Do you Want another Karazhan style Raid?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Karazhan is unique because 1. the raid was about the story, not going around killing mobs for better gear. It was highly scripted and there were no wings, the progression was linear, emphasizing on the dark plot of the mage tower and it's previous owner. 2. Karazhan is by far the largest raid ever, consisting of cellars, secret room, haunted laboratories, ominous opera theaters and so on. Again, it is not large because there are a lot of gear drop p ing mobs to kill but because of the story. 3. Karazhan was super hard, giving something players to chew.on for a long while.

Your thoughts?

[Zervek]

I disagree, with your entire paragraph. That is my thought.

[DarkTZeratul]

Karazhan is unique because 1. the raid was about the story, not going around killing mobs for better gear.

Karazhan's story was much less clear than in most other raids. It's also irrelevant, because most of the players went there specifically to kill mobs for better gear and didn't care a whit about the story.

It was highly scripted and there were no wings, the progression was linear, emphasizing on the dark plot of the mage tower and it's previous owner.

Karazhan was by no stretch of the imagination "highly scripted." Progression was also anything but linear, considering how many optional bosses and alternate routes it contains.

2. Karazhan is by far the largest raid ever, consisting of cellars, secret room, haunted laboratories, ominous opera theaters and so on.

Karazhan might be diverse, but it's certainly not the largest raid ever. Ulduar definitely has it beat, and Throne of Thunder probably does too. Siege of Orgrimmar's up there as well.

Again, it is not large because there are a lot of gear drop p ing mobs to kill but because of the story.

Karazhan had an absolutely absurd amount of gear-dropping mobs to kill. Also, I'm not sure what the story has to do with its size.

3. Karazhan was super hard, giving something players to chew.on for a long while.

*snerk*

[eschatological]

ToT was very linear, and very story-based. It was about a mad, power hungry king who was raised from the dead by Zandalari trolls. And to even get to him to vaniquish his evil, you had to beat his troll protectors/benefactors (wing 1), dig deep into the bowels of the Isle after Lei Shen stomped the main bridge (cutscene not shown in LFR to its detriment), fight crazy beasts in the underworld until you literally climbed out of the sewers, defeated a bird whose feathers allowed you to fly back into the main palace (wing 2), only to discover this mad king had been experimenting with powers beyond any mortal's control (wing 3), before finally meeting and defeating his vanguard and then him (wing 4). And if you did heroic, then you got to meet his enslaved Titan, sitting under the experimental wing (under Primordius), and beat him up.

And people *hated* the linearity of that instance, for some reason. I loved it. I thought it was the best done raid in WoW since Ulduar, maybe ever.

[TheLionKing]

Karazhan broke guilds, took too much time to effectively PUG in an era before LFR, and was a bit of a bottleneck/choke point before (25 man) Raiding began in earnest. It's more of a spiritual successor to UBRS style quasi-raid stepping stone that was ultimately overtaken by 10 man modes, LFR, and finally Flex than it is pinnacle of raiding content.

However, what it did capture beautifully was atmosphere. It was a hell of a lot more charming and than the loot tunnels that took over later expansions, I'll agree whole heartedly to that.

[Victorias]

I must agree. The thread is false and flawed.

OT: I'd love another Karazhan in the sense of style, architecture, etc.

[Hitei]

Karazhan broke guilds, took too much time to effectively PUG in an era before LFR, and was a bit of a bottleneck/choke point before (25 man) Raiding began in earnest. It's more of a spiritual successor to UBRS style quasi-raid stepping stone that was ultimately overtaken by 10 man modes, LFR, and finally Flex than it is pinnacle of raiding content.

However, what it did capture beautifully was atmosphere. It was a hell of a lot more charming and than the loot tunnels that took over later expansions, I'll agree whole heartedly to that.

Kara was hard because people were much worse then.
You can tell because Flame Wreath was a serious mechanic.

[rabidclam]

I'm pretty sure TAQ also has it beat in terms of raid size.

Also, perhaps I just can't remember well enough. But what exactly was the story of Kharazan?
Beyond the fact that it was Medivh's old house that we were so kind to clear of all it's old residents and ghosts; I don't remember there being any actual rhyme or reason for being there. Didn't seem like any of the bosses in Kharazan were going to bring great harm to Azeroth. They all seemed quite content living the rest of their lives out in the old mansion for the rest of their lives.

[Thyrial]

I disagree, with your entire paragraph. That is my thought.

I agree with this, but I'll explain a bit more...

1. The raid didn't emphasize the story any more than most raids and for most people it absolutely WAS just about getting loot. It was actually FAR less scripted than many many raids since like Hyjal, Ulduar, ToC, ICC... I could keep going...

