Field Report #28 - I Finally Made It Out

Yeah, I finally made it to Outlands. I am sure you've all been wondering, crying yourself to sleep every time you realized there wasn't a new post from me. Ok maybe a bit too much hyperbole.

Let's just say I panicked a little when TBC Classic was announced. I didn't feel anywhere near done with Classic WoW and I hadn't even gotten a character up to level 60 yet at that point. I had been taking my sweet time and that meant missing out on all the end game content of Classic WoW all over again (because that was pretty much what happened the first time around). 

I know I could've stayed around. I was also pretty sure few others would, regardless of what gaming news articles were trying to tell me. The ones who would were probably some really dedicated people that would demand more of me than I could offer. I required the general public to be around, and the general public were going to move on. And so I needed to as well, sheeple that I am.

It did help that I absolutely love TBC of course. I am hyped about it, I was always looking forward to it. Just not yet. But it's ok, here it is and I couldn't stop it. Now I needed to get a character to level 58 to enjoy it.

I did get my warlock to level 60 some week or so before the launch, but for some reason I really wasn't feeling it. I remembered TBC being where my love for tanking first started and I felt an urge to get back to that again. Too bad my warrior was only level 46 or so. I realized waiting for and tanking groups probably wasn't the fastest way to go at it, so I decided to respec. Again. It is getting costly now. 

But now I am a fury warrior and I started to hit questing, hard. I mean as hard as anyone could when you've got some 1,5-2 hours game time in the evening at best. It took me about two weeks but now I finally made level 58 and got to Outlands. For the time I am going to stick with fury so that I can quest somewhat decently, and hopefully tank decently enough as well. I tanked a few Zul'Farraks for which I was quite overleveled at the time, and other than that I've never actually tanked in dps spec before. It'll be an interesting experience.

You're right Illidan, I am not prepared

Hold up a minute. Burning Crusade is a thing? I guess we all saw this coming the moment they announced they were going to release Classic. I am sure we all went "ok then, I wonder if that means...?". Of course that is what was going to happen. Classic and TBC were very popular and there is no way they're not also releasing Wrath of the Lich King once they've started down this path.

Problem is, I am so not prepared. They only released Classic 1,5 years-ish ago! I don't even have a level 60 yet!

I was always hype about the possibility of TBC coming back, just like I was mad hype about them re-releasing Classic. And I have loved every second of Classic so far, which is half the reason it has taken me forever to get anywhere (that and unlike last time I played WoW I am making sure to divide my time to other games as well). I love the leveling experience and have multiple alts between 20-50. I am not in a rush to get to end game, at all.

Except now maybe. Because there is no way I will be able to stay away from TBC once it is released. And there is no way I am going to have time for Classic and TBC. And if they will be asking us for a separate fee for both there is also a very tiny chance I will even want to have two subscriptions, I just don't see that happening. 

So here I am, kinda feeling forced to move on to TBC. Which I am not, of course. I could just lounge around in Classic some more if I want to, but I wonder if anyone else will stick around with me? Or will finding groups be even harder? It's not overly difficult at the moment, but there are evenings when I just don't find a group I want and that might happen even more as players move over to TBC. 

Classic is fun because I find great people to do content with. I also enjoy questing on my own, but that is only because I am not really on my own. I can talk to people in guild chat or run across people questing in the same area. Maybe you group up for some harder quests and then you say your goodbyes. This is where Classic WoW has always excelled I find. If I knew I was in fact one of only very few people left on a server, that would definitely take a lot of the fun out of it for me because the only thing that is really left for me to explore and that makes the game still new and fresh is other people. I've already done the content a hundred times (literally). I've done every area, every dungeon, every quest, leveled every class at the very least once.

And yet I just don't feel anywhere near done enjoying Classic yet. I still want to get to end-game, there are still several instances and every raid that I haven't done (this time around). Most raids I didn't even get around to experience current-content the first time around, because I wasn't in a raiding guild and I don't recall PUG raids being anywhere near as common back then as they seem to be now. While I did do MC and ZG a handful of times before TBC was released, I never saw UBRS, BWL or Onyxia until after that. 

