Icecrown: The End of All Things

Well, if Blizzard is going to mimic Lord of the Rings, I'm certainly going to do a little thievery for the title of this post.

After a lot of anticipation, Icecrown is finally open, and while the quests are still questionable in places, there are plenty of placeholder models for NPCs, and bugs abound, the views are fucking amazing.

The standout things in the zone are, naturally, the three gates. Companion to Angrathar: The Wrath Gate in Dragonblight, we have Mord'rethar, Aldur'thar, and Corp'rethar. It's like Blizzard took Tolkien and multiplied it by 4. Plus, there's a quest that involves poking out a giant, all-seeing eye. Sound familiar? Wholesale BORROWING aside, however, this zone is amazingly done.

My only complaint, and maybe this is for lack of finding the damn thing, but... where's the Frozen Throne? I couldn't find it in my flying around. Hopefully it's just tucked away somewhere that I haven't looked yet, off the beaten path since Arthas has a much more imposing place to hang out now. Speaking of...

Icecrown Citadel is far, FAR more impressive than the Black Temple, definitely befitting the abode of the end boss of the expanson. While not quite as monumentally astounding as Ulduar, it still very much catches the eye.

Anyhow, videos! Here's the YouTube, and below is the high quality link, which you should go to and download. The file size is almost twice as big as the last one (350MB this time), but it's rendered very close to in-game quality. Besides, on broadband, 350MB is fucking nothing. Stop being a pussy.


High Quality Download here!

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Beta 2, Us 0

The oft-interesting thing about beta is that it's unfinished. Shit breaks, sometimes spectacularly. Instability is a fact of life. Sometimes you think things are perfect, only to have them fall completely apart. Actually, this sounds remarkably like dating a woman for any significant period of time.

Regardless, this is how beta is. You get used to it, because there's no alternative. In exchange for getting to see new content months before anyone else, you're expected to test it, break it, trash it, and then explain to Blizzard what you did so they can fix it.


Crystalsong Forest goes haywire

Even knowing all that, however, it's very easy to get frustrated when things simply refuse to go your way. Take our attempts at Naxxramas.



We've got enough of us in beta that we can put together a pretty solid Naxxramas 10-man run using the PvP premades. We had one scheduled for Wednesday evening, only to have surprise maintenance and a new beta patch preclude that occasion. So, we reschedule to tonight.

First up was an old friend, Anub'rekhan.


Anub'rekhan back in '06.


Anub'rekhan in '08.

It's both surprising and amusing that 8 of the 10 people in tonight's raid were present at our guild's first 40-man Anub'rekhan kill almost two years ago. Goes to show that, while we might suck, we're consistent.

In any case, first pull of the evening was going fine... until the instance server crashed at ~70%.

After waiting for roughly 30 minutes for things to sort themselves out, we zoned in, cleared trash again, and were just about ready to pull him when... the instance servers crashed again.

Ok, well, one more go? After retrieving a few people who had been mysteriously ported to Dalaran and reclearing trash again, we were doing fine and dandy... until the server crashed again around 20%. SIGH.

Nostalgia factor was high, though, and while the fight is incredibly easy compared to its old 40-man counterpart (which was itself easy compared to later fights in the zone), it's absolutely awesome to get to see Naxxramas again.

Even if the servers hate us.

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Drak'Tharon Keep (74-76)

Next up for the Ekerameter is the first troll dungeon you'll run into in Wrath of the Lich King, Drak'Tharon Keep. Situated roughly where the zones of the Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and the Dragonblight trisect, in the past this keep served as the Drakkari Empire's southern bastion. Now, however, the Scourge have driven the Drakkari out in their march into Zul'Drak and hold the Keep against all comers.




Technically, Drak'Tharon Keep is in Grizzly Hills, although it is also accessible from Zul'Drak; in fact, once you pick up the flight path for Light's Breach just inside ZD, it's a quicker trip to land there and ride south to DTK than to weave your way up through the forest from Conquest Hold.

