Another lost level 60

[LochnarITB]

It probably shouldn't have gone three hours in the first place, honestly.  The key to end-game instancing (not MC, that's a different beast altogether) is to target your objectives.  I've gone into BRD with the stated objective of hitting Angerforge, Arglemach, and the Emperor, and got it done in less than two hours.  You can knife in and take care of two or three quests in one run in every "standard" instance in 2-3 hours (yes, even if you're after the fourth deed in Scholomance).  It's when you try and do too much in one run that you get bogged down in the infamous 10-hour Scholomance runs...[right][snapback]78376[/snapback][/right]

Here you struck on another problem with content being concentrated in massive instances. In order to "target" a quest objective, someone has to already know the content. Essentially, those players that need to complete a certain quest are taken on a guided tour. It takes the exploration factor out of the game, something very important to a lot of players. It leaves only the wow factor of seeing it for the first time but takes away the sense of accomplishment from finding the way yourself.

There are two ways to maintain the fun for the explorers. The first is to always play with the same group of people who are on the same page. They may go in and find nothing they need but then go in the next time and be able to know what did not work and what to try next. This is very unrealistic. Even the most hardcore person does have a RL to deal with and one person's schedule interruption does the same to all. The other way to do it is to make several smaller instances that contain a few goals that can be done in the smaller blocks of time a casual player has. They could go into these knowing they will be able to accomplish something and it would be easier to find a group, on the fly, that was new to the instance.

In no way would this change farming. Once the place is known, it is no different to target the boss in such a place than it is to target a boss in the mega instances when the path is known. They both are just grinding as we now have with all the calls you hear to do "runs". Of course, you wouldn't have world bosses in such a setting and the loot tables allow there to still be special reward for those able to spend the time to defeat the worst of the worst while still allowing equipment improvement for small-chunk-of-time-over-an-extended-period players.