From mmo-champion, in the middle of a Blue post beta info dump:
“The vast majority of our dungeons must now be visited and their entrances explored before you can LFG for that dungeon. A few classic dungeons will always be available that are extremely hard to visit or are low level. Ragefire Chasm, Stormwind Stockade, Deadmines, and Wailing Caverns are automatically unlocked.”
I like this. I like it a lot. Good balance between making you find the instance regardless and their new kinder gentler leveling philosophy. Yeah, it’ll add some time to leveling via dungeons but you’ll be forced to get the flight points around Azeroth that way, and with some of the new content being adjacent to old world that’s a good thing.
Yes, people will still get lost on corpse runs. That’s what they do. But they won’t have the “I’ve never really been here” excuse.
Potentially annoying thing: You build a group on your server, one guy says “I’ve never been to ZF, don’t have the flight point”. Do you kick him, wait for him to get there, go ahead and fly yourself and summon him?
Maybe warlock stones will be popular again…
That’s a good question… but I think there won’t be many server-only groups (and for a guild group, people would probably help the slacker).
And, wait. I think this could work to the player’s advantage… if I don’t go a-exploring in Swamp of Sorrows, I won’t be able to queue for ST, therefore never get to experience the horror of the corpse run again? Oh yes, thank you Blizzard! (I probably couldn’t find the door anyway to unlock it in the first place…)
I see pugs building in LFG or Trade channels, occasionally even for low levels, but you’re right, that’s not likely to happen.
I see Mauradon getting very few visitors in the future…
Well they might change how accessable the entrances are. They are putting flight points ever 2 meters so they are likely to do something like make some entrances easier to get to in some way. I mean there is a whole town right next to the Sunken temple now.