So last night we ran into our first real problem with Kharazan. After clearing the trash past The Curator towards Shade of Aran/Chess Event for an hour and finally getting to start attempts on the Shade we ran into trash respawns.

We managed to throw 3 attempts at the boss and after that we were faced with the choice of reclearing for an hour or calling it a night. We decided to just call it a night which of course was a bummer since we didn't know who to blame. Was it us for not killing the boss on our first try ever? Was it the game developer for adding this arbitrary system that we have no control over?

The problem was made worse by the fact that there's no wipe recovery on the Shade. If you die in his room that's pretty much it, you have to run back or risk pulling him. This of course made it even worse since the walk back takes 10 minutes.

After all this happened we began discussing why the system is in place. As a game developer I'm always trying to understand why another developer does the things he does so I can learn from it. In this case I just can't understand or come up with a reason why trash respawns (specially in this place) exist.

Some people mentioned that maybe the developer wants to add some time penalties to slow progression but I think there are already plenty of penalties for that. Having to repair, having to restock on reagents, having to restock on potions/flasks/etc and the biggest of all: Time itself.

For us our raiding time is precious, we only raid 3 nights a week for 3 hours so having to spend 2 out of those 3 hours clearing and reclearing trash seems like the biggest penalty of it all. For hardcore guilds this is not really a problem since for them it just means one more cup of coffee they have to go through. They're going to kill that boss no matter what and reclearing doesn't mean anything. For more casual people it means calling it a night so really, the penalty seems to affect the people that are going to make the least progress anyway.

One thing I noticed is that every time something like this happens the raid group ALWAYS blames the developer. During gauntlets like Broodlord's, Fankriss', etc, people know that wiping means a reclear and they understand that so they are prepared for things like this. But regular trash respawning (with no easy way to tell when they're going to respawn) just makes no sense to raiders and they feel cheated. It actually feels like raid instances would feel if they didn't save your progress and you had to reclear every boss you already killed (for no loot) to keep making progress. We already beat the trash, we understand it, we perfected our strategy and did what the developer wanted us to do, why do we need to do it again?

When we faced our runs back to Shade that ended in noticing trash respawns...I just looked on the bright side and saw one thing good out of that trash - reputation.

Other than that, at least they made it to where once you do snag the kill on Aran, you are awarded with far more than loot and quest completions - you get to port to his room from then on (during that reset). THAT'S the best part of the kill.

It's there to only give to X many attempts per trash clear, and to therefore put some pressure on you to make those attempts count.

The Aran trash is too long, to be sure (when we were learning and wiping to Aran we'd spend upwards of 30% of the respawn time on the trash itself). But it's there for the same reason that there isn't a "Try Again?" dialog that pops up after you die on a boss that immediately rezzes the whole raid just outside his aggro radius. They're all just "attempts per hour" limiters.

The respawning trash is an added timesink while people learn, to slow down progression, and completly void once you are farming it.

Ideally people will be spending maybe 10%? of their time learning the zone, all the other times they enter it will be for a farm run.

Its broken down easily so that after you clear the boss it just stops, but while learning it, its like a teacher keeping an eye on you saying "stop slacking, you cant afk here, move move move!".

This is ment to be like a real raid zone but for smaller amounts people, just like was wanted and thus you have this.

Honestly though Aran's trash is the only real annoying bit, and hes far from an easy encounter - however preferable to having to kill Terestian or Netherspite for a learning guild for the same results - he also provides a teleport too.

If it was your first run at that trash, it will go faster next time. If you cleared the whole library for quest turn-ins, you probably won't do that next time either. Keep in mind it all goes away when Aran does (after a soft reset anyhow).

I'd say that a normal clear from the curator to aran takes about 30-35min after you have done it a couple times. Once you get comfortable chain pulling some of the trash and people die less you can shave more time off of it.

If it was your first time to Aran, don't forget you can jump down on the ledge under the door and pick up several buff books. They aren't gamebreaking but a little extra something never hurt.

And thank you blizzard for the port to Aran's room. The first time I made that whole walk, I thought to myself, where is the bug mount for this place?

I think a small part of the idea behind trash respawns is to break up the repetition of consecutive boss attempts. Tigole has spoken about getting the right "feel" to a dungeon, to get a balance between boss attempts and trash clearing.

Think back to BWL and Razorgore. No trash, you just zone into the instance and take your shot at the boss. Now, once you one-shot the guy, it's great. You're done in 10 minutes and on to the next. But what about when you're learning him? You start finding that people aren't logging in to throw themselves at the same encounter for 4 straight hours.

