Adventures Around Zul'Farrak

I was on my level 42 shaman, farming turtles on the beach in Tanaris and occasionally casting my fishing line into a pool. I've been feeling like this should be my next character to level, and I kind of want to, but as I mentioned in my year-in-review post, she's resto, dungeon groups have been kind of scarce, and questing as a healer is a bit meh. As a stopgap solution I'd been focusing on skilling up my leatherworking for the last couple of levels instead, which involved killing and skinning roughly a billion turtles.

I was just about to cast my line into a fishing pool again when it disappeared right in front of me, even though there was nobody else around. I turned around and the turtles I had just killed seconds ago were all up and about again. Guild chat piped up with various "what the..." type comments which told me that I wasn't the only one who had just had a bit of a Twilight Zone moment. "Looks like the server's got hiccups," I commented and moved on.

I had just earned my final Wild Leather pattern from the trainer when I noticed a call in LFG: "LF1M for ZF, tank or healer". I felt like I was hearing angelic choirs sing. I hadn't really planned to go to Zul'Farrak as early as level 42, but it was high enough, especially for a healer, and I hadn't healed a dungeon group on my shaman since I transferred her to Classic era. How could I say no to such an opportunity?

I whispered the group leader to say that I was up for healing ZF and got some confusing replies in return, something about how they actually had a healer now but no tanks but maybe we could work something out. When I asked for clarification (was I in or out?), the matter crystallised into whether I was up for a non-traditional dungeon group without a proper tank but two "dps tanks". I said of course I was, because people vastly overestimate the importance of tanks in levelling dungeons anyway. Someone who can survive a few hits is all you need really, and that can be a non-clothie damage dealer too.

I hastily went to pick up a few of the dungeon quests for ZF and made my way to the instance entrance, while people in guild chat kept complaining about odd occurrences such as: "Is it normal to fly through a mountain?" Someone else had issues with the zeppelin disappearing from under their feet and then getting teleported to Thunder Bluff.

Despite being the last one to join, I was the second person to make it to the dungeon. One guy in particular, an undead warrior whom I shall call Barry for the rest of his post (not his actual name), wasn't even on the right continent yet and was apparently trying to take the zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar and failing. He apologised for ending up back in Undercity somehow but said he would try again. A minute later I saw him disconnect in my party frames, and when he reappeared he was dead.

"Oh dear," I said. "Where even am I?" moaned Barry, not unlike someone who just woke up from a night of drinking too heavily. I hovered over his portrait. "Says Tarren Mill here." Apparently his corpse had landed next to the Alliance entrance to AV somehow, and as his body was right among the high-level guards he stood no chance at reviving successfully. After one unsuccessful attempt he just resed at the spirit healer.

Meanwhile the rest of us had made it to the instance, but thanks to the server's bugginess, Barry was seemingly stuck in purgatory Eastern Kingdoms. He asked us somewhat sheepishly whether we wouldn't mind summoning him at the stone, which meant that we had to remind him that this was a feature that didn't come in until Burning Crusade (and we didn't have a warlock in the group).

"I guess I have a warlock alt in Orgrimmar if others have alts there to help summon..." Yes, my warlock dinged 20 recently and now had her first chance to become useful! Fortunately everyone has some sort of alt in Orgrimmar, so a quick relog later, our alter egos were in Org and ready to start operation "Save Barry from the Eastern Kingdoms" by casting Ritual of Summoning on him. Thankfully it worked.

Relieved, we logged back onto our characters in Zul'Farrak and got started on the trash, now that Barry was at least safely on the same continent as us and could make it the rest of the way by himself. Our four-manning was a hilarious mess with mobs running all over and dying very slowly, but we didn't suffer any deaths, so it was all good. Eventually Barry arrived too, and in the manner of warriors in Classic, he charged in with his giant two-hander like a god of war and laid waste to everything, meaning that things went considerably smoother from that point onwards.

The rest of the run was pretty unremarkable. We realised we didn't have a mallet so we didn't kill Ghaz'rilla, and we cleared out the entire graveyard in search of troll tempers but still didn't get enough for everyone. Still, by that point we were quite happy to call it a day and started to make our way out.

Everyone said what a nice group it had been, and somehow the conversation turned to pets, which resulted in Barry educating us about ants, after sharing that he owned three different types of them.

Basically, just another day in Classic era. 😁

Oh, and as for healing the instance on my shaman? Loved it. This was the first time I got to use Chain Heal in a dungeon and it really is as OP and easy-mode as everyone says, but I really liked how chill that made the whole experience. Definitely looking forward to doing more of that.