2. It's far from the largest, though it is bigger than a few we've had. ICC, Ulduar, BT, and Sunwell were all undoubtedly bigger.

3. Kara wasn't even REMOTELY hard, in BC it was the only raid that was regularly cleared by PUGs on every server every week.

[TheLionKing]

Kara was hard because people were much worse then.
You can tell because Flame Wreath was a serious mechanic.

The 10 player limit was what I was referring to as "guild breaking" more than the actual difficulty of the raid. I don't think any particular encounter was that difficult...

[Deleted]

I'd like another one in terms of raid design, but that's it. I kinda liked it being just one building and us slowly Woking our way up the spiral, but the actual raid wasn't that impressive, the fights were boring avid the loot sucked, oh yay, more wrists! I don't remember it being hard either, pretty much the only raid I pugged in tbc.

[Balazzar]

I loved Karazahn a lot for its atmosphere and level of difficulty... That said, it really did not have any clear story... There was the huntsman, moroes, and the opera defining the more "haunted" aspects... But then the titan lady, netherwing, and heck even Prince were not explained very well. I loved Karazahn, but yeah, it was more a "help the Violet Eye eradicate this sinister nonsense" and less a defining part of TBC's overall plot.

[testsubjectzz]

I cleared regularly on my paladin, enough to exalted. Pugged it several times and the only hard part was because of flame wreath and I remember on my warlock in another guild we kept wiping on curator. Fun but nothing special I only cared about the gear and storyline was a bonus and even then I didnt care for it much

[Maneo]

Not that I agree with much in the original post.

Except that Kara was one of my favorite raids. I really thought the haunted castle thing was awesome and would love to see something like it again. Maybe as a raid only available during the Halloween festivities.

But yeah Uldar and Kara are by far my favorite raids.

[Golden Yak]

Purely with regards to visual style-

Karazhan seemed very much to have been designed as a set-piece first, and as a lair for bosses second. By that I mean that it was built to be as realistic a setting as possible without priority given to boss mechanics - no area was designed specifically around a certain boss, but instead the bosses seem made to fit within the environment. The theater was built first because it was cool for Karazhan to have a theater - the theater bosses were added in afterwards. Ditto with the dining hall, the stables, the library, etc.

It was a magnificent structure that extended far overhead and even underground, with all manner of interconnecting hallways and stairwells and secret passages, outer walls, and backdoors, to a degree that no other raid comes close to, although the Blackrock Depths (and to an extent Blackrock Spire) come close.

While other raids like Ulduar, Icecrown, Twilight Bastion, and even Siege have some interesting environments, they seem to largely consist of big open hallways that lead to wide open rooms, designed specifically for their bosses to fit within - boss encounter first, and dungeon built around it.

To this extent, I'd like to see other raids like Karazhan - environments that are constructed first as if they were actual realistic locations in the world, with bosses included within the environment rather than dominating the environment. You can still have grand halls and open areas, but they should be included organically rather than crammed in because you've got a boss idea that needs a big open space.

Icecrown Citadel's plague wing is a good example - I was hoping to see huge cauldrons of bubbling plague, abomination assembly lines, hordes of plague cultists working with different experiments, plague-spreader construction yards, a huge teeming foundry for the Lich King's bio-weapon production. Instead it was a big long hallway with two wide open rooms for boss fights. It was clearly designed first to accommodate the bosses, and little thought was given to depict it as a realistic environment.

[melodramocracy]

What makes Kara stand out as unique in this game, to me at least, is that it's not designed as a series of short hallways connecting boss rooms. It gives the player a sense that he's in a rather 'authentic' environment, one that just happens to be loaded with mobs and bosses.

Compare that to something like ICC, which is very clearly large boss rooms or platforms connected simply because they needed to be in some fashion. If you were to walk through it in a mode where there were no enemies, as a purposeful structure it'd make very little sense. Even Ulduar has a bit of this going on, though it seems to hide it a bit better.

Not sure I'm wording that correctly.

edit:
Golden Yak pretty much beat me to it.

[Salted Beef]

I love giant instances filled with trash and optional bosses. They don't complicate gearing at all.

[TenDance]

3. Kara wasn't even REMOTELY hard, in BC it was the only raid that was regularly cleared by PUGs on every server every week.

You know why? Because Blizzard handed out wellfare epics later in the game. Everyone who wanted some gear got his PvP-weapons, no skill needed, only grind. The same goes for the shiny epics you got for tokens. Doing your daily heroic had been enough to get you some nice pieces of gear, after they implemented the 128-ilvl-gear most people simply overgeared Karazhan. Add in some gear you got from some of the factions and that the crafted gear had been really good (honestly, every second priest got the crafted set, feral"tanks" could bear with that 'till BT) and yes, Karazhan had been puggable. Especially with those players in mind which already got a lot of T4-loot, sometimes even T5 and still pugged to farm some tokens.
Try Karazhan in green and blue gear, with at best some parts of D3, and you will meet some sweet enragetimers. Bosses like the curator had been the classic example of a content blocker. You had to meet certain criteria to pass, or, in short: gear.

