I'll try to keep it short so I don't drone on forever. TBC raiding is more frustrating than WoW 1.0 raiding for many reasons. One is the higher skill it asks of the individual player. I started TBC in a top Alliance guild and since have rerolled Horde on one of the newer servers. Having killed Magtheridon in the Alliance guild with pretty much no problems at all, I never dreamed that someone could ever just not click a cube. I mean I just don't understand how you could just not do something that is such an easy task. With like 10 stellar players and 15 average players, it took us something like 12+ hours of Magtheridon wipes (90% of the wipes were due to people not clicking cubes). Pre-BC there were retard checks (I was in a guild at one point that had been working on C'thun -- well after many nerfs-- for over 4 months...) but not to the extent that they are present in TBC. Honestly, Gruul (even before the shatter nerf), Mag, and all the stuff I've experienced in SSC/TK have not been at all challenging (and weren't when I was in said Alliance guild) but now that I'm in your average run of the mill guild where you don't get 25+ transfer apps a week, raiding is just painful and its honestly bordering on not fun. The only way to get into a better guild is to grind out the necessary gear in these lesser guilds (which I have ethical objections to the whole taking gear with the intention of leaving) or find a transfer guild who is willing to give you a trial, but honestly I don't want to transfer anymore. If you look at my original server, pretty much every single person that performed stellar at their class has transferred off the server by now. I mean, this isn't much different than pre-BC as you weren't honestly going to clear Naxx with 40 average WoW players, but it seems the retard filter is applied much sooner in BC raiding.

Oneiros, it sounds like your problem isn't due to the content itself and just a simple human condition. I'm leaving my own guild for the same reason. Be it pvp or raiding, I think most are happiest when they are playing with others around the same level of skill and commitment. I don't think this has anything to do with the content itself.

I think he has a point though, it was easier in pretbc to accept failure among your ranks, since TBC you get punished and hit in the face when 1 out of 25 fails, always. Difficulty of some bosses seem to not be with the boss but with the players you bring if that makes any sense. An example; we killed Teron first time last week and it was already apparent there after having plenty sub 20% wipes due to a new person or someone awful at using the constructs got it. Tonight we had a 1 shot on him with 6 new people if it wasn't for a new guy getting it at 16% and didn't kill a single construct cause he misunderstood something. Surely we could've prevented it (l2p issues and making sure people prepare better etc) but it's still annoying that at any given point in quite a few encounters a wipe or a victory is in the hands of a single player.

Edit: It seems more like a singleplayer game when stuff like that happens, compared to the teamplay this is supposed to promote. I don't understand the massive emphasis on the individual level in quite a few fights.

The single best thing that happened to TBC raiding is the consumable change. For some people, say those of you in BT, this wasn't a big deal. For people who only raid 3 times a week, and have families and kids, it was huge. Granted we're just starting to work on Tidewalker, but our rate of progression has been steady, and about the same in terms of number of hours spent as anyone has mentioned here.

I feel that Blizzard had our type of guild in mind when they made the changes they did. We move steadily, and I expect to have Illidan killed before the end of the year. In terms of number of raid hours we'll be close to what the top guilds were at (6 days @ 5 hours, vs 3 days @ <4 hours), and yeah, it'll take us take us twice as long.

However, the fights so far have really impressed me, and the worst-person limit has been nice, since I can now easily tell someone (even a family member, or friend) "see this on the log? you alone were responsible for our death, improve". Which has allowed me to push people to get better in a way that 1.0 WoW didn't allow do the relative anonymity of raids. You do have to be somewhat dedicated and patient to allow that growth to happen, but it can, and will. You do give up progression, but you keep your friends and family together.

Finally, I really like that all of these "top" guilds have been plowing through and essentially testing new encounters and finding bugs, so that when I come along its nicely polished Keep up the good work.

I kinda had to chuckle when you wrote 'still 3 off days'.We generally raided 5 days per week and 5h per raid and I think a lot of people appreciate less raiding for a while. Seems that a lot of guilds who beat Illidan also had to recruit immediatly as some are not up for 2-3 raid days per week even. We still do ssc/tk here and there but it mostly works as we got quite a few casuals in the guild. I doubt we would get 25 from our actual raiding core for those instances.
And the nax thing was a joke, I guess?

