Now that we’ve touched upon the scenery and epic scale of the new World of Warcraft expansion, it seems like a good point to go into more detail about the content you’ll probably be spending a future paycheck on. As the beta test continues, more and more videos are posted to youtube while the unwitting watchers cry about the lack of balance between the classes. Specifically death knights. Before I go on, let me remind everyone that the expansion is still in the beta testing phase. Nothing is particularly set in stone in terms of talents/spells/etc. The developers have been very good about watching the forums and taking in new suggestions as well as listening to concerns that the players have.

Beta warning aside, I’m not going to get into most of the class mechanics, mainly because I’ve only played three of them in depth. Because of that, I feel I’m unqualified to theorycraft or whine on the unfairness or imbalance in the game. Besides, like I just said, they’re not finished yet.

Throughout the week I was able to explore more of Northrend’s content and get into a few of the instances. My favorite by far is the Nexus, a dungeon centered around the blue dragon flight. I was able to experience the content on both my fire (lol) mage and my resto shaman. (Alliance and horde respectively.) It seems that for a lot of players, gear level is a major worry. We think back to the days of hellfire ramparts and underbog and shudder at the memory of all that death. So much death. Well, I have good news for you! My mage is geared in t5/t6 while my shaman is in outlands blues. Both performed on about the same level. Yes my mage was doing good DPS, but it didn’t make the instance any easier than when I was healing on my shaman.

Raiders and those who farmed for badge/PVP gear will also be happy because they won’t immediately be replacing the gear they’ve worked so hard for. While the quest and instance gear in Northrend is very impressive and visually pleasing, it scales at a decent level so that your purples don’t immediately get replaced with green ‘of the bandit’ gear. But on the opposite side, fresh 70s or people who haven’t been able to farm for epics will also get some nice upgrades from quests they will easily be able to handle. In all, it’s a very balanced system.

Most of us cringe at the mention of the 70’s dungeons. Botanica, Mech, etc. While the dungeons were well designed and looked spectacular, on the 5th run through the walls seemed to melt together while you began to wonder why, oh why, the dungeon just kept going. And going. And going. And you had to do it if you wanted the rep, right? And then once you got the rep - you got to do it all over again on heroic mode! You’re cringing right now, aren’t you?

Well, more good news! The tedious dungeon design of yore is gone. Hopefully for good. The new instances are short, sweet, and to the point. With a lack of reputation grinds, most of that annoying trash has been eliminated. While some complain the dungeons are too short, I counter this by saying that once you finish one of these newly tuned dungeons, rather than hearth immediately and feel like you’ve lost 2 good hours of you’re life, you’re going to be spamming your chat channel asking if the group wants to run it again.

Upon stepping into the Nexus you’ll find that the blue dragons patrolling the perimeter blend perfectly in with their icy surroundings. In the center of the dungeon is an enormous red dragon encased in a block of ice. The question becomes: How do you free it? Simple. Beat the other bosses first.

The first boss (though ‘first’ is subjective as you can go in any order) is a crazy blue dragon in her blood elf form. This fight is all kinds of crazy. The first time you go in, you will not understand what the Hell is going on. Nether-tethers send you flying, blizzards rain from the sky, she splits into three…yeah. It sounds confusing but the fight is very fun. The first time I encountered her, I laughed the entire time.

The next boss is a giant void creature. It’s a pretty standard fight. Basically you kill the things it spawns just like you would if you were fighting the curator in Karazhan. People may complain that this fight is boring, but not every fight can be the next Kael’thas or Vashj.

The third boss is giant. He enrages at 10% or so, but the real fun of the fight is that every so often he juts a bunch of crystals up through the ground. Anyone caught unaware is sent flying into the air. It’s a fast but fun fight.

After beating the other three bosses, you return to the center chamber and click on the crystal orbs surrounding the frozen dragon. She awakens in a rage and attacks. She uses a standard frost breath and tail swipe but also applies a DoT to anyone who stands still for any period of time. The trick of the fight is to move around to get the DoT off but still do damage/heal. It sounds more complicated than it actually is, but either way it’s a pretty fun fight.

Azjol-Nerub is my second favorite instance so far. It’s an underground Nerubian dungeon. So yes, that does mean it’s full of bugs and spiders. The fights are also pretty standard. One of them is a race against time as a spider slowly crawls its way up to you. Unfortunately the second half of the dungeon is currently blocked off so I have yet to fully experience the content. The fun thing is that they’ve added new mechanics to the trash pulls to make them less blah. The spiders shoot a web on a member of the party that the rest have to get off. When I got webbed, a tree druid had to punch me in the face until I was free. This skill seems to be a tie-in with one of Maexxna’s attacks, adding another throw-back to Naxxramas. Also, the second boss in Azjol is actually a spawn on Maexxna. Gross.

The instances are also a step up graphically than the dungeons we came to know in Outlands and Azeroth. New textures add more depth to the walls, and the lighting accents every new corner and ceiling perfectly. Like Northrend, I imagine people are going to be like me and be snapping screenshots every three seconds in these new dungeons. They are just that visually pleasing. You are going to want to do these dungeons, and without the ridiculous amount of trash there is no reason you shouldn’t.

So when you really take into account all the new upgrades to both the content and the scenery of this expansion, I think it adds a huge new appeal to the game. The developers, artists, testers, etc. have worked really hard and I must say that all the time spent has really paid off. When Wrath of the Lich King hits retail, you will definitely see me in Northrend. Most likely taking vanity screenshots or searching for a way to get a polar bear or dragon mount.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under Previews, Game Design, World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.