In WoW, killing Trolls is its own reward. And I'd disagree with a number of things Astiron says. Since when is tiered class loot a prerequisite for progression? As far as I'm concerned, tiered armor sets are just the simplest way for Blizzard to itemize for everybody. Every class (and every role for the hybrid classes) gets an armor set optimized for their role. In ZA, everything's off-set but there's still a huge variety of items that follow particular archetypes: Plate Healing, Plate Tanking, Plate DPS, Mail Healing, Mail DPS, Mail Caster DPS, and so on. I think Blizzard did a good job on the whole with keeping the gear interesting and varied and desirable. What more do you want?

Progression in no way mandates tiered armor sets. Upgrades that improve the performance of your character are progression, any way you cut it. ZA gear is more powerful than Karazhan gear. I wouldn't go so far as to say you need to gear up on early ZA bosses to kill later ZA bosses, but a character that's farmed ZA is unquestionably more powerful than a character who is starting out in the instance. If that's not progression, what is?

This true, not all of them are as well known as some others might be, but powerful nonetheless. Point still stands that none of these famous personalities can be experienced outside of raids (and reading). I'll say UBRS was a close one (all i can think of right now); Rend was there when the horde marched into Azeroth, as well as then Stormwind was razed. Not to mention Lordaeron. However, he is no one's hero and certainly not important in the grand scheme. I put Zul'jin on par with this.

But this is all probably a derail. With all the wonderful proposals in this thread about how to provide some alternative sorts of progression for those who don't/won't raid, I'd like to see Blizzard demonstrate that they are even interested in persuing this path. We know they are interested in adding more 10-mans, but this does not mean they will be progressive.

A 5-man path of progression would be awesome. I think the greatest challenge in a game like WoW with what the OP has proposed for each level of content is itemization. It plays such a humongous role in the balance of the game that this alone is likely tested and researched exhaustively for any content added. Though to some extent, I don't think 5-man is progressive; I'd like to see it stay as PUG content (with an improved LFG tool; the current one is entirely lazy of them). I do think the notion that someone here mentioned of reconsidering group/raid sizes is not a bad idea. With 10 classes (after WoTLK), odd group size caps such as 12, 15, or 20 seems like a good idea. This both expands the possibilities for designing more complex encounters (instead of the limitations of 10-man group compositions) while not penalizing less optimal set-ups. It would be very worthwhile for them to reconsider (again) group and raid sizes. Maybe 5-mans should become 6-mans (but then, groups are terribly hard to find these days as it is).

The thing about the tuning of ZA difficulty is that I think it caught people a bit off guard since it came out so long after kara that I think people had forgotten their early kara experiences.

The top guilds blew through kara really early on and it was little more than a reset timer that required everyone to kill nightbane before moving on to sweeter content. But, for the majority of WoW players, Kara was a task that involved wiping and cockblocks (Shade springs to mind as my guild's biggest 10 man cock block. The night shade went down for the first time, so did prince.). If you browsed through most guild's web pages last summer, you'd see proud pictures of their first Prince kill or whatnot.

But, by the time ZA came out, Kara was on fairly trivial farm for those who were interested in ZA and people had forgotten how hard Kara was when you showed up in greens and a couple dungeon blues. So people zoned in thinking they would tear through it the way they tear through Kara and were somewhat taken aback when it didn't go that way. Of course, that's appropriate. ZA was (presumably) designed to give 10 man raiding guilds something to work on and it was supposed to occupy people for awhile. So, naturally, proper tuning would be if a Kara farming guild could, say walk in and kill 2 bosses the first time they walk in and then progress at like, a boss a week or two. Unfortunately, without the timed run, the rewards are definitely good, but at 1 purple per boss, the pickings can be somewhat disappointing. This was combined with the fact that Kara all of a sudden was giving 22 badges for 3 hours of "work" and the difficulty vs. reward was slanted so far towards Kara that ZA seems to have flopped. I think this is because a gear maximization approach for 10 man guilds is to clear kara weekly and spend the time that would have been spent in ZA on heroics or arenas since it's not until the last two guys in ZA that the gear is really better than badge gear (especially with an eye on 2.4).

So I think the problem is not so much that ZA is poorly tuned or poorly designed (although I really think those stupid scouts on the way to dragonhawk should stop respawning. Maybe have a scoutmaster or something at the base of the dragonhawk stairs and when you kill him all the scouts die.) as much as the kara rewards are a bit excessive right now. (This is not a "making loot too easy" complaint. It's simply a statement that because of the number of badges you get from kara, it's irrational NOT to run it).

Note, my statements about ZA reflect my own sentiments and my impression of how much ZA is actually run. I could be way, way off, but it certainly seems to me like it's a pretty unpopular instance and that's because, for the most part, your time is better spent either farming badges if you're limited to 10 mans or working on the 25 man content if you can.

