It appears that the Blizzard Gorilla is not listening too well after all. And so it is time for a retraction. Why? It was a comment by Tigole, a Blizzard "Blue" whose previous announcement caused me to write the first article. Here is what Tigole had to say: "I know this question is going to come up so I'll answer it now -- Yes, you can totally skip Karazhan if you're an amazingly elite guild who doesn't have time to key up for KZ yet can face the challenges of ZA [Zul'Aman] without gearing up in KZ. Have fun storming the castle." - Tigole When I reached the words "Have fun storming the castle" it made me wonder if this was the same person who not too long ago made this comment: "While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content." - Tigole So at this point you may ask yourself what prompts me to wonder if Tigole is played by more than one person in this little drama. When the Blizzard released information about their latest end game instance called "Zul'Aman" it was much awaited. Many people seemed to think that it bring back some of the good old days when you could grab some guildies and go womp on some trolls in Zul'Gurub. It sure looked like it to me and this was an impressions shared by more than a few WoW players I have met. For those of you who are unaware of it, Zul'Aman is to be an instance just off the Blood Elf starting lands. Packed with ruined temples, jungles and forest trolls it looked like loads of fun, and to some extent still does. Like Serpantshrine Cavern, and Tempest Keep: The Eye, from which Blizzard recently removed the attunement process, this instance as well will not require a key to get in the door. So far so good, right? That's what I thought until Tigole made his "clarification" (available here.) The Blizzard Blues have disillusioned me and let me know that all those people who said "You can't skip Kharazan" were right. And this is sad news indeed. It does little good to get rid of an attunement process but then make sure that in order to progress to those, now "keyless" , instances you have to run the instance that was the whole problem in the first place - Kharazan. But let's be fair here. Blizzard has no control over the reaction of their players to their structure in endgame. The responsibility for the difficulty in many players "getting keyed" for kharazan lies squarely in the lap of the players themselves. Still... By telling the players this great new instance will not require attunement, BUT you will have to run Kharazan first is like telling everyone all of the rides in an amusement park are free - and then locking the gates to the amusement park so no one can get in. See you online, -Julie Whitefeather |