Oneiros & Vontre:
Every guild, including the top notch ones, have someone/someones that fail to click that cube/run around that beam the first time.
Every guild have stupid wipes on bosses you should be able to kill easily, whatever they say in public.

But yeah, TBC likes to collective punishments, but I also think sometimes people give up to early when they see 3-5 dead.
We had 5 dead when we entered P5 at KT the first time and our MT also died at that last 50% pyroblast but we were like "What the heck, lets see how P5 is" and somehow KT ended up dead
(Luckily our feral druid did a mangle 100k threat and managed to take over as tank after some gnome sacrificed himself for the greater good)

The biggest problem I have is the randomness associated with tanking things. Sure no problem to avoid lava spout, run around the mob, don't stand in void zones or whatever that's fine.

One really bad thing is the parry death/crush mechanics when you get a parry hasted attack eating charges of your shield block then a crush follow up 15% of the time. Boss mobs have something like 15%+ parry seemingly and even if only your tank is attacking it from the front there is still a very real threat. Gruul is probably the worst offender it seems as melee have to adjust from Cave-In and a parry or two occurs and your tank gets obliterated with a 10k crush after eating both charges of shield block.

Or Morogrim pushing out 20k damage in 3 seconds and a healer just got graved.

Or shield slam missing/dodge/parry after an aggro wipe. There's nothing wrong with the mechanic just when you throw that on there as well to a mob that can instagib anything not [warrior|druid|paladin] in tank gear.

Also, I really despise the absurd Tauren tank advantage, though that isn't really random it would certainly help fix the parry death occurances and turn them sometimes into parry crushes.

That's the kind of randomness which bothers me. Especially when you can stack multiple random elements together because you just get so many chances for things to occur.

Thankfully I haven't seen some supremely hardcore random fights like BT and Hyjal stuff as I'm sure that would be even more frustrating.

It's been touched on above and throughout these boards in the past but from my point of view as a raiding Elemental Shaman gear outside of the Tier Pieces is a major oversight. I don't have an issue with the reduction from 8 (or 9) piece Tier sets but it would have been ideal if Bracers/Boot/Belt drops were added with a bit more consistency throughout the pre-BT instances. Clearly this is something that is very hard to do right for every spec for class - but I can't help but feel that drops such as Big Bad Wolf's Head (which is good in its own right) couldn't be better used for slots there where there are no clear item past heroic/crafted loot.

It's pleasing they have addressed this in BT and CoT – so I'm hopeful this gap has been identified and there will be something in the newer zones and instances for us off-spec people.

I'm in your position as well (albeit a bit flipped ;-) ). I switched from a holy priest main to a hunter because I was just burned out on healing, and because BC raiding is a bit.. disappointing to say the least. My guild is currently on VR, but if I wanted to, I could switch to my priest and get recruited to a BT guild. It's just that, BC didn't fix anything from vanilla WoW, and added a lot of things.

In short:

1. Holy priest grinding: SLOOOW. I had to spend close to 10k gold to PL 375 Tailoring, then mats for PMC/Whitemend and Alch's Stone, then enchant everything with good enchants and blue gems. Thank goodness for guildies letting me borrow money. Tanks are in the same position. This was a problem in vanilla WoW (slow grinding I mean), why doesn't Blizz do something? It's hard for raiding guilds to recruit healers and tanks for this reason (my server's forum is filled with recruiting notices for guilds trying to find healers/tanks) and I would bet one of my 70s that most people on EJ forums experience the same. I rolled my hunter to grind for me; it's now my favorite character to play because it's far far easier to raid with than a healer.

2. Lore: Nef was important. He is responsible for the orc threat. Rag, same thing, except he's responsible for BRD, Dark Iron dwarves, etc. Naxx and AQ40 are similarly important in lore. Anyone who did the AQ40 opening questline probably saw the little scripted scene in front of AQ, where Fandral fights with the dragonflights to seal up the bugs. There is a sense in preBC dungeons that lore is ingrained into each and every zone.