How to solve it? I don't know for sure. The three day reset timer means that if you over-reward in ZA, people will gear up pretty well just by making bears endangered species. I also don't want to push for a reduction in kara badges since, well, I like being able to rack up 22 badges while drunk off my ass (on my last kara run, I was so drunk that I ran straight into the wolf when i was little red riding hood. The "aggro" warning went off, so I reflexively ran to the tank...)

You are misunderstanding what I am saying. I am only implying that based on past trends with progressive content in-game, this has been the case. One could even cite the dungeon sets as another example of this. The presence of sets in the game, on a basic level, does what you suggest. As far as progressive raid content goes though, this has always been the case; class tier loot drops in raid dungeons and no where else. And since items/equipment are largely what character progression consists of in the game, this trend would have to be applied to other progressive content. Unless they completely changed the criteria for acquisition of sets.

Again, I am only implying that this has been the trends of the past and current game. Of course ZA loot is a step up from KZ. This is not what I am meaning. But ZA is also not a progressive instance in the sense that a KZ guild can go on to complete all of the objectives in ZA and gain another level of tier/gear progression. ZA was tossed in as an extra 10-man raid. Not a progression to go from Karazhan. If that were the case, the timed event would be doable by any (and by "any" see my previous posts about how KZ is the ideal casual raid; any means even your average WoW guild) KZ guild, which to my knowledge is not the case. I could be wrong.

By the same breath, KZ has no timed event to attract high-end raiders, in case anyone challenges that ZA was done that way to provide just that. It only proves that it was not implemented as the next step in a new 10-man raid progression for KZ guilds. Definitely, it is something for them to do and a great step in the right direction. But compare this to 25-man progression, and you should see what I am getting at. Hope that makes sense.

EDIT:

Also, am I mistaken ...Sunwell is adding 3 new pieces of set gear for T6? I understood it was a way to allow raiders to keep their set bonuses while giving some new choices of gear. I am uncertain, so some clarification is appreciated.

If you're just talking straight loot, in most ways a character that's geared up from ZA is on par with a character that's geared up from SSC and TK. ZA gear blows gear from Kara, Gruul, and Mags out of the water. Of course, gear != progression.

But for many people, including the casual gamer, Tier sets are an indication of progression. It may sound a bit ridiculous, but that's a basic marker for a lot of people and always has been... you should be in T 3.5 before going into Kara, T4 going into the T5 instances, T5 before the T6 instances, etc. Having the tier gear drop in an instance validates its location in the progression sequence.

I agree with you in principle -- just because no Tier gear drops in an instance doesn't mean it's not part of progression. However, having Tier gear certainly gives a much more planned feel of progression. What I would expect to see is full Tier 10-man sets and 25-man sets in WotLK.

Is this really true of ZA gear? Assuming that you can't hit the timed quests, ZA gear is meh from my point of view. For rogues, T4 hat is better, attumen neck is better than from ZA, the ZA shoulders are only slightly better than the shoulders from chess. Granted the belt and chest are both definite upgrades, and the trinket off zul'jin...but other than that? (note I just quickly scanned shadowpanther's site, so I might have missed something). Swords you can get are worse that S2 weapons, which any welfare epic arena team could easily have by now. There's a very nice ring, but that's from the 3rd timed chest, which would be pretty darn hard for a T4 guild to get.

So, three gear upgrades and suddenly I'll blow my old kara self out of the water? And the chest and trinket come off the last two bosses...currently my kara-farming guild is having serious problems with Lynx.

Maybe for other classes it's a much bigger upgrade, but for me I don't see much in the way of upgrades from it. I'll agree with an above poster about the ease of badges from kara vs. the difficulty of ZA. We can farm kara in 3.5 hours no problem. Zul'Aman seems to me to be a pretty big step up in gear requirement...though we haven't been banging our heads against it for too long yet, so maybe it's still a learn to play issue. And while we all have some kara gear, many in our raid aren't fully decked out from it. But all in all I don't see the risk vs. reward from ZA...I do it because it's new content and a challenge.

I think this is a great idea. Would you have unique sets maybe? Hmm...T7 from 10 man, T7.5 from the first 25 man (assuming it's an intro raid and doesn't require the 10 man raid instance to be done)? So you get T8 from the next 10 man, and T8.5 from the next 25 man? So the 25 man sets are always a step ahead...and T7.5 should be slightly better than (or at least roughly equal to) T8, so the 25 man raiders stay a step ahead, and don't drop the second highest 25 man raid to run the 10 man for gear.

That's a lot of additional gear and set bonuses...unless the 10 man raids just drop the second highest tier set instead of having a unique set. But I think you need to keep the sets separate so people can stand out.