The developers of World of Warcraft are proud of Karazhan. The numbers speak for themselves.
Patch 7.1 “Return to Karazhan” was in many ways an experiment by the developers of World of Warcraft. After almost all instances were rather short and players could often rush through the various dungeons in 30 minutes (or less – depending on gear), Karazhan took a different direction. The 8 bosses often take 2 hours or more, especially for players visiting for the first time it can take even longer. But is such content well received by the community?
According to Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director, definitely. Last week there were over 300,000 groups worldwide in the search tool looking for members for Karazhan – excluding those who manually assembled their group.
The only problem for some players seems to be the long walks if they happen to die in the instance. Hazzikostas commented:
“We always take a close look at the walking distances. If it takes more than 90 seconds from spirit release to the corpse location, then we consider adding checkpoints or similar. We’ve long moved away from the 6-7 minutes walking times, like back in the day with C’thun in Ahn’Qiraj.”
Those who have not yet experienced Karazhan because they find the instance too long can rejoice. In a future patch, Karazhan will be split into two smaller instances, so players can also try “Mythic+” versions of the dungeon here. The original version of the dungeon will remain at its familiar size.
Cortyn states: I must also say that I thoroughly enjoyed Karazhan. The humor in many details and the nostalgia in many familiar yet fresh content pleased me quite a bit. Even though some players are already complaining that Medivh’s tower “steals way too much time from the evening”, I always enjoy visiting the tower. Just to experience the movement test with the final boss and wave at those who lose the staring contest with the final boss. I would love to see more of that.
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