Project Lore

Despite the fact that the official patch notes clearly state that the Forge of Souls would be the first wing of the new 5-man Icecrown Citadel instance available for exploring, players on the test server can only currently access the the second wing, Pit of Saron. Even if it does seem a bit odd to kick off testing with the middle of this epic story instead of the beginning, I was still hungry for any bone Blizzard was going to throw us, so I gathered up a war party and ventured deep into the unfortunately-acronymed dungeon. If you're not afraid of spoilers (and there will be some), continue reading below! A word of warning to those who might seek entrance to the Pit of Saron before I begin: while the servers themselves seem to have been largely stabilized, many characters are having trouble seeing the instance portals. This appears to be a bug associated with phased content, meaning that anyone who has completed certain Icecrown quests (the exact culprits haven't been nailed down just yet) will not be able to see, let alone use, them. In that case, you'll have to either transfer another, less developed character, use a premade, or hope there's a Warlock in the group that can summon you in. I, for instance, have been stuck using my under-geared Elemental Shaman, Nuggnuts, instead my pimped out Rogue, Amatera. This will no doubt be fixed in upcoming builds, but those are the only options for now. If you're not cool with that, feel free to join the rest of the players out there using the dungeon's abbreviation as a fun pejorative for describing their current experience! That aside, let's get on with it! The first thing I noticed when I entered the Pit is that the bulk of it consists of a wide-open outdoor area. This means two things: mounts and the ability to skip trash. There also may be some choice regarding which order you tackle the first two bosses in. The dungeon map for Pit of Saron. The second thing I noticed was the big, bad frostwyrm called Rimefang hovering overhead, with Scourgelord Tyrannus, the mine's overseer in the saddle. After taking a few steps in, Lady Sylvanas appeared from the portal behind us (well, if you're Horde, she will), with two of her Dark Rangers, and a small battalion of troops in tow. The redshirts of the group charged right for Tyrannus, who clearly doesn't like people interfering with his operations. A little bit of the old Darth Vader stranglehold and they all dropped to the ground, dead. Tyrannus flew off, leaving the remainder of his undead minions for us to deal with.

Sylvanas' forces attempt to crush Tyrannus...

...and are subsquently destroyed. From here, the path split off to the left or the right around the eponymous Pit, where tired slaves are busy digging out Saronite while a giant, floating skull watches from above. Each one leads to a different boss encounter, and as I mentioned before, it doesn't seem particularly important which you decide to fight first. We chose to go to the right, which included offing some giant skeletons, necrolytes, and vrykul -- in other words, the usual Icecrown rogue's gallery. *The* Pit of Saron Along the way, just passing by slaves working the ore freed them, and they had all sorts of reactions to their saviors, from just plain old running away to thinking that they're hallucinating when they first saw you. It adds a nice little touch to the proceedings. Eventually, we reached the platform where Forgemaster Garfrost resided, who was essentially a giant vrykul crossed with an abomination. He looks a lot like the Pustulent Horrors you might see wandering around Mord'rether, but with a sack of giant Saronite boulders on his back, which he evidently thought was a good idea to toss at us during the fight. His other primary ability seems to be an AoE pulse that stacks a debuff on you, increasing Frost damage taken. This means you'll need to take him down quickly before it builds up and his regular attacks start doing too much to handle. Garfrost's ugly mug. Though we downed him on the first attempt, I won't say it went cleanly. I was killed due to one of the boss' ranged attacks and so were the Hunter and Resto Druid (aka the healer), leaving the two Paladins in our group to finish the job (I should mention here that loot hasn't been implemented yet, on trash or bosses). A previously enslaved Orc named Gorkun Ironskull appeared to retake the forge, along with all the other laborers we had previously relieved of their bonds. He promised that they would take the opportunity to gear up and help us in our final assault. After rezzing everyone and buffing back up, we traversed the Northern edge of the Pit towards the second boss, a corrupted leper gnome named Krick and his hideous companion/mount, Ick. This wasn't a particularly hard fight either, but it was fun and definitely tested our movement skills. For a majority of the encounter, Ick tossed globs of slime, which created poisonous, green pools on the ground where they landed. These came slowly and were easy to dodge. But at some point during the fight, Krick decided that it simply wasn't doing the job on its own and started conjuring time bombs on the ground. Represented by expanding, purple domes, they started popping up all over the place and quickly became difficult to completely avoid. All the while, Ick continued to throw bolts of his fetid bile at the party, dealing direct damage this time. Unfortunately, I bit the dust again, but we still managed to pull off a victory on our first attempt. Krick gets throttled by Sylvanas. Sylvanas appeared to take the vile gnome's life, but before he perished, he let slip that the Lich King's blade, Frostmourne, could be found in the 3rd wing of the instance, the Halls of Reflection. Sylvanas questioned Krick's admission, citing that she thought Arthas always had it by his side, but he continued to insist that he was telling the truth. With the second boss down, Tyrannus showed his ugly mug once again. He taunted us from the skies, provoking us to burst through the ranks of his most powerful undead lackeys and challenge him on the platform above. Several more powerful packs of trash stood before us on the slope, five or six to a number. Trash on the way to Tyrannus. Hey, look! A cave! Embarassingly, we wiped on the first set, but picked back up and made it through the rest more or less unscathed. The cliffside eventually lead to a cave, which I can now admit is probably my favorite part of the dungeon. The trash inside isn't terribly difficult, but you'll have to fight them through falling blocks of ice. If you've ever fought Hodir in Ulduar, you should already be familiar with this mechanic, as glowing blue circles on the ground will show you where icicles are about to drop. This looks awfully familiar... On the other side of the cave we met Tyrannus for the final time. He had nowhere left to run or hide. Gorkun and his men appeared to back us up, distracting the Scourgelord's undead army so that we could face him and his frostwyrm alone... In the interest of at least keeping some things a secret, I'll end my recount of the events here. As for what I thought of it when it all was said and done? Well, if you were expecting a challenge, I don't think you'll find it here. The Pit of Saron, at least, isn't much more difficult than any of the other Heroic 5-man dungeons out there. But it does flow better, and the integrated story elements allow the instance to have a sort of "rhythm" you just don't get in other parts of the game. With each boss down, you feel like you're actively working towards an end goal instead of just more loot, and the inclusion of important NPCs like Sylvanas adds some extra fun, even if you never fight directly by her side. I'm reminded somewhat of the dungeons in Lord of the Rings Online, and I hope that, at least in terms of pushing the narrative, this is a path Blizzard continues to tread in the future. Facing down Tyrannus, once and for all!

