I'm not excited about the future patch at all. Just one dungeon?

[Vahlnir]

I just meant that as relative to XIV and as relevant to skipping mobs. Though they might not amount to much in terms of overall exploration, most WoW dungeons will generally have branching paths at least a few times that allow a choice of mobs or paths wide enough to avoid patrols (which are, oddly, entirely absent from XIV). Some will even allow you your choice between all but the final boss, or have side-bosses not necessary to reach the final one.



It's not just a Classic WoW thing at all, either. If anything, many of the most free-pathing dungeons (at least since Vanilla's) are the more recent ones, from Warlords of Draenor and beyond. There's no broad design change or overall philosophy indicated by their inclusion, but simply numerous dungeons that are built in a more open manner, just as others (like the train dungeon) are built far more tightly. I suspect it's just to give some diversity to the feeling of dungeons, rather than letting them fall into such a consistent rut as, say, XIV's have.

There's plenty of room to wander in some, sure, but it's still a linear path for progression for the most part. To me, going right for a few steps to fight a mini boss doesn't really add up to much, but there is that too I guess. There isn't really multiple paths for people to take until after bosses are down, which comes back to what I said already. From a progression point of view they aren't as free roaming as they used to be. The main ones I can think of in recent memory that gave people the option to decide where to go first was in Legion in the Halls of Valor and maybe that one in Suramar which I can't remember the name of. There was also Karazhan's 5 man dungeon with raid level difficulty, which did indeed give people options. But they were an expansion ago back when things were at least half decent overall. I'm not saying that they don't exist in the game currently or even recently, they just aren't common. Most are designed around mythic+ speedrunning.