Caligula

I don't agree with anything you said here at all. How long was it between MC and BWL? Eight months? Then BWL and AQ? Nine months? Since then things have been sped up a ton. Naxx came out 5 months after AQ, the expansion 6 months later (including 5 raid instances, thirteen 25 man bosses and something like 15 in the karazhan), then another patch 5 months after with two more instances, and now they have another content patch in the works. It's almost overwhelming for my guild. Having just formed a month ago, we have already dropped Gruul's and Mag to off night PuG's and I have no idea how we're going to fit TK and SSC clears into a schedule once we hit BT and Hyjal. Now we have another 10 man coming.

It does sound like ZG 2.0. You know what I thought the first time I stepped foot in ZG? "This is the most fun instance they've put out yet." That didn't change until Naxx. I'm looking forward to a 10 man raid that I can do in a few hours on a weekend afternoon or something and don't have to dedicate an entire day to clear.

As someone already mentioned, more casual does *not* mean easier.

 

Siddown

The first half of Karazhan is very easy, and so is Netherspite (as it's a co-ordination fight). If by "more casual" means "easier", then I can't see where this fits in. Is this instance going to be for people who can't kill the Currator? Is this instance going to be before Heroics?

I know it's early days and this is just one persons impression of what ZA will be, but when terms like "more casual" are used, it doesn't get my hopes up that this will be a challenge. Using WoWJitsu as a guide, the 12334th guild in the US has killed Moroes and the Maiden and the 5800 guild has cleared all of Karazhan but hasn't touched Gruul yet (my guild is one of these). So there are a heck of a lot of people that will have some Karazhan kills by the time ZA comes out.

I guess my question is, if ZA is easier than Karazhan, how many people interested in raiding won't have at least cleared 1/2 of Karazhan by the time it ZA comes out? I'm guessing practically nobody. My impression is, anyone interested in Raiding, would have at least been to Karazhan by now as there attunement is incredibly easy and the first 1/2 of the instance might as well be UBRS Part II. Making an instance easier than Karazhan doesn't seem to satisfy any players needs.

 

Gryzemuis

Says who ? I never read that anywhere in-game, on a Blizzard website or in a manual.

The problem with 25-man raids is building a guild that has enough players to field 25 man on a night. And field them on several nights per week. At the same time. With a sensible class balance. The problem that causes only 2.5% of the players to be in SSC is not the difficulty of gameplay. Raiding has always been like that. To be successful in WoW regarding progression you have to either 1) like to be a manager, and deal with pure management issues, or 2) like to be a silent cog in a large machine. If you don't fit any of those 2 categories you'll find a hard time enjoying your game in a large guild.

Pre-TBC small guilds were stuck after UBRS (10-20 people). Mid-size guilds were stuck after ZG (25-40 people). Only large guilds (50-100 people) had a true progression path. Being stuck at ZG basically means there was no progression for you for more than a year.

Karazhan is really a nice solution for this problem. Any small guild (10-20) people can do Karazhan. And they can easily keep themselves busy for a few months. The rewards are nice. If you clear Karazhan, your gear will be in the 80-97% bracket of best geared players on your server. Only 3% or so of the players will have gear from SSC or higher. That keeps people happy.

Making ZA the next step after Karazhan would ensure that small guilds have a proper path of progression. They can keep playing in their smallish guilds. Without a need to guild-hop, merge guilds, etc.

Here we have the old discussion again.
"If 10-man loot would be just as good as 25-man loot, nobody would do 25-man raids anymore". If this is true (which I think it is), think about it. What is so great about 25-man raids again ? If nobody would play a game, for whatever reason, why is that game fun again ? Imho the weeks just before TBC made things pretty clear. The majority of players won't do 25-man raids unless absolutely necessary to get gear progression. Personally I believe 25-man raids are fun to do a few times. Beat each boss once or twice. But after that, the fact you are a small part of a big group decreases the fun enough so I never want to do it again. Many of you here seem to be in nice large raiding guilds. But for a huge part of the player community, their options are limited to another "minus 50 dkp, deal with it !!" guild.
On the other hand, I'm having more than enough fun in Karazhan that I'll keep running it to help others progress, even after I get all my upgrades.