Phase 2 & Level 50

WoW Classic's phase two launched this week, including the consolidation of everyone onto a single layer on all servers, the introduction of the honour system, world bosses, and the addition of the key ring - oh wait, they delayed that last one. Typical that this happens to the one feature that I was actually looking forward to. At least I "only" have the keys to SM and Gnomer taking up bag space so far; I feel bad for the max-levels who also have to hold on to their keys to Scholo, Strat, Dire Maul and so on and so forth.

The honour system was a big deal for many, considering how many Classic players seem to be obsessed with PvP, though I'm sure that now that ganking also gives actual rewards many people who rolled on PvP servers for the supposed fun of open world PvP will be starting to regret it. Especially since world PvP can also be had on PvE servers, without all the hassle of being dragged into it unvoluntarily. Some of my guildies apparently jumped into some Tarren Mill vs. Southshore action right away and one of them posted a screenshot showing a gain of nearly 1.5k honour points from his first night alone.

For me, the main concern was the layer consolidation, since Pyrewood Village still struck me as crazy busy when the date for the phase two launch was announced at BlizzCon. About a week or so later though, I found myself questing in the Hinterlands and started to doubt myself... it wasn't unpleasantly empty, but reasonably quiet, which made me think that maybe that final merge wasn't unfeasible after all.

When I came online on Tuesday evening I was surprised by the lack of a queue, though making my way through the Hinterlands once again I got flashbacks to Kolkar Village, with the whole area now stripped clean of mobs as if a locust swarm had descended upon it, and people running to and fro all over trying to pick off respawns as soon as they appeared. In summary: I guess it's not quite as bad as I had feared, but the world is still back to feeling a bit too full right now. We'll see how long it lasts.

Incidentally, my hunter has hit level 50. I unexpectedly got the entirety of Maraudon done at level 47 after joining a tankless group for orange and/or purple side that I saw advertising right outside the instance, and our four dps setup worked so well that we actually ended up proceeding all the way to the Princess despite of me being a bit low level for that part of the dungeon (fortunately everyone else was higher than me).

After that I pretty much flew through the next couple of levels, mopping up a number of green and yellow quests in Feralas, Tanaris and the Hinterlands that I really didn't want to miss out on, and I still have more left to do in all three zones. I also put my very first dungeon group together on my hunter after seeing both a tank and a dps with the mallet looking for a group for Zul'Farrak. This seemed too fortuitous an opportunity to pass up, so I invited them both, threw out a LFM request for the last two spots and five minutes later we were off.

I'm actually feeling reasonably optimistic about those last ten levels. As I observed back on Kronos, they are slow and I'm not very fond of many of the endgame zones, but there is a variety of goals to pursue at that point that aren't necessarily all about levelling, and you end up gaining a lot of XP almost as an afterthought.

Level 50, Zul'Farrak, Uldaman

Not long ago my paladin hit level 50, after a /played time of six days and 18 and a half hours, which means that getting from 40 to 50 didn't take me that much longer than 30 to 40 (two days and nine hours as opposed to a little less than two days). Apart from the previously mentioned world PvP shenanigans, it was a pleasant ride. Like I predicted, I really loved revisiting Tanaris, Feralas and the Hinterlands. In the end I got my mechanical chicken pet too, plus the sprite darter hatchling. (I always thought it was bollocks that they took away this cute quest chain in Cataclysm and replaced it with a random drop, especially since the original story was all about saving the sprite darters, not killing them!) Remember when pets took up space in your inventory and having even one felt truly special?

I also ran a bunch of dungeons again, mostly Zul'Farrak - at the end I even tanked one run, since I once again felt secure enough as soon as I sufficiently outlevelled both the mobs and the rest of my party. I also healed an Uldaman run.

Zul'Farrak was one of my favourite dungeons in Vanilla and it was fun to revisit it. It just has it all: a straightforward layout, easy access from a zone in which you'll spend a lot of time questing, a whole bunch of dungeon quests, lots of bosses with great drops and an interesting setup. The stairs event worked great. The only issue I've had, every time, is with Witch Doctor Zum'rah. I remember back in Vanilla, the very first rule I was taught the first time I did this dungeon and got close to this guy was "DO NOT TOUCH THE GRAVES". When we came back later, at a higher level, we would loot them for fun and AoE the zombies that spawned, but in general it was accepted custom to leave them alone. I can't recall the boss himself ever giving us any trouble - yes, he spawned a bunch of adds, but they weren't too bad.

