Another #25,000 Winner Has Something To Say
Leksi came through with an article about Karazhan. BRK is just gonna quit talking and let them man have his say. That’s right, not another word. When BRK says he’s gonna shet ep, he shet’s ep.
Why once, nearly starved to death by shetting ep; didn’t tell em we were hungry.
The Bane of The Burning Crusade?
Mention its name and a large majority of TBC players get sick to their stomachs and guild leaders wake up in cold sweats.
….Karazhan
That’s it, I did it, I said it and I’m not sorry!
We’ve all heard the horror stories of larger guilds being torn to shreds because of the fallout from Karazhan. You’re sitting there thinking what on Azeroth is this clown talking about? I’ve read many blog postings about guilds who were downing MC with ease pre-TBC only to crumble into ruins because of Karazhan. You’re sitting there thinking “What!?? How can this be!?? These people were downing 40 man raid boss’s pre-TBC and now they can’t even organize a 10 man instance and successfully kill a 10 man raid boss?” It’s happened.
Let me share a story with you and hopefully this will help one person, one guild out there, have a little more fun and success with this “horror story” of an instance, Karazhan.
Picture yourself part of a medium sized guild, say 30 hardcore raiding 60’s in pre-TBC with about another 25-30 casual raiders that made up the rest of our guild. We cleared ZG regularly in 3 hours and change. We cleared MC in 4 hours and change. We just go into BWL as TBC was being released. We were “high on the hog” and loving it! Purples galore for the guild and spirits were high.
Ah, the onset of TBC. People took a week off work (no, I wasn’t one of them) to level to 70 as fast as possible. Others took their time enjoying the content of the new areas and following the storylines. Slowly instead of seeing multiple 60’s online you see 2 or 3 people at 63 while everyone was fighting for kills in Hellfire Peninsula. Then you seen a couple more people shoot up a few levels and now there were 5-7 people at 65 running Coilfang Reservoir instances while everyone else was just setting foot into Zangarmarsh. Then the real separation happened. A pack of 10 people got running instances all day long (2 healers, 2 tanks and 6 DPS) just left the rest of the guild behind in levels. They didn’t abandon them in spirit, they were just leveling faster then anyone else was. They were part of the world race to 70. You could take your toon at 60 and level to 70 without setting foot in a TBC instance. My hunter did that and it didn’t take that much more of a time commitment.
So there you have it, your lovely guild set up perfect for raiding is now split into two sub guilds. The problem was that when the first group of people hit 70 they made it their only objective to get in and master Karazhan. Something nobody knew anything about. The 10 people (two 5 person groups that had power leveled instancing together) all got attuned and made their way to Duskwood and journeyed into Karazhan. They successfully downed the 1st boss there and loot linked the purples in guild chat. Immediately you started hearing the rumblings of jealously and anger. “How could they do that to us? Leave us stranded like this, fending for ourselves. This isn’t a guild, we’re just left to fight off the wolves while they dine in the luxury of Kara!” After a day or two of this the exodus began. People /gquit because they needed the feeling of belonging to something bigger then a 10 man raiding guild and “it’s friends”. They wanted to partake in Kara, they wanted to see the loot and instance first hand. The guild of over 50-some level 60’s has filtered down to the 10-15 active players that are now 70 and doing Kara and are left with a few friends that are just happy seeing and hearing the success of Kara.
This has happened to many guilds and if you haven’t figured it out it happened to my guild. I wasn’t one of “the 10” that leveled to 70 right away. My main is a healing class and so questing is hard for me to do. I didn’t want to spec damage because then I’d never be included in any instances so I handled the burden of grinding the quests until an instance run popped up.
There are the exceptions to what happened to my guild and that’s the larger raiding guilds that set up “teams”. The first team was always been the more successful and pioneering team to push the limits of the guild. They were always the first ones to kill something. Then there was the 2nd group that followed in the footsteps of the first team. They copied their strategies and began to kill each and every boss the first team did. They continue to do this today.
If I could give one piece of advice it’s this: Don’t let Karazhan destroy your friendships in game and in your guild.
There are ways to work with this instance. It’s made to be tough and challenging. After all, you’re getting Tier 4 gear once you make it to The Curator. Take your time, understand you will die, we all did in ZG and MC right? Enjoy TBC, help your friends out, don’t make them PUG the attunements and instances…I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Karazhan is not a hard instance to kill, it’s a hard instance to organize. Once you have people dedicated to doing what’s best for the group then you will have success. Each fight has isn’t own little niche that will provide you success.
Hopefully you found my little story helpful and I want to thank BRK for letting me share my thoughts!
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9 Responses to “Another #25,000 Winner Has Something To Say”
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Bravo Leksi! I dont think ill be seeing myself in Karazhan in a very…i mean next year even though ill be 70 for a long time..very long time
I think im too casual for that
my guild only has about 15-20 people keyed for Kara, we unfortunately do not have the proper make-up to field those 20 people as 2 runs, however. in rotation, in our 2 trips into Karazhan (well, 4, but 2 Kara resets) we’ve downed Attumen the Huntsman, Moroes {tower steward} and two of the different random animal bosses, as well as getting Maiden of Virtue to 40%. all in the first week of raiding Kara. now, I don’t say this to boast, brag, or otherwise, I say this to show that even with a small amount of people, in a close knit society such as the guild I am in, I consider us extremely successful in that time! woot for Kara, and good luck to all who are venturing there!
