I have to disagree, The reason they created Karazhan was to allow smaller guilds to get involved in the raiding aspects of wow. I'm personally in a guild that consists of about 40 people who are mostly friends of friends and whatnot. Given the casual nature and scheduling issues that come from having a number of people across a number of timezones we often have a difficult time getting more then 10 people on at once. Because of that while we've progressed all the way through kara we are unable to move up the "raid progression" to gruuls, mag SSC and what not. For smaller guilds something like ZA is fantastic as it gives them something to do after completing Kara.

Not everyone wants to be involved in 40 person raids that generally contain a lot more drama, issues and time required then a 5 or 10 man raid does. I find raiding to be much smoother and more enjoyable when your only playing with 10 or so friends.
 

I don't really understand your complaint. If you are not ready for Zul'Aman, you should be doing Karazhan. If you've beaten Karazhan, you're ready for Zul'Aman.

ZA is aimed at guilds which have finished Karazhan. If the guild doesn't have 25 people yet, it gives them something new to work on. For a T5 guild, it gives them a source of good loot that they can do on an off-night, that hopefully would push them forward into T6 content.

I'm not sure that I see the need for an intermediate step between 5-man dungeons/heroics and Karazhan.
 

The simple answer is that there is simply no content as I see it that doesn't in some way occupy the bleeding edge guilds and those that follow them.

When ZA was announced and discussed heavily at Blizzcon, there were numerous people asking Tigole to not make ZA too easy and he repeatedly reassured them that ZA will be post-Karazhan difficulty level.

The main concern I have is that indeed the first boss is a simple tank/healer gear check. For tanks its base gear and the ability to taunt, for healers its the ability to heal through the volume of healing especially that the bear form of the boss deals.

I have seen numerous posts already thanking blizz that it's not too easy. For example a MH/BT guild on my server posted to that effect. They only managed to clear the first boss.

The same guild cleared AQ20 on the day it was released. I think AQ20 was better tuned, because it was accessible for more people.

Frankly I don't know who is responsible for the TBC tuning policies but I have disagreed with them since TBC was released. It was the main reason why I quit in spring. And I'm back now because I have basically made peace with not raiding, or if I raid, wiping a lot simply because we won't pass gear checks. (Yes we did chain wipe on the first ZA boss because our healers didn't pass the gear check there).

I'm still happy ZA is out. There are a number of guilds, those early done with T4 content, who will benefit from it. I have no way to gauge how difficult the first boss is for people in that gear (my group had 50% Kara gear + good pre-raid gear). If it's still too difficult to pass the gear requirements, then the instance failed until retuned. Which sounds like 2.0.1->2.1 all over again.

But I don't know.

(To cope with the last pack before the bear-boss, you gotta CC the non-mounted trolls (if you have 2 warlocks chain-fear works like a charm). Then the pack reduces to the pack you had before with just 2 mounted mobs and becomes doable.)
 

Zul'Aman is for those of us who have guild that like to do 10 man raids more than 25 man. We've been in Karazhan for 6 months now, and having ZA is definitely a breath of fresh air for us. I love the 10 man instances.
 

I definitely have to disagree, too. Zul'Aman is like perfectly tuned for the target audience, which is "guilds which have finished Karazhan".

I am in such a guild, and though we are regularly getting 25 people together to work through SSC we had a lot of fun in our very first ZA run. We managed to take down three bosses on that evening. While the first boss is rather easy for a post-Karazhan guild, the difficulty tends to rise quickly afterwards, making the other bosses challenging even for 25-man raiders. It's exactly as advertised: a post-Karazhan instance. And since so many guilds have finished with Karazhan or are going to finish with it soon, the timing for this instance couldn't have been better.
 

As a leader of a guild that doesn't have the people to make the jump to 25 from 10-mans yet I really have to disagree. Zul'Aman is something that we were really waiting for and that we feel really excited about having cleared Karazhan.

Now we have something new to work on while we work on getting the required number of healers etc. to be able to go Gruul. I hate to think how difficult stepping into raiding used to be for guilds when you needed to gather at least 20 and kick that up to 40 later. We got the 10 slowly enough and 40 really is a large number of people to get online at the same time.
 

It's a good thing, much better than trying to run two separate Kara teams going when you're trying to grow a guild. Better-geared players have something new, and the two teams can still help each other out if necessary because they aren't bound by raid ids any more.

Blizz are clearly trying to ease more people through the high-end content again - before the next expansion hits - which is pretty sensible I think because otherwise I probably wouldn't get to play a lot of it.

Of course the best thing would have been to have something in between 10 and 25-man in the first place, that's a nasty leap there.
 