Yes.
Truly casual players can keep themselves busy with the regular 5-mans.
Players that spend a bit more time can do heroics and get their feet wet in Karazhan.
But the players that are in Karazhan, and finished (most of) it, will still be stuck. Unless they go 25-man, which will completely change their way of raiding. This is about 15-20% of the playerbase.

I think for the players who are not in Karazhan yet, the biggest stumbling block is the 1-week lockout. Those who have finished their 5-man gear, who do occaisonal heroics, and who are still not in Karazhan, I think the reason is mostly because they rolled the wrong class (hunter, rogue, etc), or don't have the right friends. In old UBRS they could come because there were so many UBRS runs each day, they would find a spot. In Karazhan, because of the 1-week lockouts, people try to plan who they take with them. It is a lot harder to justify taking a non-guildie. People are more reluctant to get locked in to a raid-id, unless they know that group will clear the (harder) bosses that they might need loot from.

If ZA is easier than Karazhan, with lesser loot or sidegrades, but if it still has a 1-week lockout, then there is very little point in such an instance.

Agreed.
And it is not the difficulty level of UBRS that is needed. It is the fact that UBRS did not have 1-week lockouts.

 

Lazare

The hurdles to get into Karazhan are to 1) Get a raid of 10 people together and 2) Manage to down Attuman. Since ZA will be a 10 man raid, the first hurdle will still exist, so if they want ZA to be more accessible than Karazhan, that means it needs to be an instance for the guilds who wipe to Attuman. That seems...awfully specialized. Are there really a significant number of guilds who want to raid, but can't handle the first half of Karazhan?

The hurdles to get out of Karazhan are to 1) Get a raid of 25 people together and 2) Manage to down Gruul/Mag/VR/whatever. Many guilds, I think, have the skill and gear to handle the second hurdle, but fail at the first. Making ZA a raid instance for smaller guilds who have finished Karazhan seems much more useful.

Random thought: One good design element of classic content was Onyxia offered T2 loot very early in progression. The concept could work in TBC.

I think they should tune ZA to have a similar difficulty to Prince, and move the chest, shoulder, and leg T4 tokens to it. They could then retune Gruul and Mag as Onyxia-style T4.5 bosses. The new expected progression would be guilds would work through the entire T4 level of content with 10 people, then make the jump to 25 man content on Gruul and Mag, and then progress on to T5. Right now Gruul comes too early.

 

Schneeb

6 Bosses? Thats pretty weak, hopefully theres some optional/summonable ones too.

I also hope the enchants aren't as hard to get as the old zg ones nor will there be any difference in the drop classwise.

 

◊ Bryne

It does in this case, unless the lockout is either two weeks long or completely nonexistent. With six bosses, potential summonable extra ones, and a "speed-clearing" heroic-type function, I really doubt there will be no lockout, though that really is what is specifically lacking - a UBRS, as everyone else has said.

 

Axanor

It's not getting 25 people or 10 people together to raid an instance. You could do UBRS or ZG with a wide variety of group comps. It's the rigid group requirements for fights like Moroes (Need at least 2 out of Priest/Pally/Hunter) and Maulgar that keep guilds from making progress.

 

Metrosexuelf

As was mentioned, some people are misreading the article (or just not reading it at all). It suggests it will be tiered/scaling -- 'many reasons to go back.' There will probably be some easy content in certain parts of it and some harder content in other parts. There are also several quest/escort type missions that are on timers, etc.

It sounds like it's going to be a very diverse and scripted zone with a lot of options as far as how you can get rewards and the quality of said rewards rather than a standard dungeon crawl like Karazhan.

 

Dakous

What? I believe of 12 guilds I can recall, 1 killed Onyxia outside of near/after/slightly before killing Majordomo. The boss after Majordomo drops tier 2. That's not early - that's on par.

Gruul, Magtheridon, Void Reaver | Lurker. Gruul was an excellent standing post to train new raiders with, and we wouldn't have killed Mag, VR or Lurker without him there. I think that's typical for any guild that isn't essentially intact since having Patchwerk serve essentially the same purpose (hi there Patchwerk DM thread, hi there WWS thread which pretty much started and is referenced as "The Gruul thread.")

