While World of Warcraft has its share of awesome zones, dungeons and raids, they ended up becoming That One Level for more than one reason than another.
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Dungeons, Scenarios and Raids
- 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. It 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 Final Boss had its level lowered. This becomes a problem when the Random Dungeon Finder is balanced around the Final Boss 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.
- Uldaman as well. It was intended to be a winged dungeon similar to Scarlet Monastery, but unfortunately it didn't pan out. 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 get ambushed by mobs in their 40s. 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. For a while, the recommended level range ended at 51.) Sure, Archaedas was considered the Best Boss Ever, 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 became a much better dungeon since.
- 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 Elite Mooks 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)
- The first proper raid in the game, Molten Core, became known as Molten Chore or Molten Bore for bosses that were little more than damage sponges. They were immune to fire so mages could not use their normal fireball attack, and one forced melee players to stay at range. And since the final boss dropped more powerful gear than the rest, guilds had to keep running the raid when the rest was of little interest to them.
- For overleveled players, Battle for Mount Hyjal is one raid that nobody wands to go to, as due to its mechanics, it's not any faster regardless of how overleveled you are. Even at max level, it can take an hour to get through Hyjal (while any other BC raid with the exception of Karazhan can be cleared in 10 to 15 minutes)
- The Oculus. Much of the dungeon, including the final boss, Ley-Guardian Eregos, 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 That One Level 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.
- 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 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), 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. Tellingly, when Blizzard re-released Wrath as a classic expansion, they implemented this raid the same way ICC was by having 10N shared with 10H and the same applying for 25 man modes in order to avert this problem.
- In Cataclysm: The Dragon Soul raid which was the grand finale, with some going as far to call it the worst raid ever. Completely recycled locations, featuring bosses with completely recycled models. Even the trailer which preceded the raid's release was half-assed. Fortunately, the final two bosses were seen as amazing.
- As far as Scenarios are concerned, there's certainly "A Little Patience". Although it's clearly meant to be a moment of Character Development 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 Character Shilling (for Varian) as an amazing tacticiannote and changing a character for the worse (for Tyrande). It was 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.
- Seat of the Triumvirate is considered the most frustrating 5-man dungeon from Legion, in part because three of the four bosses qualify as That One Boss for various reasons (see this page for more details). Some people immediately destroy the keystones if they get one for Seat.
- Season 4 of Shadowlands introduced the addition of legacy dungeons for the Mythic+ rotation. Unfortunately, it seems as if Blizzard did not rework any of them to actually account for Mythic+, affixes and all. The end result is both Grimrail Depot and Lower Karazhan quickly becoming the most loathed dungeons out of the rotation, and the ones with the lowest number of successful runs, according to Mythic+ stats. It got so bad that Grimrail was eventually given massive nerfs some time after release.
- Grimrail Depot 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 RNG, with some weeks borderline on impossible to finish. This coupled with overtuned trash mobs, coupled with bosses that range from ridiculously overtuned and poorly telegraphed to 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.
- Lower Karazhan meanwhile suffers from a lot of extremely punishing mechanics in both trashnote 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 it is still considered one of the hardest dungeons to do in time. Of all the bosses, two in particular has been deemed the 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 you wipe, and it's 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 composition with proper burst DPS to burn her shield. It has been nerfed by 20% and she's STILL roadblocking groups and forcing burst DPS compositions for higher keys, regardless. The prior nerf didn't quite cut it, needing two additional nerfs that reduced her HP shield (10% then 15%) just to make it relatively acceptable. 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 Damage Over Time 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.
Leveling and Questing Zones
- For leveling zones, Stranglethorn Vale. On paper, it sounds like a formula for the Best Level Ever - loads and loads of quests, long level range (30-40+), a beautiful tropical jungle with a beautifully designed neutral town (Booty Bay), ferries leading players to multiple areas of the world making it somewhat of a hub, the introduction of Hemet Nesingwary (Giving a good chain of quests spanning the entire zone) and Pirates. So what went wrong? It was a massive bottleneck. Most other zones intended in that level range were either out of the way and/or didn't have enough quests compared to Stranglethorn Vale (Such as Desolace and Thousand Needles). But if you were on a PvP server? You were easy prey for people who enjoyed making your lives hell - earning it the nickname of "Stranglepwn Vale" or "Ganklethorn Hell". People could easily harass you in Booty Bay by attacking you and then doing something to remove aggro - making the guards kill YOU instead. People used to consider avoiding Stranglethorn Vale while leveling up was actually a Self-Imposed Challenge.
