Pardon me if this deserves to be in some other thread (more specifically the ZA testing one), I just though this would be more suited to be a discussion of it's own rather than cluttering up another thread and derailing it.

I think Blizzard did a great job with ZA. It's the first of it's kind if you think about it. With most of the in-game updates lately being tuned towards the average player (don't turn this into a hardcore/casual debate!!!), it's a nice change of pace to see a zone that's designed for almost all players of the game.

People who are "just right" for the place get to down some bosses, have a great time (maybe not so great time lol), and generally make small progression. As they gear up more from the zone, they are able to do the timed event and pick up more loot.

People who outgear the place a little down most, if not all the bosses, probably beat the first 2 timed event, and get some loot in the process that is a nice upgrade over their t5 epics.

People who SEVERELY outgear the place get their little challenge from the timed event, which is actually pretty decently hard, yet if they manage to complete it, rewards them with an item (Amani War Bear) that while basically says, "Hey, look at me, I finished the timed event which isn't a cakewalk and got one of the best looking mounts in the game!" yet doesn't actually affect gameplay or make the average casual player feel like it's something that should be accessible to them. Yet if they are people who fall between the middle of the two, they will eventually gear up and have a shot at finishing it.

Of course, Blizzard's blunder sorta screwed that all up, what with most people able to just loot the bear mount now with the Lynx chest bug and pretty much losing the "value" that it should have, which I think was what Blizzard intended for it, but that's for another thread or something. Anyway, what do you think? I personally hope to see more dungeons like that. I'm not saying that every dungeon from now on should have it's "bear mount reward" thing going on, just that it's kind of nice to be able to actually have an incentive to do ZA regardless of where you are in progression besides the "OH I LOVE TO RAID!" motto =P

Since Blizzard has it's own schedule and is unable to pump out content for all demographics constantly, ZA is a nice addition that attempts to statisfy those that are just out of Karazhan, those working on Kael/Vashj, and those that are already done with Hyjal/BT (and everyone else in-between) imo.

I think the 'timed' model is a wonderful incentive, and rewards all of the things that are desirable at the pinnacle of raiding - no dying/wiping, minimal mistakes, speed, little-to-no downtime, etc.

I often wish that our 25-man raids had similar systems built into them - having a built-in mechasnism as part of the game to encourage intelligent play, wipe recovery, rebuffing, etc. is a phenomenal idea.

Hopefully this catch-all way of catering content to every level of player is further extended into the WotLK development cycle. I know it's too late to hope for it to be brough backwards into existing content.

The 3 day reset timer, the timed event that incentivizes a fast paced raid, minimal trash, and the badges from the bosses have made this a very enjoyable instance for me. I hope to see these particular aspects of ZA utilized in future raid zones.

I just about everything about ZA. It's short and fast, there's still an element of challenge (timed event), and there's a broad spectrum of rewards (epics, badges, mounts, gold, vendor-spawned goodies). The only real problem that I have with it is how they randomly decided to sprinkle a T5.5-ish loot table with items that are better than T6. Every single one of our casters needs Hex-Shrunken Head (and nothing else); all of our melee need Berserker's Call (and nothing else). Running ZA for these items today is fine, but there will definitely be people who still need them three months from now. Everyone will have their bears, everyone will have every conceivable badge reward, and we will be running the instance in the hopes of seeing one of two items.

It's really silly that I will be replacing a trinket that drops from Illidan with one that drops from ZA, and it's insane that the guild is probably going to have to do 70+ runs of such a trivial instance to get that same trinket for everyone. Right now, ZA is fun. By January, it will be agony. BWL for Rejuv Gems all over again.

I think this instance it too hard for a guild that only got Kara gear, since it's ment to be the next step after karazhan for 10man raids

On this note, I guess my one concern with ZA is that there is a very clear 'ideal group' for it. Having done it a few times, there's a marked difference in difficulty between having two Mages available for CC and having none, for example. Arguably Karazhan was similar, in that you could trivialize many encounters based on your class composition (Moroes with 2 Priests? Maiden with 2 Shaman?), but for the most part any moderately-competent group could do it.

Part of this might just be the "new-ness" and the relative difficulty - as strategies propagate and gear scales, people may find that the need to have X AoE or Y kind of tank will diminish.

In full Kara gear, I don't think the place is too hard. You won't make the time event, but you shouldn't anyways (in the beginning) if you don't outgear the instace.

I really enjoyed the instance, but it feels more like a 5 man, i.e. something you do in your spare time instead of something you schedule. The short clear time makes it feel a bit less immersive and engaging, but it's also a lot more friendly to doing other stuff along playing wow. It's the first time I can do an instance and schedule to go out later as well. I welcome this if it's an actual change in design orientation because as cool it was to clear 4 naxxramas wings, it wasn't exactly the most social friendly design. I was never a fun of behemoth instances and this could be a nice change of mentality, even if I won't hold my breath. I guess one shooting most encounters didn't really help with making it more intriguing, which should be true for sunwell. But I would really like it if sunwell on farm took the same time as ZA.

On the matter of trinkets though heel is absolutely right. At the very least those trinkets should be zul'jin token drops like the hakkar trinkets instead of low % drops from hex lord. They are what's interesting for the instance in the long term and every time I see the 3 gnome trinket I feel it could have been my hex shrunken head.

I have cleared this instance twice with no AoE beyond 2x magma totems, and with no CC to speak off beyond the MC from a Shadow Priest. While yes, with a little more AoE / CC, the instance becomes easier, I didn't notice marked difference between ZA with a "sub-optimal" group and those Karazhan fights you mentioned with a "sub-optimal" group.

This.

I'm part of a casual 10man group (we only get together to play on saturdays, thus, casual regarding time spent playing together) that made it's first attempts at ZA this last weekend. We are Karazhan/Heroic geared, and for the record we've been clearing Karazhan every week for the past 3 months or so. On our first ZA group we managed to kill all 4 Avatar bosses. The next day we had a fresh instance, and we again cleared the 4 Avatars and added Malacrass to the list.

From where I'm standing, the instance is not complicated or terribly hard for a decently geared in Karazhan-gear guild. It is perfectly cleareable without stacking or even having certain classes required -- we've done Lynx without a hunter, for instance. Considering how every boss fight there for us has so far proved to be a matter of getting the execution down, I expected Zul'jin to be dead this weekend. Its real challenge is the timed event, not being able to kill Zul'jin.

(We are nowhere near close to completing the timed event. We got bear with 1 minute left on our first time, and we failed the timed event on the next one -- this upcoming saturday we're changing the Avatar order to Eagle --> Bear --> Hawk --> Lynx, hoping to improve some)

The gnome mask trinket is a "bonus" item slot and won't take up the space of the spell damage trinket. We had both drop from Malacrass last run.