An Imperfect Azeroth

Yesterday morning, I finally went into Maraudon. I never did the instance on my main I don't know why but I just remember not doing the instance when it was level appropriate. So when I picked up the quests on my alt, I made a choice yesterday to run the instance. Luckily I got a guildie who wanted to help since he had been in there only once.

Before I ran Mara, I had held that of all the instances in WOW, this one had the best back story.
From the world dungeons site:

Protected by the fierce Maraudine centaur, Maraudon is one of the most sacred sites within Desolace. The great temple/cavern is the burial place of Zaetar, one of two immortal sons born to the demigod, Cenarius. Legend holds that Zaetar and the earth elemental princess, Theradras, sired the misbegotten centaur race. It is said that upon their emergence, the barbaric centaur turned on their father and killed him. Some believe that Theradras, in her grief, trapped Zaetar's spirit within the winding cavern - used its energies for some malign purpose. The subterranean tunnels are populated by the vicious, long-dead ghosts of the Centaur Khans, as well as Theradras' own raging, elemental minions.

Then yesterday I actually ran the dungeon and I changed my mind!

Maraudon was the first dungeon released after WOW came out. And after one hour clearing it with a level 70 end game hunter and accepting we were only 30% done, it dawned on me that my disillusionment that I was feeling with the instance was because it reminded me of an all too human trait. The designers had overreached when they built the dungeon. They built the dungeon so big, to show off how good WOW was, that you actually get tired of the instance!

To me a good instance is like a good story, there's a clear starting point a clear middle & an well defined ending where all the loose ends are tied up. The best example of this is Black Morass, which is why I ran it twice one day & enjoyed both runs.

Mara though felt like a Victorian novel that's major plot points are separated by 50 pages of dry dialog & unnecessary details. Of course this also may be due to when it was made & the designers using older MMO dungeon designs as a template, But unlike the Victorian novel, Mara can be changed, it's a virtual world after all, & if Blizzard is moving Naxx for WOLTK, I think they could compress Mara so that instead of it taking 3-4 hours run, they could remove some of the extra corridors so that's it would take 1 to 2 hours. If they do this, I would expect that a lot more people would run this as they level up their characters instead of passing on it to do other quests.