That being said, I'd have to agree that there is too much trash between the Curator and Aran, and with no wipe recovery, it's frustrating. Our guild also has short raid nights and we ran into this exact issue last night. We had ~1hr left in the raid after downing curator, and the raid was called due to the fact that if we were looking at 45 minutes of clearing for one attempt at Aran.

Wrong. People find more reasons to not log on when they have terrible trash to reclear.

How much more fun would of have AQ been if the Post Emp trash respawned every 45 min?

The Attument trash was fun on our first ever Kara, we went in and slacked and took it really easy, finally cleared the last pack of trash and respawns own us Needless to say we learned our lesson and never slacked off on trash again.

And thats one thing that bugged me in BWL/MC - people slacked on trash more than anything and here it doesn't allow them to anywhere near the extremes they could before.

There's a balance to be found. Aran and C'Thun trash were too long imo, but a small amount of trash can really help focus a raid at the start of raid time and wake folks up- get the kinks out of everyone.

I personally disliked Shade's trash, until I remembered BWL lab packs.

I'd much rather be penalized with more trash for wiping, than have to clear ten thousand friggin' goblins every week no matter what. This way, the instance itself forces your group to get better. Strategies are more thought-out, trash clearing is more efficient, etc. At least Karazhan stops being painful on farm status.

Actually it isn't that complicated to recover on Aran. Make sure one or two of your Ankh-/SS'd Shamans/Priests/Paladins die next to the door - actually I can't see why a Shaman shouldn't stand there at all. Sure, there's some possibility for dying elsewhere (Blizzard, AE), but we managed to have full wipe recovery for several tries after trash respawned, leading to a kill right before we run out of Ankh/SS-Cooldowns

Shazbot,
I think you're right about the difference in "feel" between trash respawns and things clearly meant to be recleared each attempt like Fankriss. When you've been running back freely after making good progress on the boss, only to suddenly turn the corner past Curator and run into the dual golem pull again, its demoralizing and frustrating because you know its going to be a long while before you get to attempt the boss again. This comes a decent length into your raid, when many people aren't going to be in the mood to do a full reclear.

While I'm not sure about the design philosophy behind Fankriss-like clears each attempt, if the designers did want an extra time sink after wiping it seems like they should just add a couple 5 minute respawn pulls right before each boss, and prevent any other trash from respawning except on a soft reset of the instance. Over the course of the night you'd spend the same amount of time on those quickly respawning trash pulls as you would have on the second clear from Curator to Shade.

The run back, the buffing, the rezzing when possible, the repairing, the restocking, those are limiters by themselves. All those things add up, specially in a case like this where each run back takes 10 minutes and you're looking at 15 minutes between attempts.

After only 4 attempts you've spent an hour just running back and rebuffing, isn't that your limiter right there? 4 attempts an hour seem like a good count, no?

Aran is optional in technicality. But because of the trash re spawns and other factors, he is very very mandatory. When attempting Aran resist the temptations to go to chess first. It severely cuts into your time with Aran on that trash clear. Also, leaving free loot up is a good way to keep your raiders around for another hour when otherwise they would be 'too tired' as all good raiders do when things get hard.

Also, and this isnt easy to pull off, you can have an 11th person run into karazhan and log right outside of Aran's room. Make sure it is a class with a resurrection. On wipe, someone releases, and the 11th person logs in, rez's the warlock and 1 other, and bam, you can summon everyone right outside of Aran's door. That will give you 1 maybe 2 more attempts as the trash starts 'catching up to you'.

The problem with the Aran trash is those damn little mana worms. I mean seriously, could you make mobs any more annoying and pointless? I've lvled my one handed maces from 290 to 345 on those things. Those exploding elementals were annoying too until we figured out how to stop their explosion, they'd just drain our mana and make us PoH and drink after every pull. Other than the trash being periodically stupid, I don't mind respawns, they force you to make the most of your attempts since you know you're on a time limit.

I'd much rather have some trash to reclear than to have to do that run to prince without the Aran teleporter again. That was just mind numbing.

I'll note that the trash respawns in Karazhan _are_ very predictable. Curator trash respawns after one hour, post-curator trash respawns in two hours. If you're a raid leader, take note of the time you make the first kill on a gauntlet. If you're close to the respawn time, tell people to be careful and cluster around the safe spot just before that, and then run in as a group. (Alternatively, have a lock+ two others run past it quickly if it's still down, and summon past). Don't let the trash repop on you with half the group running past.