For Outlands? meh. Why do I care if Lady Vashj drains all the water in Zangarmarsh? Why do I care whether Kael dies? Why should I care if Illidan dies? For that matter, let Illidan and the Burning Legion/Kael fight each other, deplete their resources, and then we can fight the winner! Far too often, the excuse for killing bosses is "Erm, he/she/it drops epics. You want epics right? Shiny!"

3. Difficulty: I agree with previous posters, I still feel that many fights in BC require an extreme luck-based component. You see this at the low end with Harbinger Skyriss in Arcatraz (double MFs on a healer), medium (shatters on gruul, infernal drops on Prince) and at the high end with Archimonde and BT fights.

4. "Epic"ness: It's hard to define this, because it means different things to different people. But the 40 mans just felt more epic. More people to coordinate with, talk with, play with. There was always a slot for that new healer recruit that had to be geared up quick-like. There was always a slot to maybe try out that Ret pally (try finding a slot for a ret pally in current 25 man raids. almost impossible). The first time I saw Nef, I almost crapped my pants. I thought "Oh My God, we have to kill that thing? But he's huge!".

But for BC, where's the epicness? 10mans are terrible, you pretty much have to min-max a little. 25 mans, a bit more room, but still, they just don't feel like an epic encounter.


I disagree with you here. The dungeons seem small because they are small. For instance, preBC, if you had broken gear and you were deep inside a dungeon (past.. say Fankriss in AQ40, Broodlord in BWL, Garr in MC) you would ask the resident engineer to drop a Field Repair Bot. The idea of running out of an instance and repairing at the nearest town would be laughable to the point of getting you gkicked on the spot.

PostBC? Forget about it. There are 2 repair vendors in Kara (!!!), 1 repair guy/reagent vendor just outside SSC, a small town complete with reagent vendor, repair guy, and an fp right outside TK, towns close to both Gruul and Mag, and there's a rep vendor just outside Mount Hyjal. The closeness of towns just ruins the immersive aspect of the dungeon. PreBC, it was a raid of 40 people, completely cut off from the world, "hopefully you brought everything you needed because you can't get it once we hit the instance".


I would have to respectfully disagree with you, Praetorian. Did it ever really matter what the victory condition in phase 1 Nef was? It could have been "Survive for x minutes", "Kill x mobs", or even ridiculous stuff like "Wait until the hunters/healers are out of mana", "Wait until the tank has Shield Blocked x times". In any victory condition that Blizz would use, the general idea would always be "Kill the ugly things as fast as possible before they kill us all". And of you did that, you'd eventually fulfill any possible victory condition.

Let's say, for argument's sake, that P1 Nef was turned into "Survive for x minutes". You'd still have to kill drakonids as fast as possible, because if you didn't and tried to just aoe tank them all, you'd be overrun with drakonids in no time. Your healers would be oom and your tanks would be taking ridiculous amounts of damage.

Let's say it was something ridiculous like "x # of Shield Blocks or oom healers" Well, still, there's a time component to that; you can only SB every so often, or cast mana inefficient heals, etc.

Sorry for going OT, I just wanted to remark on Nef, as that is one of my favorite fights, and is the most "epicness" encounter in vanilla WoW, at least imo.

You can't claim "Epic"ness as a fault of Blizzard; it's purely in the eye of the beholder. Ask an EQ vet what epic is and he'll probably say no less than 70 bodies and a boss mob you can't see all of at once.

In my opinion, Magtheridon is pretty epic. Nightbane and Prince are epic. Al'ar is epic. Leotheras's personality split is epic. Phase 5 Kael'thas is epic as hell. I wholeheartedly disagree that more bodies = more "special." Although having your boss mob be huge(see: Gruul, Void Reaver) does help a helluva lot.

Razorgore phase 1 pretty much proves you wrong on this - a kill all dragons strategy is doomed to failure.

