I usually raid in 10s and almost never 25s content (except AK,Maggi and Gruul).
I admit encounters like Razorscale look a bit odd as the fight area is rather large.

However Flame Leviathan looks pretty good in 10 man version so I would not say everything is scaled around 25 man content nowadays.

Especially as most encounters nowadays are actually "hit-and-run" encounters like Marrowgar (where the spacve is really useful for escaping his second phase), sometimes large areas do make sense.

Personally I think it is a bit like someone said in a comment of part one: It is somewhat linked to what we are used to see.
I began with BC content and Karazhan was nice, but nothing like epic. I had a peek in some "old" content from canilla like Zul Gurub, BWL and MC. None of them looked quite epic. Gruul was not really epic, maybe Zul Aman a bit.

Ulduar was the first raid with had a "Whoa" effect, however I am not alone in my guild with that.
In line Karazhan und Ulduar are those I would consider epic in their ways.

Sometimes I think it is in most parts how Blizzard just designed the instance and the apparent effort. Ulduar looked like a bunch of work, same as Karazhan.

Especially Icecrown with it's all-the-same lowres floor textures and somewhat thown-together architecture does not really transfer something epic to me.

I would even say there is a difference between Zul Gurub and Zul Aman. While ZA looks vibrant in some way, I get the feeling Zul Gurub was quickly designed with elements which we already know for good.

I joked lately about Cataclysm that Blizzard managed to get a expansions theme with least effort ("Nagas? No problem, he have some left from BC. Worgen? Got them from Silverpine").
I really hope for some really unique instances (including raids). Personally I think unique environments together with unique events sum up to something epic.

That said, I think the Retaking of Undercity was the last thing which epic. Interesting from my viewpoint it was exactly epic once. Running it the second time with a toon was surprisingly boring.

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