First!

Havent done it myself on any char, but boosted many players through it, and defo like the atmosphere :D

Scholomance was a nice instance. I really enjoyed it, probally one of my favourite instances. It has a good atmosphere and layout and nice setting. I still like to go back there and do it sometimes with a few friends occasionally.

I kinda likied scholomance a bit but as with all of the vanilla wow dungeons there where just way too much trash too tightly packed as well as the entire dungeon took too much time.

Last boss was great for that level, loved that you got ported away and had to kill some mobs alone to get back to your party. Couldve been nasty if the healer or the tank was ported :P

Awesome instance. did it loads of time on my main because that damn shadowcraft helmet refused to drop ! :D

Anyway , If u want to revive it ... thumbs up !

i take it you mean the late 5 man version of scholomance? Coz that version was kinda nice, though it was cool to have it on the primary difficulty as well.

For me stratholme and scholomance were cool because you didn't NEED to kill everything. There were a few bosses that you hhad to do but that was it.

Though like mentioned before to much and to tightly packed trash was an issue.

Scholomance and Stratholme are my favorite instances. Why ? Firstly I like the dungeon layout of pre-tbc dungeons much better. As said before, you didnt have to do all bosses to complete the instance, which is a real plus. TBC dungeons are just a tube which you have to run through, its not really exiting with siderooms, or that kind of stuff. Its these little things, that made TBC dungeons sucky and uninspired, when the old world dungeons didnt have this.

Scholomance is full of rooms which you can either skip, or completely clear for more blues, ( the Jandice' room, Raz Frostwhisper ( although he is killed every time ), the Varuzden the Herald ( you have to summon him ) ). I really love that kind of layout, and the same goes for Stratholme more or less.

Although the last 6 rooms were a pain at times ( the Barov room anyone? ), it was a very fun instance to complete.

As for WotLK, bring back the dungeon set questline as it was in pre-TBC ! It rocked ! You had to gather mats and whatnot to upgrade your gear.. perfect ! It would give people more reason to actually do solo play other than the dull dailies in TBC.

Its been a while since I did it on 60 with my Mage back then, so I cant really figure out how it felt back then, but I do remember that it was awesome to do.

One last thing, things like the epic Robe from Raz Frostwhisper should also come back in WotLK, in the form of some epic which drops from a certain boss, _not_ like normal Magister's Terrace, where Kael'Thas drops an epic guaranteed. Give it some low drop rate, 3-5% or something, just a suggestion.

Scholomance is both tightly-packed annoying instance but at the same time enjoyable and fun, its that it takes a long time to clear through the bosses.

Scholomance was a nice place. Well, the looks and lay out atleast. It made sense and reflected Western Plaguelands theme while having an interesting lore behind it. However like most 5mans in vanilla wow everything was too simple for my taste. Atleast in regards to the fights themselves.

The Headmaster was pretty fun with the teleport thing, but other than that he wasn't all that exciting compared to, say, Bladefist or Kael'thas. I'd love to see a Scholomance that features the same basic concept but with fights as complex as heroic Mechano-Lord Capacitus.

Oh, and those minibosses required to summon Gandling! Bosses with a low chance to drop anything at all is a no no!

... Did I mention the trash?

If you started, and went immedinately to Rattlegore, it was indeed a bit long yes. Some TBC instances are a bit dull trashwise as well, I cant think of an example here, but Im sure that this is there, since I recall myself being extremely bored doing stupid trashpulls for hours on end.

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Q u o t e:
Oh, and those minibosses required to summon Gandling! Bosses with a low chance to drop anything at all is a no no!

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That was annoying indeed, took you half an hour to clear those rooms, only to get a couple of Dark Runes and some cash.

Scholomance, Stratholme and BRD are my favorite instances. Yes they had their flaws with too packed trash, not very complex bosses and so on. But what made them great was the feeling you got. You had a lot of liberty in where you were gonna go, what bosses you were gonna kill and so on. Not like the instances in TBC, wich are basically: hallway with trash, then a boss, then hallway with trash, then a boss etc etc.

