The Karazhan Mistake

(CAUTION: Before I link this interview with WoWarcraft’s Mr. Didier and Tigole (aka Mrs. Kaplan’s son) from the Games Convention in Leipzig, I’ll warn you that this site set off bells and whistles in my Firefox NoScript. So don’t click if you’re an extra cautious type. I’ve uploaded a screenshot of the page to Flickr and you can read the entire interview there.)

From an interview at the Leipzig Games Convention with WoWarcraft’s senior art director Sam Didier and lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan (Tigole) by ComputerandVideoGames.com’s Stuart Bishop — Tigole said:

The big lesson we learned from The Burning Crusade was that our ten-person instances are extremely popular. So for Wrath of the Lich King we wanted progression in the ten-person raid game for the players… who want to stick to that ten-person cap.

Well dammit boys, you learned the wrong lesson. You completely missed the most important lesson of The Burning Crusade, that is “The Karazhan Mistake”. And really, how could you miss it? I don’t know — I guess because you’re listening to the neo-uber guilds STILL, instead of the meat of the raiding bell curve.

Nevertheless. Since you all failed that portion of the final exam, let’s go over the material again (with some added explanations for the non-WoW people):

Karazhan is a 10-man instance with a reset timer of one week. It is firmly placed in the line of gear progression. Technically, you could skip Kara gear and step right into the first 25-man instances, I suppose, if you had a guild composed entirely of messiahs, prophets and gods. (Hint: none of us do.)

Therefore, since we all had to do Karazhan at some point, every guild either had to run multiple simultaneous weekly Karazhan raids with guildmembers tied to a single raid ID (no swapping of guildmates to the other guild Kara raids), OR, they ran a single Karazhan over and over and over and over many weeks to gear everyone up for the 25-man raids.

Was this fun? (Imagine I drew a huge question mark on the whiteboard at this point.) NO IT WAS NOT. I’ll pause while you take some notes. No pen or paper? Crimony. Never go into class or into the boss’s office without pens (plural) and paper. Write that down too.

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Not All Warlocks Are Crazy. Probably.

Continuing the theme of guildmembers behaving badly, AND letting the emailers do all the work, Chicogrande found this derailed recruitment thread on the World of Warcraft forums: Rebirth is recruiting raid member.

So Rebirth of the Eonar server is looking for some more raiders and they explain a little bit about their guild and how to contact them. The very first reply is from disgruntled former guild member Aleksander, level 70 flavor of the year (warlock):

JOIN AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!! I learned alot of things while Guilded under the Influence of Rebirth….. Lets see here…….

1. You will Take alot of sheet from the guild leader he will practiclly make you a Puppet…..

2. You cannot Raid with Crappy Gear. by crappy gear… there is a rogue in the guild who is half epiced out and it is good gear even the stuff that isn’t epics but he wasn’t taken as often as he should have been due to the fact that there are better equipped rogues in the guild and as far as gear goes this doesn’t pertain to just rogues… it goes for ALL classes

3. If your a rogue, you will Get DENIED. because they got that part covered.

4. THEY DON’T JOKE AROUND. Sooo if you tell one of them You want to PUG there wife they will KICK YOU OUT. ( I talk from Experience. )

5. Loot – No DKP system in place yet. They are raiding Karazhan. So how does loot work. Well let me explain. First of all they have two groups for Karazhan. You might as well consider yourself a part of group 2 since group 1 is normally the officers unless someone leaves and they need another person. Anyways you go and kill Curator for example. The Officers will debate on who they think EARNED the gear and give it to them. Don’t even plan on having a shot at rolling on it. I have personally tried to pass some gear to mages who needed it more than I did and they said no it’s yours take it and gave it to me. Expect to see this happen

6. No One will Ever Help you……. Only Real True Friends Will………. and it takes a long time to get them here…… cause everyone is Trying to gear up….. Soo no time to help with anything.

7. And the Last but not Least……… See Number 4.

Only Good thing i can say, there are alot of Really Nice People here……. Thats all….

Sorry Ode…… It just Wasn’t Fair. to get booted for saying i want to PUG his Wife. LOL.

Wow. How outrageous. He made a comment about some guy’s wife and he got booted.

FUCKING DUH, you twit! Make a comment about their mothers or sisters, cousins, gay lovers, anyone except the wife or girlfriend. Isn’t that something you learn on your own? Are games somehow attracting people with almost zero social experience in the real world? There sure are a lot of them with MMOG accounts.

Anyways, the warlock continues to unhinge and explains that what he meant was the guy’s wife is a MILF (we all know that’s VERY flattering) and he knows that other guilds are conspiring against him in the thread, including his current one (reply #83):

——————————————————–
Q u o t e:
Aleksander… I don’t even know what to say.

I want to make this perfectly clear. If I were still an officer of Fusion, I would gkick you. Immediately. Your behavior on this thread is rediculous, and you’re making your guild, a guild I am still quite fond of, look like a bunch of idiots and degenerates. With all my heart, I must say

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
——————————————————–

How about this……… Your an Idiot……. Did i make myself clear??? My Behavior?? What about your Behavior?? you Post on something your not even part of…. Jeez…….

you want to throw your 5 cents? WIll it make You Look like a HERO??? Dude your a Dumb SHEET Just Like everyone else Who Posted against me…….. Seriously Kids…… this gone Far enough……..

S
T
F
U

And burn in Hell……… you Wankers.

Sometimes one lobotomy just isn’t enough.

(Thanks Chico, your reputation has increased by 500!)