For months there was the complaint that the transition to 25 mans from Kara was destroying guilds. ZA is basically laying out 2 progression tracks for raiding. There are way more guilds, like mine, that have no aspirations of doing 25 mans at all. ZA is EXACTLY what we wanted. This gives access to some very difficult content and nice gear and allows us to keep our little friends and family guild small and tight knit.
 

I have to disagree Tobold, I found ZA to be very enjoyable, at least what I have seen of it. My only complaints are the scouts, which spawn WAY too fast, especially for how many there are. Other than that, I got major ZG flashbacks and enjoyed every minute of it.

My guild is a semi-casual guild that is slowly meandering our way through the 25 mans, with not too much too our name yet (Just VR and Lurker down).

For that last pull before the boss, what we did was have 1 tank on each of the riders, and 1 of the trolls sheeped. We burned down the other troll first with no tank (Went down fast enough for no tank), then everything went smooth: First rider to 30%, then I (Balance druid) would sleep the bear and we would finish off the rider, then the bear. Second rider, same deal, then the final troll.
 

Wow Tobold, I have never seen so many people disagree with you in one post. But count me as one of them for the same reasons. If you are in "good blue" gear, there are a dozen heroic 5-mans you can run at Honored rep now. Those heroics, and Karazhan now, will drop Badges of Justice that you can use to buy ZA-level loot.

If you look at the stats on wowjutsu, you'll see that most 70's guilds are in Karazhan, and many of those have cleared it. That's the state of my casual guild, and we're welcoming the arrival of ZA.
 

I think the point of Zul'Aman is to give something to smaller guilds that don't often get enough people to do 25-man raids, but then again have enough people to do 10 man raids... for example guilds consisting mainly of real life friends for example. It's just my feel of the thing, nothing more.
 

Well, at least now I know what all of you did while I was away from World of Warcraft: Everyone was in Karazhan! :)
 

I'd have to agree with the posters.

I'm part of a guild that has both geared and non-geared (Kara or equivilent)players and having to get 3-4 Kara groups running every week to get them all geared for Gruuls-SSC-TK is a pain. Drama ensues when a specific group needs 1 dps, or 1 healer, and another group's member logs in. They immediately invite and summon that person to fill a gap in Kara, and then the other group has to fill a gap later. Most of the time it's alright, but sometimes, its a real pain.

It seems like Blizzard has a policy, albeit silent, to have less guilds and more merged guilds with the 25 man raids, occurring shortly after 10 man raids. It's 2.5 times as many people required, and they need to be decently geared. It's a lot less troublesome to just merge guilds that are already Kara geared to work on Gruuls, than to actually run 3-4 groups at a time, for the above stated reasons.

So, with the addition of ZA, you are giving the smaller guilds something else to do, besides grinding Kara week after week for void crystals. With additional content, as another poster mentioned above, it also lets guilds that are/were running Kara to fill some gear slots on players to form other groups. My guild, in particular created 2 ZA groups out of the 3-4 Kara groups. We've downed Gruul, so this allows for some decent T4-T5 gear besides the 25 man dkp rolls, since we /roll in 10 man raids.

All in all, I like it, even though I've stopped raiding myself. I'd like to see ZA a little, as I love ZG (farmed ZG on my mage to get the polymorph:turtle and grew to love the place). But, if I don't, its alright. Raiding gets to be just like grinding rep with any faction, and I'm pretty much sick of running Kara.

I agree with you Tobold that it doesn't seem to make sense adding a post-Kara 10 man, since most guilds recruit the required 30+ people or merge guilds, to run the other 25 man raids, but for the smaller guilds, it has to be extremely nice. What's not to love about gearing your character with T5-esque gear without having to dkp roll against 24 other people for weeks on end? And for larger guilds, its a way to get a couple of groups going, and to "meet" some of your fellow raiders in a more intimate setting of a 10 man raid. Sometimes, when you are stuck in a particular group, you only know those guildies and tend to create little cliques inside the guild. With ZA, unless your guild is anal about running it, there is the opportunity to mix groups up.

Personally, I think ZA should have existed long before MH/BT was finished/tuned. Give smaller guilds some more raids they can do for, heaven forbid, fun.

The only way to "beat the game" is to kill Illidan, with a 25 man group in BT. But, I think Blizzard could have made it so there was a way to beat him or a similar "end boss" in a 10 man raiding progression. Since all of raiding is just tuning the instance to players with certain gear, I think it could be possible to have a 10 man as hard as a 25 man. More precision, less forgiving fights. At least then, guilds wouldn't be forced to choose between stopping progression or merging with another guild it may not really want anything to do with. On older servers, guilds only really merge, even if its half of one guild and half of another. With ZA, smaller guilds aren't forced to merge with another guild, losing their individual identity inside their guild, or recruit so many new people that their guild loses its identity, made up of the members as a whole. Instead, smaller guilds keep progressing and seeing new content, without being artificially forced to grow to see other raid encounters.
 

