"The team felt Zul'Aman was one of our best raid dungeons of all time, but that it launched late in the Burning Crusade expansion cycle, so not that many players got a chance to experience it when it first came out. It was really the "hidden jewel" of Burning Crusade raiding. "

Unlike Naxx, which truly was the pinnacle of vanilla raid design and which virtually no one ever saw, ZA was potentially the worst of the BC raids, and I'm shocked that the devs either honestly thought otherwise or felt it was good PR to say so. Everything about ZA was a conceptual recycle of ZG. It may have had a few entertaining mechanics and it may have had some fun gimmicks, but to say it was a "hidden jewel" or "best raid dungeon of all time" is just silly. It's even dumber when you remember its primary competitor in its own expansion was Karazhan, which, while far from hidden, was and still is easily one of the top five raids blizzard has ever designed.

I think the love for ZG is well noted and a lot of people are happy to see it come back. At least as far as the people I've played with, ZA was useful only because we could sell bears to rich pubbies for thousands of gold. Otherwise, it was an annoying, often painful experience with no coherent grounding in lore. As far as I can tell, the design of ZA was, take ZG, cross off bat, tiger, panther, spider and Jin'do, write in eagle, lynx, bear, dragonhawk and Malacrass and add a timer. The color and architecture is even almost the same!

Seriously Mercer, try again.

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