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The Patch Test Realm continues to bear fruit with the addition of new repeatable raid quests to the game. As if you didn't already have enough ways to earn badges, Blizzard is giving you one more! Don't worry, you won't have to do anything fancy, though. I think they more or less speak for themselves:

Lord Marrowgar Must Die!

Lord Jaraxxus Must Die!

XT-002 Deconstructor Must Die!

Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die!

Razorscale Must Die!

Flame Leviathan Must Die!

Malygos Must Die!

Patchwerk Must Die!

Instructor Razuvious Must Die!

Noth the Plaguebringer Must Die!

Anub'Rekhan Must Die!

Sartharion Must Die!

If you still don't get the gist of it, each quest will require you to enter one of Northrend's raid dungeons and melt the face of one of their biggest, baddest bosses. Doing so will reward you with ten -- count 'em, ten -- Emblems of Frost, which are presumably the new currency used to by Tier 10 gear. We don't know a whole lot about how this quests will be handled, but due to the nature of lockout periods and the number of badges being doled out, I think it's logical to assume that you'll only be able to complete one a week. There's also a pretty good chance that the NPC giving them out will do so randomly. Of course, for the majority of guilds, that's going to make some weeks far easier than others! Kill Patchwerk? Well, OK then! To be fair, none of the bosses are particularly tough, and most can be accessed without going to far into their respective raids. You may notice a new face at the top though... Lord Marrowgar? He is, indeed, a new encounter that players will face in Icecrown Citadel. Hopefully we'll get the chance to face him as the testing process rolls on. How about some feedback, readers? Are these quests a convenient way to earn some badges for guilds that might be having trouble with the upcoming raid or just another nerf to the gear system? You could earn 10 top-tier badges just by destroying this guy!

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The PTR is abuzz with all sorts of changes right now, at least when people aren't getting disconnected! Through the 30 second gaps of up-time, though, I managed to score a few screenshots of the new quest tracking features that Blizzard's been working on. And guess what? They're integrated right into the World Map! I knew something had to be up when I read this in the patch notes:

Quest Tracking Feature

• This system is currently under development and is not fully functional.

