Dungeons have been pretty much standardized for quite a while now in WoW. As Mythic+ took over the format, everything has been designed towards it and its timer-focused goals. Blizzard recently talked about how that took something away from the dungeons. They also mentioned how a new feature coming up a little later in Midnight is looking to bring it back.
Longer Exploration and Getting Lost in a Dungeon
The PC Gamer interview features Associate Game Director Paul Kubit and lead encounter designer Dylan Barker. The focus is on Midnight’s new mega-Delve “Labyrinth” feature. They talk about the inspiration behind it, and it seems it was that something that was lost from dungeons with the advent/perfection of Mythic+.
“If you remember, back in Classic, we had dungeons like Maraudon, Blackrock Spire and Depths, where we had like 20 bosses in a dungeon. And that’s not something that happens anymore—dungeons have three or four bosses … And maybe we lost something along the way.
Maybe in the chasing of that specific mode of Mythic+, we don’t have that ‘weekend project’ where ‘I’m just gonna get lost in this cavern with my friends and we’re gonna go clear the whole thing.
That RPG fantasy feeling of getting lost in a big dungeon doesn’t exist in the dungeon space anymore—but it could in our Delve space, if you look at something like Labyrinths. So that’s something that Labyrinths are trying to tap into from an emotional point of view.” – Paul Kubit
That Classic Feeling
That comment about Classic dungeons certainly rings true, especially thinking back to Blackrock Depths. If Labyrinths look to bring something like that back, with the ability to separate your progress out to multiple sessions, that sounds like a pretty great addition! Unfortunately, the feature is only coming in 12.1.5, which is quite a long way away. The patch is currently scheduled for Autumn, after September 12ths Blizzcon, as we saw on the 2026 roadmap.
Make sure to read the whole interview over on PC Gamer. It talks a little more about the new labyrinth feature and how it relates to Delves.
Do you agree with Kubit’s comments about dungeons? Has Mythic+ perhaps taken away too much from dungeons? And can Labyrinths bring it back?