- Alterac Mountains for the fact that the zone had no settlements. Thus no flight paths 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 Mooks that lurk around the zone. 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 the criteria needed for the achievement is to complete specific storylines.
- 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 That One Level 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 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 NPCs 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 Eldritch abominations which never happened, making the whole thing feel pointless.
- That arc ended up finishing up four expansions later in Battle for Azeroth with the release of the 8.2 Rise of Azshara patch that opened Nazjatar and The Eternal Palace (and, in a way, 8.3 Visions of N'zoth).
- Deepholm for being excessively long and its quests and objectives are spread throughout the map. It's also required if the player wants to gain reputation for the Therazane faction, 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 Indiana Jones movies that many players did not enjoy, particularly if the player is leveling their 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.
- From Legion, Highmountain. The main hub zone is not fun to navigate, elevators are slow, the hall at the bottom and the outer area of it are quite empty. The quests are considered quite bad, ESPECIALLY the escort quests (of which there were a few): either the NPC just stops following or they are slow as molasses, the one with the old Tauren mom was just infuriatingly slow. The terrain is incredibly difficult to navigate (especially considering you aren't allowed to fly when you first play there): it must have been a real challenge to put a boulder, a stick, or a blade of grass one cannot pass over into every single nook and cranny so there is only one possible path. Also, a lot of the quests didn't even correctly mark where the items and such were supposed to be, and even when they did, you couldn't tell if the quest giver was on top of the mountain or inside a cave. Finally, there are some points where it's obvious Blizzard wanted to troll players. A quest involves following a Tauren (actually a black dragon) inside a cave, and said Tauren eventually jumps off a cliff to a pool of water. Since Soft Water applies in this game, a player would think of doing the same... only it's a smaller target than it appears. There's also a mob called "Gornoth the Lost" that's been compared to the Fel Reaver from Burning Crusade, only worse because he patrols around a very, very enclosed quest zone with trees and the like blocking your view (at least the Fel Reaver patrolled the entire zone so you'd be unlikely to see him for another half hour or so after he passed, and if you were paying attention you could SEE him), can spot you from nearly 40 yards away, never loses aggro even if you get far from him, and to boot he serves no purpose in that quest zone. None. He is there to piss the player off.
- The Val'sharah Invasion in Legion is the most disliked among the mini-events. Where the other invasions have only one boss and standard enemies, this one has three bosses, three mini-bosses, and a high mob density with respawning mobs. That many of said mobs can see through stealth doesn't help. Many players have simply given up on fighting through the mobs and just suicide rush to objectives. The second boss is especially frustrating because he is fought on a narrow ledge and uses attacks that can one-shot many players if not quickly dodged.
- Suramar has become this for a lot of players in Legion, despite otherwise being popular for its Scenery Porn and detailed, interesting lore. It's a nice idea for a one-off scenario, but it rapidly becomes a massive nuisance to navigate the multi-level designed-by-insane-people city with a stealth-like mechanicnote when you just want to get someplace. The enforced stealth-oriented gameplay within the city proper is the biggest source of frustration for players, but having much of that content (including two entire dungeons) gated behind the glacially slow Nightfallen rep grind doesn't help.
- Speaking of Suramar, "Sick of the Sycophants" is one of the least popular world quests. You have to kill twenty Loyalist Sycophants, and while Occuleth encourages you to use the item he gives you to summon Withered to kill them, the Withered do practically no damage. Breaking disguise and attacking the Sycophants will draw you into a difficult battle, one that gets even more difficult if the patrolling enemies spot you. All this is on top of having to avoid the aforementioned enemies with the ability to remove your disguise.
- 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.
- While only a city, Dazar'alor earns an impressive amount of hatred due to both its sheer size and layout. Half of the city is a Mayincatec pyramid with most commodities spread out across the various levels and the only way to ascend is to take winding staircases that take forever to ascend. The other half of the city is so far away that it requires a flight point to reach in a decent amount of time and once again, everything is spread out across different levels. While Boralus is equally large, everything players are likely to use regularlynote are all kept close together rather than requiring several minutes of running up and down stairs to get from A to B.
- Stormsong Valley is generally the most hated questing zone for Alliance players in Battle for Azeroth. Where most modern zones have a single coherent questline with a spattering of side quest hubs along the way, Stormsong has multiple minor questlines that send the player running back and forth across the zone. The actual main questline is easy to overlook because it's so low key compared to the immediate problems of a Horde and quillboar invasion which are both minor subplots.
- After many players wanted to see it firsthand for years and how much it was hyped up as the primary draw of 8.2, Nazjatar became universally reviled for its overall unforgiving design compounded with having daily quests that are mostly fetch quests, "kill X amount of monsters" quests, or "kill [elite mob]" quests, being congested with mobs that regularly appear in large packs and have high health compared to mobs in Kul Tiras and Zandalar, having reputations that are mandated for the expansion's second Pathfinder achievement, and just being laggy as hell for the average player. Contrast Mechagon, the other new quest hub introduced in the same patch, which was widely enjoyed because of its simple layout, more variety in quests, and having items that grant players a limited form of flight.
- The Maw is widely disliked. The approximate consensus is that Blizzard made the WoW universe's version of Hell a little too authentic. Forcing characters to run around on foot in a large zone unless they get rare drop mounts native to the Maw (with the flimsy Hand Wave that your other mounts are too afraid to go there... even ones like purely mechanical motorbikes and helicopters); being unpleasant to look at and not in a cool "You're definitely in Hell" way; forcing players to leave, group up, and come back if they want to tackle the group content; the Eye of the Jailer putting a hard limit on how much you can do in a day; and having little content to do (a few dailies and a few weeklies to grind rep with Ve'nari makes up the bulk of it) anyway all contribute to a lot of players wondering what Blizzard was thinking. 9.1 sought to address some of this by adding a new quest hub in the form of Korthia, the opening questline to which removes the mount limit and Eye of the Jailer and can be skipped after the first time you've done it (though the option to skip requires that character to be level 60, which contains its own problems).
PVP Zones
- Among the PVP areas, Tol Barad gets quite a bit of hate, since the attacking faction must hold three separate bases at once to take it. This tends to result in the attacker having difficulty taking the third base (for example, while the attackers take Warden's Vigil, the defenders will retake the Slagworks,and once the attackers set out to take the Slagworks, the defenders will head to the Ironclad Garrison). This tends to be disliked by PVPers for being poorly designed and by PVErs who don't like to have access to quests and the Baradin Hold raid be determined by their faction's skill at PVP. Although after some further balancing and buffs on the part of the attacking side, a lot of the hatedom for TB seems to have died down. In fact, the attacking team has been overbuffed, meaning they almost always win — which is still imbalanced, but better because TB constantly exchanges hands, rather than stays in Horde / Alliance hands till the reset. Which is the reverse of what happened in Wintergrasp, the "TB" of Wrath. Wintergrasp started out as being severely in favor of the attacking team, and while this meant you had little chance of holding the keep, you knew you would get it back right away in 2 hours. This was later re-balanced. If you want access to dailies, the "overbalance" approach works a little better, especially on servers where one side is much better at PVP.
- The PvP zone of Ashran in Warlords of Draenor is a base breaker; those who don't like it mention the thin premise for the fighting, poor writing, questionable design, the difficulty of getting forty players to coordinate to any extent and drawing PvP participation away from battlegrounds and arenas, which were not given any new maps. This led PVPers to dislike the expansion as a whole for those reasons.
Solo Content
- With 7.2, a group of quests to unlock new appearances for the artifact weapons was released. There isn't one for each spec; instead, there are perhaps a dozen such questlines distributed roughly evenly throughout the specs. Yet, while supposedly intended for solo play (sometimes with NPC help), the final battles of these questlines are punishingly hard for most characters, and seem balanced not for the role but for one particular class spec — and other classes and specs might find it nigh-impossible. For example, Windwalker monks' use of Paralyze makes one part of the fight simple, but classes that don't have a 60-second stun with a 15-second cooldown have a much harder time. At the other end of the spectrum, on one site's page for the quests, the Fire Mage tips at one point literally consisted of a single entry: "lol". (It has been noted by some players that the questline is called the challenge quest, but others have noted that these quests were not on the test server and did not benefit from player feedback.)
- The Torghast feature in Shadowlands has been subject to this, also generating a large hatedom for being an extreme Luck-Based Mission. Corridors and bosses are completely random each time you start a run, and some bosses can be unwinnable if you are in the wrong class or spec suited for it. As if that wasn't enough, Twisted Corridors takes it to a whole new level by virtue of relying on the player to obtain a large amount of Health Power-ups as well as self heal and damage ones. Got too few health power ups? Final boss is going to destroy you in a single strike. Not enough damage? Boss will keep getting stronger until you cannot handle the damage anymore. Got the wrong boss for your class toolkit and wrong anima powers? Same deal. And if you lose (deplete your death count)? That's 2 hours or more of your time wasted for nothing.
