Patch 6.2: Timewalking makes older dungeons relevant

One of the constant discussions I’ve seen in my time covering World of Warcraft is that the game has a host of older content that is still fun and interesting and visually well designed, and all of that legacy content is sadly irrelevant as soon as the next expansion comes along. Well, one of the features of patch 6.2 that aims to change that is Timewalking. And Timewalking seems set to make us actually want to run older content again.

As it’s currently explained, Timewalking will open up randomly as part of a spate of new random weekend events running from noon on Friday to noon on Monday. When a Timewalking weekend event opens, it will allow you to queue for a random Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King dungeon, and once you zone in, you will be scaled down to a power level appropriate for the dungeon in question. You’ll retain your skills and talents, so you won’t have to change your rotation, but you’ll actually have to worry about the mobs doing things like killing you again.

In addition, the loot from the Timewalking dungeon in question will scale up to the level you actually are once you’ve completed the dungeon, so if you’re running Shattered Halls and The Bladefist drops, it will scale up to be useful to your level 100 character. There are currently five BC dungeons available via Timewalking and five Wrath dungeons. The BC dungeons are Arcatraz, Black Morass, Mana-Tombs, The Shattered Halls and the Slave Pens, with Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom, Gun’drak, Halls of Lightning, The Nexus and Utgarde Pinnacle being the Wrath dungeons.

And it should be pointed out that this isn’t strictly a level 100, max level feature. No, to Timewalk the BC dungeons, you merely need to be level 71, and the Wrath dungeons require level 81. So you can Timewalk as you level up, which I think is a good idea. I’m definitely looking forward to this feature and hope it eventually expands to cover more old dungeons. I’d love to see a Timewalking version of Dire Maul, for example.