Our MeinMMO author Sascha Asendorf didn’t stop after his recreation of the WoW human city of Stormwind, but wanted to detail all of Azeroth. However, he only completed the popular raid Karazhan.
The Minecraft build of the human city Stormwind from World of Warcraft took me 1.5 years at that time. Even though I am proud of the reconstruction, I wouldn’t do it again today. Seven years ago, it looked quite different, as I wanted more, much more.
That was my plan: My original plan was to assemble a whole team to recreate Azeroth in Minecraft. For about half a year, it worked out great. We simply called it “Project Azeroth”.
The team of WoW and Minecraft fans initiated several projects during that time:
- Schattenfang Keep
- New Tinkertown
- Blackrock
- Darkmoon Faire
- Eversong
- Wyrmrest Temple
- Orgrimmar
I, on the other hand, dedicated myself to the coolest raid from Burning Crusade: Karazhan.
These were the challenges: Unlike Stormwind, Karazhan is much more compactly built. Many corridors and rooms that are connected but don’t meet until much later complicated the planning.
Thanks to my spatial imagination from my draftsman training back then, I managed the challenge quite well. I even found myself marveling now and then at how well everything fit together in Minecraft.
I took this long to build it: Since I worked more with the editor this time to create large areas such as floors, straight walls, or towers, I only spent about half a year building Karazhan – which corresponds to about 600 hours.
This is how I started: Basically, I built Karazhan just as you would progress through the raid. Starting with Attumen’s stable, I went up to Moroes’ banquet hall. After that, I created the chambers and the boss room for the virtuous maid and then the theater.
The theater presented my first major challenge. After all, the theater is one of the largest venues in Karazhan. I invested a few days in the construction, during which I was actively building for several hours.
When the theater was finished, I decided on the Little Red Riding Hood event and created the stage.
After the theater event, we go to the curator, who protects the menagerie. A great boss from whom I used to take his T4 parts for my paladin during my WoW times. The only difficult part here were the owl statues, which you simply can’t get detailed in Minecraft 1:1.
I certainly didn’t forget the optional boss “Terror of the Night”, which can only be summoned on the terrace in front of the curator after completing a long quest chain.
This was an absolute nightmare: Anyone familiar with Karazhan will know what comes after the curator. The Library of the Guardian. A damn large room with several levels where reality seems to break apart. The library connects the menagerie with several boss rooms. These include:
- Aran’s Shade, the spirit of Medivh’s father
- Terestian Illhoof, a demonic satyr
- The dragon Nethergroll
- The popular chess event
Here, above all, attention to detail and a lot of planning were necessary. I spent the longest time working on the library. Several weeks passed and the individual boss rooms were created alongside. The result is certainly something to behold and ranks among my favorites in Minecraft-Karazhan.
The rest was basically a child’s play and went quickly through. Okay, Nethergroll was challenging again with all the telescopes and the tilted domes. But that was nothing compared to the library, which really gave me headaches.
This is how the chess event was created: For the chess event, I also attempted a timelapse video, which unfortunately got interrupted midway. But at least this way you can see how I built it to some extent.
It is easy to see the use of the MC in-game editor, a plugin for server admins, which allows me to copy buildings or create large areas in seconds.
With the theater and chess event, Blizzard really outdid themselves. Cortyn from MeinMMO thinks so too and counts Karazhan among the best raids in WoW.
This is how big Karazhan really is: When you look at the original Karazhan from the outside and then go into the raid, it becomes clear: It’s much larger than you thought. And it’s the same in Minecraft. I built the actual tower in a different place and linked the two entrances to the interior of Karazhan via a portal mod.
For the interior, I also had to make full use of the entire height that was available to me in Minecraft 7 years ago. Karazhan is a total of 255 blocks high – from the cellar to the final boss.
I currently lack screenshots of the rest. The interior has been completed, including all accessible rooms. Only the exterior is still unfinished; here, especially the terraforming and final details are missing. However, I haven’t touched that for 7 years, and I will probably never finish it 100%.
In the Minecraft community, there are tons of great buildings that often involve years of work. If you are interested in such mammoth projects, check out Hogwarts from Harry Potter. It not only looks really cool, but also turned into a genuine RPG.
