Kara
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Are raiders becoming obsolete?
At first glance, I didn't really think there was much out of the ordinary about a post made by one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, Neg. A number of raiding guilds have complained strenuously about the presence of easy-to-obtain epics in the game, but any post entitled, "Does Blizzard Hate Raiders?" is typically going to get a scoff and little else. I had read the article shortly before zoning into Black Temple for the third time ever, and for the first time with the ingame sound on. My guild had recently killed both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus, and while the Karabor Sewers portion of the instance is interesting to look at, it pales in comparison to what you'll see once you're offered a teleport to a different floor by a member of the Ashtongue Deathsworn. My guildies and I were really just there to farm Hearts of Darkness for resist gear and to explore a little bit, with nothing really important on our minds. Nevertheless, what we saw that night was beautiful. The floor you're ported to has a tiny, friendly area with the Ashtongue Quartermaster, but beyond that lie a number of sinister things. The ceiling is pillared by giant statues much like those that guard the portal into Outland, and rogues lurk in pairs seemingly all around you. Not infrequently you find yourself turning around to shouts on vent to see them rapidly killing off members of the raid; we finally hit upon the strategy of sending our own rogues off to sniff out the presence of danger while the raid itself was ringed and guarded on all sides by the tanks. Once another set of rogues was found, our hunters set up Flares to flush them out of hiding, marked them, and pulled carefully. You were only really safe if you were in the middle portion of the raid; wandering off to go explore on your own was unthinkable.The music is lovely, the atmosphere is stellar, and for the first time ever in a raid I felt the real sense of a dangerous place with violent, unpredictable creatures that didn't want us there. It was one of the few times that we've actually had to use real strategy as a raid outside of a boss fight. Black Temple makes it abundantly obvious that you are a small, embattled group struggling to survive against overwhelming odds. Most raids are pretty straightforward - learn the tricks to the trash, pull the trash, clear the trash, ask "What's the respawn timer?", and then kill the boss. Tempest Keep is a pretty cold and sterile environment; Serpentshrine Cavern is more interesting visually but the trash is, in many cases, just pull after pull after pull of the exact same stuff (weirdly enough, Karazhan and Zul'Aman seem to come a little closer to the Black Temple raid mentality than their Tier 5 brothers). But there is so much obvious care and attention lavished on the endgame raids, I said to myself (while taking tons of screenshots and turning the sound up), that I just don't buy the argument that Blizzard doesn't give a hoot about raiders. But Neg isn't really writing about the conflict between raiders and the rest of us, which has been a pretty thoroughly discussed in one form or another. It's his contention that the raiding world - what I saw on Thursday and what Nihilum practically does professionally - is becoming obsolete in this, the Age of Purple.
One Shots: Deconstructing Karazhan
For today, I thought I'd show off a screen I snapped some time back. You see, for all the time many of WoW players spend in Karazhan, generally there's very little time to look around. I just happened to accidentally knock the mouse around at the correct moment, and noticed this bit of MC Escher/Labyrinth inspired backdrop. And yes, that's my beloved Troll Rogue with a mohawk (not to be confused with a Night Elf Mohawk) front and center. It just goes to show you that no matter how much time you've spent in a place, there's sometimes still more to see. One Shots lives on a steady diet of your screenshots! Snapped a good screenshot lately? Tired of seeing the same old games featured? Send us shots from your favorite game! It's easy to be part of the fun -- just send your screenshots and stories to oneshots@massively.com. Yours could be up here next! %Gallery-9798%
Two players take on Karazhan
Two players with five characters each, that is! Suvega, the man who brought us quite a nice DKP system a while back, appears to be running out of challenges, so he and his girlfriend decided to see if they could multibox their way through Karazhan. So far, they've beaten Attumen, Moroes, the Maiden, and the Wizard of Oz Opera event, which is pretty darn impressive if you ask me. Check out a trailer above (or in higher quality at Stage6), follow their progress on their blog, or check this thread for pictures of their hardware setups (drool-worthy, if you ask me). Their class breakdown: Suvega controlled a Holy priest, a Prot warrior, and three Fire/Arc mages, while Vyndree helmed a Resto shaman, a Prot pally, and three Elemental shamans. What do you all think of this accomplishment?
Around Azeroth: Cherubs?
