A Dungeon-Filled Trip Down Memory Lane
Ranking vanilla World of Warcraft dungeons
Let me take you back to the halcyon days of classic World of Warcraft, a youthful time when we could toil around in dungeons late into the night, our heavy eyelids vying with the caffeine cloud of a freshly opened Mountain Dew. Dungeons were plentiful and crazily intricate. Loot was varied and irresistible. The mechanics were enigmatic, buggy, and highly absurd.
Now you find yourself in the Wailing Caverns. It’s 2:45 AM. You’ve fought enough Night Elves and raptors to last you a lifetime. The yawning chasms of the dungeon are melding together into some indecipherable puzzle. Is your party supposed to take a left or right at this waterfall? Oh no, someone just missed the platforming jump — how in the world do they get back up to where everyone else is?
At approximately 3:35 AM, you hear these dreadful words from the tank who’s been silent the whole time: “Sorry guys…I think…yeah, my mom just came in and yelled at me. I have school tomorrow.”
And then, poof, they log off. It leaves you and your crew dawdling in the middle of an alligator-clogged cavern of terror. An awkward silence spreads out as everyone hopes they’re not the one who has to return to Orgrimmar to hunt for another tank. And you’re contemplating just accepting defeat and heading to bed.
That’s pretty much how most dungeon experiences went back in the old-school days of this game we all know and love. Some dungeons were absolute gems, a marvel of lore and level design, while others were a pretty painful experience to slog through. Boy oh boy though, did they all leave an indelible impression on me. Spoiler alert, I secretly love every single dungeon in vanilla (classic) Warcraft.
Here is a look of the dungeons you can come across ranked from forgettable to memorable!
The Stockade — 19th Place (Last Place)
If you’re a fan of first-person shooter games where you’re constantly working your way through narrow, gray corridors to get to even more narrow, gray corridors, then are you in luck with this dungeon!
The layout of the dungeon forms a “T” shape with a whole two paths to go down, but it would be disingenuous to call that non-linear. You’ll be fighting your way through the same two dull hallways whether or not you want to. In this dungeon you’ll run into characters with red Defias masks on. This monotonous dungeon will send you into a boredom-induced haze right up to the final boss.
Your intrepid adventure through Stormwind’s infamous prison block won’t really leave much of an impression on you after one foray.
Give it time though; you’ll likely run this same dungeon a gazillion times if you’re on the Alliance because, well…. it’s literally a few steps away from the nearest inn. For better or worse, it doesn’t get much more convenient than that in the classic version of the game.
Razorfen Kraul — 18th Place
You’ll be dreaming of Pig Men for weeks after trudging through this thorn-filled hellhole of a dungeon. This place is overflowing with them! They’re hanging in the rafters. They’re burrowed up in their little cave-dweller nests. You’ll even find them shoveling poop in the westernmost section of the dungeon which is basically a bat zoo filled with droppings of all shapes and sizes.
Sounds amazing, right?
If the Quilboar infestation hasn’t sold you on how hellacious this place is, then there’s always the fact that at least half the mobs have totem and chain abilities which can periodically root everyone in your party to mess with your positioning; the pig men are like, “Oh, is that a mob patrol inching your way? It’d be a shame if you were to get rooted right about now.”
And to top it all off, upon killing the final boss of this dungeon, your reward is that you’ll get to fight your way through another legion of pugnacious boars who waiting for you on the route leading to the exit. Huzzah!
Warriors have a few notable drops in this dungeon, but besides that, you might be better off devoting your time elsewhere. You may find questing and killing a myriad of animals to get their hearts and tusks in the Barrens more fun than venturing into this dungeon.
Ragefire Chasm — 17th Place
This dungeon is another one on the list that’s fairly unremarkable; think of it like The Stockades, but with a fire and brimstone makeover. There’s retina-searing lava in every single direction. So if you’re enthralled with the color of neon orange, then this place will be Heaven for you!
Just like The Stockades, we can find this place in the heart of Ogrimmar, so you’ll be able to walk right out of the entrance portal and check your auctions when your group members inevitably get jaded with the dungeon and leave. That’s a positive, right? As they always say: location, location, location.