Atmosphere and questlines that happened inside Scholomance (not the questline to obtain the key) were great, probably best instance quests in the game at the moment. Everything was relevant and nicely tied up to the ghosts of the island and few remaining Barovs in horde/alliance camps. Vast majority of other instance quests from Deadmines to Black Temple are bland and there is very little thought or touch of lore in them.

But as others have mentioned, trash was a major problem when this instance was done on correct level. First room with the blood steward of Kirtanos, the summoner room with Kirtanos, cellar with Jandice Barov and Rattlegore were a nightmare for correct pulling and handling of trash and endless source of wipes making Scholomance in many ways the hardest five-man instance in the game. Also there is an evil trap, or design flaw for group composition in the place. Magic-immune mobs at Jandice as well as physical-immune mobs around one of the minibosses at the end (can't remember the name) which made building a group that can complete whole instance from top to bottom extremely hard.

I guess making the place more compact (drop few of the mini bosses at the end and move Jandice there) as well as fixing the nightmare trashmob rooms would have made it more fun.

Definately a very interesting instance. Challenging for all classes, the rooms with tons of casters was awesome when it all went wrong - and those guys in the basement hit like a truck!

I agree with earlier posters about the coolness and pure argh-wft-factor of the Headmaster fight too. It was a real treat the first time around, and still makes me laugh! :)

Up there with Mara and ZF as my favourite instances so far. :)

I've always liked it but I think for people that don't bother doing long instance quest chains it was probably a bit dull. I think only a few of the players I know ever bothered finishing the Ras Frostwhisper or Dawn's Gambit quests. If you did bother though there were some great stories in/around that place. :)

Too trash heavy, yeah probably a bit. Mostly the minibosses, cut it down to just a couple of them per run and make it a random combination that always drop at least a high level blue "of the" (like the animal boss in Kara or the summonable minibosses in Skettis/Ogrila) would probably help a lot.

My vote will always go to Vanilla wow instances for sheer quality. I hate the tbc instances due to the 'tube' effect.

I will gladly run a mate through a pre-60 dungeon for any reason: Scholomance and Stratholme are two of the best instance in my view due to the nature of their design. They are open ended and do not require you to take on everything to progress...

The design has its usual trash flaws which could be rebalanced by taking 1/3 of the mobs out. That's it really.

Each of the rooms has a different feel to it, and the bosses are all different enough to keep eveyone on their toes. They might not be a challenge to a group of 70's... but they can still cause a wipe if people get too over confident.

Give a payrise to the team who made those two dungeons... preferrebly by giving a paycut to the idiots that designed the TBC 'tube' syndrome

My favourite pre TBC instance. It had the atmosphere, the storyline, straightforward but still interesting mobs/bosses, an alchemy lab, optional bosses and very importantly for a priest: the undead.
It being an endgame instance some level of difficulty is only expected. Yes, the trash had caused MANY a wipe, but when done properly it was very doable.

It used to be quite difficult before the nerf, I remember spending 5 hours in there with a group of friends.

It's great instance but has some weaknesses - mobs that turn immune to melee for example, I've had a melee only group so my druid (the healer) had to starfire them to death. It wasn't funny.

It was way too long instance if the party wanted to do all the bosses and quests.

I remember big rooms with full of mobs and endless los pulls from the doorstep. Most of the time there the party was standing behind a door waiting for the tank to bring the next pull. Very boring imho. And the trash always caused a wipe because there were so many of them. I remember 4-5 hour runs before TBC.

Last boss fight was fun though.

I loved Scholo. It was my favourite pre-TBC 5-man instance.

Good points;

* Good atmosphere. It really 'worked' as a building rather than just a bunch of tunnels.

* Undead. Great fun for pallys and priests.

* Variety of bosses. Not all were just tank-n-spank.

Less good points:

* Length. It was a long session to do everything.

* Trash on the way to Jandice. Often they would pull through the 'walls'