"The Karazhan mistake"
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 3rd 2007 at 1:00PM
AFK Gamer's got a great post up about what he calls "The Karazhan Mistake." At BlizzCon, and now in Leipzeig, Blizzard has been patting themselves on the back for the 10man raid of Karazhan-- it's clearly the most popular raid in the expansion (does that have anything to do with the fact that it's the first raid most guilds do?), and so they say the 10man raid idea of theirs is the bomb. Along with the new Zul'Aman, we can expect to see more 10mans in Wrath of the Lich King.But AFK says they've learned the wrong lesson. While Karazhan is definitely popular, creating a 10man raid in the guild progression path (remember, UBRS didn't start as a 10man, and it wasn't really a progression instance) was a mistake. It's more or less where all the guild drama and frustration in the expansion has come from-- guilds with only 10 people are rare and far between, and so most guilds have to schedule and run multiple raid IDs just to get everyone through there. And now (eight months after the expansion has dropped), while most guilds have finally got Karazhan (and all that raid coordination) down pat, they're dealing with another problem: beefing back up to 25 for the rest of the raids. Blizzard's making guilds jump through all these hoops, and deal with all of this group A/B drama, and they're citing Karazhan as a success?
AFK's solution is a simple one: lower the cooldown on raid IDs. (His other solution is to have raid IDs be guildwide, but letting only 10 people in a guild run Karazhan weekly is a terrible idea.) That would more or less take the raid out of progression (in essence, turn it into UBRS), and let you go there whenever you had 10 people ready and willing, leaving the real raiding to the 25 mans.
Personally, I love Karazhan. It's a great dungeon with some cool bosses and lore, and Blizzard's right: it's how raids should be done. It's just too bad that, by creating a great 10 man in a world full of 25 man raids, they caused guilds (especially guilds just starting to raid) so much trouble.w
[ via Mystic Worlds ]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Blizzard, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Tchernobyl Sep 3rd 2007 1:18PM
hear hear! on top of cutting down groups from 40 to 25, having a gearing up/attunement process (before removal of attunements) being in a 10 man is senseless, however well designed the instance is.
Flow Sep 3rd 2007 1:18PM
Sot true, my guild is farming karazhan for 2 months now and rushing through in less than 2 hours is normal. Allthough the coordination and gear is becoming nice we never even attempted gruul. We simply cant get 25 man together cuz all other guilds are raiding kara too. Maybe its my server horde-alliance population, but reading this thread makes me think we are not only guild with this kind of issues.
Adam Sep 3rd 2007 1:18PM
I have to agree. Blizz says its a success just because of the sheer number of people running it. But the fact that a lot of people are running it should be obvious: it's small and it's easy.
The transition from Kara to 25-mans is weird and can be difficult, though I'm not saying that 10-mans are competely horrible.
I just think that maybe 10-man raiding and 25-man raiding should be on different, yet parallel, tracks. So if you're a guild that can't or doesn't want to do 25-mans you have a 10-man progression to go through but if you're a guild that wants to go into 25-mans you can just do that and are not forced to do anything in the 10-man track.
Mainstay Sep 3rd 2007 1:26PM
I think the transition from 10 to 25 is kinda odd, I mean you have 2.5 Kara groups in each 25 man guild, so how exactly is that supposed to work?
Personally, I think they should make the 25 man content for the power guilds and 10 man content for the more casual raiders who can't commit to 5-7 day raid schedules.
Course, I know a lot of people are going to be like "nooooooo" in these responses, but I mean seriously, why not have 10 man stuff where people can get fairly equivalent epics, just don't give the casuals the tier stuff.
BaboonNL Sep 3rd 2007 1:31PM
Karazhan is exactly what a raid should not be like imo. =/
Way too much trash, boring boss fights, too easy, and too hard to get out of it.
You either have 2 Karazhan groups and 5 people are way undergeared for 25-mans, or you have 3 groups and 5 people don't get raid spots.
Glad we don't run that place anymore.
Ryan Sep 3rd 2007 1:32PM
Well, ZA will be on a 4-day timer I believe, so wish granted.
Zghuk Sep 3rd 2007 1:40PM
"Allthough the coordination and gear is becoming nice we never even attempted gruul. We simply cant get 25 man together cuz all other guilds are raiding kara too"
same here. 20 players would be ok, but 25 players is too much. If we want to do gruul by oneself, we had to have 3 karazhan raids... :-(
Rich Sep 3rd 2007 1:43PM
I agree completely. It was a huge, terrible mistake and killed a lot of guilds.
Fletch Sep 3rd 2007 1:48PM
Honestly they should've stuck with either 25-man or 10-man raids, not both.
john3103 Sep 3rd 2007 1:50PM
Idealally, the 10-person Epic Raids should be on a 7-day timer, with an 'optional' reset after 3 days.