Wow, this is exactly what happened to our guild. The “hardcore” guys, who didn’t seem to have any RL job, were at 70 within 3 weeks, while the rest of us were left fending for ourselves in the depths of the seamlessly endless amounts of quests and lore. Those guys eventually split to form a new guild and we have found ourselves in a state of reform. The break up was not friendly and lots of animosity still remains, but somehow, through all of it, our guild is as tight as ever and were are just now getting our group of 10 finished with Black Morass.
Very nice post, and thanks for giving us hope.
- Misfit
I must be in a very unusual guild as I see these stories posted all the time and it’s never happened to us.
To be fair, we’re not a “hard core” guild. Pre-BC we did have ZG and MC runs, even some AQ runs, but they certainly weren’t on farm status, and I’m not sure the group ever really finished them.
But when new content like this comes out, there is nothing but “Grats” all around for those folks who level up and get into the end-game instances.
Our guild leadership gave us all plenty of time to enjoy the new expansion, at our own pace, and just a couple weeks ago put out the message that it was time to start getting attuned for Karazhan.
So, I guess there is hope out there as every time I read a post like this I count my blessings that I found a guild really just interested in having fun and celebrating everyone’s success.
My guild sort of falls into the middle ground on this issue. We’ve all stayed very friendly and there haven’t been any issues so far. However, I have noticed that there’s a lot of “you’re on your own” type attitudes displayed by many members of my guild. There were a few that leveled to 70 very quickly, and I was on the fringe of that group for most of the time; meanwhile more casual players in the guild were sort of left to fend for themselves. Having observed that sort of attitude in a guild I’ve come to really enjoy being a part of has been more than a little off-putting, but since there hasn’t been out-right shunning or fighting I decided it’s probably best to just let it go rather than make an issue of it.
At the moment, my guild has 5 people keyed for Karazhan, and we’ll actually be hosting a run this Saturday, with a few fillers from other guilds. By the end of April, we should have enough guildies keyed to do our own runs without having to bring in folks from other guilds. I guess we’ll see how it goes from there.
In the meantime, I’ll be doing runs for dungeon 3 set pieces.
with me it is my fault im behind everyone else in level
my main in the guild is a pally he was lv 60 when TBC came out but i was burn out on him a long time ago after spending all that time as a buff bot in ZG doing little more than keeping buffs on everyone and i didn’t want to do that any more but my hunter witch i enjoy playing much more was only 49 so i started playing him as my main got him to 66 now and most of it was through grinding i have been through the ramparts a couple times and slave pens a time or two but most of my leveling was done by grinding and some quests(witch im not very good at)
i get mad sometimes when people in the guild wont help me and when they help other people that are leveling priests and shaman thats why im not playing my hunter all that much right now i just dont want to grind anymore and the last pug i manage to find we spent more time running back than we did killing stuff so im just going to let him rest for a wile and play others…..
Adrus
p.s. hope you dont mind all my griping =P
If you were part of a guild that fit into my example…I’m sorry. It sucked having so many people that provided help before in 40 man raids turn selfish and not want to assist others in the buildup to Kara. We lost good people. Luckily we had the makeup of good friends left over to get into Kara and start taking names and whoopin arss! The first group of 10 that got into Kara within like 2 weeks I think maybe 2 people of that original 10 are still around with our group. The rest have either /gquit because we weren’t moving fast enough for them or /gquit and are doing the same thing they were doing for us, causing issues.
We’re completely content now with having 12-14 people available for raiding if we needed it. There’s 8 hardcore people that would raid Kara every night if we could. We’ve got about 3 full runs together (not in a normal weeks sequence). We all spent our time in the regular instances to at least get our keys for Heroics for most of the Outlands Instances. We have the gear from those normal Outlands runs so we’re not sitting in just greens. We’ve organized about a day a week to start and we’ve got Attumen and Midnight, Maiden and Moroes all down pat. Opera we haven’t been lucky enough to get the Wizard of Oz event yet but when we do I’m ready to have a blast. We’ve downed the other two Opera Events (Little Red Riding Hood and Romeo & Juliet).
But again, enjoy it guys and gals. Once you get a group together get in and play around with the instance. The loot is worth it and most of all IT’S FUN! It’s a very beautiful instance scenery wise. The story and theme of it is classic!
Help your friends get attuned. You’ll have more options when someone can’t make it for the normal 10 person raid. If you want to be fair set up a rotation. Have 5 people that always go and 5 that rotate out. Come up with something clever like that to allow others to feel part of the group.
Those are the things that work with that instance…give them a whirl.
the guild I’m in at the moment as around 30ish lvl 70s, and probably 20-30 lvl 60-69s. And the funny thing is I don’t think any of the 70s have yet to get keyed for Kara! Right now we’re still doing the old-world raids, basically allowing everyone to see what teamwork can accomplish, as well as allowing the GM & Co-GMs an opportunity to see who stands out the most. It only took one wipe in one of the old Raids to teach a lot of the 70s that just cause they’re higher level doesn’t make them invincible! It was a viable lesson IMHO because it shows how team work and EACH class and their abilities come into play, vs. just running through 5 mans where you can pull it off with just about any group combo.
Fog Horn Leg Horn called, he wants his quote back.