Says the tier 4 gloves (weakest stat allocation of the set) dropping in Karazhan, and the t4 chestpiece dropping from Magtheridon. Not always a perfect measure, especially if they want to shuffle things up, but everything else sort of holds that together.

And the problem with 40 man raids is building a guild that has enough players to field 40 people on a night.

The pluralistic success of Ragnaros kills cited frequently when this topic comes up suggests that the issue with SSC is not what you suggest it to be. I'm not even sure there's much of an issue - if you suppose the current raid game is the entire pre-expansion raid game re-done, and we're to replicate pacing for December (that expansion every year deadline) - in the hypothetical - then let's see - if Karazhan is MC, then yeah, a lot of people (dare I say, the average of people raiding) are finishing up "MC". Now they have the end of the next instance (SSC/TK in aggregate) to get to, and five months to do it.

Not terribly unreasonable, but I think a number of factors spoiled that - the least of which being the social restructuring that went on most everywhere between re-leveling to 70 (staggering populations across levels) and 40->25.

You actually answered your own question. The first half isn't that casual unfriendly - especially when viewed as a week activity for lower DPS raiders. Just because we can blaze through Kz in 2-3 hours now (or less) doesn't mean that's even remotely realistic for anyone else. Imagine taking a half hour / hour on the Curator->Aran trash again.

Imagine wiping to Aran enough that the instance respawns, and you give up in frustration. Worse, you give up because you only have 30 minutes of raid time left - why bother reclearing? You all set aside that time to play, and you can't. It's the very definition of futility.

Imagine how much more casual friendly Karazhan would be if you could pull a lever outside Aran's room, turning off respawns to that point and enabling the port (to the room outside).

Alternatively - imagine a six pointed star, since the article states six bosses. Southern entrance, central platform with a boss, four points (two a side) with bosses, and then unlocking the final boss on the north point. Casual-friendly is "how far down the slope does calling it tonight make you slide?"

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

dukes

That preview is pretty interesting. It sounds like they're anticipating a "let's see what Hakkar is like to kill without killing any aspects" challenge, updated for 10 man TBC. The different loot for different difficulty setups seems to reinforce it and makes it sound like there could actually be a serious reward for doing this (I'm thinking Tribute Run @ DMEast - maybe you get to choose a mount from them dependant on what aspect you ask, THAT would be worth doing :o )

Sounds like its a while away though, with there being a couple of mini-content/fix-patches between now and then, so probably at least 2 months away.

 

Krag

Gamespy has their preview up now. And at least here it sounds like it will be a step up from Karazhan.

Sounds quite promising and interesting. I was one of those who liked going to both ZG and AQ20.

 

Kink

We need a 25man Kara instance. This new 10man is simply a new UBRS, something for PUGS to do. Saying casual does not mean easier, but it really does imply it. Casuals are people with less play time, therefore less gear. I would not call ZG a casual instance, but I would definately call UBRS one.

I am sure it will have content that will attract everyone though. But what raidign guilds need is a 25man instance to work through that will lead to SSC and beyond. Kara was a major problem for many many average guilds. You get your 10 active raiders, then maybe work up to around 15 or even 20. But you still do not have a balanced group for 2 Karas, or enough for even Gruuls lair, so people start to join other guilds. In the end you remain a gear-up guild. Adding a 25man Kara difficulty instance will mean these guilds can do Kara, recruit lesser geared people for this new instance, and gear them up in both kara and the new 25man. It also means people do not get so bored as if you get 20 online, you can probably down a couple bosses in the new instance anyways.

(In what way is this post considered arrogant? sigh... idiots. Look the word up in the dictionary. Just because you do not have or see these problems does not mean they do not exist for others. To argue otherwise is in fact arrogant (i.e. I being rich and pretend there are no poor people in the world). Seems to me a lot of people just love to give negative reputation just for the sake of it.)

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Cesar2000

I'm not impressed by the Zul'aman info :/ Just 6 bosses, and it doesn't sound like the stuff will be any harder than Kara.

