Ulduar is Stupid

First off, Ulduar is my favorite raid instance in WotLK, maybe ever. It had originality, some surprises, a bombastic vehicle segment, and a boss whose corpse you used as a bridge. But Blizzard has their panties in a knot over the idea of telling an overarching story with their expansion through raiding, and to that end, Ulduar is stupid.

In Lord of the Rings (THE archtypical fantasy story) did Aragorn take a few days off from aiding the men of Rohan deal with their shit to go handle a recently discovered Balrog? No, and do you know why? Because that would be tangential, arbitrary, and totally pointless within the overall narrative. In a book with Tom Bombadill, that's saying a lot.

Shit like that was fine in Old World because there was no grand narrative. Every zone was, more or less, it's own self-contained story, so C'Thun's sudden and unheralded arrival wasn't interrupting any larger story than Silithus itself. In that world, shit like Ulduar is totally legit and awesome.

In Burning Crusade, they tried having a central story, and it worked for the most part, with Zul'Aman being the notable exception. Come to think of it, what's with all the awesome raids being unrelated to the story? Anyway, even the tangential dungeons like Karazahn and Mt. Hyjal had a relation to the Burning Legion, and were generally on topic, if not advancing anything forward.

Now Wrath: Sartherion, Malygos, and Ulduar all had pretty much fuck-all to do with anything remotely to do with the big ol' LK or his bidness. That would be fine if they were just trying to make NORTHREND: LAND OF MANY ADVENTURES AND DANGERS! But no, the story is clearly about the Lich King, and you can't just ignore him, especially in the middle of shit in 3.1.

This is not to say you can't have varied or unexpected raid dungeons, just that they have to be somehow tied to the larger narrative at work. Imagine in 4.2 (let's just say), Deathwing's right around the corner, but we got one more major patch to go. The new raid is... wait for it...

RETURN TO KARAZAHN - A.K.A. KARAZAHN 2: KARA HARDER

Thrall went to Karazahn upon becoming the new Guardian of Tirisfal, but has not been heard from since. The Alliance/Horde's list of allies runs thin, and they need the new Guardian's help to fight Deathwing, so they can wait no longer. Adventures journey through the flying-mount only entrance to a previously unseen part of the tower, to discover Thrall was unable to control his newfound demons. You punk new (NO MORE REHASHES, BLIZZARD) bosses, culminating in a fight with a possessed Thrall, and, finally, the ghost of Medivh himself. Shade of Aran even returns, this time as an ally in the final fight, to give his mad son a final rest.

OK, I am totally stoked on shit like that. It comes out of left field, uses previous canon as groundwork for new content, breaks up the expected enemies of the expansion, and still manages to relate to the fight against Deathwing. Plus it would actually give us a chance to get revenge on Medivh for that time he cheated at chess.