But I know most people probably have been in end-content for a year now and maybe they are feeling done with it. I've heard it's difficult to find groups for PvP which might've otherwise bolstered end game. I heard that Blizzard intend to keep dedicated Classic servers running but I wonder how long they will do that if most people leave them. I don't know, maybe it is a good thing that I am sort of being ushered along since I seem to just loiter around and not even get to end game, but I can't help but feeling this will only mean I am going to miss Classic all over again (until they re-re-release it in another 15 years).

We Need More World-Events

In my line of work I often meet people (mostly teenagers) who share my love and enthusiasm for video games and we often end up both playing and talking a lot about them. The other day I got to hang out with a guy who was playing Runescape (among other things) and he told me a bit about it. It seems like a cool game in general although extremely grindy (apparently quests of the sort "kill 100 of these" are standard. Yes 100, that's no exaggeration) but one thing in particular stuck in my mind. He told me of an event that, if I understood correctly, happened pretty recently in-game as part of an update/expansion to the game. Players were asked to hand in buckets of sand (and possibly other things the kid didn't mention) and in the end an island (or possibly beach) emerged in the game that hadn't been there before - complete with new places to skill up different professions or techniques. Now if you happen to play Runescape and know I got that all wrong, what matters is that it got me thinking about inclusion in video games and that it is the one thing that really sets MMO's apart from your every day singleplayer game.

And they say WoW graphics are outdated (Runescape in 2007) - forums.zybez.net

It might sound weird to talk about inclusion when talking about video games, because in essence video games are all about inclusion. Their interactive nature naturally invites the player to feel included and feel like they affect what happen around them (more or less). But MMO's can provide inclusion on a different scale, one in which the individual (that is you) gets to truly feel like they are part of something bigger and like they made a difference in the world around them.

Looking at a game like World of Warcraft, Blizzard have always known the power of this and allowed players to feel included in every expansion they released. Instead of just telling players there was a new expansion coming, they allowed us to experience it and take part of it through special events in game. One of my favorites was the massive event that preluded the opening of Ahn'Qiraj. Back then I had just started playing and was far from a raider, so I had little understanding of what was going on other than that everyone, from a low level casual scrub like me to the hardcore raiders, regardless of faction, united to achieve a common goal. There was something to get for everyone, you didn't have to be part of a big guild or know a lot of people who played - you just needed to take part in the event. It just felt magical to be part of something as massive as that undertaking. The event included gathering a vast variety of items and hand them in, but everyone could chip in and that was the important part.

You had to be there - imagekb.com

And the events that lead up to Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were similar huge folk festivals where everyone seemed to stop what they were doing and come together to achieve the same goal regardless of whether you were a pvp:er, raider or quester. My rose tinted goggles will allow me to ignore the fact that Blizzard obviously cleverly designed the events to entice these different groups to come together, but that is exacly what good game design should do.

I think this is different from multiplayer games in general, where you obviously also see a bunch of people work together (hopefully) for a common cause. Most importantly because these MMO events offer change - they allow the player to take place in changing the world that they live in rather than just repeating an action (like any multiplayer shooter for instance where the same goal is achieved or failed over and over without permanent change, similar to the seasonal events or pvp done in WoW.)

Party with the dead - wow-one.com

Could you implement something similar in a singleplayer game? Would we even want that? I am thinking both yes and no. On the one hand I always think it's interesting to see how you could develop new gaming experiences, on the other hand I feel like singleplayer and multiplayer games deliver very different gaming experiences and that's ok. Naturally there are things in multiplayer you can't do in singleplayer and vice versa and I doubt you could conjure the same feeling of scale in a singleplayer game as you could in a multiplayer, unless you somehow managed to hook up singleplayers making it a sort of inbetween like Dark Souls. Could you make multiplayer games other than MMOs adopt this idea? Could a game like Team Fortress 2 or CoD include this kind of gameplay? I am sure they could, in fact I would love to see it be done more often. Instead of just giving players a new map/arena/whatever, you could have an in-game event regarding it. Whether it would go down well or people prefer things to be as static and predictable as possible in these kind of settings I don't know - personally I would love a bit of gameplay diversity (which might be why I don't play those kind of games much).

