WoWInsider has a brief report on a playable demo at E3:

Zul'Aman sneak preview at E3 - WOW Insider

There's not much detail in the article, but they do claim it is a 10-man that is intended to be more "casual" than Karazhan.

They placed it below Karazhan in the progression ladder? That is disappointing. I think a 10-man placed at mid-kara difficulty to begin and progressing from there would have been much more well-received.


Oh well.

Um, a pre-Kara raid instance certainly wasn't what I thought the game needed. If that info is accurate, I'm expecting an instance a bit like the old 15 man UBRS...

More casual than karazhan does not imply easier.

It fits -- most of Z'G was more casual than Molten Core, and it was tremendously popular. (No, not for most of us, but in general you saw guilds doing Z'G first.)

Also, there's a big itemization gap at the Karazhan level. Not a lot of gear for moonkin, DPS plate, or elemental shamans. A raid instance that provided such gear would be nice.

I hope Zul'Aman contains items that made ZG and AQ20 running, even for a guild who was in naxx.

Awesome enchants and class books.

Since TBC took care of good helm/leg/shoulder enchants, maybe ZA could offer belt enchants, or better versions of what is already existing in game.

I can see the logic behind making ZA not part of a 10-man progression that starts in Karazhan.

Currently, Karazhan is part of progression, and currently it's where the majority of each server's raiding population is. I know at least in my little corner of my server, everyone's in Kara; I know a handful of people that aren't part of a regular group.

Thing is, I know my Kara group has plans to eventually step into SSC/TK, and drop Kara from the schedule once we no longer want much of anything from it. That's our plan for progression: Kara -> Gruul/Mag -> SSC/TK -> Hyjal et al, if we get that far.

Most of our raiders are not hardcore. We're serious players, we're skilled for people of our level of play, but the general consensus is that we want to avoid raiding more than 3 nights a week.

My point, which I'm making in a roundabout way, is this. For a casual raiding group like us, putting in ZA as part of a definite parallel progression path from Kara essentially leaves us with a choice of either a) dealing with the headache of organizing ZA groups from what will probably be a pretty cohesive 25-man raid by that point, along with trying to fit it into the schedule despite people's desire to avoid over committing themselves to raids, or b) skipping ZA because it just doesn't fit into the schedule, and we'd rather work on 25-man raid bosses with the nights we do spend raiding (since 25-man raids involve our whole crew, and help us progress along the main progression sequence, whereas ZA is likely to be like ZG or AQ20: hopefully some nice gear and some fun fights, but ultimately a sideshow).

Blizzard doesn't want ZA to be neglected, and they're listening to players complaining about what a headache Karazhan is, logistics-wise, so they're making ZA more accessible.

I don't know that that's necessarily the answer. Kara is very accessible; as I said, I know very few people that don't raid Karazhan.

The only oddball idea I had was this: if ZA is more accessible than Kara (no attunement, possibly a shorter lockout, smaller size making one-night full clears feasible for even fairly casual groups once the fights are mastered), but a step up in difficulty and loot...

More casual than kara doesn't mean anything other than a full clear will be potentially faster. All I'm imagining when Blizzard says that is less trash.

Well its like ZG... you will zone in and have the option of moving towards 4 bosses however you want, after doing one you can stop and do the others another day, then once you finally kill them all you can do the final bosses.. (or atleast thats how I understand it)

Im kind of disapointed at how... replicative of ZG its seeming, sure it will be fun to start with, but I doubt some 'weekly' quests will be enough of an attraction to keep it desirable, there will need to be something unique.

I'm really liking the idea of another 10 man. Kara for me just became stale, another instance to run instead sounds great. I'm also looking forward to the lore involved, espeically Zul'Jin.

The game needs a lot more raid content. Probably a 10 man easier than Kara and one that is harder.

And a 25 man easier than SSC.