I would agree with you on this. I thought it was a good idea, myself, but apparently I'm part of the minority.

BTW, Hi Kaahn!

It's crap if you're trying to put a guild run together for a specific dungeon but you can't direct queue into it because someone hasn't discovered where it is.

While exploring dungeons is one of those things that's kind of cool the first time you level up and then tedious on every alt, I suspect the real reason they're abandoning it is because it let players control their random dungeons. Don't want to be bothered with Stonecore? Don't discover it. Only discover the easier/shorter dungeons before you start heroics. And so on. It's likely conflicting with their plans for the LFG tool and needed to be dropped. Most players have already played through and done it once anyway, so it's not like it's a big loss.

I think they're dumping it because the zone levels don't match up with the corresponding dungeon levels.

Vash'jir: 80-82 (at least) vs. Throne of the Tides: 80-81
Uldum : 83 vs. Vortex Pinnacle: 82-84

Based on how I leveled in Vash'jir, most players are probably already level 82 by the time they reach Throne, especially if they're following the full quest progression of the zone. Vortex Pinnacle is probably in a similar situation, albeit less so. Players are probably halfway through 83 by the time they reach the lead-in quest for VP, unless they've been skipping the Harrison Jones quests. This disparity is made even worse if players quested in Hyjal first.

I would have never imagined that people would use that feature to AVOID certain dungeons, so I can certainly understand that (apparently) no one at Blizzard did either.

I have one question about this, though: do you still have to discover a dungeon before you queue for that one specifically, or have they completely removed this restriction?

@Aanye: Agreed. Having to go to the last map of the zone for Throne, plus going to Hyjal for the quest that gets you to BC is going to be something a lot of people will avoid. Personally, I find Hyjal is the one zone I want to complete on every character, if only for the fact that going through the whole zone makes it the ONLY zone that gets me revered with a faction. Totally. Worth. It.

"I would have never imagined that people would use that feature to AVOID certain dungeons, so I can certainly understand that (apparently) no one at Blizzard did either."

Then you are very naive.

People were talking about how easy it will be to avoid horribad instances as soon as this change was announced several months ago. I was even encouraging people to create disposable alts whose sole purpose is to sniff out Oc-esque dungeons so none of your mains ever have to worry about being sent there.

If Blizzard never thought this would happen then they're not just naive but actively stupid because we've been talking about it for well over six months.