Yet every time I've run this dungeon on Kronos, the witch doctor is easily the hardest fight in the entire instance. I've repeatedly wiped on this guy. He summons zombies really quickly and they hit like absolute trucks. Some groups I've been in have tried to avoid the issue by emptying every single grave beforehand (which seemed outright bizarre to me, considering the seriousness with which the "do not touch the graves" lesson was driven home back in the day), which does seem to help but takes up loads of time (and since the zombies hit so hard, the healer needs to drink pretty much every other pull). I don't know what exactly is wrong with the fight, but I do know that this is not how things went down in Vanilla.

Actual Vanilla screenie from when we did decide to open the graves.

If Zul'Farrak is one of my old favourites, Uldaman is the exact opposite. I remember really disliking that place back in the day. With no map view for dungeons back then I tended to get lost all the time, though this is significantly less of a problem ten years later with me being quite familiar with the general layout by now. The intended level range of 38-53 was also a terrible idea, as it meant that you either got no XP for half the dungeon or would run into a massive brick wall towards the end of the instance. Oh, and of course you had to go back there again and again due to the way the different quests were designed and the fact that enchanters were looking to visit their trainer. (I'm still baffled that anyone thought that putting a profession trainer inside an instance would be a good idea!)

All that said, I was surprised by how good a time I ended up having with my pug. It helped that I had a good group that was undeterred by the fact that the server was having hiccups just as we started, crashing repeatedly just as we were doing the "pre instance" and resetting quest progress. I was only disappointed that Grimlok didn't shout: "Me Grimlok King!" The last boss, Archaedas, has remained in my memory as the first truly involved dungeon boss fight I ever encountered, as he spawns multiple sets of adds that need to be controlled. I also recall him summoning a copy of himself near the end (or something like that) which didn't happen in this version and made me doubt my memory a little. We wiped the first time anyway, which caused our tank to pull him out of the room the next time. (Again I found myself hesitant: Shouldn't those doors lock when you engage him?) This completely circumvented the add spawn and turned him into a simple tank and spank, which was slightly disappointing but also intriguing.

"Only" ten more levels to go...

Stratholme and Zul'Farrak revisited

My little troll druid's adventures in the old yet revamped instances continue.

Stratholme

You probably already knew that Stratholme has been split into two parts now, called Main Gate and Service Entrance. Considering that the instance always had those two entrances and already consisted of two distinctly different halves as it was (undead and living side), this split feels reasonably natural, though it's not without issues. There's the problem with the postbox keys for example (no, I don't think I'll ever get tired of linking to that post of Klep's), but the street that used to connect the two parts (I think it's called Market Row) also feels a bit pointless now. It's considered part of the Main Gate half of the instance now, but it's basically just a dead end with a quest mob in it. I considered myself lucky for being able to convince my party to go there and kill it.

The instance has also received some updates in terms of lore besides the quest givers at the entrance, though I have to admit that they felt a bit half-arsed to me. I mean, the living side used to be a Bastion of the Scarlet Crusaders, led by the demon Balnazzar disguised as Grand Crusader Dathroan. Now Balnazzar has dropped the disguise, and all the Scarlets have died and risen as undead. To be honest I didn't even notice that change until we made it to Balnazzar's room and I was startled by the fact that he was already in his demon form. The undead side is similar - everything is more or less the same, except that Baron Rivendare is gone because he's in Naxx now, and in his place we fight his long lost twin brother Lord Aurius Rivendare.

I don't want to be too cynical, but this really felt to me as if Blizzard wanted to drive Stratholme's story forward but couldn't be bothered to give it a full revamp à la Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep. The end result is just a particularly bad example of the inconsistent way in which Blizzard approached the Cataclysm, where even within the same instance some characters have moved forward in time while others are still in exactly the same position they were in back in vanilla. It just makes my head hurt.

The quality of my pug groups in Stratholme was below average as well, which rather soured the experience for me. In my Main Gate run nobody was particularly rude or terrible, but for some reason people kept dropping every other pull and for no apparent reason; we must have rotated through about five different tanks alone, which was simply annoying.

The first time I zoned in at the Service Entrance I got a paladin tank who immediately pulled everything in sight and then kept going, not giving anyone time to pick up the instance quests in the chapel or loot. Since I did those things anyway, we eventually wiped and he started telling me off for being too slow and that me wanting to get quests or loot wasn't his problem. I dropped group and didn't feel like pugging for about a week.