None of the bosses are going to take the Boss of the Year Award, but they’ll try their best with the mechanics the developers handed them. Hopefully, you really love tank-and-spank, because that’s all you’ll be doing here. This dungeon is inoffensive, straightforward, and absolutely forgettable.
Razorfen Downs — 16th Place
This place is Razorfen Kraul with about half the Pig Men expunged and replaced with a myriad of ghouls and skeletons. That there are less Quilboars instantly makes it a million times better than its cousin dungeon!
The bosses themselves are fairly diverse and fun to fight against. You have the classic tank-and-spank, a couple that can summon, and a few ranged casters that require mechanics such as stacking and interrupts.
In terms of atmosphere, the dungeon is satisfying to look at. It perfectly captures that cold, damp aesthetic you’d expect from a burrow that’s deep underground. The dungeon is replete with cool earthy tones of gray and brown, contrasting nicely with the warm lighting from the bonfires placed all over.
The biggest point against this dungeon is that it really won’t leave much of an impression on you at all, neither positive nor negative. It’s in the middle of nowhere and has basically no lore to reinforce its place in the world. There’s also a severe drought of interesting loot going on inside of it. You’re not missing much if you decide to skip this one while leveling!
Blackfathom Deeps — 15th Place
Blackfathom Deeps ends up being players’ first introduction into a semi-long, labyrinthine dungeon.
The environment of Blackfathom Deeps is gorgeous to look at. All the blue and green hues that make up the seaweed-strewn walls of the underwater caverns are easy on the eyes, and there’s a nice balance of different areas you can come across, ranging from wide-open pools of water to imposing Night Elven temple ruins.
The scale of the place is a lot more epic than most of the dungeons that come before it, and it’s hard to find anything to dislike when it comes to visuals and space.
One of the biggest problems, however, is that the bosses are generic and seem to lack a ton of defining mechanics. Hogger in Elwynn Forest is likely a far more parlous encounter than anything you’ll find in this place. If you’re new to tanking or healing and want to impress your guildmates, then this will be a very auspicious place to dip your toes in those metaphorical waters!
Just be wary of the statue room where you light the four lamps to proceed; the enemies there hit like trucks, and it can sometimes be an immediate group ender if you’re not prudent with the pulls.
Maraudon — 14th Place
When you enter this place, you’ll feel as if you’re beginning an epic adventure through goopy, fungi-filled grottoes of… Alright, not really. Moving through this dungeon will make you feel as if you’re lost in a swamp and very close to catching a disease.
Maraudon is massive. There are only a few other classic dungeons that can vie with it for sheer size. However, the issue with this dungeon is that it lacks a sense of coherence with structure. As I move about the dungeon, I can’t help but feel as if I’m on a conveyor belt that’s aimlessly touring me across a nightmare land filled with poisonous flowers and deer people.
What stands out in this dungeon is an enormous, picturesque section: Princess Island. You’ll find quadruple waterfalls and life everywhere. If player housing was a possibility, I’d imagine players would set up shop… preferably a good feet away from Princess Theradras’ corpse.
There are also memorable weapons you can find in this dungeon, such as the Blade of Eternal Darkness. This dungeon can provide an enjoyable experience, if you can excuse most of the slog you have to get through to reach those wowing moments.
Wailing Caverns — 13th Place
Half the fun of this dungeon is the experience of trying to find the entrance portal in the inexplicably befuddling caverns leading to it. It can take you a solid fifteen minutes to get inside, if it’s your first time. It’s pretty common to end up lost, forced to make the corpse run back in when your party wipes. This challenge alone has earned this dungeon a good bit of notoriety.
The Wailing Caverns will certainly having scratching your head. While the mountain itself is small — a tiny dot on the vast plains of The Barrens — the interior of this dungeon is sprawling. Your party may meander about for what may feel like an eternity because of its sheer size.
The bosses in this dungeon are unremarkable. Half of the time you’ll be mowing down Night Elves after Night Elves while rushing to finish until a blue item will drop. “Wait, that was a boss?”
A lot of your wipes are going to happen in the Wailing Caverns, thanks to party members falling asleep. If you see a Night Elf, they will try to use a slumber spell on you. It always seems to either be the tank or your healer who ends up falling to sleep, too! So have fun! My advice would be to bring a Paladin, Shaman, or a Priest along for the dungeon so you have a dispel to counteract this spell.