While not immediately available - in fact, for one of the two lines, a minimum of an hour of questing is required - there are two quests that eventually lead here. This follows the renewed trend by Blizzard of giving clear quest support to almost all of their dungeons. Seek out some familiar faces at Granite Hills in the forests directly south of Drak'Tharon Keep for how to get started on these.



Drak'Tharon Keep Ekerameter:

Difficulty - 3
Loot - 4
PUG Factor - 2
FUCK YEAH Quotient - 4
Overall - 4

Troll dungeons have gotten a pretty poor reputation through the course of the game. Zul'Farrak is tiny yet has tons of trash, Sunken Temple is... horrible (the only instance for which I'd give a PUG Factor rating in the negatives), and Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman have both caused their share of headaches. So, now it's ice trolls? Well, for one, Drak'Tharon Keep is as much DEAD trolls as anything - the Scourge have taken over, and nearly every inhabitant is reanimated. Additionally, the design of the place is unlike anything I've seen before - it seems sort of a strange combination of Mayan and Japanese architecture. Moving on into Zul'Drak proper gives some Greco-Roman hints too.



Difficulty-wise, the place is average. At present in the beta, the bosses are on the easy side, but that may be intentional for most of the leveling dungeons. Trash can be tricky in places. Considering this is around the Mana-Tombs/Auchenai Crypts point in leveling in comparison to TBC, this place beats the pants off of those.

The loot here is well-suited for the levels, with a good mix of drops. As with most dungeons, each boss has 3 blue drops, meaning you won't need to run these places a thousand times unless your luck is truly horrendous. The two quest lines that lead here also give some good additional blues. An errant PUG member could cause havoc in the pulls leading to the latter two bosses, so keep your idiots on tight leashes. In the FYQ side of things, one of the quest lines, while having an ending that most will see coming, nevertheless concludes in a very cool fashion, and sets up a storyline that continues into Zul'Drak.

All told, this place defies the odds for a troll dungeon, and is definitely worth running several times for good XP and drops in the mid 70s.




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Halls of Stone (77-79)

So, first up on the agenda for instance reviews is the first of two 5-mans set in Ulduar in the Storm Peaks, the Halls of Stone. Ulduar is a Titan city, like Uldaman or Uldum in the old world, except this one isn't buried and isn't in ruins. Ulduar itself (and thus the instances) are only accessible by flying mounts unless you are summoned, much like Tempest Keep.






First, a handy dandy series of ratings for the dungeon's merits, and some spoiler-and-strategy-free comments to supplement and explain the ratings. This all sounds very official but actually it's entirely arbitrary and I reserve the right to blah blah on with it.

So here are the 5 ratings categories and what they mean:

Difficulty - Quite simply, how hard is this instance relative to the level it's presented at? 1 means the place is poorly tuned - either it's way too easy or WAY too fucking hard, whereas 5 means it's very challenging and manages to be fun because of it.
Loot - Is the loot worth coming here for? 1 means skip this shit, it ain't worth it (Auchenai Crypts anyone?), whereas 5 means almost every boss drop is a keeper. This includes rewards from quests that take you inside the dungeon.
PUG Factor - Different from difficulty, this essentially answers: How likely is it that a complete moron pickup member could wipe your group? 1 means you're better off 4-manning it; conversely, 5 means shitty players are a nonfactor.
FUCK YEAH Quotient - Essentially, how cool is this place. Are you going to be sleepwalking through another boring highway of loot (LOOKING AT YOU AUCHENDOUN INSTANCES)? Are the boss fights innovative and engaging? Is there cool scenery? Familiar NPCs that show up? Tie-ins with leadup quests/zone content? 1 means YAWN, 5 means FUCK YEAH. Who didn't see that coming?
Overall - Sums it all up. May not necessarily reflect the other 4 ratings perfectly, as some things weigh more heavily than others in a given instance.