And given that Nef was at the end of an instance Razor started, is it really so strange that coming into Nef, people might have wondered if they were supposed to be killing everything, or surviving, or maybe even surviving until a certain number had spawned?

It isn't anywhere near as clearcut as you make it seem.

I think you have it backwards. Ragnaros was not important. Nefarian was not important. The AQ40 event was well played out but the Silithids weren't a huge threat. KT was the only character in 1.x that meant something.

Illidan/Vashj/Kael'thas are HUGE players in warcraft lore. Their stories make Nef/Rag/co. look like the little guys (which they are). If you're honestly complaining about killing Illidan, who was at one time one of the most powerful beings and possibly capable of defeating the Lich King, then what will ever make you happy besides fighting the Lich himself? Illidan is a huge player in the lore and there is a major reason we are fighting to stop him. The same can be said for Vashj's desecration of the Zangarmarsh and her attempts to create (with her compatriots) a second Well of Eternity. Kael'thas and his minion's destruction of Netherstorm in their zealous addiction to magic and his secret betrayal of The Betrayer is a big deal. I don't see how you can possibly be unhappy when we are finally doing something that matters. Nef and Rag were nothing in the lore.

I don't really understand why so many find TBC content hard. Once you break an encounter down into individual tasks and stick to those, it becomes pretty simple.

For example my tasks on Vashj:
- Shoot till 70% without stealing aggro. If I start exploding, move away from other people.
- Pop my totems in the middle and wait for "Coilfang Strider" to spawn, I have a handy timer that tells me when to look for it.
- Unclick my BoS, Frostshock, chain lightning, call for DPS on Ventrillo, repeat till Vashj gets free.
- Repeat phase 1 with the addition of dodging green stuff on the floor.

Archimonde:
- Plant totems and shoot till I see a flamestrike go down on my side of the hitbox.
- If the doomfire is coming towards me, do a double-strafe and get at least 10 yards distance to it.
- Use tears before landing.
- Use pvp trinket if feared towards a fire or a curse is ticking.
- If curse removal looks unlikely to happen, use a purification pot.

Gorefiend:
- Shoot till you get the debuff.
- Press ctrl+ 4-tab-3-tab-3-tab-3-tab-3-5-4 repeat till all 4 constructs die.
- Help the next person with their constructs.
- Reincarnate if it is up, otherwise lean back and wait for loot.

In short, I like TBC encounters unless there is a part of it that is just broken or unbalanced as heck. What is up with Archimonde being a joke if tanked by a fear-warded bear? Why do we get feared in the air? Why does Bloodboil crush the fel rage tanks? Why does Thrall still die to rains of fire? If things like that got fixed a lot sooner, I would have zero reason to complain about encounter mechanics.

It doesn't SEEM like remembering to click a cube or pressing the feign death button before 6 seconds have passed since pulling aggro is hard at all, but believe me, it is!

TBC raiding started out as terrible:

-Complete lack of entry-level 25-man content
-Plethora of horribly untuned or downright undoable encounters
-Unreasonably tedious trash on unreasonably short respawn timers
-Emphasis on stacking consumables
-Astoundingly terrible raid itemization

These problems completely ruined the raid game during the first several months of the expansion. It took entirely too long to fix these issues - most of them were evident in the first month, and there were a few solid months of outcry on the forums before anything was addressed. They were addressed, however. I am left with two complaints:

-The Mother Shahraz and Archimonde encounters need work
-It doesn't seem like there will be any raid content that will require Tier 6 gear

Not so bad, all things considered. In the end, the only thing I can say is that I hope that the developers have learned how to correct their mistakes in a more timely fashion. I hope that on day one, the next expansion's raid game will look a lot less like the embarassing mess that TBC was upon release, and a lot more like the polished game it is now.

The biggest thing I hope they take away from TBC is a need for the content's intricacy to start simple and scale upward. The opening fights should be more forgiving than the later ones in each instance, and should allow even the most inexperienced guild to zone in and both accomplish something and learn content. This was done in the 5-mans and in Karazhan to an extent (with both Maiden and Attumen being relatively simple compared to Moroes) but utterly ignored in the 25-man content.