Moonsoul of Jubei'Thos offers this shot taken from the Karazhan Opera House. Though I, personally, usually spend my time in Karazhan staring at health bars, sometimes it pays to have a look around and enjoy the scenery. Otherwise, we might all have missed this unique work of Azerothian art. (For those of you checking this out full-screen, is it just me, or do those charming cherubs have horns?)Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? Because we'd love to see your idea of the best looking instance on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! %Gallery-1816%
Around Azeroth: Meet the Maiden
Lolzengers of One on Nordrassil sends us this shot of Karazhan's own Maiden of Virtue, not quite at her best moment. (For those of you who are wondering, her best is usually when she's mercilessly devouring innocent groups of raiders.) But in defeat she looks so peaceful... like the loot pinata she was clearly meant to be.Have you ventured into any new corners of the World of Warcraft lately? Send your stories and screenshots to aroundazeroth@wow.com -- your image may be featured in the next Around Azeroth! %Gallery-1816%
More polls on the WoW forums
The first poll on the official WoW forums was mentioned on WoW Insider when it was posted a few weeks ago, but since then a few more polls have been created. While one of them is obviously just for fun, the other two are more interesting.When asked "What is your favorite arena?" the Ring of Trials in Nagrand won out as everyone's favorite with 46.3% of the votes. The Ruins of Lordaeron received second place with a tally of 25.14% of the votes. While I didn't vote in this particular poll, my choices would have matched these results.Admittedly, I'm pretty much a noob to the arena. Like many other players, I mostly just get my ten matches a week to scrape up enough points for some welfare epics. Probably due to this fact, I dislike the Blade's Edge arena. The ramps, pillars, ropes and bridge create a lot of variables during an already hectic fight which can lead to panic, confusion and ultimately an inglorious defeat. Even more inglorious than normal, that is. Also, this arena in particular makes it more difficult for stealthy types (my 2v2 team is composed of a rogue and druid) to get the drop on their foes because the narrow catwalk makes a convenient place for an opposing team to make a stand with their AoE and stealth detection. What are your thoughts on the poll? Do they match the results?
Around Azeroth: Romeo and Juliet
Reader Gryffyn sends us this charming shot taken in one of the many rooms of Karazhan (in particular, in one of the hallways leading to Maiden). Is this the real story behind Romulo and Julianne's opera house performance? We may never know the story behind the skeletons... Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wow.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world! %Gallery-1816%
Guildless: The saga continues
As you might remember, I made the decision a while back to try my hand at raiding, and for the first time ever /gquit. It was with a heavy heart that I applied to a friend's raiding guild, one that had previously accepted a few of my guild's members that wanted to get into raiding. It took a couple of weeks to be accepted in, mostly because my gear was so very shoddy in comparison, and they were looking toward TK and SSC. In addition to that, I had a friend in the guild who was fighting on my behalf with the guild master, and just about the time that talks opened up between the three of us, I shipped off to BlizzCon.So I came back from the convention with an absolute burning desire to play again, something I haven't had for a good long while. I messaged the Guild Master, eager to know the results of her discussions with the other officers. No answer. I messaged my friend, and was given the run around. Just about the time I thought I better throw in the towel, my answer came. It came in the form of a guild invite. I had managed to weasel my way in.
Forum Thread of the Day: Karazhan's timer too long?
Meugly, of Wraith on H-Icecrown-US, asks the simple question "shouldn't Karazhan be on a shorter timer?" Currently, it resets every week (on Tuesday, like all the other weekly raids). ZG and AQ20, on the other hand, reset every three days. Meugly's argument basically seems to go like this: Raiding guilds are having enough trouble transitioning from 40-mans to 25-mans, so Having a 10-man raid as the pathway to 25-mans creates a huge bottleneck. You can't really skip ahead to 25-man content, since you need the gear from KZ to have a chance at later raids. If you've got a raid guild with fair amount of raiders, you've basically got two options: Run one group a week, and leave a lot of people out. Obviously imperfect. Run two groups a week. This is, as Meugly says, "a logistical horror. So many of the boss fights require a pretty specific group make up. If one of the two teams is short a single player in a key class, they probably won't be able to raid at all that night." Reducing KZ's lockout time to three days would go a long way towards addressing this. You could, for instance, have a core group that runs twice a week, with others filling in the ranks as possible. Or you could run two separate teams but just have more flexibility -- if team B is short a Priest, and team A ran before the last reset, a team A priest could come along. Also, as the OP points out, KZ is kind of a step up to Gruul and Serpentshrine Cavern and such, like how ZG and AQ20 were arguably steps up to MC and the rest of the "classic" raids; and those 20-mans were, as I've already mentioned, 3-day resets.What do you all think? Is KZ enough of a "serious" raid to warrant a full week reset timer?
