Challenge modes are going to add the tech required for that, but, in the long run spending the time to extend that to old content isn't something I would really foresee them doing.

Blizzard tends to give just enough relevance to old content to justify it being in the game, without allowing it to seem like something people should spend a good portion of their time in.

For example: Transmog. Hey, neat! You can go run old raids with friends for gear!

But the first boss of BWL still regularly bugs out after death and continues sending waves of adds out because they don't want to go in and fix it.

They should. I mean if they can insta poof someone to level 80 I would imagine they could shrink someone too. Not sure that they can do anything with your gear though. That is probably the tricky part. Perhaps they can make some kind of less powered heirloom type set. If they can do it without compromising current content, I am all for it.

Grovin, I doubt that. There is talk of challenging modes in dungeons but I doubt they let you do it whenever you go into old instances. Just start taking off gear. Drop your weapon, lose the helm. Then see how tricky stuff is.

They also tested that iLvl throttling in the 4.3 PTR, so yes, the tech is viable.

But (cutaia) is right. There's a lot of questions about how to make iLvl-throttled characters compatible with older content. Do 85s throttled down to 70 still have all their endgame abilities? How do those abilities affect how a throttled character can manage challenges in level 70 content? If those abilities are removed, is there the potentiality that due to how much spell acquisition has changed since level 70, throttled characters might not have tools that were available to normal 70s in BC, thus overchallenging them for the content?

And like he said, the fact that C'Thun's stomach room is still bugged six years after release means it would be a headache to have the encounter team revisit it for characters who want to clear it "like we did back in the day."

"Not sure that they can do anything with your gear though. That is probably the tricky part."

On the patch 4.3 PTR, the following debuff was placed on players testing the HoT dungeons: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=108972/modified-gear-level-ptr-only

This is likely the same tech they'll use for challenge modes, so the gear wouldn't be the thing stopping them.

@ Grovinofdarkhour,

Unfortunately, Blizzard thinks that if you want to play at level 70 raids such then you should level to the max level of that raid content and then twink. I really hope that they would instead bring the level of npcs and gear up to the max level for the vanilla, BC, and WotLK raid and dungeon instances like they did with shadowfang and the Deadmine heroics. This would give us a more endgame content and make the old material new and fun again.

Well I'm going on the assumption that we're still just talking about a gear thing, no changes to dungeons needed. If heirlooms can grow with you, we know an item's level can be modified, so why can't they just give us a slider labelled "Avg Ilvl" that runs from 1 to your current gear's level? Make us pay gold to unlock it from an Ethereal or something, I don't mind.

Or better yet, just a checkbox: "[ ] Tune Gear to Location". So whatever zone you pass through, whatever instance you enter, it's like you're going into everywhere level-appropriate.

It would be hard to balance without making it too easy or too hard. Would you balance MC around a 40 man raid or 10? Would you upgrade the loot? At what point do you decide it would be easier to just convert the old raid to a level 90 raid?

But the main reason is that most players don't want MC to be a challenge, they want to solo Ragnoros and laugh at him. Every time there is a discussion about "item squish", the one big concern is always "How will this effect my ability to faceroll old raids?"

I hope for not just gear, but effective level downgrade too. With this SoR program, Blizz can be seen to admitting that it isn't fun for a raid-geared max level toon to pal around with a level 34 friend. I want to hit a button and be level 34 too, and run some dungeons with my friend. Other games have had this feature since even before vanilla WoW, and I hope Blizz gets with it and implements something soon, even if they throw up their hands and say it's not meant for retro raiding and they won't put in the resources to properly retune old content.

Balance shouldn't matter as much for dungeons, as those are very forgiving for low dps, and if someone blows through it on ez mode, it'd be not much different from full boa groups.

@Cutaia

I am far from a tech expert- I would imagine there might be different things active on the PTR for testing purposes that may or may not ever make it to live. That said, that would be great if they had that available. Perhaps on a scroll or something.

Also, Grov, when they develop ideas, they're going to be looking at how to keep people playing.

This is unlike "twinking" where people have to run MC every week to gear up their level 60 raid so they can try and do BWL and AQ40, etc. And Blizzard has never even really supported that playstyle.

With what you're talking about, though, you know that your gear is a certain level when you walk into the raid -- and presumably, it would have to be a level where killing the last boss is feasible. So, it's like you're already starting the raid with the appropriate gear to finish it. If you kill the first 4 bosses of MC this week, is there any reason to start fresh next week? You're not going to get any useful gear, you know. So, it's less like progressing, and more like a binary, "Can you kill Garr or not?"

So, realistically the additional play value of adding this seems to be: Players interested in a challenge will play each old raid once just to prove they can do it. Then..that's probably it.

I'd love the ability to scale my character down for the content/down to match a friend. It's City of Heroes' best (and most rarely copied) feature, IMO. If you've got the tech to do it, it works for challenge modes, making old content in general challenging, and running with low-level friends/guildies.

All this focus on skipping the low-level content so you can play with your friends is less productive, long term, than simply making it so you can join them in the low-level content without it being a boring (if occasionally hilarious) ROFLstomp.