One of the good things about UBRS was that it taught people the basics of how to play with a larger group of people than normal. It was far easier, but you would still be organizing pulls and doing things (like out-of-group healing) that you couldn't experience in a 5-man.

This is bang on for my experience.

One of things I miss about Naxx is the wings. You always could try to cherry pick an easy boss before hitting the cock block of the wing. As someone who was in a social guild where we had 7 bosses down in Naxx pre-tbc I can tell you that the early 25 man content is much to rough. I hope in the next expansion they put in a kiddy pool type raid content for guilds to chew on so that progress can be made instead of beating their heads against the wall until they give up or bleed to death. (25 man raid, not 10, 15 or 20)

That does seem to really be missing to an extent in the 25 man raids. It's been said before a few times, but SSC could have easily been made the first 25 man with Gruul just removed (Noone would have cared otherwise), and Mag on the side for your "Onyxia." Looking back at it now....had the raid game been what we got in 2.1 from the start. I could see my guild (5/6, 1/4 - Al'lar down this reset most likely), easily on or past Kael'thas. That is slightly frustrating, but so far I've been pleased with the content up to this point and I truly think we'll be able to finish through teir6 by the time the next expansion hits. This is a very stark contrast to naxx where I knew there was no way we would could finish it before TBC. Speed of progression doesn't bother me. As long we're moving forward at a steady pace, and the goal (Illidan in this case) is reachable, it's very motivating for me. Kill him in July, or kill him in October, the only difference is maybe not everyone gets all their teir6 loot before the next release. But even if we kill Illidan hours before expansion 2 hits, I will be more than satisfied.

Edit, just to add some thoughts about the encounters I have done. So far the only fights that have taken more than a raid session's worth of learning (~4-5 hours) have been Morogrim, and Magtheridon (I'd add Hydross but I'll conveniently not count our pre-nerf attempts ). To contrast that we learned FLK, Lurker, and Void Reaver (big surprises there right?). So looking back, there seems to be from my POV, some cakewalks, some challenges, and a couple middle-road encounters that are tricky at first, but easy once you do it a couple times. I've heard all about Vashj and Kael's ramp up, but so far everything we've faced hasn't been any more or less difficult than pre-tbc.

And those early months had a catastrophic toll on many guilds. The major issue I've found is people quitting, and not coming back (that and people not transferring). For us at least, we had very few quit at the beginning of the expansion, and now at least a third of our raids are generally newish recruits since the expansion.

This would be my main beef with the expansion. Its all well and good for the BT/Hyjal guilds to say content is easy etc... but those are the guys who were farming Nax regularly.

For the middle of the road guilds, ones where many members haven't raided before and those that have mostly have experience up to mid AQ40, Gruuls Lair could be a daunting start to raiding.

The very first fight, Maulgar, throws so many concepts at new raiders they get overwhelmed very easily. This is where the friend groups with a few good players start to begin to fall apart, due to the bad players dragging you down. When try after try the same people get killed from varying reasons in a hardcore guild they'd be booted. In a middle of the road guild, well geared players are hard to replace. You don't want to replace them if you're friends with them either, and it makes learning encounters a lot tougher.

Look at MC.
1. Lucifron. Introduces the concept of multiples enemy on a boss encounter. Introduces decursing.
2. Magmadar. Introduces moving to avoid enviroment hazards. Introduces stance dancing.
3. Gehennas. Draws from lessons learnt from the first two bosses further emphasising decursing and avoiding AoE attacks, as well as spot healing.
4. Garr. Draws on the multiple add handling and introduces crowd control as well as continuing with the aoe avoidance.
5. Geddon. New aspect added. First real boss fight where 1 player could potentially spell doom for an attempt. But the Bomb was easily handable and even with a retard who didn't move, didn't often doom the attempt. Resistance fights introduced.
6. Shazzrah. Introduced basic aggro mechanics. Boss dispelling introduced. Bit of a shit fight due to melee uselessness.
7. Sulfuron. Introduces the idea of interruptable boss abilities and add seperation.
8. Golemagg. Continues using lessons taught in earlier fights. Introduces enrage.
9. Executus. Brings all the ideas of MC together into one fight. You've got CC, kill orders, avoiding aoe, enviroment hazards, multi tanking, watching boss buffs, enrage abilities. Great fight and helped prepare players for:
10. Ragnaros. An epic fight. Again drawing from lessons learnt through MC and adding its own twist on them. You actually had to worry about aggro (Horde) when starting. Mana management was important. Keeping yourself alive was important. Healer assignments for groups. Avoiding/minimsing aoe damage. Introduces the idea of multiple phase fights (along with ony). Add phase intense and hectic. CC important, aoe needed (similar to core hounds). Not only that, it felt epic.