Hopefully they will have new spell ranks and enchants dropping in there though- as well as a lot of offspec items that have been missing in current instances.

I hope we don't have to wait long for this one.

 

Schneeb

Gruul/Mag really arent any harder than Kara (Prince/Nightbane) and the first few SSC bosses arent either.

 

Metrosexuelf

That just sounds like a tremendous waste of resources to me. Why bother programming a 25 man 'Kara difficulty' instance when you already have a plethora of 25 man content in this game.

Other than numbers, what makes Gruul/Mag significantly harder than Karazhan Or early SSC for that matter?

 

Goggles

I'm sorry but this just isn't the case from my experience (and I think most other peoples). You're in an 1 of the best guilds in the world so I guess it was probably all easy to you. Loads of guilds on my server have killed Prince, Nightbane, Maulgar. There are still relatively few who have done Gruul and very few have done Magtheridon or any boss in SSC.

Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.

 

Emily

Sounds about right.

 

Cesar2000

Gruuls Lair and Magtheridon are definately not much harder than the end of Karazhan. The likely reason you see so many guilds clearing Karazhan but nothing else is because they don't have 25 people. If a guild has 2 groups that can clear Karazhan, they will definately be killing Maulgar and Gruul within a week if they try.

 

Regan_

For us, is the "field 25 people with a balanced raid composition" thing. We have around 35 active level 70s with wildly differing dedication levels. Back in the time we could field 15 people and take quite a few bosses in AQ20 or ZG, that's simply not the case in 25-mans. So unless we merge or ally with some other guild we just can't do 25-mans more than once in a blue moon when 25 level 70s are logged at the same time (and with a terrible raid composition at that).

So for me, giving something to do after we clear Karazhan is great and ZA is probably what will keep my subscription up until the next expansion. I hope it's a step up in difficulty from Karazhan, even if some other elements (lockout or overall time needed to clear) are more "casual friendly".

 

• Chicken

I wouldn't say that too loudly, I maintain a guild progression post for my server which is, if anything, average when it comes to progression (In context of overall WoW; it'd be below average in context of this board), and it's not uncommon for guilds that kill Maulgar weekly to still take a number of weeks for their first Gruul kill. Two to three weeks is normal, though I'm not entirely in the know of how many raiding days a week those guilds have.

 

Ghorthor

The most depressing news of ZA, especially after reading the GameSpy article, is how unfinished the zone still is. 2 of 6 bosses showable? If this thing goes live in 3 months we're lucky. Most of the problems discussed here - where to place ZA into progression - will vanish by its way too late release.

 

Cesar2000

This is my servers progress thread:
TBC Raid Progression - Dragonblight Community Forum

Im sure there are a few guilds missing, but for the most part its complete.

21 guilds killed Nightbane
18 Guilds killed Gruul (Some as coalitions)
4 Guilds killed Maulgar (but not Gruul)

As you can see, almost every single guild that's killed Nightbane also downed Gruul. About a third of them also downed Maggy and Void Reaver. I think the 5 'easy' bosses that currently exist are enough before you start tackling some harder stuff.

 

Pyria

While I love the atmosphere and bosses in Kara, if I had to put my finger on something that bugs me about it it's that it's just too damn long. Sure, you can speedclear the whole thing in three hours, but if you organise an offday Kara run in a guild like mine you have to expect alts and people who really don't want a big hassle, just an easy clear of a simple instance to kill time on a nonraid day. We went in there yesterday and it was a pretty grueling clear that lasted until past midnight since people typically just don't want to give up when they have Malchezaar at their fingertips.

Hence I'd say that I like the idea of a 10-man with a few less bosses, speaking as someone who expects to use it as a diversion from the "real" 25-man instances. The fact that it sounds a lot like Zul'gurub actually makes me pretty excited, considering that ZG really was an outstanding instance in many ways once they finished tweaking it.

 

Krag

IGN preview is up. Pretty much the same except it seems confirmed that we can get a bear mount

 

Cesar2000

Thanks for that. Bear mount is just made of win

I'm happy with this part as well, although I'm sure it was to be expected: