Project Lore

It was one of those fights that took everything my raid group had to get through it. And that made it all the sweeter when we finally beat it.

I'm talking about that ugly, bumbling, high-pitched experiment of an abomb, Rotface. For whatever reason, my 10-man raid crew had opted to take the right fork in the hallway outside of Professor Putricide's laboratory. Although probably the harder of the two abominations, we set our sights on downing Rotface first, and focused on getting down the tactics we needed to down him.

Our first night trying him out seemed encouraging. Our best attempt had gotten Rotface to 20 percent, and we were certain it was only a matter of time. Then things went south.

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Groups tackling normal modes in Icecrown Citadel no longer will be limited by a fixed number of available attempts, Blizzard blue poster Daelo announced on the official WoW forums late Monday. Here's what was posted:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode. We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A few hours later, Slorkuz expanded on the topic in the European forums:

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There's been one specific horse trampling his mark all over WoW news this week, and his name is Invincible. On the official World of Warcraft website Wednesday, Blizzard unveiled a page devoted to Arthas' horse along with the news that the Invincible Charger mount will drop upon defeat of the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel, on heroic difficulty. The site also goes into considerable depth on the history of Invincible -- in both life and undeath -- and just why he is so epic and frightening:

The mare Brightmane gave birth to Invincible as a young Prince Arthas watched with rapt attention. In the years following Invincible's birth, the horse and Arthas formed a bond that carried them across the warring nations of Azeroth, through the icy grip of death, and into the throes of battle. The stallion's coiled muscles were made for speed, and Arthas often felt that his mount flew rather than galloped across the countryside.

With the slightest touch of his heel, Arthas was able to convey his directions, and Invincible obeyed without question or hesitation. It was Invincible's unfaltering faith in his master that inevitably led to the stallion's death and unholy rebirth. On a cold winter afternoon as snow was blanketing the ground, Arthas was desperate to get away from the city even if it meant riding through harsh and unforgiving weather. Once outside, Arthas guided Invincible over a familiar jump, but the stallion slipped on slick ice, and the fall shattered his forelegs.With no way to save his companion, Arthas was forced to give Invincible a merciful death, and the prince carried that guilt with him for a very long time.

Years later, after the Lich King granted Arthas necromantic powers, Arthas returned to the grave where he had buried Invincible and raised his loyal servant into undeath. It was in this dark act that Arthas felt a sense of purpose. He believed that Invincible's death was not an accident; rather, it was essential to Arthas's destiny. Invincible was not bred to be a warhorse, but after he was brought back from the dead and made immune to hunger, pain, and exhaustion, he became the perfect steed for Arthas.

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They're two of the signature moves of rogues and hunters: Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection. Both allow the two classes to dps straight out at the start of a boss fight without pulling aggro, and in fact can also help a tank build up their threat levels quickly from the start. But I had never seen a fight won solely because of the tactics of these two moves until last week.

My raid group had gotten through Lord Marrowgar in Icecrown Citadel, but hadn't quite reached the Gunship Battle shenanigans that I already happily told you about. Which left us taking on Lady Deathwhisper, and things were going great -- the Adherents and Fanatics were going down fine with the help of our two tanks, the deformed ones were getting kited around to avoid their hard hits, and the boss' mana shield was getting hacked down steadily.

Then right as we were finishing off the last of the mana shield, somehow one of our tanks died. With no battle rez in sight, we assumed that the attempt would be a wipe because usually two tanks are absolutely necessary for the second phase of this boss. She has a nasty, stacking debuff that essentially makes a tank lose the ability to generate threat, so the two tanks taunt off each other, ensuring that at least one tank is holding aggro.

Time to improvise.

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Wow, WoW, you're going too fast for me! It seems like only yesterday that the Plagueworks opened, and now today we'll get the blood-thirsty minions within The Crimson Hall for our stabbing pleasure. But are we ready?