Then a group could learn the raid over 10 days, but a more advanced guild could farm it a bit faster with less drama over A/B groups.
wolffy45 Sep 3rd 2007 1:57PM
We are a guild with around 20 lvl 70s plus some low lvls. All friends or friends' buddies. 3/4 of the 70s can raid 2 to 3 nights a week, the rest are casual/PVP. I believe there are many guilds like us who don't blindly recruit just to make up numbers for 25 man, and Kara is a godsend cos we have a core group of raiders but really not enough to do 25 man.
I am sure many of you think Kara is pushover, but it's a real challenge to us due to our casual nature and RL committments. And we love the challenge.
By all means, have more 20-40 man raids for the more serious raiders, I just hope Blizzard can continue to put out more 10-man content for guilds like us who don't have the manpower, but want to raid.
Dev can remove 10 man raid as part of attunement imo, but I would love the raid to be as reasonably hard as possible for 10 man, so the gear is still relevant compared to 25 man.
We don't mind learning fights, jus make sure there are new fights to learn for people like us.
Ayashi Sep 3rd 2007 2:28PM
I really like that 10-man raids exist. Yeah it causes drama - my old guild totally broke up because of what I believe was aftermath from Karazhan drama (Team A + Team B, they started out having balanced groups, then for some reason the main tank from Team B, and some other well-geared players, decided they wanted to be on Team A instead... boom).
However, it has allowed my small guild to raid and have fun! but I very much enjoy being able to do a raid instance with my guildies without having to pull in from another guild, which is what we will have to do eventually if we want to go to Gruul's Lair or something of the sort :/
mehlvogel Sep 3rd 2007 2:16PM
My opinion and situation is *exactly* the same as posted by #11.
Jay Sep 3rd 2007 2:52PM
@10:
Agree with you. The size of Kara, you need to have a 7 day window for learning progression. But once you're clearing it, being able to reset the instance after 3 or 4 days should be available to help reduce the headache and drama of working towards 25 man raids...
Menehune Sep 4th 2007 7:29PM
Very good post! I lead a group and we are not guilded to avoid the "guild politics". But we are at the transition where we need 2 groups to start thinking of Gruul's Lair. And as human nature has it..it is hard to get the 2nd group going as all want to be in the existing group. Makes me wish it was a 15 man instance with all tier 4 tokens in it. We are giving ourselves 2 months to get two groups going so we can go to Gruul's. Wish us luck!
Grimia Sep 3rd 2007 3:03PM
The 10/25 split really is hard for guilds that want to move up and aren't starting with a number of people in key spots that are already "done" with Kara. If it was 10 then 20 man raids it would be a lot easier for guilds to move up to higher content. For our guild we can usually have 2 groups going in Kara but when we try and do Gruul it's 20-22 guildies and then some good friends from other guilds filling in those last spots.
rick gregory Sep 3rd 2007 2:58PM
Hmm.... Um... no.
You don't need Kara as attunment for the 25 mans. You can walk straight into Gruul and Mag's without every seeing Kara. So if you don't like the idea of a 10 man and you have 25 dedicated raiders... go into Gruul.
What? The mobs are hard and you need the gear in Kara? Oh, i'm sorry, you want the first couple of 25 mans NERFED? So you can do them in blues? Uh huh...
I get the drama potential, i've seen a little of it. You know why guilds split over Kara? Because if immature, selfish people. People who want to be in the uber group and not help folks.... or who demanded that more advanced people *always* help the less advanced people.
Kara lets people start raiding without 25 geared players at 70. It's an odd progression from 10 to 25 if you have 2 kara groups who are always the same people it leaves 5 slots to make up. But, at least in my guild, we rotate people in... some one can't make it, wants a week off, etc.
This game is about fun - people who get all tweaked and gkick or gquit over raiding issues seem to forget that. Of COURSE Blizzard thinks of Kara as a success because it IS in the way that matters to them - a lot of people run it.
Matthew Rossi Sep 3rd 2007 2:59PM
Two thoughts:
A heroic 10 man? One where the mobs and bosses are a little harder and it resets in 3 days instead of 7? Maybe with better loot or badges.
Before, we had 10, 20 and 40 man raids. Why did we go to 10 and 25? Why not either resurrect the 20 man, or go to 30?
Medros Sep 3rd 2007 3:32PM
Guild wide raid IDs is a bad idea plain and simple. It punishes those who, for time or timing, don't raid with their guild. Right now Kara is, what, 7 days? Only hardcore guilds who could even fathom raiding it twice or more a week would benefit from lowered timers. Removing the raid timer all together would likewise be a big mistake, because that would ensure that any small change in group configuration would mean all the progression would be lost. T make most of those changes, they wold have to weaken Kara to at least half of what it is now.
ryno106 Sep 3rd 2007 3:38PM
The only problem is the numbers. There's no reason to have a 10-man be a prerequisite for the 25-man content. Having it be either 20 or 30 would make a lot of problems go away, and eliminate most of the drama that goes with it.
10-mans are good because they give people who don't have any desire to do big 25-man raids the ability to get into some content and not be pressured by such a big group. I'm definitely going to be looking forward to ZA.