Once the trash repops, go have everyone take a 5 minute bio break, get a drink, whatnot. Also take a break after killing each boss, before you start the next gauntlet. It's much better than have people going AFK while the clock is ticking.

I timed our Kara where we did all except Nightbane in one night, this is from start of trash to death of boss:
Attument 25mins
Moroes 25 mins (Ballroom way)
Maiden 20 mins
Opera 15 mins
Curator 35 mins
Aran 40 mins (Skipped Terestian till after Prince)
Chess 15 mins (Skipped Nethespite till Prince)
Prince 15 mins (1 wipe)
Netherspite 10 mins
Terestian 10 mins

There was 2 10min breaks which are excluded from this list, and post Curator people seemed abit more 'slacky' however so perhaps -5mins on Aran and Chess

Only Aran's trash is perticularly long but hes a short fight so you have over an hour of attempts limited only by your wipe-recovery speed.
Curators trash probly more like 25mins as you take the backdoor after you get to it once.

However I believe Curators trash has only about an hour respawn rate compared to the two for most other things.

Why doesn't trash repop in 30 mins in scholo? In shadowlabs? In Heroic Steam Vaults? Then why the shorter respawn time here? It's a c-block pure and simple. I could maybe understand a couple of pats, or a couple of groups. But when everything repops on you? This just means wasted time.

Your raid downs one boss, and clears the trash to the next encounter. You get 3-4 attempts, and then have to re-clear. You still have a few issues on the fight, you get the feeling you might get it next try… and you have to re-clear again. It's demoralizing. It gets late. People can't stay, raid breaks up. Not to mention, the longer it goes, the worse people's reflexes get.

Curator is 45 minutes.


And yes. The respawning trash is the only really bad part of Karazhan. Why do people keep replying with "respawing trash serves to limit your attempts on the boss"? Everyone knows that. Understanding the intention doesn't make it good.


What? What trash respawned in BWL, AQ, or Naxx?

Remember how little trash there was in Naxx? Some bosses didn't even have any. Yet somehow, the zone contained enough "content" to keep people occupied for months. It's generally regarded as the best zone the game has seen.



Since people consume content more quickly than it's produced, there's going to be some boring play experience somewhere. I'd much rather have it take the form of farming already-familiar content (which can still be fun for quite a while), than have to endure enforced wasted time on the way there.

Our KZ raids are time limited. If we had 5 hours to blow every night we went I wouldn't feel bothered by the repop timers on the trash or the sheer amount of it in general. But we don't. And I'd rather spend those 3-4 hours we have 2-3 times a week learning to kill bosses than learning how to do boring trash more efficiently.

In AQ40 the only repopping (besides Fankriss) trash was the 'gauntlet' before Prophet and that was learned extremely fast. We learned our lesson on that trash in Molten Core. The first obstacle in MC wasn't Lucifron. It was getting to Lucifron without wiping to dog/imp/surger repops. If that style of trash had ended there, I think we'd have a lot more raiders playing still and a larger percentage of them capable raiders in their own right because they just might have not watched TV instead of paying attention.

Ask yourself, how many people actually enjoyed the raiding time spent clearing PULL AFTER PULL of the same annoying trash in the previous dungeons? This is the problem with raiding in WOW. It is extemely boring to do these things. I don't want to be bored playing a game. "Risk vs Reward", "Earning Epics" yada yada. I don't mind a challenge, as long as it isn't boring. This is what put a lot of people I know off of raiding, and in the same fel swoop, WoW entirely.

I know Moroes trash is 1 hour, Curator 45 minutes, Aran's 2 hours. I haven't had the chance to time the others, but thought some might like a handy reference.

Although I feel like the trash on some areas is a bit too fast (Curator was a bitch when first learning it), Aran's is the only one that I feel is quite bad. Perhaps that's because I'm a mage and the mana worms are quite possibly the lamest idea ever created. :P

The biggest issue I have with the repops is that I feel like it puts undue pressure on the raid that it cannot ever AFK or take breaks unless we fail so many times that we get repops. When you start getting frustrated at your raid members for going to the restroom because you know you might lose an attempt because of it, I guess that just feels wrong.

In a non-repop raid if something comes up, there's no problem calling a 15-20 minute AFK, tell people to get back, and continue where you left off. Now, you have to stop and thing, "Is it worth AFKing when we might only get 1 more try by the time we get back and have to reclear all the trash?"