That was a great learning curve in my opinion, and ideal for new players starting off. I remember wiping on the first giant pack and thinking woah, these are too hard. 8 weeks later we're battling Majordomo.

Now lets look at the first 3 fights in the raid ladder in TBC (leaving loot reaver and loot from below aside for now).

Maulgar: Gives you mutliple adds, many aoe attacks, knockbacks, cc, spell interrupts, cleaves, debuffs, kill orders, ranged classes tanking (didn't really come about till AQ patch with Ayamiss and TE) and fears.

Thats a hell of a lot to throw at new raiders right off the bat.

Gruul is less complicated as far as execution goes and tests gear more, as well as introducing the enrage timer. You've got to have people knowing what to do, because one person messing up on Shatter is a wipe. You also need a sufficent level of DPS to down him before growth becomes unmanigable, and you need to focus on threat too. Your dps shouldn't really be threat limited at this stage but its possible. Random silences and cave ins too.

Magtheridon implements odd boss mechanics, high burst damage, aoe avoidance, multiple phases and cc too and is very tough for new raiders.

None of these compare to the learning curve of MC and that was a big mistake for me. A dungeon with 4-5 bosses below Gruul's lair level would have done wonders for the more casual/middle of the road guilds I think. Just simple quick bosses reintroducing some basic principles of raiding would have been a great success. Sure Nihilum would have one shotted the bosses in one night but who cares, it wouldn't be aimed at them. Have the loot be equal to kara loot, add T4 Helm and Gloves here too (to allow guilds to bypass kara though no one would I guess) and a rep faction as the guy I quoted stated to help provide gear for every possible spec, and you're laughing. Make the last boss just below Magtheridon's difficulty and use it to bring together some raid basics and you've now got a sand pit for new raiders.


My raid experience in TBC is limited to SSC at the moment. I stepped down raidign hardcore from pre-TBC to enjoy things at a slower pace. What just made me endlessly frustrated to the point where I don't raid anymore (as of last week) and am just awaiting ZA to resub is the number of retard checks. We get it, you don't want bad players getting carried along to new content but putting such severe punishments on the raid for their mistakes just ends up pissing off the other 24 people. Burn out is massive in the lower guilds that are mid-SSC and are forced to supplement their raiding force with less than sterling players to be able to maintain regular raids.

I'm ranting a bit incoherently here so I'll close with a quick summary.

I hope blizzard learns from their experience in TBC raids. They've show the ability to adopt to what the masses want from their raids. Every new expansion is going to bring new players who are new to raiding. If they keep adding intense and complicated encounters with many retard checks at the first rung of the raiding ladder, then these new players are going to find entry into the raiding scene extremely difficult, whilst the middle guilds succumb to attrition and whittle away, merging with each other to stay alive and making the % raiding smaller and smaller.

Not even close to finishing the game but from my perspective (kael nearly dead) the game feels a lot better.

Karazhan feels about right, nothing really to comment about.


I like the idea of more Onyxia type encounters that were included with this game, and two feels just about right. However I wish they weren't so similiar I suppose in difficulty, as far as tiers in gear goes. Myself I would've preferred 3 Onyxia type dungeons instead of the two we have right now that are very similiar. Basically what I would be asking for is Gruul to be exactly the same as he is, for Magtheridon to be MUCH harder with drops similiar to Kael/Vashj and finally the end game Onyxia style boss that is somewhere around Tier 6 quality.