It seems like most groups venturing within Icecrown Citadel have started to get a feel down for defeating the first four bosses in the instance. But with only a couple of weeks under our belt for the three bosses in Plagueworks, I know there are still many groups struggling with these new encounters. My personal raid group has nearly gotten Rotface down, had an epic wipe the one and only time we faced Festergut, and has yet to see the face behind that ever-amusing voice of Professor Putricide that echoes within the hall.

We're progressing, which is a start, but I would hardly say that the encounters have become routine yet for anyone. So this is why I'm somewhat torn.

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The Icecrown Citadel gunship battle may not be the most challenging of fights in the raid, but I would definitely argue that it's one of the most fun. The jetpacks you get to strap on to your back coupled with a coordinated effort to bring down the other ship before they can shoot yours out of the sky brings an exhilarating thrill unlike any other fights I've previously seen in WoW. (Added bonus - get a druid to use the jetpack while in bear form. Hilarious.)

Both times my raid group has gotten to the battle, we defeated it pretty easily once we got in the groove. As a melee dps class, my primary job has been to man one of the guns on the ship. I shoot the heck out of the other ship and strategically use the stronger cannon once enough pressure has built. Once our cannons are frozen by a meddlesome sorcerer on the other ship, we rocket on over. The tank and healer go first, then I and the other gunner charge in, too. We get her down, and come right back to the canons that are now free to be used again. Those of you who already have seen the fight know there's a lot more going on, too. While the gunners have their own mess to work on, other members of the raid group have a whole 'nother set of problems.

But it's easy to get sucked into a bubble while concentrating on your designated task, as I found out the hard way last night. Our cannons were about to get frozen again, and the rocket group was preparing for another trip over to the enemy ship. We've gotten the timing down SO quickly -- the tank and healer rocketed over as I got booted from the gun, and fractions of a second later I also clicked my rocket to board the ship. But we were so engrossed with our duties that we didn't realize we had already won the battle.

The realization sunk in pretty quick, though, as the three of us (the second gunner stopped short) flew through the air, and our destination ship pulled further and further away.

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WoWFlix is a column featuring videos from around the web related to World of Warcraft. If you find something you’d like to be featured, leave a comment or send a tweet to @Heartbourne.

 The following fan-made video contains major spoilers for The Frozen Halls, the series of 5-man regular and heroic dungeons available upon the release of patch 3.3. This video was made by vodka, a famous progression Alliance guild on Alterac Mountains. I remember back when they were on Mannoroth and my old Horde guild Reformation was competing with them for the server first Kazzak kill. This trailer is quite high quality. They definitely took some time working on capturing the multiple dramatic angles. For anyone who needs to get hyped up about patch 3.3 and its probable release on Tuesday, this will do it for you.

Players on the test realms will get to take their first steps into the Lich King's domain tomorrow, assuming that excessive lag and crashing servers don't put put a damper on the event. No doubt many guilds (and PuGs) will be trying their damnedest to get their foot in the front door, so you can expect the outside of Icecrown Citadel to look like something like an Azerothian Woodstock (can we get The Artist Formerly known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain to play the event?).

That big bad skeleton in the background might just be Marrowgar.

Testing itself kicks off with (obviously enough) the first boss in the instance, Lord Marrowgar. As yet, we don't know a whole lot about the specifics of each boss, but the achievement associated with him does tell us that he has a spell called Bone Cyclone which, ideally, people should be staying out of to avoid damage. Though we've yet to see his ugly mug, I'm also going to go ahead and guess that Marrowgar shares his model with those big old Bone Sentinels running around in Icecrown Glacier.

Here's the downlow from Daelo on the testing phase:

"We are scheduling a raid test for Icecrown Citadel tomorrow at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT for the two US PTR Servers. Lord Marrowgar, the first boss of the raid zone, will be available for testing. The trash leading up to him will also be ready for testing.

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 US Icecrown Citadel raid testing schedule information in the weeks to come.

The EU region will have a different raid testing schedule, which I will announce on their forums in the near future as I have further information and more bosses are ready for testing."

