They will be ghost towns. Few people are really going to go through the pain of gathering 40 people together to get worse equipment than you can get if you just team up 5-25 people.

There will be some who would like to experience these raids like Naxx and BWL, but there won't be 40 of us around all at the same time.
 

Also realize that enchanters will probably want the shards, some will (probably) be a fairly easy PUG'd with 20-30 (MC), and I'd expect the Gold farmed from wouldn't be too shabby.

As it is today, my guild spends days leveling alts and PvPing the BGs, because the large instances are on raid 'cooldown'.
 

I recently wondered about the same thing and figured that the only reason someone would do MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx is to learn tactics. And that's only if the nrw endgame raid instances require stuff that you've learned in the legacy raid instances.
 

James, comparing UBRS/LBRS/UD Strat/Live Strat/Scholo to MC/BWL/AQ/NAxx is fallacious. The former are 5 man dungeons, with many quests and exp from killing monsters. In summary they work fine as leveling dungeons.

The raid instances do not. There aren't many quests to get exp, the exp from killing monsters is very low in a raid, and you will get better loot from 5 mans in The Outlands. And there's the hasle of getting many players together. There isn't much reward for a leveling player in the old raid instances.

All this is fine ofc. Just pointing out fallacious logic.
 

Leveling is much much greater than gear.

Most leveling guides will tell you that going into any instance is a waste of time due to the fact that the exp rewards are far below the time investment (unless you can complete 4+ quests in 1 run) when compared to normal mob grinding and questing.

The same is true for any elite level mobs, instance or otherwise. Level 60-63 greens from the Outlands are nearly equal to ZG epics and these can be acquired ALONE vs a 20-40 man effort.

Blizz reps can be quoted saying that MC epics will be great sources for Nexus Crystals in the future. However, our guild currently has over 200 Nexus crystals in the guild bank.

I don't foresee any MC Nexus farming runs for a VERY VERY VERY long time.

Regarding Naxx, the Legendary staff is nice, however; even at lev 70 the bosses in Naxx are STILL going to be difficult. The easiest boss in Naxx (Instructor Razuvious) can hit my T3 warrior for 22,000+ with 1 unbalanced strike. I don't care how buffed you are at 70 in T4, no warrior can tank that. 1 mind control break + 1 Disrupting Shout will quickly lead to 40 dead lev 70 raiders.

I would say yes; Naxx, AQ40 and MC will be abandoned.
 

Leveling up in Molten Core unfortunately doesn't work well. If you go with a 5-man group into a small dungeon, you get a group bonus to xp, adding about 20% to the xp per mob. But in a raid group there is a raid malus on xp, cutting your xp in half. I once participated in a Molten Core run at level 59 (guild desperately in need of a priest), and killing Luciferon gave me 72 xp. :)

The new LFG system theoretically allows searching for a raid PUG, but I don't think that will happen. If there are level 70 runs to BWL/AQ40/Naxxramas, it will be from guilds looking for a change from raiding always the same level 70 raid dungeons.
 

I really do not think Naxx or AQ40 will be a ghost town. A real raid guild will still attend those instance for loot. Our guild is a Naxx guild and we will still be going to get our players gear. I mean come on T3 is going to be good up till lvl 67 which by then you most likely still can have till you start getting t4 to replace.

I find it funny when these non raid players say yay we can do a 25man raid and make it sound like it's going to be so simple. if you havent fought bosses pass cthun then you will not see how much work it is to accually fight these boss encounters cthun and up. Its not zerg the boss type of strat. you accually have to time things which i do not see non raid players pick up fast. what i see is they are all going to whine becuase they cant seem to figure out the strat then whine to blizzard saying they made it to hard. so yah i cant wait to laugh