Words like PUG, Casual and Hardcore can mean many different things, which is why they probably all should be avoided in all honesty.

Pre TBC I had done some very good runs, and some incredibly bad ones with what would be traditionally called a PUG, the "LFM Scholo, need tank and healer" sort. While the bad definitely outnumbered the good, at the time I was the fifth lvl 60 in my guild (and a Rogue no less during the "LFM Anything but Rogue" days), so I had no choice if I wanted to do 10 and 15 man content, so I learned to grin and bare it. What I tended to find is that there were quite a few very skilled players out there who for whatever reason were part of sub 10-15 member guilds who also were forced to PUG for the same reasons I was. Were they the best players to play the game? No, but a few months later when the rest of my guild members got to 60, we asked those people to jump on board with us to raid MC and they did very well. The only thing holding them back was the raid size requirement of the content.

Now, I will gladly admit that with TBC this has changed quite a bit. Those that were interested in PvP now can do pretty much just that to gear up, so that eliminate those people from the potential pool of quality "Puggers". Also, with content now requiring only 10 players, many of these people can now just run Karazhan now without having to rely on 30 other people.

But I still contend that if someone took the effort on any server to make a "Mixed Groups, guild alliance" thing like Suds did back in the day on LB that it could work. It'd require a lot of effort from the person organizing it, and that's the rub. On my currrent server a few threads on the forums came up talking about the exact same subject, but nobody would step up to the plate and actually do it, instead it was a thread full of people saying "Yeah, someone really should do that!".

Exactly. And honestly i'm not even sure that such playerbase exists.

On my server we have guild full on 30+ year members that play only on weekends. Guess what, they cleared KZ. We have guild that barely cleared mc pre tbc. Other guild often laughed at them, it seemed that they gathered all bad players on server. Guess what? Not only they cleared KZ but they killed Gruul and Magtheridon. So i don't buy this crap about too hard t4 content. Besides, Blizzard added Ogril'la, Skyguards and Netherwing in 2.1 and will continue to add more solo and small group content for customers who don't want to raid.

I can't imagine blizzard will add spellbooks to ZA. Not because it wouldn't provide insentive to go, but because it would have to be done with pvp changes in mind. Either the spells would have to be trival (new mage portal) or everyone who wanted to pvp would need them, and that doesn't seem like a good way to balance multiple progression paths.

And if they do, I hope the spell books are a rep/token thing, nothing was worse than running Aq20 40,000 times to get w/e spell for those couple guildies who simply couldn't ever get it to drop.

I like the idea of a token drop system for books (maybe even have them not be bop). That way pvp'ers could easily kill the first boss at least (from the blizzard post) and still collect books.

I didn't see anything in the article indicating that ZA will be more casual than KZ in the sense of "lower in the progression ladder." The interview discussed how Blizzard intended to make it more accessible than KZ in that it has fewer bosses and no attunement. The article doesn't say anything about difficulty or item drops.

Further clarification by Tigole;

I'm honestly surprised you want a big incentive to run ZA several times. I would have expected the exact opposite reaction "I hope they don't make me run ZA for a month to get some book when i've already killed illidan."

Unfortunately, you'd never "out-gear" backstab 11 (or its equivalents). Because it's an across-the-board increase to DPS (or healing or threat generation), everybody will want it, whether they've killed Archimonde or Attumen. Skillbooks are not equivalent to simple gear upgrades.

This will result in players who comically out-gear and out-skill the instance going back to farm it multiple times in order to get their skillbooks. It's asinine to force the more advanced raiders to farm an instance that represents no challenge at all to gain a new rank of a spell. If Blizzard wants to make SSC or BT easier for guilds that do ZA, they should do it by making the gear that drops in ZA an upgrade over Mag/Gruul/Karazhan loot, not by adding skillbooks that will force everybody and their mother to run it.

You wouldn't be forced to run it - it just serves you very well to do so (i.e. you'd be stupid not to); but again, this gets into the point of having them be Bind on Use so they'll be available for sale at auction almost immediately.

It also allows people an additional means of progression to their character quite a few months in from the start of the expansion (honestly, the skillbooks were great - a lot of the skills that got boosted before hadn't seen a new rank for 6 or more levels).

