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Earlier this week I listed the five worst raid instance entrances. Today, I cover the five best!

5. Magister’s Terrace

I’m totally biased towards all things Blood Elf, deal with it. However this actually does merit a spot on the list on its own! You may not recall but the Isle of Quel’Danas was a progressive event zone. The island started out under the control of enemy forces and it was only through slow, steady work did we capture the island.

In those first days if you wanted to run Magister’s Terrace you were besieged by baddies the minute you stepped off the boat. You had to battle your way up the hill to the stone fending off some particularly nasty mobs that tended to group up on you. Eventually, we wrested control of a path through to the Terrace and yet later, the whole island.

4. Stockades

The instance itself is pretty much good for nothing but wool-farming but it has a pretty awesome entrance. The Stockades are near the dead center of Stormwind and serves as the city’s prison. The bad news is that the prison has erupted into violence and now the prisoners run the Stockades. The Alliance police forces are all right outside the instance entrance in full armor, preparing for the flood of inmates to come pouring out of the gates. The police forces have stacked up crates and barricades like a mini-fortress and are all shouting at one other very dramatically. Mostly what they shout goes something like “OMG WHY IS NO ONE STOPPING TO HELP US HERE FFS. WHERE’S VARIAN, THIS IS A FULL ON PRISON RIOT OMG WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING”.

Prison riots are badass.

3. Coilfang Reservoir

How many instances do you get to by swimming out into the middle of a giant lake, diving down through a twisting drain pipe and emerging in a giant waterfall? Pretty sure its not more than four! The shared instance hub for the Slave Pens, Underbog, Steamvaults and the famed Serpentshrine Cavern is easily one of the coolest entrances.

I wasn’t aware that the giant waterfall was anything more than just that for the longest time. Then someone formed a raid with me to show me what it really was. If you’re in a raid and you approach the waterfall you’ll hear a rumbling sound as the walls behind the falls pull back to reveal Serpentshrine Caverns.

2. Deadmines

Westfall is a shitty zone. A lot of the quests are boring, the scenery is drab and everything pretty much feels like the Grapes of Wrath there and John Steinbeck can eat a dick.

Oh yeah, its also home to an underground hideout of thieves who live on a boat in the middle of some inexplicable body of water. Nice!

The perfect place for boating! 

The entrance is entirely unassuming. A modest rickety shack holds a series of descents until you reach the mines themselves. Still, a noxious old mine seems to fit right in here. Press on however and you’ll eventually be swashbuckling with pirates and parrots on an oceanliner. Well played Westfall, well played.

1. Ahn’Qiraj

This instance entrance used to simply be a giant middle finger that said “Yeah there’s a couple raids behind this door but screw you”. That apparently pissed off a lot of people so the Horde and Alliance both worked together in the most shitty of shitty zones doing some pretty lame quests so that one day, one lucky douchebag could shaft everyone else who helped and claim a unique title and one of the rarest mounts in the game.

But that’s not all. Once the gates were opened you found yourself staring at the toes of some giant Anubis-like statues that came to life and started to nom your face off. The process of opening the gates of Ahn’Qiraj had widespread consequences that effected pretty much everyone and their dog across all of Azeroth.

In fact, the gates of Ahn’Qiraj were so epic that Blizzard said “Whoa guys we can’t in good conscience submit any more people to the sheer awesomeness of opening the Ahn’Qiraj gates anymore so from now on they’re going to start as opened on all servers!”

When the gates were opened on Moon Guard, I was there and I was one of the first tanks to get smacked up by Kurinaxx and I SMOTE HIS RUIN UPON THE MOUNTAINSIDE.

But when he didn’t drop the pretty robes I wanted I said it was a lame place and hearthed.