The Impossible

As we play along in WoW, what once would have seemed impossible is now easily doable.

At level one you can't imagine fighting a dragon. Even at level sixty, it is absolutely inconceivable that you would be able to fight a dragon alone. But at eighty, many classes can solo Chillmaw.

We've killed dragon lords, demon lords, and now lich lords even old gods.

With the way that WoW is designed, it is impossible that we will ever find an impossible task. We'll just level past it and get the prize at the end.

What I think would be really cool is a 'uncrackable' fortress. The way I'm imagining it it would be an instanced area in the middle of the ocean. It would be a five player instance and you could only attempt it once a day. While zoned in your gear would not take any damage- the whole purpose of the place is to defeat the players.

You would have to start by flying in and avoiding the shot projectiles a la the frostwyrm quest at the end of the Death Knight starter zone. In this zone, and this zone alone, you would be able to use your normal abilities while mounted on any mount- ground or flying. If you got hit by the projectiles your mount would nearly always instantly die and you would fall to the frothing waves below.

Once landed you would be swarmed by several waves of guards- in the fashion of Halls of Reflection or perhaps the trash before Flame Leviathan. Getting off the ramparts would be a gauntlet run, with mobs continuously spawning. If you managed to get off the ramparts you would be in a tower. Climb the tower to activate a lever. Repeat this in the five or six other towers (by crossing more ramparts) to unlock something below.

When you do go down, you will be continuously assaulted by guards. Throughout the instance opposing mages will be communicating to each other your strategies and therefore as long as you are in combat, the enemies will gain combat knowledge and will level up in a manner similar to that of the Icecrown Gunship Battle.

From there, I don't have any particular thoughts, but the whole instance is nearly constant combat and an increasing number of debuffs on the party.

There would only be one boss at the end and the loot dropped would not be significant. There would be areas throughout the instance that could be made easier by having certain classes use unique (or nearly so) abilities. There would be locations that benefit from stealth, pets, curses, magic debuffs, DoTs etc.... One part may require a warlock using his teleport, another where a mage needs to cast mirror image.

The point of each of these specialization areas would be to improve your unique skills in a group without having to worry about repair costs.

As new expansions would be released after the initial launch of 'The Uncrackable Fortress" the enemies within the instance would change their abilities and scale, to keep the problem fresh. By the time we hit lv 100, the flying enemies outside would be easily as strong as Onyxia and the standard guardsmen might be as powerful as the Lich King- but they would be standard guards.

All in all, what I'm saying is that it would be nice to have something that can always be returned to and is always 'progression' material.

However, if the mobs scaled, they would not give experience, because otherwise players could spend all their time in the one instance and never see the rest of the game. It is still possible to do that- even now, by turning off exp but the Uncrackable Fortress is something that is meant to be tried on a daily basis- or perhaps even less often like a weekly basis.