Little Patience was universally reviled due to both Varian and Tyrande uttering the same lines over and over again, and that the entire point of the instance is to [[CharacterShilling shill]] Varian as some amazing tactician.[[note]]Said tactics amount to laying traps then calling the Orc commander a coward so his entire army charges headfirst into said traps[[/note]]
* As far as Scenarios are concerned, there's certainly "A Little Patience". Although it's clearly meant to be a moment of CharacterDevelopment for Varian, an example of the effectiveness of teamwork for the Alliance and the act that secured the night elves' allegiance (in particular that of Tyrande) to Varian, it was so badly implemented that today it is remembered primarily as a mass of CharacterShilling (for Varian), changing a character for the worse (for Tyrande), and just another in a long line of things the expansion did to vilify the orcs, making them look like racist, thick-as-bricks warmongers who fell for obvious traps and attacked a sacred place for no obvious reason.

* The Oculus. Much of the dungeon, including the final boss, involves using the abilities of drakes that are based on your specializations. If someone picks the wrong drake and/or misuses their drake, things become very difficult for the entire group. It's worth mentioning that even ''Blizzard'' as much as admitted The Oculus was ThatOneLevel when they severely nerfed it ''and'' added additional loot to the final boss just so people wouldn't quit immediately upon finding it as the dungeon finder's selection. To give an idea of just how much incentive they were giving, one of the new pieces of loot that had a small chance of dropping was a mount -- one that was previously a low-chance drop from a ''raid''. Also, the dungeon had three mutually-exclusive achievements (for not using one of the three drake types), all of which were required for Glory achievement. Those were outright removed due to the disagreements resulting from finding a group that all still needed the same one.

* As far as Scenarios are concerned, there's certainly "A Little Patience". Although it's clearly meant to be a moment of CharacterDevelopment for Varian, an example of the effectiveness of teamwork for the Alliance and the act that secured the night elves' allegiance (in particular that of Tyrande) to Varian, it was so badly implemented that today it is remembered primarily as a mass of CharacterShilling (for Varian), changing a character for the worse (for Tyrande), and just another in a long line of things the expansion did to villify the orcs, making them look like racist, thick-as-bricks warmongers who fell for obvious traps and attacked a sacred place for no obvious reason.

** Lower Karazhan meanwhile suffers from a lot of extremely punishing mechanics in both trash[[note]]How bad it is? The strat used to time a lower karazhan is to ''intentionally wipe'' after first boss in order to avoid doing the following trash thats too difficult and time-consuming to be worth the effort.Some trash packs are also ''skipped as much as possible between bosses'' because of how [[BossInMookClothing difficult]] and not worth the time it is to kill them.[[/note]] and bosses, and poor telegraphing as well in some cases. It's saying something that this place has been nerfed multiple times since its re-release on S4, and its still considered one of the hardest dungeons to do in time. Of all the bosses, two in particular has been deemed the [[ThatOneBoss run killers]] for a reason:
*** Maiden of Virtue is possibly the one that roadblocks groups the most. Her shield is noted for requiring a extremely high amount of burst dps done in a 10 seconds window or else [[TotalPartyKill you wipe]], and its a mechanic you are guaranteed to see at least 2 or 3 times per fight, meaning completing a Lower Kara often boils down to having a comp with proper burst dps to burn her shield, so much it has been nerfed by 20% and she's '''STILL''' roadblocking groups and forcing burst dps comps for higher keys regardless. Even that didn't quit cut it, needing 2 additional nerfs that reduced her hp shield(10% then 15% ) just to make it relatively acceptable, but even then she is still bound to make groups wipe in tyrannical weeks with her shield in higher keys.
*** Moroes is another prime offender. He applies a permanent [[DamageOverTime DoT]] that makes healing a complete pain, even more so on Grievous and/or Tyrannical weeks. His adds, meanwhile, needs to be CC'd and killed one by one before he reaches 50% HP or else they will destroy your group. While his add rotation varies per week, some are notorious for having obnoxious mechanics, like a whirlwind that forces melees to stay away and be unable to DPS him, another with a huge frontal cone [=AoE=] to dodge, as well as another that can heal other adds and Moroes or drain your healer's mana and stun him. It reached a point where Blizzard had to step in and nerf some mechanics, by making adds sighly weaker and removing the permanent aspect of Moroes' garrote debuff (it now lasts only 1 minute instead), in addition to reducing its damage sighly.