There are other neat features that can be discovered in these soggy caverns, like the world’s slowest escort quest or the infamous platforming jump that has claimed many victims.
While the Wailing Caverns may leave you frustrated, it holds a special place in players’ hearts thanks to nostalgia. It’s impossible to forget your first experience getting tangled up in all of its idiosyncrasies.
Blackrock Spire — 12th Place
Warcraft labels Blackrock Spire as a five-man dungeon, but it might test your sanity without a group of ten players to support you. Trust me. The dungeon functions as an effective introduction to the idea of raiding for newcomers. Since it’s broken into two dungeons — an upper and lower portion — the layout of this dungeon satisfies different styles of level design: linear and free form.
The lower half is a maze of overlapping bridges and dilapidated ruins, whereas the upper half is more of a linear experience with a bunch of distinctive rooms connected via hallways. The upper area is where you’ll find most of the formidable bosses in the dungeon.
This two-pronged design is very liberating, allowing parties to pick their preference for the type of challenge they’d like: a classic dungeon crawl that sprawls in all directions, or a more linear experience with some notably imposing encounters.
This dungeon earns a special reward for the way it connects its two sub-dungeons together. There is even fantastic loot you can find, like the recipe for the Arcanite Reaper! I, also, have some forever ingrained memories of comedic moments where party members would take a fall into Lower Blackrock Spire from Upper Blackrock Spire. At which point, the hapless soul would be forever lost down there.
The only thing that really drags this place down so far on my list is the environment itself. This dungeon can be wearisome on the eyes. It consists of a bunch of grays and browns that blend together. There comes a point where all the rooms feel and look exactly the same. This is a common problem in the classic World of Warcraft, but the verticality of this dungeon exacerbates it.
If this dungeon had been tackled by retail World of Warcraft, I’m positive the art team would have completely revamped the dungeon to be more visually exciting!
Sunken Temple — 11th Place
Despite what others may say, this dungeon is absolutely wonderful! The only reason it’s this far down on the list is because all the other instances ranked higher are just that iconic. So if you’re looking to roleplay as Indiana Jones, then this is the dungeon you should gravitate to.
The run to the instance portal literally feels like something straight out of an adventure movie. You’ll need to trek all the way to the Swamp of Sorrows, which is already a far-flung place, and then actually swim out to a decrepit temple in the middle of a lake. That’s just the beginning of this adventure! But adventurers beware, there lay unique dangers ahead!
There are multiple underwater sections where you can drown if you’re not careful, along with throngs of enemies who are all hankering to halt your progress. How cool is that?
The interior of the dungeon is circular, with five different levels and an intricate system of winding stairs connecting it all together. There are plethora secrets waiting for players in this area. Some of these secrets are bosses that are only spawned through puzzles and questlines.
You will end up running through this dungeon a few times to everything the dungeon offers. It, also, keeps players interested and curious, making this a dungeon that feels like a true expedition where it rewards you for turning over every rock.
The above are not negatives, but elements that augment the dungeon and drive home the concept it’s going for.
This dungeon will certainly leave you feeling discombobulated with its spiraling staircases, and you may find yourself the victim to the many traps (beware the poisoned statues) and rampant curses. These characteristics make for memorable moments with your group to bond over. After all, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” So if you decide to enter this dungeon, buckle up, it’s a wild ride in this dark, decaying temple!
Stratholme — 10th Place
This place might be a dilapidated, fiery hellhole with a nonstop supply of disease-ridden zombies, but at least it’s a hellhole with a ton of amazing bosses and loot to offer those who dare enter it!
We can find here the fabled Piccolo of the Burning Flame, which is infamous for being the most annoying item in the entire game. If that alone doesn’t earn this dungeon a spot this high on this list, then I don’t know what would.
If you are a fan of Warcraft 3, then this dungeon will always be a super evocative experience for you. This dungeon is drenched in lore that many consider essential. You can say that Stratholme is pure nostalgia for most players.
Whether you’re grinding for your dungeon tier set, hoping for the iconic Baron Rivendare mount to drop, or you’re stockpiling Argent Dawn Commissions for reputation, this is one of those dungeons that will stay with you months later.
