Change the structure of the 4-dungeons, maybe?

[Makeda]

They've gotten very similar across all MMOs largely because when they vary it up a bit, players start avoiding the 'different' dungeons.

Remember Mauradon from World of Warcraft - amazingly designed place... but even when it was current content it was very hard to convince people to be willing to enter a 4 hour 5-person dungeon... so they re-made it into 3 small linear fragments that only used up about half of the actual original dungeon...

I remember one Guild Wars 2 dungeon that involved moving a boss over traps. A dozen or more. Boss immune to all damage but the traps. You set the traps by doing something funny while avoiding adds... It was a very clever 'fight without using any of your abilities' design... and players hated it. Even though it was nothing more than a 'swim in a tunnel to the boss, then engage' - super short. But the gimmick was too strong (for those wishing to correct my very fuzzy memory... I am trying to remember how the original 'Southshore Living Story Event' mini-dungeon worked, but it's been a few years since that got removed from their game).

Almost every MMO has a Mauradon story - a dungeon that either had non-linear choices, differently designed boss mechanics, a different kind of reward, some messing with your abilities, or something.
- They always looked amazing when we saw them previewed in betas... but when they hit live servers... players would start avoiding them.

Guild Wars 2 and WoW both had several of these over the spans of their design (GW2 got away with many of them being from limited events so they could just quietly let them vanish... but they learned the wrong lesson from this and just got rid of their dungeon team rather than adapt to the playerbase).

I agree with the concern that dungeons in MMOs are too similar these days... I just don't know how we overcome player reluctance to accept variety.