Poster: Stompfoot at 9/15/2005 10:18:33 PM PDT
Subject: Zul Gurab: A SMASHING Success |
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Kudos blizz, I tried ZG with my guild the other day and we got up to Hakaar, found out the cool trick to him too but had to stop before we gota kill. I just wanted to offer my thoughts on the dungeon.
Firstly, I am extremely impressed with the look and feel of the zone. You really did nail it and I hope the instance design team takes on board how much people appreciate this. (Yes im referring to Molten core and how bland it is in comparison for a 40 man raid) Zul Gurab actually feels interesting to be in, and fun to advance in the environment. Molten core? Well further down the tunnel is... another tunnel! And lava, and an ash pillar - thats about it.
Please make sure when you design silithus you dont resort back to the molten core style of wall-floor-celing-lava approach, (as my exploration of silithus found, thats what it looks like so far, just tunnells...) but instead draw from ZG and how much people want a zone that feels that alive.
Zul Gurab brings back some of the fun raiding, that boring visual instances like MC have started to take away.
The boss fights? Fantastic design, I especially liked Hexxer, a neat design. Hakkar, his model im not sure about but its definetely a fun fight and will be hard enough for guilds/pug's but not to hard as to alienate them once strats become available.
Lootwise I think you nailed it again. I see alot of ppl here in BWL/MC guilds complain that 'omg item x from ZG is just about as good as a MC' item. However I think ppl tend to forgot the 'casual' guilds/players that cant get to mc/bwl will actually have to work a bit harder than they will to kill the bosses and acquire this loot.
Yesterday I saw a staff drop that was almost as good as SOD. You said you wanted loot to be good but not quite as good as MC, thats exactly how I felt when the staff of Hexxer dropped. It was almost worth rolling on, but kept the SOD from MC instead and gave this to a UBRS equipped friend.
Its not like every PUG and their friend will be doing hakaar tomorrow and getting loot similar to the BWL guilds guys!
Also, I feel like I have much more of a roll (as a mage) in the Hexxer fight than just about any fight in Molten Core, except bosses like Shazzrah.
This is exactly what people wanted, a fun fight where we feel our roll is important. Molten core tends to in most fights be just repetitive spamming of one or two buttons. Fights like Hexxer require more than this and have a nice immersion factor, encouraging people to quickly adapt as the situation changes (eg you get cursed, or teleported) and act accordingly. Also I loved the dancing zombies/skellies, its a funny site and another cool bit of polish on the zone.
Also, in game voices for boss = very cool, (referring to hakaar, ragnaros, vael etc) and I hope to see more of these in game in future.
Now dont get me wrong, I love MC, and the start of BWL tho our guild isnt up to third boss yet. But ZG comparitively just seems to have some much more 'feel' to it and thats something Molten Core definetely lacks. (Although I still think Ragnaros is the funnest fight in the game)
BWL (referring to Vael) makes really nice attempts to get this cool feel in the instance with lore and a neat design twist too.
In short blizz I think Zul Gurab is a great success and I hope your next 20 and 40 man instances will have this level of atmosphere and detail that places like Molten Core lack.
People like to whine and whine about everything blizzard does, but is there anyone else that just has been very impressed with ZG and would like to share that sentiment here? Id love to hear what aspects of ZG other people were really impressed with, too.[ post edited by Stompfoot ]
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=152933&p=#post152933 | | | Poster: Tigole at 9/16/2005 8:03:38 AM PDT
Subject: Re: Zul Gurab: A SMASHING Success |
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Thank you, Stompfoot, for creating this thread. And thanks to all of you for the compliments.
The most important thing is that you guys are having fun and are satisfied.
We worked really hard as a developement team to try to make Zul'Gurub and Arathi Basin as fun as possible. It's really rewarding for us to hear such positive feedback like this.
Thank you.
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=152933&p=#post153555 |
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