When I tried again, I got another paladin tank like that, though fortunately I already had all the quests in my log this time. We also didn't die, though the pally complained about "having to use LoH" when my grand total of three different healing spells were unable to keep him up while tanking about ten mobs at once. Seriously, what is it with cocky paladin tanks? I noticed that they seem to make up the vast majority of my low-level tanks and it's getting quite annoying. Fortunately this particular specimen wasn't totally unreasonable and after a bit of grumbling from my side we moved on and completed the instance.

Zul'Farrak

Fortunately the gods of pugging eventually seemed to have mercy with me and my group for Zul'Farrak was nothing short of lovely: a sweet druid tank, a fun warrior, and two playful newbie hunters, all of whom I would have happily run with again if it hadn't been so late already. I'm glad that one of my favourite instances didn't get tainted by a bad pug experience at least.

With the dungeon always having been one of the better ones, I wasn't surprised to find that Blizzard didn't feel the need to make any noticeable changes to it, other than the fact that it was moved up a couple of levels and also has all its quests on the inside now. It felt kind of weird to only be given four quests for it though, as I remember this instance having loads back in vanilla - seven or eight maybe - even if some of them were a bit obscure to get (like the one to learn the name of the spider god). No more Carrot on a Stick, no more Troll Tempers, no more Uncracked Scarab Shells and no more Divino-Matic Rod. Woe. Interestingly you can still fight and kill Sergeant Bly and his party, despite of the Divino-Matic Rod quest being gone. I only got a brief glimpse of the dialogue to trigger this, but it seems that you just attack him out of random annoyance now? For all the killing we do in WoW, I find this display of unprovoked violence towards an ally oddly disturbing...

Other than that I have to admit that the instance felt somewhat undertuned to me, but I don't know if my party was just that good or what. I really don't know what to think of the tuning in low-level instances post-Cataclysm in general. The very first ones, like Ragefire Chasm or Deadmines, felt like they were reasonably challenging for their level now, with both bosses and trash pulls actually posing a real threat at times, but as you go up in levels the runs quickly turn into mindless AoE fests again - except when you suddenly get a random run where everything seems to hit crushingly hard again (like it felt in my Dire Maul North run). I don't know if the tuning is really that out of whack or if gear and spec simply make that huge a difference these days. It's just puzzling to me.

Roguish ramblings

Recently I decided to revive one of my lesser-played alts, a male blood elf rogue. He was originally created because I wanted to see the blood elf starter zone in early BC but hated female belves at the time. As it turned out, I wasn't actually that fond of the male ones either, so I stopped playing him the instant I finished the Ghostlands... or actually - a bit before that, even. I didn't like the Ghostlands either.

Then one day I decided to give him another try and was scarred for life by this badly thought-out rogue quest. Needless to say that he went back on the shelf for another year after that.

But this time... this time I think he and I might actually get somewhere.

The first thing I noticed when I started playing the little guy again nearly two months ago was the positive effect of stealth normalisation. Now, this change actually happened quite a long time ago, but as I said I hadn't actually played him in that long. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, stealth used to have different ranks: the lower the rank, the higher the movement speed penalty while in it. This meant that as a low-level rogue you either moved from mob to mob really, really slowly if you always wanted to start with an opener from stealth, or you just charged into mobs like any old warrior and then had to spend a lot of time running away or running back to your body, as any add could quickly spell your death. Unsurprisingly, I didn't think that this made the class particularly fun to play. The suddenly increased movement speed in stealth improved this drastically for me.

I also decided to finally tackle lockpicking for reals. I had done the quest to learn it in the Ghostlands and picked a couple of extra locks there for fun, but then I had quickly fallen behind as nowhere else seemed to have random locks for me to pick. I decided to consult a guide on WoWWiki and then spent about half an hour sitting in a pirate ship near Ratchet, unlocking the same couple of rapidly respawning boxes over and over again... which wasn't hugely entertaining either, but at least it brought me back on track.

And then... I discovered the wonders of pickpocketing! Pickpocketing was one of those things that I always thought sounded really cool in theory, but in practice I felt that it was rather dull. A couple of extra copper and a pretty rock, woo-frikkin-hoo. However, once I started to move around Durnholde to work on the lockboxes there, I was delighted to discover that pickpocketing the local Syndicate mobs could provide me with junkboxes that helped with levelling my lockpicking as well!