Again, biggest benefit to introducing more skillbooks this way is that it does encourage people to go there (but not force them as they can buy it or trade for it) AND it gives that extra edge to all existing players to allow more to progress through the endgame. It's an extra nudge to help ensure the Black Temple isn't another Naxxramas.

I see no downside unless you hate getting buffs.

Do you think they can't likewise introduce honor / Arena Points purchased skills if they felt it would break the PVP system to have these only available through Zul'aman?

I thought the AQ20 model worked pretty well for the most part. The zone was moderately interesting to raiders, had a handful of upgrades and lots of books that were either useful or salable. The zone itself was definitely imperfect but the loot model (ignoring scarabs for the moment) was pretty reasonable.

I would ideally like to see items or skills available that might help to close the skill/casual gap a little (artificially) for pve through creative means. Threat modifiers, gear that helps pvp and offspecs do primary raiding roles without surpassing the true pve specs, clickies, that sort of thing all spring to mind. Put stuff in there that would be handy but not needed for the core raiding crowd but might help more casual players progress with a little helping hand. Of course the other key is fluff, things like Polymorph: Snake and a new mount are always popular.

The thing is that you can make BT or TK equivalently easier by making the gear that drops in ZA better without forcing the more advanced guilds to run it. Adding skillbooks will essentially force all serious players to acquire them one way or another (which will be an unneeded buff/grind for BT clearing guilds). Improving the quality of ZA gear will achieve a similar difficulty target for guilds progressing into BT without forcing more advanced guilds to run ZA solely for books/farm gold to buy them.

Why do people get into this mode of assume it is an "unneeded grind" for those top folk? Once they've cleared it, don't they want to have something else to do in the game apart from just farm Illidan? You make it sound like it is a bad thing to have desirable content for everyone.

That's just silly.

I get invited to Kara all the time. All the damn time. And my guild is just me and a couple of friends who only want to PVP. While some old-school FM players might remember me from pre-TBC, to the vast majority of the server I'm just some random guy they've never seen before.

From the reviews at the moment Zul'Aman sounds a lot like the ZG of outlands.
And also reports conficting between whether its loot will be better or worse than kara.

I guess it wouldn't make sense for Zul'Aman loot to be any better than stuff you get from SSC/TK. I'm kinda expecting Zul'Aman loot to be of about the same lvl as Gruul / Magtheridon.

Loot would be better than Karazhan - I'd expect similar to SSC/TK only focusing on weird slots, possibly with its own set armor (possibly an off set - belt, boot, bracers 3/3 set). Remember, Karazhan = Gruul = Magtheridon for loot. This is clearly stated to be more challenging than Karazhan, so it'll also have better loot.

A concept I'd really like to see them try (who knows if they ever will or not) is item sets with bad bonuses - the more items in the set you get, the more severely penalized you are - but make each individual item in the set be over budget - exceptionally good items where in effect, you'd only want to use one of the given choices - more than that and you'll take a hit. It would allow them to introduce some very interesting choices into gear selection (Belt of awesomeness or boots of awesomeness? If you use 'em both, you'll take a -30 penalty to int or whatever, so you'll probably just want to use one).

Axid: It's been explicitly stated that the loot will be better than Karazhan, and that ZA will be tuned so that it starts at roughly Prince/Nightbane difficulty and ramps up from there.

• Kara starts at ilvl 115 and ends at ilvl 125, with T4 clocking in at ilvl 120.
• SSC starts at ilvl 128 and ends at ilvl 138, with T5 clocking in at ilvl 133.

So, there's a 10 ilvl difference between the start and end of a tier, and a 13 ilvl difference between tiers. There's no room between the tiers for ZA to fit in, so it'll have to overlap.

If I had to guess, I'd pick ZA loot to start at ilvl 123 and cap out at ilvl 133. If they have a set (T4.5, basically) it'll probably be ilvl 128. In other words, ZA loot would start out being a tiny bit worse than Prince/Gruul/Mag loot, the set would be as good as VR/Lurker loot, and the very best loot (probably gained from very hard timed encounter) would be as good as T5, with no ZA loot comparing to Vashj/Kael drops.