And what kind of content should have these kind of world-events? Anything? Free stuff or pay for stuff? It worked in WoW to have everyone engage in a world-event that essentially preceded something that you still had to pay for to experience but I am not sure that works in any kind of game. But I am probably getting way ahead of myself here.

I haven't played enough other MMO's to know to which extent they incorporate this kind of gameplay, I can't recall anything like it in the few months I played Warhammer though. I do realize it is probably a huge undertaking for a game developer to try to achieve but the reward must surely be worth it. I can only speak for myself but all of the world-events I took part in in WoW, which was pretty much all of them from Vanilla to early MoP, became some of my fondest and best memories of the game.

My personal opinion is that the experience got watered down as WoW progressed, but it might also just be that every new world-event became less and less of a big thing for me. It was just another expansion with another world-event. I like to think that is not the case and I'm not that jaded, but rather that Blizzard included the players less and less. If I compare the level of player commitment required for the Ahn'Qiraj event with that of the Mists of Pandaria event... wait, did MoP even have an event? I can't remember it if it did. But Ahn'Qiraj wasn't even for an expansion, just another (or technically two) new raids. In Burning Crusade we got to work together to unlock the Sunwell Isle. I would've loved to see more events like that, that changed parts of the game, big or small. To me nothing else ever came close to making the world feel as alive, real and worthwhile as those all-player-including world-events ever did.

Zinn's Nostalgic Instances - Ramparts

Name any BC or Classic dungeon and I've probably done it about 100 times by now, with few exceptions. The Wrath dungeons are closing in on that amount. Whenever they change one of the old instances, and in the case of the Classic ones they've basically remade them all in some way by now, I both get happy and sad. Sad that the old instance is gone forever, because in a way it is, and happy that they're adapting it to the style of the new times so that more people can enjoy it. I think this is a reason I quite like the BC instances so much. They've been simplified almost beyond recognition, but overall they at least still look a lot like the originally used to.

By doing these instances on my alts, mostly burning through parts and bosses that used to be incredibly difficult, I chuckle to myself as I remember the olden times and think about the massive difference in challenge that the instance now holds compared to when it was current content. I think about boss skills and mob groups that used to require a massive cooperative effort from the group to pull off, and compare it to the mass-pulls of the runs I do today. Of course there is a difference in difficulty because I am doing normal rather than heroic runs on my alts, and I wouldn't even want the instances to be as hard as they used to be when I am only online for 30 min to do a quick pug run. Eventhough some of the old instances hold some challenge still (when done in the appropriate level) even on heroic most of them are something you just dance through without any thought.

But doing the pug run makes me remember how much fun I had struggling through these dungeons and I wanted to commemorate those memories and share them, somehow. So how should I put this. For anyone who was there I am sure you've got your own set of horrible and awesome memories connected to any or all of what was the dreadful heroics of BC. I hope this can be a little trip down memory lane for you. For you who weren't there, maybe this can be a tiny glimps into a world that just doesn't exist anymore. A ruthless, unforgiving time when Blizzard wanted you to sacrifice a lot more of your time and sanity than they ever do nowadays. They new they could ask for it because we were ready to give it to them. Over and over we bashed our heads against these walls and only rarely did they crumble. Only with the best of teamwork and group effort. Which only made it feel all the more rewarding. Like those rare times when I end up in a pug today who does well in an instance not because of overgearing it and steam rolling through but because everyone does their best and actually tries to help eachother. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that feeling, but to me it's like everyone in that pug just became my very best friend for a short moment in my life.

I don't know if this is something that will interest anyone else, but to me that kind of what a blog is all about anyway.

Unlike heroics nowadays, most mobs were pretty annoying in old heroics. This isn't necessarily a good thing, hence the use of the word "annoying" rather than "challenging". The BC heroics inherited stuns and fears that lasted more than five seconds from the Classic dungeons, back when Blizzard still thought it would be hilarious to see players struggle to keep aggro and eachother alive when being incapacitated for what seemed like an eternity.

The key for these instances was crowd control, and that is what I do like about them. Eventhough I think Blizzard overestimated how much puggers are willing to put into a group filled with strangers they'll never meet again, when it did click and everyone just felt like helping out it was one of the best experiences ever, like I already mentioned. You did need a lot of patience (and back then not only for the instance but for the whole group forming and gathering as well), and very few puggers had it which Blizzard soon realized.

