Ah wis sittin’ the other day, in the Stonefire Tavern, havin’ a pint and reminiscin’ aboot all mah adventurin’. So, ahm sittin’ there an’ talkin’ away when Firebrew’s lassie, Gwenna, asks me whit wis mah favourite place that ah’d been adventurin’ tae? Well, that goat me thinkin…

Post idea stolen from Larísa, go check out her take on it here.

I had intended do do a few more ‘lite’ posts but unfortunately real life has sort of hit me with a bag of brick in the last week so I’ve not been able to sit down and think about anything for very long. Things are slowly returning to normal, though, and I figured I’d sit down and do this post – a reminiscing one which I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

With the addition of the new instance, Magister’s Terrace, I began to remember how it felt when The Burning Crusade came out and I started poking through those new instances. They felt differently structured, new, exciting. Some I loved, some I hated, others I just didn’t really care either way. I was basing them on my limited experience in Azeroth – I only just reached 58 before TBC, taking a 6 month break for Uni, so I never got to experience Dire Maul, LBRS, UBRS, Strat, Scholo, or any of the raid instances. I’ve visited them since, but you might find my list a little skewed by the lack of low-level experience in these places.

Like or dislike, some instances make a really strong impression – it’s those I’m going to be looking at. My top and bottom five of the 39 five-man instances. This post, however, will only deal with the top five – in an effort to limit my wall-o-text habit to something even a tiny bit more manageable.

1. The Botanica

I just love this place – there’s something about it which really appeals to me. It could be the soft, ambient lighting and lines but they’re common to all of the three five-man Tempest Keep instances. The place has the right mix, in my mind, of mob types, bosses, packs and small pulls. It’s a place where I’ve never felt uncomfortable with any class-composition or felt that I have to take, for example, a mage. It also has a mixture of hard and easy bosses – from Laj to Thorngrin the Tender (who used to be much harder than Warp Splinter on heroic!). The range of bosses is like the range of mobs – you’re not killing the same things over and over like, for instance, in some of the Auchindon dungeons. Blood Elves, Satyrs, Lashers, Mutations and Peacekeepers, etc. it means I never get bored despite it being a rather long instance.

I have some good memories associated with this place – my ‘late night heroic’ group on Sporeggar went for about a week and a half straight doing this place as our nightly heroic as we all wanted something from War Splinter. I will never forget when I got my [Feral Staff of Lashing] after our 9th run – finally!

2. Caverns of Time

Ok, so this is sort-of cheating as it includes two five-mans but I really do like both rather a lot! Durnholde is a fun instance where you get to play alongside Thrall (even if he is a n00b at this point) and take part in a little bit of Warcraft ‘history’. Normal Durnholde is interesting, reasonably easy and I really like the fact that it’s a precursor to Black Morass – making you go to a low level instance which people might otherwise level past and skip. Heroic is another matter – a challenge and a half. I’ve only done it as a healer but, wow, the place feels even more like a jail-break than before as it’s no easy stroll out of the keep.

Black Morass or The Dark Portal as it’s properly known. What an instance – no skulking around corners working out the best pull strategy, no ‘afk 5 mins’ in the middle – this place is almost the opposite of Botanica. A slew of similar monsters coming at you for about 35-45 minutes straight! It’s fast paced, reasonably challenging, and different. I do love variation in my instances and this takes the whole ‘onslaught event’ type of boss from other dungeons and puts it into it’s own spotlight.

Even more fun, when you have a nicely geared paladin tank and he pulls the whole instance worth of trash before you begin. Lots of numbers rolling over your screen and a gleeful grin as you wade in and start tearing them apart.

3. Wailing Caverns

It’s been such a long time since I’ve been to Wailing Caverns… I’d never gone whilst playing Aurik so the first time I actually entered this place, I think, was post Burning Crusade when I started my druid, Mharai, on the Horde side. I love and hate the place – hate the bloody long, twisted corridors, but love the rest. The atmosphere is perfect for me – lots of growing things, druids, many different creatures, a wide range of bosses and all within a flesh of story. The whole instance is a mini quest-hub and the murloc boss makes me laugh every time.

4. Scarlet Monastery

The first time I went to Scarlet Monastery I was level 40 or so and myself and my other half’s hunter ventured through the Library wing to complete one of the various quests. We both instantly fell in love with it and spent quite a bit of time over the next few days seeing what we could kill with just the two of us, whilst building up a rather humongous pile of silk cloth – handy as I’d only just figured out how good first aid was.

I don’t really know why the place is so appealing – the short wings, nice loot, lore, ambience… I really don’t know. I mean the place has some painful bits where you can accidentally pull waaaayyy too may mobs (armory) and bosses who require you to do more than just tank and spank (Herod, Mograine and Whitemane) as well as some you might not even find! (Fairbanks). I guess it seems like the start of the ‘challenging’ instances which you can’t just run into unthinking and splatter everything in sight.

5. Magister’s Terrace

Well, I couldn’t do a top five without adding this place in as, for me, it hits all of the right buttons. I figure that if my shaman was my main I’d probably be cursing the place but with my nice little crowd controlling rogue I get invited quite often. Again, there’s the mix of large pulls and then single harder mobs, the bosses are all very different and it’s reasonably short, given a good group.

I guess how much I like this place might change once its no longer new and exciting and different but, for now, it’s sitting comfortably amongst the little groups of instances that I’ll almost always accept an invite too – normal or heroic.

Stratholme, Dire Maul West, Stratholme – Despite what I said before I have been to these instances – just not at the appropriate level. I’ve stealthed all of them for things I wanted – patterns, drops etc. and also in the case of Dire Maul and Scholomance gone to them to help do mount quests for guildies. I love their design and layout, love how they have this twisted combination of lore and just the right number of interesting encounters. I marvel at the fact people managed to get through them at 60!

Stratholme holds some very good memories for me – running through it in the early days of TBC on my druid with a friend who was helping me get my bear trinket (when it was still imba). He made a game of trying to catch the warden before he could run off to stand beside Baron – pulling the whole room as he did – and didn’t die. Other instances I’ve not mentioned also have good memories for me but the ones above combine good memories, for me, with with ‘right’ combination of enjoyable encounters for my own taste.

I would love to see a few others post with theirs as I really do love seeing what people like about certain instances – I know, for example, that a lot of my guildies absolutely hate Botanica! So, please, lets see your posts on which places you love to visit with your friends (or solo) in Azeroth and Outlands.

Wailing Caverns image stolen from the Wowwiki page of the same name. The rest are my own screenies :)