Both of your comments that Kara was a great raid made me cringe at first. “Not Kara again!” But when I think about it, I ran that instance at least one night a week for maybe… nine months? RL, distance group of our friends, it was our chance to hang out. But obviously Kara was good enough!

But I think Vashj and Kael’ are still my favorites (I didn’t do past Kalc pre nerf). The required a guild to run like a well oiled machine! I loved that feeling on those bosses. Archie, Council, and Illy came close – but just didn’t give me the “I love this guild” feeling the same way.

As for trash – I think post boss high can always outweigh any amount of trash.

Aertimuss last blog post..Wrath Resto Druid Trinkets (With a Focus on Mana Regen Trinkets)

Story: everyone knows Kael’thas, if you’re either a casual whose last experience was with WC3:TFT or a raider who took him down in Tempest Keep. There’s even an orb that shows you the sunwell and Kil’jaeden and really gets you into the story the first time they’re there.
Gear: best 5-man gear in both normal and heroic. Always worth the effort to find a group.
Bosses: none of the bosses are a real tank + spank — usually people DPS through Selin Fireheart, but he has a mechanic that makes it interesting. Vexallus is Curator-lite. Priestess Delrissa is an excellent boss encounter that makes _everyone_ contribute. The Kael’thas boss encounter is insanely fun and not too difficult assuming the tank doesn’t get 1-shot by the flame bolt and the phoenix doesn’t blow anyone up.
Trash: Trash pulls are not boring, and require knowledge of every unit’s special ability, good crowd control, and good pulling. There are actually only a few trash pulls in the instance — 6 before Selin, maybe 10 between Vexallus and Delrissa, and only one before Kael, but because of the difficulty you’re not ever getting tired of fighting trash.
Sense of Purpose: Not hard to find motivation to kill Kael’thas given how his story was built up over BC, especially in the draenei starting zone (and I expect the blood elf one too).
Gradient: I guess this is the only point where MgT doesn’t live up to your standards — you fight Kael in a small room and that final trash pull is in a corridor.

Definitely my favorite instance because of sheer variety in 5-man bosses wasn’t something you got until LK. Very little of the instance puts you to sleep, making it valuable for time spent.

Replayability depends on many factors, including:
– The entertainment value for experienced or overgeared raiders.
– Scripted or fixed events should be avoided. When overgeared or experienced players return to the same content, they don’t want to be help up by a lengthy scripted event. The flight phase of Nightbane always felt a bit long for me, for example.
– Low player and setup requirement: it should offer different fight mechanics but lack specific build/spec requirements for given fights. You wouldn’t want to respec just for one particular farm run. Players should be able to overrule/overpower or skip such fights. Also low number requirements, say 10 man, allows guilds to leave such farm runs for ad hoc events.
– Flexibility in reward: it should yield upgrades for people with the appropriate level but also something with a lasting value. The badge rewards from Kara made it a superb badge farm instance. The timed events in ZA were an excellent idea. The achievement rewards in WotLK can hopefully pick up the thread.
– Design without flaws: I can’t think of an example in WoW (luckily) but when looking at some games they increase the game’s challenge through obscurity and design flaws: the room is too dark to clearly see what you should do, or, you must jump over a gorge of eternal peril and failure results in a 10 min break/rerun.

I believe Kara and ZA score very high in terms of replayability. I’m getting the impression Naxx will do so too.

I know that 40 man raids are a pig to organise and Blizz have been wise to step away from them, but it does feel epic to stand in BWL with 40 others. Achievements did breathe a new life into old raids and instances and I’ve enjoyed that.

I’m looking forward to Ulduar, I think the raiding community can do with a harder challenge than whats currently out there. I hope it will look and feel suitably epic, with interesting trash but not too much of it. in terms of difficulty I would not like to be stuck on it as long as lots of us were in Kara, but I’d like to see it cleared significantly less fast than new style Naxx.

Exciting times ahead!

i.e. “Kill Mr. Bad the Really Evil Guy while standing on one foot and drinking a soda through a twisty straw.” I’ll do it.

I’m planning on a little PTR visit, but maybe not as much work there as some of my guildies. Priorities, right? I still have some work to do on live. If I’m exalted with Hodir and have managed to find or buy a Jet’ze’s bell, then Ill be there.

My own personal take on Achievments in raiding is this

Things like Sarth with the drakes up giving extra rewards is a very good idea.

Things like rewarding titles for not dieing too any boss in Naxx is a very bad idea.

Getting rewarded via loot for doing things harder is good
Getting aesthetic rewards for doing things harder is bad

1. Story – While it did seems a little tacked on after we had already killed the titular villain of the expansion, there was a lot of build up to much of Sunwell. Kalecgos had build up in MT, as did Muru and KJ. The quests around the Isle, which we all did every day, made for a feeling of world progress lacking in other questlines (I missed the opening of the gates). Brut was overseeing the scar while you ran bombing runs, and the battle between Felmyst and Brut inside was epic.

2. Gear – Perhaps the best itemized gear the game has ever seen can make SWP worth doing even at 80 for some willing PUGs. I know I am still using a piece or two of SWP gear even after clearing all the raid content in Wrath thus far. Not by choice, but it certainly has not hindered me.

3. Bosses – Only 6, but quickly accessed after the 1st trash clear. Kalc, Brut, and Felmyst were all amazing. Each testing a different skill set but all challenging the raid on a level I had never seen. Brut did become boring when you out geared him, but Kalc and Felmyst are still some of my favorite fights in WoW. Twins was terrible, but the pillar strat made the fight quick. M’uru… well opinions differ. Punishing would be a relevent word but the other hand is that when the raid finally got it all right, the beauty of a 100% perfect raid was something to behold. KJ was epic, fun, challenging, and visually stunning. Overall, I’d say 4.5/6 bosses were good to great.

