Why ‘World of Warcraft’ Returning to Karazhan Is Important

Returning to Karazhan is something that many World of Warcraft players have thought about since the Burning Crusade expansion came to a close. Karazhan, along with Gruul’s Lair, made up the first tier of raids available in the expansion and, as such, became the weekly objective of many players who were looking to progress further in the expansions raiding tiers. That was years ago, but it’s about to start all over again.

For weeks upon weeks, players would run through Karazhan in hopes of obtaining specific pieces of gear they needed to progress to the next tier of raids — regardless of when they started playing the new expansion. Essentially, it served as a rite of passage for every WoW player looking to start their raiding career. Oh, and don’t forget about the ridiculous attunement line of quests you had to complete to even step foot in the front door.

For those not in the know, Karazhan is an ancient, abandoned tower located within Deadwind Pass. The tower was built on top of a nexus of ley lines so that their magical energy could be harnessed in order to defend Azeroth from great danger. Previously occupied by Medivh, the last Guardian of Tirisfal, the tower provided him with immense magical power in order to combat the Burning Legion until he was corrupted by the leader of the Legion himself, Sargeras.

In-game, Karazhan became home to one of the largest raid instances in World of Warcraft. It was scripted with 22 different NPCs alongside 12 boss encounters. That’s… a lot. Many of the encounters were an absolute pain to work through with a raid group of 10 people, but they also featured wonderfully executed tie-ins to popular games, stories, and films in the real world.

Regardless of how you felt about the place though, or if you ever entered its hallowed halls before, there’s no doubt that it helped create some memorable moments for every player who went through the Burning Crusade’s raiding experience for better or worse. In many ways, it remains one of the most iconic parts of the Warcraft franchise as a whole, which makes the latest expansion Legion a perfect opportunity to bring it back.

As part of its effort to bring more content to Legion, Blizzard has already announced that we’ll be heading back to Karazhan in patch 7.1 in order to wrap up the Stormheim storyline present in the next expansion. Legion’s verson of Karazhan is set to be a five-player epic dungeon, instead of a raid, with nine bosses in total in order to maintain that raid feel instead of a regular dungeon run.

This time around it looks like Moroes, everyone’s favorite boss with bleed, is back to reclaim the abandoned tower for himself and his new friends from the Burning Legion. As such, players will be fighting against him (and a few other familiar faces) alongside their new demonic friends from the Burning Legion in order to liberate the tower once again from corruption. While we don’t quite know all the details yet, this return is certainly something we can all look forward to once Legion releases early next week.