On Raid Design Part 8: Karazhan
In the eight, and last, part of my raid-ranking-series (up to Ulduar) I’ll explain why Karazhan made the top spot.
Setting
This place has got “win” written all over it. First of all it’s in the old world, in deadwind pass – an area that never had much weight to it. It was a drive-through, kind of mysterious and totally different from everything else. It felt wrong to be there. Compare this to an unmotivated airborne Naxxramas, floating around without much reason to it. Compare it to Zul’Aman or Zul’Gurub, who both had pretty much just been thrown in wherever convenient (from a non-wowlore-knowledgeable perspective, that is). No, Karazhan had a story – even before it was there. Plus, there was a rather long-winded quest chain to get keyed. A solid questline that sent you places, made you kill stuff and do things. Good times.
Flair
Okay, haunted castle sounds cheesy. But Blizzard pulled that one off rather amazingly. While the whole instance is clearly one castle, the different rooms and sections are so varied that you felt like travelling through all kinds of different areas. Every single detail seemed just about right, everything made sense. The layout of the castle itself would have worked, the extra rooms you’d never need to go to, small hallways, huge salons, everything was right. You entered a normal castle, and as you got deeper into the whole thing it would get wierder and more mysterious, but still: It’s a castle with all kinds of castle-ish things to it. It’s beautiful.
And every single boss setting was well thought-through (safe for Maiden – what the heck is she doing there?). Attunmen in the stables, Moroes with his friends in the dining salon, Aran’s shade in the library – it makes sense. Those bosses are Karazhan’s weird residents, no doubt about that. And the first time you enter Curator’s hallway … don’t tell me it didn’t feel epic to pull that … thing.
Trash
Yep, back in the days when raid-trash mattered. Karazhan has a great trash-balance, both in variety and difficulty – even though it could have been a bit harder (see: Zul’Gurub, absolute win in that category). There is enough trash to make you earn your way to the bosses, yet given the gear you could still brute-force it.
Still, there is trash you have to mind, and that trash is not only a significant part of the raid, but it also caters to the atmosphere, gives you kind of a hint what’s going on, matches the current area of the castle, and there’s plenty of different trash and interesting pulls. It’s not just “we need some fights between boss encounters” – “ok, throw in huge guards and some patrols”, it’s more residents of a castle. Trash that makes sense is an underestimated contribution to the overall atmosphere.
Encounters
The variety in encounter design is amazing. There are human-size bosses, bosses with adds, gigantic bosses, a dragon, a demon, bosses with phases – no encounter is anything like any other of Karazhan’s encounters. Every fight is unique and has some kind of cool gimmick to it. Damn, I was always looking forward to the opera event, it just never got old. The love and care for detail Karazhan offers is just astounding.
The encounters aren’t particularly hard, but there is stuff going on. Moroes and the Wizard of Oz require creativity, CC and everybody has a job to do. Big Bad Wolf is just funny, Shade of Aran is a pain but feels great to finally get down, Illhoof is fast-paced and requires a full-out burn, Netherspite is all about raid-coordination – I could go on and on, but in the end it comes down to one word describing Karazhan: Entertaining.
Summary
Almost everything about this raid is perfect. The first step into the yard, the backstory with all it’s questlines reaching deep into the content of the whole expansion, the encounters and the overall feeling – this is raid design at it’s very best, and I’m hoping that we’ll see another raid this high in quality. Just tune up the trash a little bit, please!
I never thought I’d say it, but I miss Karazhan. Very good encounters, and everytime we pull Sapphiron I keep thinking how much of a joke that is compared to Nightbane and Netherspite.
I think they overdid the trash in parts though, there’s too much trash between Curator and Aran, which made it mandatory to brute-force your way to Aran, simply for the shortcut into latter Karazhan once he was downed.
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