 

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Blizzard has been surprisingly forthcoming with information on future content as of late. Normally so quiet about what's on the horizon, they seem to have broken their vow of silence either in an attempt to cut off data-miners at the pass or to simply engage their fans in a more direct way than they have in the past. Whatever the reason might be, we all win in the end. Sylvanas, as envisioned by Blizzard artist Glenn Rane. As a continuation of this campaign, Blizzard has opened up a Character Biography page for those Heroes and Villains most closely associated with the events soon to transpire at Icecrown Citadel. The first two chronicled are Lady Sylvanas Windrunner and Jaina Proudmoore. Who knew that Arthas was so popular with the girlies? Sure, he was something of a pretty-boy before he turned into the Lich King, but with his whiny attitude and bad judgment skills, I'm surprised that he ever got as far as he did! Despite my misgivings, it's obvious that these two lovely ladies have a huge stake in Arthas' fate. Surely, Sylvanas would love to notch an arrow right between his cold, unliving eyes. After all, he did turn her into a Banshee and force her to commit atrocities against her own people. Jaina, on the other hand... she's a strong woman, and had the will to shy away from her one-time friend when he started to walk the path of darkness, but will Miss Proudmoore be able to resist the opportunity to redeem him? We could see quite the moral struggle between these two atop Icecrown Citadel. So, if you need a refresher course on either character, be sure to hop on over to the bio page and check them out. Though most of the information itself isn't new to people who keep up with the lore, each entry details their vital stats, tells you what games or media they've appeared in (novels and comics are included), along with a short summary that shows you how they are associated with the Lich King. It's worth a quick perusal and I'm sure they'll be adding more bios as Blizzard ramps up to the release of Patch 3.3. Personally, I'd like to hear a little bit more about the lesser known characters -- perhaps those that we'll meet within the Citadel itself. What characters would you like to see detailed, readers?

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If you've read up on the latest Icecrown Citadel preview, you might have noticed the following text in the description:

"Icecrown Citadel features 10- and 25-player versions of the raid dungeon, and each version has 12 encounters. Each encounter can be fought in either normal or Heroic mode, and players can use a new user interface feature to toggle easily between difficulties."

As it implies, ICC will be returning to a more traditional style of raid progression, with only two lockouts (10-man and 25-man) as opposed to four, like Trial of the Crusader (10-man, 25-man, and heroic versions of each). But the wording didn't seem entirely clear. What exactly did it mean by each encounter being fought in either normal or Heroic mode, then? Well, the problem seems to be that Blizzard is doing a little dance with their own terminology. It should really read "each encounter being fought in either normal or Hard mode," since Heroic is once again being used as a label for the 25-man version of the dungeon. What this really means is not that you will be able to switch between 10 and 25-man at will, but rather that you will have the opportunity to tweak the difficult of individual boss battles at any time you want outside of actually being in combat with one. This is different from the way the mechanic is handled in Ulduar, where the Hard modes for each boss are activated in different ways like timers, buttons, and damage dealt. Bornakk confirms:

"Assuming everything goes as planned, you can switch it back and forth as much as you like. Encounter 1 on hard, 2 on normal, 3 on hard, 4 on normal, etc. In effect it works out similar to Ulduar but it's with a much more clear method in the UI as opposed to the fairly confusing process of figuring out some encounter mechanics just to activate it."

To be honest, I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good change. Sure, it'll give everyone a chance to try out the Hard modes as they see fit, but sometimes the limits placed on accessing them also served as a trial to see whether or not a given raid group was cut out for it. For instance, if you don't have the chops to kill XT-002's heart, then you probably won't be able to finish the fight without dying or hitting the Enrage on Hard. Allowing just anyone to take a crack is going to end in a lot of bitter tears, and may even lead to some Hard modes being nerfed faster, since there will be a greater number of unprepared players engaging them and, thus, complaining about them. I'm all for convenience, but sometimes it feels as though tweaks like this further marginalize the hardcore player base. If Hard modes are supposed to challenge top level raiding guilds, why not just leave it that way? What say you, readers?

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