I'll have to agree with Tobold here. Zul'Gurub was nicely tuned for "casual raiding." I loved being able to log in at 2am and join an in progress raid. It didn't take people in great gear, it didn't have "one mistake and you die" tuning and it didn't even require the full 20 people for parts of the content. Those all encouraged a more casual approach and style than any raid I've seen in TBC. That's made me an ex-raider, unfortunately.

I really do miss that aspect of WoW.
 

I completely disagree with Tobold here. There was a huge gap in difficulty from Karazhan to Serpentshrine Cavern / The Eye, and it was worse when you had to go through both Gruul and Magtheridon to progress. Zul'Aman is exactly in where it should be in terms of difficulty. It's not supposed to complement Karazhan like Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj complemented Zul'Gurub, it's more like how Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj overlapped in difficulty. While you could kill Skeram or Razorgore after you killed Majordomo Executus, you still would want to kill Ragnaros (and get the fire resistance required for both Raggy and Vael).

If you can't kill Prince Malchezaar and/or Nightbane, you are not prepared (sorry, couldn't resist) for Zul'Aman.

And there is already an alternative to Karazhan: Heroics. the loot is at par with most of Karazhan gear and you only require 5 people to get a Heroic group going.
 

so the alternative to a ZG style raid is heroic 5 mans?

I think you completely missed his point.
 

Indeed. It seems clear that Blizzard doesn't get it either. You'd think, with over 9 million players supporting the game, that they would find room for a wider variety of raiding experiences. I don't see any signs of it happening.

Perhaps it's true what they say about not being able to go home again.
 

I'm With the T on this!

In a casual guild, though I don't think anyone knows what that means anymore! The word casual means anything to anyone.

I get to play on a very ad-hoc basis.

I have a level 70 warrior, 60% blue gear. Not nearly geared enough to raid Kara. My guild mates are all in the same boat.

I get to play a couple of mornings a week for maybe 3 hours at a stint. And then once every 2 or 3 weeks for 5 or 6 hours on a Saturday.

I'm not gonna be Kara geared for ages.

Where is the 10 to 20 man raid for me and my guild? The one like ZG, where I can log in and get involved without booking it 2 weeks in advance.

Fine have your kara style dungeons.

* If you wanna spend your time grinding to prepare for each run.
* If you want to be in a uber organised to extreme guild to sort it out.
* If you want to kick players because they are not geared up enough or have to leave the run because little johnny needs some TLC.
* If you can deal with the stress that these dungeons bring.

All I want is a ZG for level 70's, 10, 15, 20 man - I don't mind.

Something I can rock upto within 20 minutes of logging in, play, enjoy, wipe and not give a damn about what epic gear I have or haven't got.

You've all sold out to some strange kinda Pavlovian Bliz trick - wave a purple in front of your screen and you'll rep grind and stress each other out in dungeons despite the needs of your Kids, Wives, Husbands, Friends, Social Life, Homelife, Worklife, etc.

I'll repeat - where is the dungeon I can rock upto without notice, say to a bunch of folks - lets do this regardless of gear - and have some fun!

- Please don't respond with the 5man dungeons and the same dungeons as heroic. I'm fed up to the back teeth of dealing with that (now) boring game content.

T you are spot on as usual!
 

i agree with tobold here, for a casual player who loved zg deadly, i want an alternative 10 man raid instance who is a bit less difficult than kharazan. lets say an instance tuned for 6 ppl so 10 undergeared ppl can try it with ease.

i think the lv 60 dungeon/raid style is preferable compared to TBC style, where everyone get checked via kharazan. One wonder why blizzard said that there is more ppl visiting kharazan than other dungeon, maybe because there is no alternative ?
 

*loved zg DEARLY

sorry for misspell :)

need more variety in casual raid instance.

no more this one raid instance as gear check for the rest of raid instances
 

This is why I also long for 'casual raiding'. I'm usually looking to have fun and have a good time working towards a goal with friends.

Battlegrounds are therefore my favorite place to be. And, not a bad source of gear.

Also, this leads to dungeons.

The arenas are alright, as long as it's 5v5, I'd maybe prefer even bigger.

I figure once I get bored of these, I'll have gear that is 'overgeared' for Zul'aman and I'll go check it out to do it once (this strategy worked for Karazhan), not worth the trouble otherwise.
 