* Alterac Mountains for the fact that the zone had no settlements. Thus no flightpaths or areas for allowing quests. Dying also meant you had a lengthy corpse run if you were Alliance, because there were no graveyards in this zone whatsoever. It was essentially one big waste of space. Blizzard agreed with the players' sentiment, as this was one of the very few zones ''removed from the game'' due to its emptiness and merged into Hillsbrad Foothills.
* The Outland version of Shadowmoon Valley is filled to the brim with group quests and {{Elite Mook}}s. There is also a lot of backtracking involved between quests. If players want to quest there, they're going to have to spend quite a bit of time there. It was also That One Level for players looking to complete the Loremaster achievement because it originally was "complete x quests" before a later expansion changed it to be complete certain quest storylines.

* Deepholm for being excessively long and its quests and objectives are spread throughout the map. It's also required if the player wants to get reputation for Therezane, which the player starts as Hated with.

* In the classic game, Gnomeregan was badly regarded for its confusing layout, quests that required several runs, and the two-level corridor leading to the last boss where aggroing a mob on the other floor could result in them running down the corridor and back up to the players, pulling every other mob along the way. In got even worse in ''Wrath of the Lich King'' due to a botched {{Nerf}} where the whole dungeon was supposed to be lowered 6 levels, yet only the dungeon's FinalBoss had its level lowered. This becomes a problem when the Random Dungeon Finder is balanced around the FinalBoss being weakened from level 34 down to 28, which results in RDF sending in low-level groups to take on Gnomeregan enemies that are 6 levels higher than players expect them to be.

* The Oculus was the most hated dungeon in the ''Wrath of the Lich King'' expansion due to the dragon-riding segment at the end, which replaced all the player's abilities with new controls which many people had no idea how to use. And then comes Malygos, raid boss of the location, featuring final phase with the whole raid riding on dragons (''with different abilities'' from the Oculus ones just in case plays were getting too comfortable) while he blasts you harder than the dungeon boss ever did.

** Grimrail was this way originally as it was clearly never meant to be used in a setting with affixes that requires room to work around them (Sanguine, Storming, Quaking, Necrotic, Spiteful) and, as a result, clearing trash often boils down to a lot of [[LuckBasedMission RNG]], with some weeks borderline on [[UnwinnableByMistake impossible to finish]]. This coupled with [[BossInMookClothing overtuned]] trash mobs, coupled with bosses that range from [[FakeDifficulty ridiculously overtuned]] and poorly telegraphed to [[GameBreakingBug bug prone]], not many were eager to do Grimrail Depot. It took a few waves of massive nerfs to make this place more reasonable and in line with the other dungeons. The nerfs reduced the difficulty of the trash, the damage values of some bosses, redesigned the visuals of the mechanics to be better telegraphed and they fixed most of the bugs. While a lot better as a result, Grimrail can still be this trope in weeks with affixes that exacerbate the lack of room and narrow corridors, as mentioned above.

* Alterac Mountains for the fact that the zone had no settlements. Thus no flightpaths or areas for allowing quests. Dying also meant you had a lengthy corpse run if you were Alliance, because there are no graveyards in this zone whatsoever. It was essentially one big waste of space. Blizzard agreed with the players' sentiment, as this was one of the very few zones ''removed from the game'' due to its emptiness and merged into Hillsbrad Foothills.

* In the classic game, Gnomeregan was badly regarded for its confusing layout, quests that required several runs, and the two-level corridor leading to the last boss where aggroing a mob on the other floor could result in them running down the corridor and back up to the players, pulling every other mob along the way.

While ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has its share of awesome zones, dungeons and raids, they ended up becoming ThatOneLevel for more reasons than another.

While ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has a lot of awesome zones, dungeons and raids, these are not any of them.

* Alterac Mountains for the fact that the zone had no settlements. Thus no flightpaths or areas for allowing quests. Dying also meant you had a lengthy corpse run if you were Alliance, because there are no graveyards in this zone whatsoever. It was essentially one big waste of space. Blizzard agreed - as this is one of the very few zones ''removed from the game'' due to its emptiness and merged into Hillsbrad Foothills.
* Vashj'ir in ''Cataclysm''. Vashj'ir, for its mob density causing mobs to have a completely three dimensional attack range as well as how many bugs it had and respawn rates up the wazoo. Many claim the zone is boring, but the zone is actually quite diverse, with seaweed forests, massive palaces, deep ravines, underwater caves, and enormous sea creatures. Its status as a ScrappyLevel seems to come mostly from the fact that people just don't like underwater levels - especially since here, you had a 360 degree aggro radius so [[ParanoiaFuel mobs could suddenly appear from where you wren't looking]]. The respawn rates for enemies was absurdly high, adding to the tedium. The zone's relatively tedious to have to swim or ride your seahorse around the very large zone and find the various caves and shipwrecks where [=NPC=]s are taking shelter. Also when the expansion first released it was incredibly buggy, preventing some people from even progressing through it (you can still get screwed on the final quest if you're unlucky), and secondly, the whole theme of the zone was a build-up to a confrontation with underwater [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch abominations]] which [[AbortedArc never happened,]] making the whole thing feel pointless.

* Deepholm for being excessively long and its quests spread throughout the map. It's also required if the player wants to get reputation for Therezane, which the player starts as Hated with.
* Uldum gets to be this once you get to the Harrison Jones quests. It eventually turns into a gigantic pop culture reference to the ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' movies that many players did not enjoy, particularly if you're leveling your alts. There are also a lot of unskippable cutscenes during these quests and it quickly wears out its welcome. Blizzard thankfully listened to the criticism and have avoided putting multiple unskippable cutscenes in subsequent expansions.

** Really the entire Court of Stars sub-region of Suramar is this in comparison to the rest of the city. While most of the city is relatively easy to travel through and patrolling mobs are sparse, this region is densely populated with both detectors and elite mobs. Just getting inside while stuck on foot is dangerous and once inside being revealed will almost certainly end in death. And of course, you would hear "Who goes there?" and "An illusion? What are you hiding?" all the time - so much that Nightborne racial jokes and even Blizzard's web page ''literally make fun of this''.

* Uldaman as well. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen It was intended to be a winged dungeon]] similar to Scarlet Monastery, but unfortunately it didn't pan out. What resulted was a large web of caves full of twist and turns with a large pre-instance area and a pretty ''big'' level curve. (You could easily enter in the high 30s-low 40s, the final boss was ''47''.) Sure, Archaedas was considered the BestBossEver but getting to him would take over two hours even ''with'' a competent group. Also, if you were an enchanter, you'd have to go in since the Enchanter trainer around this level was hiding out in Uldaman. Fortunately, it has been nerfed a ''boatload'' of times and [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap became a much better dungeon since]].
* Uldaman. It's actually something of a MyGreatestFailure amongst the developers, since they wanted it to be a winged dungeon yet wound up with a rather tedious dungeon with a pretty unique boss mechanic. The main downfall of Uldaman was that the level range was ''too high''. Normally you're good if you're within a couple levels of the dungeon mobs, but in Uldaman, you'd start off at the mid 30s, but later on would get to 40+ meaning low level players would [[SurpriseDifficulty get ambushed by mobs in their 40s]]. For awhile the recommended level range ended at ''51''. Oh, and Enchanters had to run this because there was a trainer in there.