ZG is gone asa raid instance

[theckhd]

Found it.

But before you make the trip anyway, a troll named Maywiki (old-school players might recognize her as one of the NPCs from the ZG turn-in quests on Zandalar Isle) needs your help. Conveniently, the Zandalar tribe wants Zanzil dead too, and you've come to the right place at the right time. You kill Zanzil and discover that Jin'do was moments behind -- his portal to Zul'Gurub is even still there! You take the plunge, ending up inside the raid instance -- except this is your own personal Zul'Gurub, where everything is your level.

You ascertain that Jin'do must be about to resurrect High Priestess Jek'lik (the bat priest), and you fight to destroy her body and stop the ritual before she's brought back to life. But Jin'do can still realize his goal of resurrecting Hakkar by bringing another priest back to life -- this time, it's Venoxis (the snake priest). You rush through Jin'do's portal again, battling him at Venoxis' altar and making the priest un-bring-back-able. You emerge from Zul'Gurub victorious.

And on the second page of comments:

ZG is still available as a raid as of press time. You just get your own special version for questing in. It's neat!

[andx]

But will the mounts still be obtainable if the raid ZG is gone and you have your personal one?

[culhag]

I'm glad I finally got the tiger last week. (after 14 months of farming !)

Oh my god... Did you do it literally every time it reset?

I missed some lockouts now and then, but I guess I did at least 90% of them.

But of all the rare mounts I have (all... four of them ), this is the one that took the most kills for me, so maybe I was just unlucky.

[Sabindeus]

I flew through the outdoors ZG. It's kind of creepy. The geometry isn't exactly right, and the place is empty. :x

[Neziah]

BOOO! I say BOOOOOO!

I really liked that place.

[Ryyu]

I've been doing ZG for close to 3 years now, I haven't missed a reset since wrath launched (needed a few for it at 70 still so missed some)

Ive seen one mount drop. Which I won luckily, but my GF is still tigerless after years.. Arseing game.

[culhag]

I flew through the outdoors ZG. It's kind of creepy. The geometry isn't exactly right, and the place is empty.

You can go in "old-ZG" on live. You have to climb on the walls that surround the place, to a passage just right of the portal, it's not hard. (I haven't been tried in a long time but I'd be surprised if they changed that)

[Ryyu]

I flew through the outdoors ZG. It's kind of creepy. The geometry isn't exactly right, and the place is empty.

You can go in "old-ZG" on live. You have to climb on the walls that surround the place, to a passage just right of the portal, it's not hard. (I haven't been tried in a long time but I'd be surprised if they changed that)

Most of the "out door" instances exists on live, ZF does. Oddly enough AQ20/40 have a massive zone tied to them, you can you tube some of the vids quite interesting what they must have been planning before they went down the raid route, AQ is about the size of the barrens.

[Nikachelle]

Do you have a link for the AQ stuff? I'd like to take a look.

[Chunes]

I flew through the outdoors ZG. It's kind of creepy. The geometry isn't exactly right, and the place is empty.

You can go in "old-ZG" on live. You have to climb on the walls that surround the place, to a passage just right of the portal, it's not hard. (I haven't been tried in a long time but I'd be surprised if they changed that)

Most of the "out door" instances exists on live, ZF does. Oddly enough AQ20/40 have a massive zone tied to them, you can you tube some of the vids quite interesting what they must have been planning before they went down the raid route, AQ is about the size of the barrens.

Indeed, the outdoor AQ area is very, very interesting to check out.

I personally would think it grand for the "real" ZG to actually be downgraded to a level 38-42'ish 5man dungeon. At that level you could still reward the mounts as super rare drops, much like the ring from SM Lib. They'd be level appropriate too, since epic riding comes at 40 now, right?

This would give the leveling range a good 5man option to rival SM cath as the de-facto leveling spot for those in the 40 range.

The only problem I foresee is that the zone is pretty big, considering the fact that it was originally a raid instance. I doubt the average 5man would have the stamina to clear ZG more than a few times unless the loot for that level was exceptionally good.

Then again, there always is the rare mount carrot to dangle in front of people's faces. Even more so if they removed the 3 day lockout if they demoted it to a 5man instance.

[Teranoid]

So of all the raids in Azeroth they pick ZG?

Retarded.

[theckhd]

I personally would think it grand for the "real" ZG to actually be downgraded to a level 38-42'ish 5man dungeon. At that level you could still reward the mounts as super rare drops, much like the ring from SM Lib. They'd be level appropriate too, since epic riding comes at 40 now, right?

This would give the leveling range a good 5man option to rival SM cath as the de-facto leveling spot for those in the 40 range.

The only problem I foresee is that the zone is pretty big, considering the fact that it was originally a raid instance. I doubt the average 5man would have the stamina to clear ZG more than a few times unless the loot for that level was exceptionally good.

It's a big zone, but i don't think it's that much bigger than ZF or ST. It would be easy to speed it up by removing a chunk of the trash. And it sounds like their current design already reduced the number of bosses.

For the amount of design work that would have to go into it (delete trash, drop HP and damage of mobs/bosses, remove a few spells that don't work as well in small groups), it would be an awfully quick retrofit. All of the layout and artistic assets are already done.

[Chunes]

Do you have a link for the AQ stuff? I'd like to take a look.

Just youtube AQ exploration.

Here's an interesting one that even shows the technique for getting "out" of AQ while still inside the instance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT1DdsvENog

The vids I remember though were actually of the overworld area where the instance is located. I'd spend a little longer hunting them down, but they're likely very outdated and I'm at work anyway. That video though is from 3.3.0 though.

[Ryyu]

Do you have a link for the AQ stuff? I'd like to take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSIOfoGSvuw quick one i found, there are better ones.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri6Z5bNM ... re=related a better one. ZF is there now if you have the beta. Looks about the same as the instance sadly.

[Chunes]

It's a big zone, but i don't think it's that much bigger than ZF or ST. It would be easy to speed it up by removing a chunk of the trash. And it sounds like their current design already reduced the number of bosses.

For the amount of design work that would have to go into it (delete trash, drop HP and damage of mobs/bosses, remove a few spells that don't work as well in small groups), it would be an awfully quick retrofit. All of the layout and artistic assets are already done.

I agree, area-wise it's probably pretty comparable to the dungeons you mentioned. The nostalgic part of me would cringe at them removing any of the non-optional bosses in there, like gaz, Jindo or the edge of madness completely.

I think with the current design of raid encounters and the Sartharion-esque scalable hardmode encounter design, they could potentially pull off some pretty cool stuff with that zone, i.e. leaving a few extra priests up before killing hakkar gives a better chance for the rare mounts to drop of the old soulflayer when you kill him.

Still, it being low level content I doubt there'd be significant return on the time/effort/money invested on revamping the zone to that degree since players might just blow through it, deem it too hard or cumbersome and not worth the time to even do it, or just skip dungeon's entirely in the rush to hit 85.