Eh... personally I think Kael easily rivals C'Thun. The problem, as has been stated ad nauseum, is that it's pretty much downhill from there. They have months and months to work on just six encounters in Sunwell. Hopefully they deliver.

I'm mostly enjoying BT fights. From the first half, it seems only Supremus has a weaker design, while Akama is just very under-tuned. But this is no problem, it seems comparable to Naxx's first wing.

RoS is really a fun fight and no one can say it's not imaginative and challenging. Yes, most times it goes down in a few raids, but as already discussed, guilds approach fights nowadays in a much more aggressive and efficient manner.

Shaz, Bloodboil and Council seem to stress on healing power and big damage spikes to MT, with random damage happening at short intervals. The random part could be better, seems just a way to artificially make the fight harder, but the bosses are fun and require a high level of executing, at least while doing them the first times.

I haven't seem Illidan yet, but I was very happy with all instance end bosses until now, except perhaps Gruul. Magtheridon pre-nerf was the fight that took us the longest to learn and I think it's one of the battles were the epic feeling is better preserved. Vashj, Kael and Archimonde all felt like powerful end bosses.

Sometimes there seems to lack some touch of genius. For instance, we are doing Council at the moment, and many can see similarities with twin emperors. However, when you got to their room, you had a preview cinematic with the end boss. The mobs itself were huge and challenged you. There was random/spikey damage, but it was more of a controlled burst, like sudden changes of pacing on the fight. On council you get everyone crammed in small room where trees and couches constantly cover you camera screen. There is no crescendo or intro to the fight, they could just be another trash pack. I'm loving the fight itself, but see the difference?

Holy cow, the first ever glimpse of that all-seeing eye coupled with the Twin's introduction... many in the raid were pissed that they missed that the week Huhuran went down. Thanks for reminding me about that!

I think I guess it's kinda true that BT lacks the... 'cinematic' experience that Naxxramas had. You had bosses yelling throughout the instance... you had very, very theme-based wings, so much so you could actually smell the rot in Heigan and Loatheb's lairs. You had that insanely creepy yet uber-cool intro speech by Gothik. Even the first boss most people got to (Anub'Rekhan) had his distinct character. I don't even need to mention Sapphiron and how many goosebumps DnT's world first preview video raised. All in all, the instance was so full of flair.

In comparison, what do you get in BT? Among others, "MORE@$&@#($ I WANT MOOOOOOOORE", plus a gigantic 3-sided Olmec wannabe with dialogue that leaves you wondering what they're even doing in the instance. I remember Quigon's description of SSC being along the same lines.

Kael'thas, even if a little long-winded, seemed more along the lines of the grandeur the old instances delivered. Heck, I'd go out on a limb and say even Karazhan was amazingly well-done from an immersiveness standpoint, all the way from Attumen yelling "Well done, Midnight!", to Aran's panicky, shrill outbursts, to the final showdown against the Prince in a twisted, quasi-reality.

This is getting way too off-topic; I digress.