The next series of JWBarry’s Instance 2.0 Diary has been posted and I highly suggest checking it out as it is another great read.

There’s not as much talk about new features and such but it really gives a great insight into how they went about this process and what they wanted to achieve.  This post helps highlight what their goals for instances (and raids) are going forward and I’m liking what I’ve read so far.

This post covers the Annuminas instances and the Eregion 3-mans, although really it is the Annuminas instances as they didn’t need to change the Eregion instances much at all.

The Annuminas instances have always been some of my favorites but there were some annoyances that I think cut into their popularity.  Luckily for us, many of those have been corrected including:

  • The annoying burrowing Cave Claws – they can’t do that anymore!
  • The lever puzzle in Glinghant is gone which also means you can run this with less then 6 people
  • The darkwaters have been tweaked which was a HUGE pain
  • The instances no longer require specific camps to be controlled by the Free Peoples in Annuminas such that they’re always available!

From a higher level view, what this diary can tell us about instances and their overall group and raiding priorities is almost more exciting then the specific changes:

  • Forcing group numbers isn’t a goal.  So if you’re good enough to 4-man a 6-man instance you’ll be able to.
  • DPS races are not desired boss mechanics
  • Drawing fights out just to make them take longer isn’t a fun mechanic
  • Puzzles without appropriate feedback will be tweaked and/or removed.  I don’t see this as making the game “EZMode” as you’ll still be able to have challenging puzzles but certain ones were complete and total black boxes without any guidance on if you’ve done something good or bad.
  • Instead of power drains they’re adding power cost multipliers such that it will be up to the players to manage their power not the instance

For me this Diary wasn’t as much about the details but what JWBarry highlights about the process and their goals.  I can’t wait for Part 4’s discussion on Helegrod!!