[RoKPaNda]

You know why? Because Blizzard handed out wellfare epics later in the game. Everyone who wanted some gear got his PvP-weapons, no skill needed, only grind. The same goes for the shiny epics you got for tokens. Doing your daily heroic had been enough to get you some nice pieces of gear, after they implemented the 128-ilvl-gear most people simply overgeared Karazhan. Add in some gear you got from some of the factions and that the crafted gear had been really good (honestly, every second priest got the crafted set, feral"tanks" could bear with that 'till BT) and yes, Karazhan had been puggable. Especially with those players in mind which already got a lot of T4-loot, sometimes even T5 and still pugged to farm some tokens.
Try Karazhan in green and blue gear, with at best some parts of D3, and you will meet some sweet enragetimers. Bosses like the curator had been the classic example of a content blocker. You had to meet certain criteria to pass, or, in short: gear.

That's not really true. A lot of the PvP stuff, epic or not, was less than ideal for PvE. While there were some really really good PvP pieces for PvE, it's not like a majority of the PvP pieces were all that hot in PvE. Badge gear that high in ilevel didn't get introduced until Karazhan was no longer current content. Karazhan was more like UBRS than an actual raid. It was maybe an introduction to raiding at best.

You're really oversimplifying things. You make it sound like you just went out and got free epics. You didn't. PvP epics took playing either 10 arena matches a week and slowwwwwly getting the decent epics, or actually trying to PvP and get more points by doing well. Crafted stuff took awhile also, but yes the crafted stuff was good, but it's ilevel was actually lower than Karazhan's. In some cases they just made the set bonuses too good. And badges of justice for the badge gear? There was no LFD. You had to sit around in trade chat looking for groups or putting them together and for me it was no problem because I was a tank at the time, so I could get the items pretty fast (Still took a huge time investment) - But there was a limit to how many you could get. It was nothing like now where you can queue for random and run them as much as you want.

And for all the fondness that people here have for TBC heroics (nostalgia) - Almost nobody ran most of them. Nobody wanted to do the CoT heroics, nobody wanted to do heroic Shadow Labyrinth, nobody wanted to do heroic Shattered Halls until they overgeared it, nobody wanted to do heroic Sethekk, Mana Tombs, Crypts, or Blood Furnace. It was usually "Form heroic pug, run 2 out of the 3 coilfang heroics and then another one that was decently fast and I can't recall the name of, and then the group falls apart." If you were a DPS player and didn't have a set group, you weren't getting speedy "Welfare epics" that way. Overgearing Karazhan wasn't why it was puggable or why people had no issues with it, it was easy. It was geared at people who weren't actual raiders, that's why one of the fights had a mechanic that was basically "Don't move."

But anyway, to answer the question: I'd like to see raids that are larger like Karazhan and Ulduar, but I don't want them to be large just for the sake of it. I want the bosses to be designed for the instance, not the other way around. When I walk into an area called the plagueworks, I want to be able to tell immediately why it's called that. Instead of just "Okay huge hallway, throw some skeletons here, maybe some green stuff here and there, some cobweb doodads, and then a big mostly empty boss room!" - However I wouldn't ever want to see Chess event again. I love actual chess, but that event was amazingly annoying at times because rather than sitting on the sides and watching, people who didn't know how to play would insist on "helping."

[Ferocity]

Try Karazhan in green and blue gear, with at best some parts of D3, and you will meet some sweet enragetimers. Bosses like the curator had been the classic example of a content blocker. You had to meet certain criteria to pass, or, in short: gear.

There was one and only one enrage timer in Karazhan. Maiden of Virtue. And it was very long, like 10-15 minutes. People didn't even know it exists until couple t6-geared warrior and priest decided to duo KZ. Edit: Oh and Aran, when he enrages (which is like 15-20 minutes timer), he makes several copies of himself with tons of health.

And that's what was great about KZ. It wasn't about enrage timers (which should be all removed from raids altogether unless it is purely patchwerk fight), wasn't about 20-page booklets per boss you must read. It was about layout, atmosphere and having fun with friends.

That's why that raid became so memorable.

Alas, with current developers, we will never ever see anything like Karazhan again. Best they can do is to make million of difficulties and millions of subtiers, which makes raiding even less appealing, whlie trying to keep catering to people, who shouldn't ever touch RPGs in first place.