Nonetheless, players are prone to look back even at the worst of times with happy nostalgic memories glinting in their eyes, including these. It's easy to forget all the struggle and frustration behind those horrible pulls, mobs and bosses, but this was back when we had the time for it and just didn't know any better.

Top 5 Things I Am Glad They Changed In WoW (Part 2)

nos·tal·gi·a  (n-stlj, n-)
n.
1. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

You might think you know what this post is about (except that the title probably gave it away), but you'll probably be wrong. But I'll get to that too eventually.

It has always fascinated me when people long for the olden days, thinking that just because it rhymes with "golden" everything about it was gold-tinted. People who see Game of Thrones and think "Would've been awesome to live back then (i.e imaginary middle ages), life was so much simpler". Oh, you mean back when a common cold could kill you? Yeah, have fun with that. The same effect can be seen in WoW, fascinatingly enough it seems like every new expansion makes the old one seem so much better than when it was current content. I know this for a fact because when Burning Crusade was released, loads of people were whining about the removal of 40-man raids. When Wrath was released, loads of people were moaning about how the raids of BC were so much better. When Cataclysm was released, people suddenly started to think that ICC had been one of the best raids they'd been to. And these examples are just a piss in the sea to all the complaints that were actually thrown around, and suddenly forgotten as soon as people didn't have to play that content anylonger.

Some things do get worse as a game moves on and changes. I am woman enough to admit that I look back at all the previous expansions wishing I could replay them as if they were new, for different reasons. I miss the class quests of Vanilla, I miss the feel of BC and the raiding of Wrath, just to mention a few things. But change can also be for the better, which I have written about previously. And here is my part two of "Top 5 Things I Am Glad They Changed In WoW".

5. Pet Handling

I must say I think they've taken the simplification of pet handling a wee bit too far when it comes to hunters. I reckon soon you won't even have to tame your pets, you just go to the stable and get to choose from a big list. No wait, next up your skills will automatically put a dot on your target and also bless your party with a buff of your choice, because that is what the pet has become now anyway - a dot plus buff with an animation. And it can die. Actually, what's left of pets is exactly that, a dot plus buff with a drawback, much like the shaman totems which makes it more annoying than fun in my book.

But every change to pet handling has not been to the worse, there were some things about it that was plain infuriating. Many of these things are still around, like the way your pet sometimes bugs out when you interact with temporary quest pets, getting caught in a limbo where you are unable to dismiss or call for your pet. I could be wrong but I want to recall there being an even more annoying feature to pet handling though, the fact that your pet would despawn everytime you mounted anything, or at least after everytime you had used a flight path. Every. Time.

I'm not sure if this was true for hunters, but unless my memory fails me this was at least true for warlocks. And how often do you mount and dismount/fly during the course of a gaming session? The answer is: A-frickin-lot. Unlike hunters, warlocks didn't just have the one second "whistle-and-your-pet-comes"-skill either, but had to recast those six or whatnot seconds every time. I disagree with most of the changes done to pets, as I liked the feeding and even the differences in stats that hunter pets had, but I am definitely happy they changed this specific issue.

4. Disenchanting

Enchanting used to be one of the few professions that didn't benefit the alts of the user. Unlike most other professions, where you could just send items to your alts when needed, you still needed to ask other people to enchant the bop gear of your alts. Fortunately, they adressed that issue by introducing the enchanting vellums, very handy. But do you remember when you had to manually give all the blues and greens of the instance to the enchanter of the party for them to disenchant, and then if you were lucky in the end they would hand them back to you? Some people complain about how enchanters nowadays just ninja need on greens, but trust me, it used to be a lot worse. I read a funny story regarding this, I can't remember where now, about how a warlock collecting soul shards got called a ninja for not distributing his soul shards at the end of the instance, that someone in the party mistook for enchanting material. Good times.

3. Traveling

I remember when dying in Maraudon usually meant the end of the party. Not only did it take 10-15 minutes to get to the cave, then you usually had to wait another 20 minutes for the person to find their way to the entrance of the specific instance you were in. You were screwed if you were doing a Princess Run, since you needed the staff to open the instance entrance portal, and that staff wasn't usable when dead.