I agree with Groat that the set will probably be around 3 pieces, and will be designed not to clash with the tier sets. Weapons, cloaks, and rings (as with the AQ20 set) are possible, and would be nice. The AQ20 implementation was flawed by their being only 1 weapon option per class, but the new token system could fix that. If completing a hard timed event in ZA got you your choice of several different ilvl 128 epic weapons, that'd go a long way to boosting the number of guilds in T5 instances and fix the "requirement" for PvE focused raiders to PvP to get gladiator weapons. (For reference, season 1 gladiator weapons were ilvl 123; season 2 weapons are ilvl 136.)

(All complete speculation, obviously.)

Except... it won't be in the outlands. It will be ZG of the Eastern Kingdoms.

I don't agree that skill books should be placed here due to the reasons you've mentioned and also that PvPers will kick up such a fuss it will be untrue (similar to S2 Weapons).

But I think its almost guranteed they will add something that Illidan guilds will want. Be it skill books, some form of ZGlike enchant (Belt would be the obvious slot) or even just items for the raid specs with poor items at T5/T6 level (feral and enh spring to mind). A dungeon like this will also most likely add at least 1 item for the idol slot of Shaman, Paladin and Druid to again make up for poor itemisation in this area.

Lastly its almost a certainty that there will be proffession recipies at reputation levels that your crafters will want.

So whilst I agree that it is a bit silly to make Illidan downing guilds go back there, I'm positive they will put some reason in there to do it. (like Bear mount wasn't reason enough! ).

I'm a member of the 25+ guild you are referring to, and age is obviously not a good measurement of skill.

We currently have 5 Karazhan groups running, but are still struggling to get 25-man raiding started because of the huge difference in interest, available playtime/scheduling, gear, etc.

The first Karazhan group currently clears the whole instance in 3h45m (Wow Web Stats), our aran kill ranks #7 on dps Wow Web Stats). Our paladin has more or less every plate piece, weapon, and 3 parts of both the T4-gloves and T4-head. We had him go Retribution yesterday to try something new.

ZA will be excellent for us, as a natural way to continue 10-man raiding after Karazhan, and I personally can't wait for it to get out. The sooner the better!

I didn’t mean that In fact, we have lots of 25+ members. I'v ponited that people who can only play couple of hours a week are able to clear Karazhan, and Zul'Aman in current form is much better for everyone.

Essentially, I love the thought of ZA hosting yet another wide variety of encounters at what would be considered moderate to hard skill level, all while being enveloped in a small raid size.

One of my bigger gripes with this game is having to rely on people who, for lack of a more pleasant word, suck. Larger raid sizes paired with legacy raiders in my experience has a tendency to water down an individual's poor play style, and only show it self on the corpse run or imminent "WTB RES" moments. Having a skilled, small sized raid instance upon complete would once again make me feel overjoyed that I still play this game.

That aside, I really hope there wouldn't be new spells/abilities added in to that instance. The game balance/unbalance is already so/so, and judging from the spells they included in aq20, wouldn't help that fact much at all. As for new spells, as a shaman, I'm already overwhelmed with ways to set off my gcd.

I would hope that the new instance would have alternative spec pieces, but in low quantity, or something similar to ZG with the token pieces, so that a few weeks down the road the loot wouldn't purely go to waste. Really I think this what this game lacks for some classes is interim pieces of gear to help puddle jump up to the top, or for temporary spots when specific drops just don't want to drop.

Something else I'd like to see in ZA would be some optional content that involved a pure PvP reward, something in which isn't too over the top, but right in line with the epic honor gear.

Really looking forward to ZA, but mostly hoping they blizzard doesn't revert back to their old ways of devising new hooks and forms of time sinks.

I have to disagree. The AQ20 books seemed to me to be used as a balancing method. For example the mage ones were generally really good and helped push their dps back up on par with other dps classes. Other classes that were deemed okay at the time received small bossts in comparison.

Spellbooks are a horrible idea for Hybrids, especially Druids (I will focus on Druids because that is the class I play).
Assuming we will get 3 spellbooks for each class like we did in AQ20 I am not sure how they will decide which out of our forms actually gets new ranks. In AQ20 it was only caster (moonkin) form with Starfall, Rejuvenation and Healing Touch. Back then that was understandable because less offspecs were raiding at that time. But now in TBC we have more offspecs that raid and that want spellbooks for their roles. So how are they going to solve this without giving Druids more than 3 spellbooks, skewing the loot distribution? I would be glad to see 1 book containing 3 spells for caster, 1 book for bear/cat and 1 book for moonkin. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see that happening.