This dungeon will visually wow you, along with the experience it provides. The smokey cobblestone streets mesh perfectly with the creaking, wooden homes wreathed in smoldering embers. Or how you can see the unscathed sections of the city in one area and the devastation in the next. This is a dungeon that will have you pausing and admiring, despite the danger surrounding you.
Gnomeregan — 9th Place
This dungeon is a sprawling underground engineering complex nestled below the quaint winter wonderland we know as Dun Morogh. It’s filled with nooks and crannies that are teeming with memorable quests and items.
We all remember the absolute befuddlement we felt while attempting to collect punch cards. Or what of the Sparklematic 5200 machine, which was a veritable in-game lottery device? Nine times out of ten you’d end up bamboozled and receiving a single shiny pearl for all of your hard work.
This dungeon is mechanically complex with all sorts of things to be wary of, such as Dark Iron bombs and alarm bots. It’s certainly a dungeon that evokes a love-hate relationship for players. This dungeon has many optional areas, such as the Engineering Bay, where your party can become directionally disoriented. And areas where you can fall and plummet to your tragic demise. And let me tell you, corpse runs in this place are a nightmare!
While this sounds like a challenge you are not ready to face, this dungeon has shortcuts and alternative entrances. This dungeon straddles the line between being intricate and streamlined at the same time. This makes exploring this area so rewarding. Once players know the routes, they can navigate the facility with ease. It’ll get to a point where certain group-destroyer mechanics, like the alarm bots, no longer become such a headache.
Overall, this dungeon is well-designed, has a unique aesthetic, exceptional lore, and great loot. It often acts as a rite-of-passage for many low-level players. So if you end up dawdling in Ironforge and are ready for a new challenge, check out this place!
Uldaman — 8th Place
One reason this place holds a top spot on this list is the way it steeps itself in mystery. Excavation sites and ruins create a sense of the unknown, and at the time of this dungeon’s release, the Titans were still a very enigmatic concept in the game’s lore.
The layout and level design may leave you bewildered, but I really like the concept of being lost in an underground research site, slowly deciphering the riddles of vast mythological entities within. This dungeon feels both enormous and straightforward. It has a central route leading to the final boss and areas that branch off with different bosses at the end.
Unlike the Sunken Temple, you’ll be able to fulfill your Indiana Jones role-play fantasies here without feeling absolutely lost and confused.
In no way do I want to forget the dungeon’s set pieces. Classic World of Warcraft isn’t known for being as much of a visual spectacle as the retail version, but this dungeon is filled with awe-inspiring concepts that change that. You can find scepters that have to be cobbled together to open doors, abstruse machinery filled with lore and knowledge, and statues and monuments you can interact with that summon larger-than-life bosses. The whole place is jam-packed with these moments and unique concepts that really make you feel like a geologist working your way through a mystery-filled location.
Zul’Farrak — 7th Place
I have a soft spot in my heart for dungeons that have outdoor areas that match with the surrounding area. Zul’Farrak accomplishes this with its open-ended environment. This dungeon stands out against the others, taking away the claustrophobic layout for a spacious, multi-directional design as you can see in the screenshot above. I found this dungeon has led to great moments with friends where I could spend hours chatting and roleplaying because the space allows for that.
Zul’Farrack offers unique bosses and action-packed moments. One of these events is the dungeon’s stair event, where a small army of enemies will form at the base of the stairs, forcing you to battle and hold your own. Seeing that many enemies in one spot at one time isn’t a sight you see often in classic World of Warcraft, so to see it in this dungeon leaves for an adrenaline-fueled adventure.
There is, also, an optional hidden boss who will drop one of the most well-known trinkets in the entire game: Carrot on a Stick. This trinket — even to this day — is still synonymous with open-world PvP shenanigans.
Zul’Farrak has one group-breaker element that you’ll need to be prudent about when you delve into it, though. A vast swathe of Trolls have a penchant for hexing your tank and wiping your group. So make sure you have a Priest in the group so you can dispel those little calamities as hastily as possible!
Scholomance — 6th Place
Scholomance is one of the most successful vanilla dungeons when it comes to showcasing a strong, cohesive theme and creating an immersive atmosphere for players. You can feel the dread emanating from the island of Caer’Darrow and its rickety, bone-strewn exterior. It’s a place you can tell from looks alone that you should be wary of it and yet… you want to see what lays in store for you.
One does not simply walk into this dungeon. Finding a way in can take ages thanks to an attunement questline, which adds to the mystery and allure of this dungeon. You can barely even see the exterior of the dungeon, part of it peeking out the sides of this mountainous island. Why is it so hard to get inside? What is inside? When you find your way inside, you walk into a dungeon that emanates doom and gloom.
The dungeon’s gloomy design becomes multilayered and realistic with its lived-in environment. There are different areas that allow you to see beyond the dungeon, such as the overlook where you can summon Kirtonos the Herald. The overlook allows you to gaze out into the Western Plaguelands. Different vista points such as this one help to solidify the dungeon’s place in the world.
I have so many fond memories of getting lost in this place. You might think it’s haphazardly thrown together at first, with how many alternative paths, dead ends, and side bosses it’s crammed with, but there’s definitely a rhyme and reason. I love that you really need to plan out your path with your party, or you’ll all just end up making no progress. It feels like a true dungeon crawl. The only people who might loathe this place are alchemists, since they have to run it repeatedly to make use of the potion table inside.
If you’re looking for a dungeon that will leave the hairs on your arms raised, has great loot, a diverse range of bosses, and great level design, then make your way inside this dungeon…if you dare.
The Deadmines — 5th Place
The Deadmines is the dungeon that keeps on giving. Even after your twentieth run through this dungeon, you still feel the same excitement and wonder that you did in your first time around. Deadmines shows how great level design can lead to endless hours of enjoyment.
This is one of the earliest areas in the game where players can earn blue (rare) items. It’s a great feeling when one drops. The Blackened Defias set — a slick, mean-looking outfit of armor — will also introduce players to set bonuses for the first time.
If you are a Rogue, the drops in this dungeon are a perfect fit for you. If you’re a Twink Rogue, this epic loot becomes even more valuable for your character. Collect the whole Defias set, acquire your Edwin Van Cleef daggers, and you’ll be mowing down enemies in Warsong Gulch in no time.
This dungeon earns its high-ranked spot not only because of the loot, but because of the way it introduces players to instances. It uses linear design to guide players on an epic journey that grows as you move forward. It will eventually lead up to an ultimate confrontation with the bandits’ leader on a boat set piece. All the bosses in this dungeon are memorable and fit into the areas you find them. It also helps that the entire story of Westfall flows organically throughout the dungeon, creating a satisfying finale for players to work towards.
Shadowfang Keep — 4th Place
The player base holds a deep reverence for Shadowfang Keep, and there are quite a few reasons for that.
The Gothic architecture and medieval beauty of the cursed stone fortress found a permanent place in my mind. There’s something compelling about the simple layout of the place and the way it integrates itself into the surrounding story of Silverpine Forest. The place was so popular back in the day that the Alliance would frequently make the arduous trek from Southshore just to reach it.
There is a lot of timeless fantasy imagery present in the dungeon. Werewolves, moonlit castle walls, floating visages, and undead horses allow players’ imaginations to run wild and create stories of the location. As you maneuver through the dungeon, there is a sense of anticipation that climbs. What will you come across next?
And for those who had been questing in Silverpine Forest before entering, they’re aware of the tragic story that befell those within. All of the quest stories in the zone tie directly into the dungeon. There’s a beautiful aura of immersion and mystique that pervades the whole place.
The level design is another brilliant win in this dungeon. It’s a mostly linear experience, but with a ton of verticality accounted for in it. If you come across spiral staircases, you are bound to come across a boss room. This constant climbing heightens the anticipation of what awaits you at the very top. Eventually it all crescendos into an ultimate battle with Archmage Arugal at the top of his tower.
There are also many side paths, like the horse barn. If you’re feeling adventurous, these side paths promise engaging encounters. All in all, the dungeon is a controlled experience that never loses its sense of urgency.
There are other factors that play into this dungeon’s high ranking. The different bosses you encounter in this dungeon are all mechanically arresting. The loot is unique, with some equally unique names (i.e. Abomination Skin Leggings) that are forever seared into our memories. If you were a fan of Van Helsing or any other dark fantasy show, then make sure to visit this crumbling, somber castle swimming with different creatures of the night.
Scarlet Monastery — 3rd Place
Can you guess why this dungeon is ranked so high on the list and deserves high praise for years to come? This location pioneered a new form of dungeon for the game, one that would later become so popular that it became the standard for both of the upcoming expansions. This location presented the idea of a multi-winged dungeon connected to a single hub area. This area would thematically link all the wings together, creating a strong sense of place and connection throughout.
This place was a conduit for social interactions and open-world PvP brawls. The space created a natural way for people to team up and get to know each other. It’s part of the reason why so many old school players speak highly of this place and the wonderful memories it created.
All four of the wings in the dungeon are iconic in their own ways. The graveyard section is a haven for gold farming. The library is renowned for its caster drops. The armory is great for melee classes. Finally, the cathedral wing is blessed with one of the most celebrated bosses in all of World of Warcraft: High Inquisitor Whitemane.
There is a Super Mario Bros. vibe felt in this dungeon and the different levels exudes charm and variety. And so it’s fairly impossible to become jaded with this place, and it’s remained popular because of all the ways the players could interact with it.
Blackrock Depths — 2nd Place (Almost Tied With 1st Place)
Blackrock Depths is the embodiment of the term “dungeon crawl.” It’s a vast, immersive, and labyrinthine dungeon that surpasses the grandiosity and scale of most of the raids the game offers. This is a place your party can easily lose a full day’s worth of time in if they’re not careful. It feels like a bona fide city, rather than a dungeon within a city, which means you may feel overwhelmed if it’s your first time visiting this dungeon.
There are 40 bosses in this place, a number which absolutely dwarves — pun intended — every other piece of instanced content in the game. And not only that, but this city is overflowing with a lot more than just magma. There’s an anvil that blacksmiths can use to craft rare recipes. There’s the Relic Coffer area, which adds a whole new subset of options for how players can run this place. Blackrock Depths is also a key area for gaining attunement to the Onyxia raid. Or you can spend weeks completing all the quests that are attached to Blackrock Depths.
It’s that extensive.
The beautiful thing about this location is that there isn’t a wrong path. This dungeon offers a variety of novel experiences and runs. You can grind through the dungeon over a course of several hours. You can do “lava runs” to skip to the last few bosses, if you’re toiling away at rare drops such as the Ironfoe Hammer from Emperor Dagran Thaurissan. Or you can pick specific areas to sneak into depending on what you’re working towards, whether it be an attunement questline or a specific profession component.
This sort of open-ended, free-form environment is something that has faded away in the modern version of the game. Blackrock Depths is the sort of experience you savor while you’re running it.
The sandbox nature of this dungeon is inimitable, but there’s only one other instance that surpasses it in my mind…
Dire Maul — 1st Place
I’ll tell you the number one reason Dire Maul is my choice for the best dungeon in vanilla World of Warcraft: it immaculately fuses together the best elements of Blackrock Depths and Scarlet Monastery to form an unparalleled experience. This really is an example of perfected harmony seen in level design, environment, and wide variety of activities players can partake in. It’s an example we’ll likely never see again.
This dungeon eulogy will be a more comprehensive than the others on this list, but it’s all thanks to it earning the number one spot. So buckle in tight while I expound on all the things that Dire Maul did so very right!
Dire Maul is another city-like dungeon, expansive and diverse. However, it surpasses Blackrock Depths because of the ingenuity in its level design. Instead of going for an enormous mishmash of interconnected tunnels and areas, this dungeon opted for three distinctive dungeons — nicknamed North, West, and East — that are linked via multiple tunnels that do not use portals.
This means that this place could maintain the grandiose scale of Blackrock Depths, but with a more clearly delineated path for each of the segments that would allow players to have a clearer goal for each section. If your group wanted to slog through the whole Night Elven city at once, they could. If they wanted to focus on a single wing of the city, they could. If they wanted to intermittently bounce between all three of the distinctive areas for various tasks, they could.
One place that’s nostalgic for many players is the Dire Maul Library, because it functioned as a centralized hub that would link all the sections together. While probing around Dire Maul West, you could inadvertently stumble into a path that would lead you to Dire Maul North. The North had pathways leading into the Eastern section. And even then, years later, players were just realizing connections and alternative entrances they had been missing.
Basically, Dire Maul took the concept of Scarlet Monastery distinctive thematically linked dungeon wings and added literal connections between the wings to make the place feel like a cohesive city.
The near-endless list of things also enhanced the excitement of delving into the city’s ruins. This place was such a success because it consistently provided the community with a reason to return to it time and time again.
A quintessential example of this is the tribute runs that players could do in Dire Maul North. This was an alternative gearing process that required a tremendous amount of preparation (having the correct professions, classes, and items) and it allowed groups to bypass all the bosses of the wing besides the final one. You could accomplish all of this while acquiring a brand-new table of loot for your efforts. Doing this task even unlocked additional drops of lore through new dialogue options with the Ogres and beneficial buffs on party members that would spike their power levels for hours.
Other fun tasks included the Warlock and Paladin class mount questlines which converged in this dungeon. You could even spend months acquiring books from around the dungeon and returning them to the library to receive a trinket (a rare reward back then) for your efforts. Or for Warriors and Paladins, you could toil for months in this dungeon in order to start the questline to craft one of the most timeless weapons in the game: Quel’Serrar. You can craft this weapon through an engaging questline where you must ignite it with the flames of Onyxia and submerge it in her blood!
You know what class also found this place incredibly captivating? Rogues. Dire Maul was a veritable playground and testing ground for them. This was a place where they learned to hone their skills and become as surreptitious as possible. They would slyly wiggle around the entire city while flying solo to scavenge for riches. This included the books that could be returned to the library.
You can almost consider Dire Maul as the game’s first catch-up dungeon, too. The gear here, while not as potent as the stuff found in later raids, had its place throughout the meta in all of vanilla World of Warcraft. A lot of the stats on items such as percentage-based dodge and critical strike kept it relevant. It could compete with later gear that won out in terms of the primary stats. The boundless treasure trove of flavorful items with unique procs and aesthetics kept the player base satiated for years.
This is why this dungeon earns high praise and the number one spot. It maintained a devout fanbase of players for years without the implementation of modern retail systems like the Mythic+ dungeons. This dungeon was able to sustain a fanbase organically without the need of an artificial grind (i.e. currency drops, ever-scaling item level).
We’ll likely never get to see and feel an experience like this in the game ever again. This sort of mega-dungeon, built with longevity and multi-pronged interaction in mind, doesn’t really fit with the modern design philosophies of the game. Dungeon crawls and open-ended level design aren’t compatible with a focus on competitive, time-based modes like the Mythic+ system we have now.
Maybe someday this type of non-linear, exploration-based dungeon will return to the game in all its glory. World of Warcraft is constantly metamorphosing and seeking that next great way to keep its players engaged. A patch with a release like Dire Maul, where the gear is distinctive and useful throughout the whole expansion, could be very auspicious for the game. As patches continue to grow more complex and the development timeline skyrockets, this type of organic evergreen content could drift back into the fold.
For now, Dire Maul will forever exist in a time capsule — a dungeon that pioneered a new concept for longevity and player engagement. I’ll definitely continue to recollect many warm memories of this place for years to come.
Final Thoughts
Vanilla World of Warcraft was filled with oodles of dungeons to traverse and conquer. These dungeons came in all shapes, sizes, and difficulties. Although it’s all very subjective, this list reinforces for me that linear and non-linear design are both concepts that can work well in a dungeon. Scarlet Monastery and Dire Maul are both in my top three on here for a reason.
It all comes down to that nebulous concept of what qualifies as a good design for an instance. You can sum it up by saying that all these elements discussed above form together to create the inherent “feel” of a dungeon. Whether it is linear or nonlinear, the dungeon needs to fulfill certain criteria to be considered a success. For example, Scarlet Monastery was thematically strong and promoted community with its hub design, whereas Dire Maul fostered exploration and immersion.
What also was wonderful about vanilla World of Warcraft was that players had access to an eclectic mixture of different dungeon styles. Dungeons were not expected to conform to a competitive, time-based end-game system. Because of that, developers could be looser and exploratory with their concepts.
It’s impossible to say what the game will be like in another seventeen years, but the possibilities are endless. Maybe we’ll eventually get to see a return to the philosophy of old, where dungeons were about slow-paced, planned out crawls. Or maybe we’ll get to see a sort of hybrid approach where the new dungeons vary between the two different design styles. No matter what, I’m excited to see how the overall end-game philosophy will continue to shift and transform in the future.