With that in mind...




Halls of Stone Ekerameter:

Difficulty - 2
Loot - 4
PUG Factor - 3
FUCK YEAH Quotient - 3
Overall - 3

Comments - Medium sized instance with some decent variety. The boss fights are relatively simple and very difficult to wipe on at their present state in beta. Loot here is very good for the level, with some great, relatively common BoE trash drops. The PUG Factor refers to a specific boss that will have a familiar mechanic. FYQ-wise, there are definitely some cool visuals here, but a lot of it is offset by a long lost character's return... specifically, his voice actor is fucking TERRIBLE. Lots of good lore here about the Titans and the dwarven race, however. Overall, an instance that's worth a run or two on regular.





Quest Availability - Aside from the heroic/nonheroic dailies, there is only one quest for this instance, started inside as part of a boss event. No pre-questing is required.




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Long Break Is Long

Herein I quote myself:

"Let's see if I can sustain Step 3 longer than a week. I'll shoot for two for now."

Well, despite my best hopes, Step 3 lasted about a week. This somewhat coincided with my decision to take an almost complete break from Live WoW, which included discontinuing my raiding schedule. When one creates a blog that is at least in part designed to discuss current and past raiding, and then one quits raiding, it makes it rather difficult to comment on those topics, no?

However, while my break from WoW is not over, my break from this is. I've got a bunch of plans for beta-related content to post in the next few days, stuff that should be interesting and relevant, at least to me. If I'm the only one reading my own blog, well... fuck the rest of you nonexistent people.

On my break in general - I've done the raidleading, guild officering thing for over 2-1/2 years now. I've taken some periodic breaks before, most notably at the end of the old game and the very beginning of The Burning Crusade. Since then, I've been consistently active. I've helped strategize and defeat, by my count, 44 bosses in 10- or 25-man content. I've coordinated resist gear and consumables for dozens of raiders, managed the bank for a couple months, calculated DKP, blah blah blah blah. I did a lot of shit for a long time. Everyone needs a breather, and this is mine.

I can say with complete confidence that I don't miss raiding one bit at the moment. I'm also smart enough to realize that this won't last forever; I'm already itching to run Naxxramas on the beta realms, and am looking forward to the other raids in store. However, current content, mechanics, and ways of doing things are boring, irritating, and generally distasteful at this point. Thus, I choose to distance myself from them and focus on something I think I'm relatively good at - objectively evaluating upcoming content and design. I take this beta shit seriously!

Now, with that little anecdotal blurb out of the way, on to my plans for the immediate future:

1. Reviews for each and every 5-man instances available in Wrath of the Lich King. I'll include a few prettified screenshots for each, and some ratings and discussion about the pros and cons of the instance. I was also planning to have some spoilered stuff that covered the place more in-depth, but Blogspot sucks at that, so you get the very basics until I find a better way to go about that.

2. Assuming those of us KKW folks in beta can get a run going (we had one planned for last night, but the new beta push and resultant server downtime precluded it), I'll have a similar review up for what I can experience of 10-man Naxxramas. Comparisons between old and new Naxx will be tossed in where appropriate.

3. A video tour of Icecrown Glacier, since it's now open and seemingly stable, similar to the one I did of The Storm Peaks. I've already got most of the footage I need recorded, so I just need to finish that up, edit it, and add some music. Expect this in a day or two.

4. Plenty of humorous looks at the beta forum goers. The most recent patch brought a lot of changes to almost every class, and almost universally every class got something "nerfed." I use quotation marks because, for fuck's sake, it's beta, everything's always going to be in a state of flux, so calling changes buffs or nerfs is missing the point. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of instances of people going positively apeshit. I'll do my best to find the cream of the crop.

There are definitely some other ideas germinating as well, so we'll see what else I can dredge out of this brain of mine. In the meantime, hello again, and welcome back to my shitty blog. More content's in store, I PWOMISE.


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