And apparently, this is it: As you can see, your quest log is now integrated into the map screen when you bring it up (though if you prefer the old log, you can still use it by hitting the appropriate icon). Checking a box in the lower-right corner will allow you to actively track objectives on the map. Presumably, the numbers that correspond to quests in the panel on the right while be displayed on the world map where your goal is. Sadly, this must be the part of the system that "is not fully functional" just yet. As for that green box in the upper-right corner? The final graphic obviously hasn't been added just yet, but clicking on it allows you to window the world map, something you couldn't do previously without add-ons like Cartographer. Here's what it looks like: Since the feature is still in development, it's not guaranteed that it will make it to live servers in the form you see it here, but I'm still rather excited by changes like this. If I can log onto the test server for more than a few minutes (I haven't even had enough time to re-allocate my talent points), I'll be sure to bring you more (and, hopefully, some details about the new 5-man dungeon that is currently open for testing). What think you of this feature, good readers?

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As of tonight, Patch 3.3 has gone live on the Public Test Realm. Earlier today, we caught our first glimpse at the latest PTR patch notes, signifying that we knew it would be coming soon. But here it is, just a few hours later, and it's already here! Happy day! The long fight against the Lich King has been arduous, and the final battle has been a long time coming. It seems that we'll all soon get our shot at Arthas. But first - to test out the fights and ensure that they're in good enough condition to release to all. I would expect there will probably be at least 6 to 8 weeks of beta testing before the patch is passed on to everyone, and perhaps there will be drastic changes by then, since nothing on the PTR is ever guaranteed to appear in-game. This is just pure speculation on my part, but perhaps we could see the finalized Patch 3.3 out sometime in January. It seems appropriate, somehow, for the final battle to be played out in the winter (at least for us Northern Hemisphere dwellers). Personally, I can't wait to hear and see more about the new 10- and 25-man raids, and especially the 5-man dungeon at Icecrown Citadel, since I've been having a great time with the 5-man content as of late. And now that I've got a level 80 character, I'm debating whether or not to download the PTR myself... but I'd hate to get attached to any content (or loot!), not to mention Rogue vanish fixes that may never end up on the final version. Oh, decisions. Well, for any of you who are looking into beta testing, here's what Blue Poster Aratil gave as advice on the forums:

Patch 3.3.0 is available for testing on the PTR. We would like to encourage everyone to take time to test this patch and provide feedback on the Test Realm forums. For more information on the PTR, please visit the following threads- Introduction, Installing.

The forums already have jumped alive with excitement, and apparently some at grief that the patch is more than 1.3 GB in size. Hopefully that's an indication that there's LOTS of new content for us to discuss in the coming days and weeks. So, how many of you are going to foray into the PTR?

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With 3.2.2 finally out of the way, the Patch Test Realm is clear for the arrival of 3.3, which should be bringing with it Icecrown Citadel, if nothing else. Though not a peep has come out of Blizzard yet, it appears that the Character Copy service is currently available. If you've never used it before, it allows you to take a character from the server you normally play on and reproduce one with its exact stats and equipment on one of the test realms. Sindragosa in Icecrown Citadel If you think this the timing seems too soon, might I remind you that, at BlizzCon, it looked like they had already put a lot of work into Icecrown Citadel, even detailing some of the events that might occur as you progress through it (like the airship battle between the Horde and Alliance). Even though we've heard little about the encounters, populating a raid with bosses and trash is often one of the last things to actually happen when creating a dungeon (that's not to say they haven't already charted things out in some no-doubt-extensive design documents). Likewise, the freshly released information regarding the new three-wing, 5-man instance accompanying the raid leads us to believe that at least some of the forthcoming content is close to being ready for public consumption. Not to mention, Blizzard keeps talking about that Vanish fix like it's right around the corner. Quoth the Ghostcrawler:

"We have a change for Vanish in place for 3.3. You will get to try it out soon (tm)."

Even if 3.3 is expected to hit the PTR in the next couple of weeks, don't think that you'll be able to go toe-to-toe with Arthas just yet. Previous experience shows that, whenever they choose to start showing off the raid, they'll probably cycle individual bosses in and out on a testing schedule. And in order to preserve the secrecy of key fights, like that against the Lich King, they'll likely leave some out altogether. So feel free to go ahead and copy your character (I've verified it, it works), but be aware that if the real thing isn't coming just yet, they'll likely wipe all of the current transfers before 3.3 actually lands for testing. Can you guys sense it? That excitement? The final conflict of Wrath is right around the corner!

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