Dying in some parts of Barrens meant a 10 minute run even from the nearest graveyard and worst of all, trying to get to Ironforge as a Night Elf was a dull nightmare run of 30 minutes unless you managed to convince a warlock to summon you or a mage to port you. Tricky business for a new player without friends or funds. Getting to Badlands, some parts of Stranglethorn Vale or dying in any of the Blackrock Mountain instances also meants tens of minutes in running. After a couple of deaths or a couple of alts, it quickly became very boring and very tedious. They've definitely improved most of the traveling time sinks that used to be in the game and many of them were horrible.

2. Collecting Instance Groups

People love whining about how the LFD tool turned instancing into a mindless business with the party being a group of indiviuals, no one caring about the next person more than they would any npc (actually probably less). This is without a doubt one of my favorite subjects, and I tend to return to it over and over, because eventhough there are a lot of things that could be better about pugging, few things were better about how it was done before the LFD-tool.

I remember asking around in the lfg-channel for easily an hour before finally having a group, this was especially true for any instance that wasn't popular like any midlevel instance. Any setback (like dying in Maraudon, see 3.) would normally have one of the members leaving, just like now, which basically put you back to square zero in terms as whether you were going to get the instance done or not. There was no zoning back to questing then, you had to do all the traveling to where you were and then back to the instance when you finally found the last member. If you were lucky, you got one instance done every second hour. People didn't mind much because they didn't know of any better - this was the way instancing was done. Also everything was still new and fresh so we didn't mind things taking a little time. Since we didn't get to do the instances often at all, we didn't grow tired of them as quickly as we do now and tend to remember them as so much more fun and epic. Now that we're spoiled with the extreme simplicity we seem to have forgotten what a pain in the ass getting an instance back then used to be.

1. Diminishing Returns

I remember people thinking protection warriors be OP in arena pvp back in Wrath, I know people constantly complain about how annoying warlocks are with all their fears. Thank heavens for diminishing returns, right? What if I told you they didn't always exist? Initially, stuns, fears and incapacitates lasted their full duration, all the time, which made some classes unbearably annoying to fight against and endlessly fun to play. Warriors were an extra level of fun because of the amount of randomness in their stuns, another thing Blizzard later on decided to remove as much as possible, I can only imagine the masses of keyboards and monitors destroyed during the early years of WoW because of sheer frustration.

And stuns used be a major thing about the game. If you decide to tank through an instance like LBRS or especially UBRS, you will quickly notice that some packs seem to stun you all the dang time and that is even with diminishing returns! Why did Blizzard ever think that a fun part about tanking was to stand around unable to do any actual tanking while the mobs run around everywhere? Back when they still thought the rest of the party would actually give a crap and help you out by dpsing carefully and sensibly, heh.

The only reason I ever succeeded in world pvp back in Vanilla was because I decided to main a shadow priest and then warlock shortly, and the fears saved me every time. The whole concept of "stunlocking" was truly created back then, when a rogue could sneak up on you and keep you stunned until you died, sometimes even until you dismounted. Yes, this happens still today, but back then this was what was to be expected in an encounter with these classes, and some classes just didn't stand a chance against it, which is why Blizzard decided to balance it out although no way near fast enough. For all the stun- and fearlocks I've had to suffer through, I am immensely glad they introduced diminishing returns into WoW.

Zinn's Photo Album

I was cleaning out some space on my computer the other day to fit more transformers porn really important things that absolutely aren't porn, when I stumbled across a folder with really old screenshots. I thought I had lost all of those when my old computer fried! But then I remembered only the mother board fried and the hard drive was transferred over to Loves computer where I had completely forgotten about all the things I had on there. And then somehow those things ended up back on my computer... Long story short, I found pictures. Looking at them really is a trip down memory lane. The guilds I've been in, the people I've played with. The bosses I've killed (surprisingly many with the entire raid dead) and the Ui's I've used! Come huddle around, this could be just as interesting as when your uncle showed you the pictures from that trip to Mallorca (and a perfect way for me to save my favorites to the eternal internets).

BURNING CRUSADE

Feb 7th 2008 - Gruul's Lair on my lock. Really liked those fights, especially as a lock.