I'm still out of the Outlands, having some tens of levels to do before that, and already I feel I'm left out of some major content in the form of instances. Already I see Kara and ZA something unreachable with the 1-2 times 2-3 hours a week.

Sure it's nice Blizz caters for the hc-raiders, but I suppose the main dough comes from us casual guys/gals who play the game for the content and entertaining replacement for other entertainment forms (TV, movies etc.).

And when WOtLK comes out... I'm definately going to feel left out of the Outlands instances as well...

Gladly looking forward to that anyhow!

Copra
 

ZA is slightly harder than Gruul i thought, and since your guild doesn't have Gruul on farm in any way, ZA can be a bit stressfull.
 

Once again I have to disagree with you, Tobold. Zul Aman is pitched at just the right level of difficulty.
Our guild has done Kara. Most of our guild has the loot they need from there, and we have had enough of it now.
We still go there, but it is mainly easy epics for people coming up through the ranks.

We went to ZulAman this weekend on our first serious attempt at the place. We killed the Bear boss and the Bird boss.
Yes, the bear boss is hard, and your healers need to be on their toes, but the fight itself is quite simple - a typical tank and spank. It is a gear check and nothing more: you need to dps him down before your healers are OOM, whilst your tanks need enough hit points/armour to survive his heavy blows.
The bird boss is a bit more complicated, but is not difficult -just figure out how to avoid the aoe lightning damage.
If ZA is too hard then go back to Karazhan and heroics.
Since the last patch it is so easy to get Heroic Badges, and thus getting hold of heroic loot is so much easier.
The step from Kara to SSC is a big one, and I think this instance fills the gap very well.
 

I'll toss in a few comments...

First of all, IMO ZA is correctly targeted. I assume that the Blizz planners are thinking that ten months post-release, the better organized smaller guilds are getting deep into Kara and that ZA is just right for them. They didn't target ZA for toons that took a six-month hiatus and cast Resurrection :)

ZA is not targeted for toons in blues-n-greens, or even fully blues. Heroics, crafting, and PvP are ways to get the epics needed to survive Kara, where you get more-and-better epics, and then on to ZA. (I like that variety in obtaining gear, because I remember the days back when pretty much the only realistic endgame gear path in WoW was 40-man raiding.)

Interestingly, the very same complaints that are being leveled against ZA (too hard) are also proving true in the case of the reduction of Heroic key requirements. Within a few days there were stories circulating on my server about "I'm 70 now I can run a Heroic!" groups trying to jump into Heroics and getting mercilessly slaughtered.

I suppose that is, in part, a game design failure of sorts. Blizz guides us by the nose though the 1-70 content, mostly controlling access by turning on those little "!" when we're deemed ready. I suppose those poor guys and gals thought that a Heroic key was the equivalent of a yellow "!". It reminds me of the guildies who ding 70 and immediately say, "When's the next Kara run?", to which you have to say, "Whoa, there, big fella..." :).
The endgame is definitely a different ballgame...
 

I fall into the casual category of Tobold where I was doing Kara but now don't really have time for that.

The thing is, I skipped heroics and was able to get into Kara with my mage because of my tailored purples (spellfire and spellstrike sets) and my blue quest rewards from running regular 5 mans (once each) and blues from quest rewards.

I have 2 more purples from Karazhan and one from the headless horseman, and one from pvp.

I didn't step foot into a heroic until this last patch since I don't have more than honored rep with any faction (which is easy to get).

I've only had time for one heroic since the patch, I almost started 2 more but decided to log out instead as I realized I wouldn't have time to complete those.
The thing is the majority of people are farming Kara or trying to and I agree with others that ZA fits in nicely with progression.

I've seen many small guilds break up after their A-Team was done with Kara and wanted to get better gear elsewhere and there was no higher level 10-man available for them to go to.

Tobold's absence from WoW seems to have caused his finger to slip off the pulse of the average level 70 WoW player, but the responses here should be enough to get him back on track.

I understand where Tobold is coming from and for those replies who agree with him, but the fact is we are a minority, and when I start having more time to play, and pick up a few more purples, I too will be ready to hit ZA with excited anticipation.
 

I understand where Tobold is coming from and for those replies who agree with him, but the fact is we are a minority, and when I start having more time to play, and pick up a few more purples, I too will be ready to hit ZA with excited anticipation.

Is the Black Templeaimed at a minority? I would argue yes.

The number of players that are unable to gear for or find suitable guilds to begin end game content surely out way the number of players setting foot in the Black Temple.

If Blizzard had no problems with folk running heroics and progressing through end game content... why would they drop key rep requirements? Not soley for the alt-toon brigade.

