World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Beta Coverage

World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade: Karazhan Screenshots and Movies

This movie records the more difficult boss encounters of the instance, with the final one not shown because it’s believed you have to defeat Prince Malchezaar to face him (Nightbane). The second two bosses we didn’t put too many attempts in for the night because it was late and the next night our entire instance had reset. Hopefully the video doesn’t spoil too much in the way of strategies, but I doubt it will. Here’s the link:

http://files.filefront.com/KharazanPreviewwmv/;6211159;;/fileinfo.html

and a mirror here:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=31718

Aside from that, I took some various screenshots of things not already seen by others or in this movie:

The front entrance to Karazhan:

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The side entrance (available after defeating the Opera Hall):

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Repair NPC after reaching Honored with The Violet Eye:
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The Curator (only t4 dropping npc so far):
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Belt from a trash mob:
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Medivh’s bedroom:
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Shade of Aran (Aran being Medivh’s father):
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Loot from the Shade:
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Chess Room:
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Witch Hat from Opera Hall Oz encounter:
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Netherspite encounter:
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Terestian Illhoof:

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Terestian loot shot:
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Staff drop off Curator:
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Prince Malchezaar:
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Presumably the final boss, Nightbane:
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And finally, obligatory loot shot:
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Hope everyone enjoys it all!

-Kylista
http://www.exodiaguild.com/

So how would u rate the encounters so far in terms of difficultie and orrigenality?

I mean could a well geared group of 10 people who have been playing with ech other for almost a year and a half clear this in a few nights?

We believe Nightbane (a big skeletal dragon) is the final boss. It’s believed he lands on the mountainside where you fight the Prince after the Prince is defeated.

As far as the instance goes, the first few bosses are simply gear checks to see if your group has the endurance to last a few long fights. The later bosses are skill checks to make sure your group has the coordination and expertise to earn the “uber” loot of the instance. I would say mc-geared/experienced people would have no chance past the initial bosses, as some of the trash mobs alone later hit for over 8k non-crushing.

Many of the encounters are gimmick fights, and many just require precise coordination, it’s the best instance Blizzard has created to date and I fully see why they took so long to release it now. The attention to detail there is incredible.

Can u tell us something about the Netherspite encounter?

Looks interesting.

Netherspite is basically a shadow version of Sapphiron with a twist. When you engage him, 3 orbs in this room (that are positioned in a triangle fashion around the room), activate a beam to shoot at Netherspite. When any given beam is active on Netherspite, it gives him a different stacking buff (which is bad). To block the beam, you have a raid member stand between the beam and Netherspite and, in return, the beam provides the person with 2 beneficial effects, and 1 negative effect.

1 beam buffs defense/damage taken, but reduces max hp.
1 beam buffs healing/threat reduction, but reduces max mana.
1 beam buffs damage dealt/threat reduction, but increases damage taken.

The last beam is a threat because instead of a 600 damage frost aura like Sapphiron has, Netherspite has a 1200 damage shadow aura. It’s not THAT hard of a fight, but requires some thinking and planning obviously.

Edit: Oh, also when you interrupt any beam from hitting Netherspite, everyone in the raid gets a -19,500 armor debuff.

How far did you actually get inside the instance, to me it looks like you have taken down most of the bosses, but when i saw a old video from the instance i remember it to be really huge. So is this one of many wings you did, sense there are other places like the Opera Hall and Library( i think ) to see, and kill stuff inside. Because if this was all of them, it feels kinda short : /

These are only some of the boss fights. There’s tons of trash and 90% of the bosses in Karazhan are optional (altough the fights shown are 4 of the last 5 fights presumably). Prince Malchezaar is supposedly the 2nd to last fight, with Nightbane being last. However, between the instance resetting every time it’s soft reset, not many groups are willing to clear the entire thing to reach the final bosses again, considering Karazhan is about the size of 3 aq40’s put together.

In short, there are about 12-13 boss encounters and we did all of them except Nightbane (who is assumed to spawn after defeating Malchezaar) and maybe the chess encounter.

It’s sort of bugging me at the moment.. I haven’t seen the movie but I’m really wondering just how you have cleared all the way to the presumed 2nd to last boss. Since the instance is a 7 day timer, and as I’ve heard no timers are saved in beta after resets. Did you skip alot of content? I’d always hoped karazhan to be quite a bit more massive, with more bosses than shown.

Karazhan would take about 20 minutes to travel from beginning to end on foot. It’s at least double the total size of AQ40 temple. There was tons of clearing involved and many, many hours put in, trust me.


Thanks a whole bunch to Kylista and WoR for an awesome preview, and hopefully I’ll get a group to venture in there myself sometime soon…

-TMTCJz

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