Feb 20th 2008 - Getting ready for Prince Malchezaar with some naked dancing.

Feb 24th 2008 - When heroics were still heroic. Or maybe we were just bad.

April 10th 2008 - SSC, look at that beautiful UI!

April 8th 2008 - Hex Lord Malacrass is still among my favorite boss fights. Can you see me behind the fat tauren?

April 29th 2008 - We rarely got to Zul'jin because Malacrass was such a pain in the ass.

May 6th 2008 - Mage last one standing on a Leotheras kill. Toight like a toiger.

May 24th 2008 - I loved the buff you got in Karazhan that spawned an army of women that followed you around. Does that make me sad?

May 26th 2008 - We mostly ended up killing trash in Mount Hyjal, but occasionally also a boss.

Sep 4th 2008 - The one time I killed Magtheridon.

WRATH OF THE LICH KING

Jan 27th 2009 - Spider cow watches over the city.

March 2nd 2009 - I am proud of that Lightwell placement. Just trying to give people a challenge.

April 1st 2009 - Less Rabi still haunts my dreams.

April 27th 2009 - Still using Xperl. I really liked Ulduar.

May 9th 2009 - Everyone including boss dead on Razorscale. Hate when that happens.

May 18th 2009 - I definitely had a hate-love relationship with Mimiron. Mostly hate.

June 16th 2009 - Wish they'd make another fight like General Vezax.

July 8th 2009 - I cried when I lost the tier token, but Yogg-Saron is still one of my all time favorites.

August 4th 2009 - Kel'Thuzad, yet another epic fight.

Sep 4th 2009 - Wotlk talent tree! Looks the same tbh.

Sep 7th 2009 - After ENDLESS 1% wipes, finally Sarth 3D.

Jan 19th 2010 - Balls big enough for two faces.

April 5th 2010 - The first kill of a boss is always nice, but killing LK the first time was truly epic. Miss you Mayhem.

Oct 23rd 2010 - Everyone plus boss dead, on BQL hc.

CATACLYSM

20th of March 2011 - Astralis, server only to take Al'akir hc in current content. Unfortunately I wasn't there.

Do you remember Chamber of Secrets?

I've always been quite fond of the event bosses in WoW, and over the years they have increased in number. I can't remember which used to be the first one... I can't even remember all the ones we have now. Off the top of my head; The Yeti, Headless Horseman, Omen, Ahune, Crown Chemical Co., and ehh... some other probably really obvious ones I've forgotten about already. Yeah, I'm getting old.

But they haven't just added bosses, they've actually also removed a couple. Or at least one. Lazy as I am, I often end up having really old quests left in the quest logs of my alts. And by really old, I mean fracking old. I've already told you about the time I tried to finish The Cudgel of Kardesh on my lock, a quest I have yet to actually complete (I'll get back to you on that). When logging on to my shaman the other day, I stumbled onto this beauty - Chamber of Secrets. Remember Karazhan? Remember the event boss they put in there over Halloween 2008 (although not actually connected to Halloween)? If the answer to any of the above questions is no, you've missed out (especially if you don't know about Karazhan! GO DO IT NAU. Or read this handy post.).

Chamber of Secrets was, as mentioned, a special quest to kill a special boss during the Scourge Invasion event that foreboded the coming of Wrath of the Lich King and Northrend. "Omg!", you're probably thinking. "Who, what, when?! Please tell me more!". Tenris Mirkblood was situated inside an area of Karazhan where you wouldn't normally go and he only had two drops, two awesome drops however - a remodelling of Arcanite Reaper, and a 100% raid wide little Vampiric Batling pet.

And a lot better than Twilight.

I don't remember the fight as being particularly difficult. Not the roflstomp loot-piñatas of event bosses we have nowadays, back then things like these were actually some challenge - but definitely a lot easier than a regular raid boss would be.

Bat to the left.

Just as a proof of how long ago this was, this was during the short period of time when I was maining a warlock, and for some reason I never got around to doing it on any other character. Look at that cute little thing. No, I mean the bat. So yeah, now you know I'm cooler than you. Or maybe just that I've played this game for too long.

