Project Lore

And we're back to a robust week of testing in Icecrown Citadel! If you had seen this schedule earlier, either on a different news site or on the official PTR forum itself, do note that the dates have been shifted. There will no longer be any testing done tonight (Tuesday, 11/10), and the encounters that would have been are only being pushed back a day or two, so we'll essentially still get to test everything as originally planned. There's at least one potential spoiler below that you may want to watch out for if you intend or reading any further (not mine, it's in the schedule itself):

We are scheduling raid tests in Icecrown Citadel for November 11-14. The schedule is as follows: EU Servers Thursday, November 12 at 19:30 CET – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Rotface Friday, November 13 at 19:30 CET – Blood Princes, Professor Putricide Saturday, November 14 at 19:30 CET – Lord Marrowgar US Servers Wednesday, November 11 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Lord Marrowgar, Festergut Thursday, November 12 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Deathbringer Saurfang Friday, November 13 at 7PM EST / 4 PM PST – Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Icecrown Gunship Battle Saturday, November 14 at 4PM EST / 1 PM PST – Sindragosa Only normal difficulties will be tested, although 10 and 25 player raids will be available. The Icecrown Citadel raid test schedule will be very flexible, and can change at a moment's notice due to build status, bugs, and server issues. Remember that this is the test server, so things can, do, and will break from time to time. Check this forum for the latest Icecrown Citadel raid testing schedule information in the weeks to come.

I noted on the last schedule update that there were only four more bosses to be tested. After this week, three of those will be knocked out (Blood Princes, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Deathbringer) and only the big, bad guy at the top will remain. We have it on good faith (and a little bit of experience) that the Lich King will NOT be available on test servers, and will rather continue to be evaluated in-house. The case has been similar for end-bosses in past raids, and with an extra helping of lore and spoilers plopped on top of Arthas, I highly doubt Icecrown Citadel is going to be any different. Likewise, I anticipate Blizzard testing all hard modes internally, which shouldn't much of a problem considering they'll have extra time to do so. Even when 3.3 goes live, players will have to wait for the Lich King to be unlocked and defeated before they can even begin to tackle any bosses in their more difficult forms. As for the encounters being re-tested? Some like Professor Putricide presented with rather large bugs the first time around (you couldn't target him again after engaging him for the first time!), while others seem to be on their way to receiving their final coat of polish (Lord Marrowgar). By my estimation, this places the patch about three weeks away at Dec. 1 (right after Thanksgiving), though that may depend on whether or not they postpone holiday-week testing to the next (assuming they even need it in the first place), which could push 3.3 back to Dec. 7 at the latest. We'll keep you posted here on Project Lore and, if all goes as planned, there will be some videos of all the new encounters being tested on the US servers this week. So stay tuned!