4. Trash – Many people complained about the SWP trash, but I never found it bad. I was always wishing for more due to the best-in-slot drops (never did get that wand). After the first lenthy push trash almost vanished. The instance, once mastered, became a quick farm. I think the trash balance was good overall. Challenging but not overwhelming and allowing a quick farm once the instance was put on that status.

5. Timewasting – I felt Twins was the only timewaster built into the instance. Terrible fight. M’uru was the meta timewaster though. The fight was so punishing that it wasted many guild’s time night in and night out. Not good. Had he been just a bit easier, the instance would have been much better balanced.

6. Gradient – The instance did not have a huge ramp up in visuals, being beautiful all the way through. The bright outdoor environment was a nice change from BT. Fightwise, the gradient was flawed. The first 4 bosses each built on each other but then M’uru came and ruined the flow, being significantly harder than KJ for most guilds. A mistake plain and simple. KJ was easily the most visually interesting though, and the fight was epic, fast paced, and fun.

Over all, I think Sunwell manages a 4.75 out of 6, losing .25 for a tacked on story, .5 points for Bosses (Twins and M’uru), and .5 for Gradient (M’uru again). Still, a rather good.

Nice post. I enjoyed it. I was in Naxx the other day and I was thinking to myself “How is Kel’Thuzad the final boss of Naxx? This fight is soooooo boring.” Whereas Sapphiron, now that’s a boss fight.

I think they give you 2 minutes of trash spawns on Kel just to get you sleepy enough to make the boss fight seem more interesting.

Two things I was wondering about that may or may not be potential blog fodder:

1. I can’t wait for 3.1/Ulduar to be on the PTR. Will Conquest be putting in some PTR raiding or do you want to keep it a surprise for when it is officially released? Why or Why not?

2. As a guild, how much emphasis do you place on Achievements while raiding? I find that a lot of people completely ignore the achievements because they are “worthless”. Meanwhile some guilds will spend hours wiping on 3 drakes just for a title and a mount. Does Conquest go out of their way to complete achievements?

Wrath seems to have taken a turn for the better with fewer trash mobs in instances (or it maybe the viability of AoE trash clears in Naxx that makes it seem that way ). Sarth with 3 drakes up is still the perfect boss fight design in my mind since the tempo of the fight varies and there is lot of emphasis on player skill and team coordination to get the job done (although some spell effects could have been better to make life easier for raiders – I am looking at you all-red target circle/shadow fissure/lava).

My Favorites include

Black Wing Lair

2 boss fights no trash! Too bad the first one is Razorgore the Guild killer. After the boring ho hum tank and spanks move away from stuff fights of Molten Core you have an intricate multi layered fight like Razorgore. Then Vaelastrasz the Corrupted which will challenge your tanks,healers and DPS in a short but great fight which features the greatest opening lines of any boss in the game

“Too late…friends. Nefarius’ corruption has taken hold. I cannot…control myself. I beg you Mortals, flee! Flee before I lose all sense of control. The Black Fire rages within my heart. I must release it! FLAME! DEATH! DESTRUCTION! COWER MORTALS BEFORE THE WRATH OF LORD….NO! I MUST FIGHT THIS! ALEXSTRASZA, HELP ME! I MUST FIGHT!”

BWL is great. Very little trash,alot of challenging bosses and at the time awesome loot. Once you mastered it it could be done in 2 hours or less. It should have been a template to future raids but Blizzard felt the only way to keep us playing was to through massive amounts of trash at us

The Black Morass

A great idea. Trash that is timed and actually means something to the overall theme of the instance. A true challenge for the gear level and a short clear time make this the best instance ever made.

Worst

SSC+TK

There was alot of things wrong with early raiding in TBC. I remember the trash in Karazhan hitting our tanks for 10K. I remember a Gruul whos groundslam would hit you for 8K with no one near you. I remember Mag when the trash would Aoe Shadowbolt everyone for 8K with EACH shadowbolt. But the the worse thing was SSC+TK trash. The first thing i can remember is finally clearing the trash to Hydross which would take about an hour or so because the bog lord guys would hit your tank for around 15K and kill them then proceed to kill the raid. If you were lucky enough to kill the Bog lords they would do different things but by far was the 2 adds with 1.5 Million health each that hit as hard as the original bog lords. Anyways we cleared that only to discover that the trash was respawning in 45 minutes during the boss fight.

If I thought that trash was bad the trash before Kaels room at these spinning warriors of raid wipe. Basically if you didnt kill them fast enough and there was 2 of them they would spin instantly killing your melee and tanks and shooting bolts of doom at everyone in the raid.

There alot of Instances pre bc that are just terrible. Uldaman? Huge amounts of trash with terrible boss drops + a level 50 boss at the end when the place is for level 30-36? But for the instance that takes the cake is…

Shadow Labs

I was lucky. I leveled my hunter in 4 days when TBC came out. The first dungeon I ran was the hell known as Shadow Lab. Murmur god bless him decided to drop my Sonic Spear which was just awesome for hunters. I used that baby all the way to Illidan in BT. First of the place is long and filled with mountains of annoying trash. The big demon fearing dudes were just hell before they got nerfed as a fear plus huge hits on the tank would wipe us. The 7 pull trash groups before the 2nd boss were hell. An instance shouldnt take 3 hours to clear and even when I was on my prot pally the place would still take an hour plus to clear.