Traveller's Guide to Zul'Aman

Zul'aman is my favorite raid instance of all time, and shares that spot only with Karazhan. They're both incidentally the first two raids I seriously raided. In fact I think there is no coincidence about that at all. I had just started raiding and exploring my preistlyness, I felt like I had everything left to learn and experience. There is no doubt something very charming about being a noob. The bosses of Zul'aman were well designed and fun, the only drawback of the raid instance were the tedious trash (especially those blasted Scouts). Malacrass is still on top of my Worst bosses ever- list in terms of difficulty and challenge. Because he adapted with the group setup, he was truly never the same from one try to the next. Throw in a random setup of four adds that he had and you could have some truly hellish fights. Because of him I only ever got to kill Zul'jin twice or so, we always got stuck on that bass turd Malacrass *shake fist*. Those are really fond memories however, so when Love asked me if I wanted to do a run through Zul'aman just for fun, I immediately said "YES!". Also as a chance to see the instance one last time before it is revamped. Running in there with a handful of level 85 players doesn't do the instance much justice. most bosses lived for some 5-10 seconds, which didn't allow them much time to get the fight into the difficult parts. If I had the possibility I'd easily get in there with a proper level 70 raid.

Running up to the instance through Ghostlands, in which you still can't fly by the way. I know they'll fix this, it's just funny they didn't implement it from the start.

I love the design of this place.

This is the first time we got to meet Harrison Jones, and even though he meets a rather nasty fate in here, he returns in both Wrath and Cataclysm and turns into a rather prominent feature in Azeroth. Time to gong the gong!

Most of the bosses had some sort of gauntlet event leading up to their platform, only exceptions are Malacrass and Zul'jin. Nalorakk the bear lord, was usually the first boss one killed, seeing as he was the easiest. As I was in a swedish guild back then we called Nalorakk "Nalle", which is swedish for "bear".

The gauntlet usually meant alot of ccing. I remember you had to tank switch when he changed forms, and we usually used bear on bear here.

Another gauntlet. You had to work your way up with mobs spawning from both ends of the gauntlet. We usually had our raid split in two, with one half dealing with the front mobs and one half dealing with the back mobs.

On our way to Akil'zon, the eagle lord. He had a nasty thunderstorm under which you had to gather and also summoned loads of eagle adds that we had locks and hunters shoot down.

The worst gauntlet was the one leading to Jan'alai, it had scouts that called for help and Fire Breathers that dealt big damage. You had to advance in a steady pace and make sure to kill all scouts you saw asap, much like in Stonecore. I don't know how many times we wiped in this gauntlet.

Jan'alai the dragonhawk lord, was a really funny boss to do. In the background you can see a group of eggs, he had another group of them on the opposite side. After a while he would call on trolls to open up the eggs, which would then spawn buttloads of dragonhawks. It was managing the dragonhawks that was the real challenge of this fight, all the while he threw out fire balls that looked like popcorn on the ground and which of course had to be avoided at all costs.

Next gauntlet! Many lynx, handle them.

Halazzi the lynx lord was definitely one of the tougher bosses in ZA. He hit like a truck and you basically had to have a hunter for tranquilizing shot back then, because when he enraged, people died.

Malacrass... my nemesis. Malacrass was a fun boss to do as lock, because you could be put on banish, fear and seduce duty if you were unlucky. I regularly had to shackle on this fight when healing.

Malacrass took on skills depending on which classes you had in the raid. I remember paladin being among the worst because it made him Consecrate, use Retribution Aura (which did alot of damage) and use Avenging Wrath (which had to be dispelled asap). Priest was pretty annoying too with the fearing.

Due to a trigger happy priest in our group I didn't get to join in on this fight. I remember the cyclone phase being the worst one, where you had to constantly move from cyclones that moved around in the room. We wiped once due to Love forgetting to re-equip his staff from a previous wipe, and he was critted because without the staff he wasn't crit immune. This is at least the third time I tell that story on this blog alone. He will never stop hearing it.

Victory!
I got 7 sticks to try my luck with getting Mojo, but alas. I did get an epic blacksmithing pattern however!

Good bye Zul'aman. It will be interesting to see how the 5 man instance version will turn out. If it is half as fun as the raid, I'm happy.