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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.

Shintar’s post over at Priest With A Cause got me thinking about some of the really interesting entrances out there for raid and dungeon instances so I thought I’d put together a list of what I thought were some of the best and worst. Today I’ll talk about the worst, tune in later in the week for the list of the 5 best!

5. Black Temple

You’ve spent your whole career in the Burning Crusade learning about Illidan and his nefarious plans for universal domination. You’ve spent endless hours slogging through Karazhan, the Eye, Serpentshrine Cavern and quite likely you’ve been cracking Rage Winterchill over the head for free loots for a few weeks too. You’re finally ready to launch the final assault on Illidan’s fortress while the battalions of the Aldor and the Scryers, led by the naaru, hold the lines behind you.

When you finally see the entrance to the penultimate raid zone of the Burning Crusade you realize that not only does it look suitably intimidating and impressive but the actual doors themselves are guarded by an outdoor raid boss. To even get your foot in the door you have to deal with the nightmare that is Doomwalker. Awesome, right?

No. Forget it. See the crack in the wall over there that leads into Illidan’s toilet? That’s where you’re headed!

4. Tempest Keep

Tempest Keep itself is extraordinarily badass on the inside. Some people may say the same for its outsides too. It is after all a big floating power plant/castle/air fortress/space ship. However the entrance is entirely awful. Why?

Tempest Keep. Pretty sure anyway.

Do you have epic flying? Better hope so because if you wipe in Tempest Keep you have to fly back from the graveyard. If you had a basic flyer (which was only 60% movement speed back in the day you damn kids) then you’d be putt-putting your way back to the instance while those with epic flying in your raid mocked and cursed you for being so slow you missed rebuffs.

3. Halls of Reflection, Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls

The shared entrance hub for these three dungeons is what I call the Icecrown hat trick of fail. I’m certain the only more obscure place to put an entrance into Icecrown Citadel would be a tunnel from the mountains in Wintergrasp on the souther border of Icecrown. It certainly doesn’t help that in order to get to the entrance hub you have to think in three dimensions which, as we all know from Oculus, presents quite a challenge for some people.

If you get stuck trying to get back after a wipe just do this: stop. Point yourself towards Icecrown Citadel. Look up. There are walkways on the sides of the citadel. Pick the second one up from the bottom on the right side and hold straight til morning… or until smacking into an Argent Crusade banner.

2. Blackrock Mountain

The biggest challenge with Blackrock instances prior to the LFD feature was powering through the boredom and staying awake as you took the longest flight in the history of ever to get to Blackrock Mountain. Seriously, the closest portal access point is Stonard and that’s only available if you’re Horde. I don’t know for sure but based on what I know about Alliance flight points and harbors, Alliance players probably had to catch three connecting boats to get to a super inconvenient flight path that leads them to their final destination half a zone away from the raid instance.

Of course its all good once you’re at the summoning stone right? No, and put down the vodka.

Headed towards BRD? You need to shimmy down a giant chain and wind through a series of tunnels and antechambers. Molten Core? You’ll need to run through BRD first. How about Blackrock Spire? Oh you’ll have to go to the eastern side of the ring and make your way up a series of staircases or cheese it by jumping in through the window after scaling the face of the rock. Ok but what about Blackwing Lair you might ask? If you do ask, you don’t want to know.

1. Maraudon

As I’ve said before, I hope this place is the first casualty of Cataclysm. First, the dungeon is all the way out in Desolace of all places. Once you get to it you’re lulled into thinking the entrance is rather straightforward; Its just through that big set of gates on the hill right?

Wrong again. Are you going to the purple side or the orange? Are you a baller and have the staff with you to skip to the waterfall?

Or more likely, are you so enraged and confused and lost in these caves and tunnels that you stop doing instances until you reach Outland after clearing the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral and dinging level 40?

Yeah, you’d be right to do that.