Basically I'm a huge fan of the Onyxia style raids. Even though we have these raids on the back burner at the moment we always do it when we have just enough time to squeeze them in depending on our progress that night. Example being we have a 4 hour raid and clear SSC in 3 1/2 hours, a half an hour is a perfect amount of time to go knock out one of those. It also gives people who don't want to contend with lots of trash a way to just enter and kill a boss without wasting too much time.

Onto traditional 25 man raid dungeons.

SSC was a pretty fun instance IMO. The only thing I dislike about it is how strung out and unimportant nearly everything in there seems, excluding Vashj of course. Hydross is an example of a resist check done right and Leotheras is one of the more enjoyable encounters I've come across so far. Although a tad easy I enjoy the 4HM/Maulgar type encounters like these as it splits the raid up into multiple groups contending with a vast array of abilities. Everything in this zone seems balanced fairly well and Vashj is a very well tuned encounter.

The Eye in my opinion sucks. Short of Kael'Thas I would never EVER go to this zone for any reason. The encounters suck and aren't very important. Nothing feels epic in the zone, its annoying to look at in my opinion and the loot besides KT sucks for the most part. Although we haven't completed the zone yet (soon) this will be the first zone we completely stop doing once enough people get attuned to Hyjal. The zone is just flat out annoying. Besides the fact we aren't attuned to Hyjal at all theres very little reason to go to this zone. However Kael'Thas himself is a very epic encounter and is the only saving grave of the whole zone. The encounter like Vashj but ever more so is very C'Thunish (i guess) in design.

So the good in my opinion?

Karazhan
Gruul/Magtheridon
SSC (for the most part, Vashj and Leotheras are the most enjoyable parts of the zone)
Kael'Thas

The bad?

The Eye in general (all bosses except Kael, Kaels Trash, and how long phase 1 of Kael Takes!)
The lack of an epic feeling or significance behind many encounters (I understand every fight can't be a Kael'Thas fight)
No huge dungeon

edit: Another thing thats I find truly wrong with the expansion is the lack of the "boss before the last boss", basically meaning truly the second hardest boss in the zone which drops frigging awesome loot. Sure Leotheras is harder then everything in the zone, but he's no wheres near Vashj. Nothing in The Eye is even compareable to Kael'Thas either.

Although I like theses instances in the case that you can pretty much choose which boss you do first there is no true gate-keeper boss leading to the last boss, which I really enjoyed about pre-tbc. Majordomo, Chrom, Twin Emperors, Sapphiron are all good example of these. Difficult bosses placed right before the last boss that typically dropped loot nearly compareable with a difficulty (typically) less then that of the main boss (yet not rivaling them).

For example, bumping up Leotheras's difficulty some (not to rival vashj), put his loot up in iLvL some and making him the clear boss before Vashj who still drops the tier 5 gloves. I think this would make the zone feel a bit cooler, maybe not. For The Eye you could change the actual design of the instance and have it so you need to kill Solarian and Voidreaver to open the way to Kael'Thas. Al'ar would be behind these barriers and blocks your way to Kael'Thas which would give a bit more signficance I believe to the zone as Phoenix's are a trade mark of blood mages. Ramp up Al'ars difficulty some and have him drop the shoulders instead of Void Reaver.

I don't know just thoughts I guesss. I really liked the idea of gate keeper bosses that seem to be mostly absent in TBC.

I won't prattle on, but on the topic of WoW 1.0 "Average player in the raid = success of the raid" vs. BC "Most unskilled player in the raid = success of the raid", I think the solution is simple: provide content for more average players.

Most average players are average only because they don't have the time or inclination to understand their class; not because they're inherently incompetent. Such players, frankly, should not be raiding high-end content and are probably only there because they enjoy the social aspect of raiding or find non-raid content unappealing (also very likely).

WoW has long touted itself as a casual game, but historically casuals have been lumped in with the hardcore and this is seriously problematic. The next expansion needs to see either casual raid content (10-man progression in paralell to 25-man; for example) or attractive and interesting non-raid casual content.