From then on things pretty much snowballed, as I found more and more fun uses for all of my different abilities. Rogues are probably one of the classes that start off with the most utility early on (or at least they used to, I don't know how this has changed since the patch), and I guess it's not always immediately obvious how all these moves can be useful while soloing. However, unlike a healer's many healing spells for example, a rogue's skills can all be used while soloing, which I found quite amazing really. I came to the conclusion that you can tell a good rogue from a bad one because the former remembers at the right time that he has Blind. I always forget about it myself.

I also decided to try running some instances. Being a damage dealer, I figured that I would have to sit in the queue for half an hour while questing, but in reality most of my queues were less than five minutes long, sometimes even instant. In the end I had to just stop using the dungeon finder altogether for a while if I ever wanted to get any questing done.

The overall quality of my instance runs varied and some of them were fun simply because of the people I was with, but I have to admit that the entertainment value derived from actual gameplay was fairly low for me. I remember running instances with other rogues before WOTLK, and I remember them always darting ahead in stealth, distracting patrols, pickpocketing and sapping mobs, or in other words, being extremely useful even when not dealing damage. Unfortunately the WOTLK world has no room for rogues like that, and all that was left for me to do was to helplessly run after the tank, who was responsible for sixty percent of all damage done by spamming his AoE, to occasionally use Sinister Strike on a single mob. In one instance I even had someone yell at me to AoE already, until they remembered that rogues don't get any until level eighty. Yeah. Maybe that's why the dps queue is so short. While soloing I feel powerful; while grouping I feel utterly redundant. Which would you choose?

Then patch 4.0.1 came. I lost some skills that I had already learned before because they got moved to higher levels, but on the whole things didn't immediately feel too different. It took me a bit to realise that lockpicking had been completely removed as a skill, and is now a passive ability that automatically increases as you level up. I'm a bit disappointed by that, seeing how I had only just got into the mini-game of levelling it, but I suppose it will be nice to never have to deal with rogues who go "lol, what is lockpicking" when you ask them to open the door before the first boss in Shattered Halls or something similar ever again. Blade Flurry being on a thirty second cooldown now also helped a little with the AoE issue, if not much - but if nothing else it gives me one more button to press instead of just sinister-striking my way throughout the entirety of the instance.

I also finally got into the right level range for Zul'Farrak and Maraudon, two instances that I was looking forward to running through the dungeon finder since I hadn't done them in a while and was curious how the whole Maraudon split thing worked. Klepsacovic had a couple of posts on this subject lately that also received some interesting comments, and after experiencing these instances myself I can only echo their sentiments.

The Maraudon split is just plain awkward. Purple Crystals feels like a joke with only one boss in the zone, and Celebras the Cursed seems to have been completely left out in the cold, as both the orange and purple section officially end just before you reach him, and Pristine Waters starts behind him. It's a shame because he's one of the key lore figures of the instance and there's a quest to kill him, but most attempts to convince parties to go and kill him too get brushed off with a "nah, I just want my loot bag" (if people respond at all and don't just drop group).

In Zul'Farrak the loot bag caused issues as well - it's a circular instance, so saying that the instance is complete when you've circled halfway round to the chieftain will always result in people dropping out. Fortunately I got lucky because in the two runs that I was in, one tank looped around the right and one around the left, which means that I got both halves of the dungeon cleared for my quests over the course of those runs, but still... I consider myself lucky on that one.

I wonder if the next couple of instances that are coming up for my rogue (Sunken Temple, Blackrock Depths) will yield any interesting pug stories.

Instance Review: Zul'Farrak

Today I'd like to talk about another low-level instance that is very close to my heart: the troll city of Zul'Farrak.

1. Accessability

Zul'Farrak is located in Tanaris, which lies pretty much at the end of the world if you're looking at it from anywhere significant (like a capital city). Your first journey to the zone will take a fair amount of time, but it's worth it: Where else would people get their fix of Noggenfogger Elixir? The quests in the area also have as much synergy as you're currently going to find in any part of the old world, which makes it a fairly pleasant place to level. (Pirate quests!)

Once you've actually got the flight path to Gadgetzan, getting to Zul'Farrak is easy enough, as it's only about a minute's ride away from town.

2. Atmosphere

This is personal bias speaking here, but I absolutely dig any and all instances with trolls in them. I'm not entirely sure why that is - after all I play a troll myself and hearing their death noises has been known to make me twitchy on occasion. ("What was that? Am I still alive? Phew.")

