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Blizzcon WoW Raids and Dungeons Panel

October 11, 2008 by Zuggy

5 Man Dungeons

Halls of Lightning

Just like all the dungeons built by the Titans the Halls of Lightning had to feel huge while restricting the gameplay space to make sure that players don’t have to run around too much.
Players aren’t really able to fight titans because they’re obviously way too big and way too powerful to be fought, that’s why designers had to come up with new ideas of creatures to let people experience this part of the lore.
The first boss roams between multiple platforms and you can decide where you will fight him, the 2nd boss is visible as soon as you enter the first room and is located on a platform above to make players want to go up here and figure out who this guy is.
There are plenty of Titan themed arts like statues shaped as constellations, astral maps, etc …
The 3rd boss is an air elemental with a custom model, developers want to use more of that to make bosses feel more “unique” and would like to stop using so many “trash” models for bosses.
The last boss, Loken, is a messenger of the titan and his fight also feature a fairly long storyline.

Ahn’kahet

Ahn’kahet is the 2nd part of the Azjol-nerub dungeon, as you go deeper into the ground more influence from the Old Gods can be seen. (Temples, etc …)
This is also the first time you will encounter Faceless Ones in World of Warcraft.
New technology has been added to make this underground dungeon feels like a very huge cavern, it actually mix up outdoor and indoor elements to achieve this.
Ahn’kahet looks pretty big when you enter the instance, but you only get to travel through a very small part of it. (As most of the elements are here to make the cave feel bigger and nicer)
There are plenty of new unique abilities used by the bosses here, and the instance uses a bunch of a new mechanics to make the fights funnier.
The last boss is a Faceless One and rely heavily on the new phasing technology. Each player is phased into a world where his own teammates will attack him, once he managed to defeat them he will be switched back to the normal world to help his teammates.

Raid & Dungeons

Obsidian Sanctum

The Obsidian Sanctum was made with scalability in mind. TBC entry raids (Magtheridon) were far too difficult at the release.
Players here will fight Sartharion and 3 adds, they can choose to kills these adds before killing Sartharion or keep them alive instead to get more items.
As the fight get more difficult, the players are rewarded with better rewards in case of success, the best reward being the Reins of the Black Drake for the 10 man version and the Reins of the Twilight Drake for the 25 man version)

In it’s current state on beta servers, the encounter goes as follow :

Pretty much the same with 25 players, but with slightly better gear.

The Eye of Eternity

Malygos is a huge lore figure and this dungeon had to feel special. As you enter it you will just see a floating platform and the script relies a lot on scripting to make it as interesting as possible.
To enter this dungeon at least one player in your party needs the key to start the encounter, you will have to kill Sapphiron in Naxxramas to complete this questline.
This dungeon also features the Red Dragonflight, as developpers didn’t want such a strong lore figure to be killable by players alone.

Additional Q & A

A feature might be added to “kick” AFK players in raid without having to wait 30 minutes until they disconnect
They’re still thinking about how 10/25-man legendaries are going to work and feel that new caster/healer legendary items are needed. They would also like to bring back atiesh-like legendaries with a long questline instead of random drops.
Uldum is still on the table, but definitely no ETA for it.
The amount of items dropping should be fairly balanced between casters and melee weapons.
There won’t be many level 80 attunements, the only attunement right now is the one for Malygos and it only requires one person in the raid to kill Sapphiron in Naxxramas
Hunters should be able to off-tank with a defense-speced pet but aren’t meant to main tank anything with it.
Sunwell was way too hard, developers want content to be challenging but you shouldn’t have to do 500 try on bosses like M’uru to kill them.
The goal in WotLK is to have a smoother progression between the different types of dungeons (Normal > Heroic > Raid). In TBC some heroic dungeons were way too hard and some of them way too easy.
Devs would like to add more portals between wings of the same instance (a bit like Dire Maul) to let people decide if they want to keep going in the dungeons, or just stop here.
The Ashbringer storyline will continue, and you’ve only got a few days left to complete Atiesh from the old Nax. (= Patch 3.0.2 this week)
A lot of improvements are on the way for the LFG tool