A large percentage, IMHO, of the paying game base are not being catered for.

Here's a question for you.

What would you judge to be a healthy amount of time to play each week?

I would put it at about 10 to 15 hours. Me personally, I would say no more than 10 hours.

But lets break it down into realistic terms with 2 examples.

Case 1: A 15 year old at school. Possibly the most critical years of education (drop out/or work towards something higher). Let's give him/her two 3 hour evening sessions during the week and a 6 hour session on a Saturday. 12 hours

Case 2: Parent with partner and kids. This parent works full time, 40 hours. Comes home in the evening... plays between 7pm and 11pm 2 days a week and for 4 hours on a Sunday. 12 hours

Both cases are neglecting issues and people in real life, but enjoy playing. It can be done and balance home and proffessional life.

Playing beyond that things can get sticky.

But Blizzard demand that you play more. By waving the carrot of greater things via rep, keys, blues then purples, and extreme end game content.

Yes it is extreme, ZA is extreme. It is no longer about a game but a way of life. Yeah some of you might where that as a badge of honour... if you do, meet me in game and I'll bake you a chocolate cake.

So I ask again, where is the end game 10 man (or 15) dungeon for players who want to balance their game play?

For players who don't wish grind the same content again and again each week. For players who wish to stay in their small friendly guilds with players they have got to know over the last 2 years. Surely they/we deserve a dungeon they can get into for fun and at a relaxed pace.

Keep your ZA, 2.2 should never have been the Black Temple... and give us a moderatly leveled and planned 10 or 15 man run.

I'm never ever ever ever gonna see the inside of the Black Temple and never see Kara due to shape of my guild and the requirements of that dugeon.

Gimme a level 70 ZG and I'll be there at least 2 or 3 times a month.

I've been playing warcraft for almost 6 years. I've never managed to quit the MMO.

If 3.0 goes anywhere near not providing the likes of me and my guild mates game content at end level then I will seriously ask myself questions about subsidising your game content at my expense.

Sorry about the long winded rant, just something I feel passionate about and needs addressing. Hope some of it made sense.
 

wow lot of hardcore raider elitist read tobold's post. i cant believe most ppl here dont understand tobold's post and ranting their objection like a true elitist.

Strategicaly, by focusing on Raid and Gear, Blizzard is making a terrible mistake. Alienating majority of playstyle is not a clever move. and i agree with tobold and other MMO sites , Blizzard US/EUR subscription is declining, There is considerable lack of player in most servers including servers which usually have FULL sign.

Im curious what happen at 2008 when Conan and Warhammer and other AAA+ MMORPG come out. I really hope blizzard's designer wake up before more ppl moved on to other games.
 

Hoorah Eldric!

That's exactly what I had in mind when I posted my response: the hc raiders cannot be the majority for whom to cater. Just impossible.

I think we will see Kara and ZA around the time we're in mid-80's and over-geared to the instances anyhow. We either have to solo them or have a boost run by someone then grinding the WotLK end game, taking the effort and success out of our game.

The situation will be like it is now for us 'newcomers': there is no reasonable way for us to enter the former level cap (60) end game instances, as there simply aren't toons around to do them... because everyone goes for the Outlands the first instance they can!

Time to split the focus and make the instances accessible to all...

Copra
 

yep copra. I've been saying since BC launched Blizz's biggest mistake was not retuning the loot tables in the old instances. If the old instances had thier loot bumped up to BC standards People would have run them as leveling content. Might be too late for that now.
Sad thing is I've seen nothing to make me think they won't do the exact same think with WOTLK.
 

ZA is tuned well given so many guilds have Kara on farm. I still view kara as a mistake though. ZA with its faster clear and reset would be ideal for the first raiding at 70 (with suitable gear requirements). Then have the longer and more structured Kara to lead into 25 mans. Unfortunately it's too late for Blizzard to fix this.
 

"What I don't really see is why World of Warcraft needs such a post-Karazhan raid dungeon. I thought the raid progression after Karazhan was already pretty complete and didn't have any big gaps to fill."

You havent been an officer in a guild that is trying to move on to 25 man content from kara then. [I mean, most people have, but just saying]

The problem is that its rediculously hard to get those extra 15 people. ALOT of the time, you will clear kara with 2 groups, but still not be able to get those extra 5 people. If you cant get those in a month or so, your people who are done with kara will want to move on and leave, and then you will have to gear up more people through kara, and more people get impatient and leave, and it starts all over again.

This is perfect for those guilds, and is VERY needed. This allows your geared members to do even more challenging conent, will allowing your officers more time to recruit and get your numbers up and ready for 25 mans.