Maybe it's because all the troll instances have a certain old-school adventure flair about them. "Indiana Jones and the secrets of Zul'Farrak", anyone? I could totally see it.

3. Story & Quests

Unless you want to get into troll lore in general, the "story" of Zul'Farrak can be summed up pretty simply: There's a bunch of bloodthirsty troll bastards who have lots of stuff. Let's take it! They are clearly evil anyway. Does a good adventurer really need any more justification?

As far as quests for the instance go, there are a ton of them; and almost all of them are available to both Alliance and Horde. Conveniently a lot of them can also be picked up quite close to the instance and don't have any pre-quests. It's interesting that they are without exception about stealing stuff from the trolls for other people. You're not the only one who wants a piece of those riches! (Though you could argue about the objective value of things like scarab shells and troll tempers.) This makes Zul'Farrak an excellent place for gaining a huge chunk of experience in your fourties.

4. Length

Obviously people's ideas of what's the ideal length for an instance will vary a lot as it's very subjective, but I find Zul'Farrak's length to be quite close to ideal. With a competent group it shouldn't take all day, but you're getting a good chunk of content for your time.

Due to the instance's circular nature there is no single predefined route through it, so if you're short on time you can always just aim for the part you are after and skip other bits, thereby adjusting the length to your needs.

5. Layout

As just mentioned, Zul'Farrak is basically one big circle. This can be mildly confusing during your first visit ("Wait, haven't we been here before?"), but it's not too bad. There are a lot of walls, huts, nooks and crannies that make the instance feel like a real place, but due to the circular layout you can't really run into any dead ends.

6. Trash

Sandfury trolls are hard. Well, at level anyway. This makes Zul'Farrak a good place to practice playing your role in a group, because there's a lot to do for everyone. First off there are many patrolling mobs to watch out for, which can easily lead to overpulling if someone doesn't watch where they are standing. Most trolls will also try to flee when low on health, increasing the risk of unwanted adds even more. Slowing abilities and focused fire are key.

They also have a whole host of abilities to annoy you, like heals, totems and crowd control - their hex in particular is extremely overpowered, can be cast on the tank and doesn't break on damage, like, at all. Ouch! Dps needs to learn to help with things like interrupts and dispelling.

7. Bosses

I'll be honest here and admit that many of the bosses in Zul'Farrak aren't very memorable by themselves. There's that basilisk guy, that zombie guy, that chief guy... but who even remembers their names? The only one that really stands out is Gahz'rilla, but that's simply because he's the only boss that isn't a troll, and seeing him emerge from his pool of water for the first time can be quite awe-inspiring to the average newbie. Plus, back in the day you needed a special item to summon him which was quite hard to acquire, so actually getting to see him felt special. Zombie boss can also be memorable if you've ever been in a party with someone who refused to listen to the instruction to not touch any of the graves.

However, there is one thing that's more epic than any other instance boss encounter that I can think of: the "stairs event". There's nothing quite like running up that pyramid, freeing the prisoners and just as you're congratulating yourself on another job well done, you turn around, look down... and suddenly there's a sea of trolls in your way. Then you have to spend the next ten minutes fighting your way out in a truly epic manner. For that encounter alone the instance is worth visiting.

8. Loot

You can't talk about Zul'Farrak loot without mentioning Sul'thraze the Lasher, an epic sword that is acquired by combining two rare blue boss drops from the instance. It's actually not that amazing a weapon, but at level fifty owning an epic still means something and is great for showing off. You do need to get quite lucky though, to see both halves of it drop and also win the roll.

As far as more ordinary boss drops go, Zul'Farrak still has some odd leftovers with questionable stats on them. I mean, were items with negative stats ever a good idea? And which class wants to spend their time meleeing with a staff? There's still some awesome loot for clothies and caster druids though, plus a few items for rogues and other lithe melee fighters. Any plate wearer not wearing heirlooms will also be happy to pick up some Big Bad Pauldrons.

The quest to kill Gahz'rilla also rewards people with an interesting trinket, the Carrot on a Stick. It's hardly amazing, but at low levels it's easy to not get any trinkets at all for a long time, so having something to stick into that empty slot feels quite satisfying.

In summary, Zul'Farrak is an instance with amazing atmosphere and some interesting and unique rewards. Since it's easy to get to and has a lot of quests to offer it's pretty much always worth a visit, even if you're trying to power-level. And it has the stairs event, which is one of the best five-man boss encounters ever and fun at any level. 'nuff said!