The Future for Dungeons and Raids

Blizzard’s Dungeons and Raids panel for day two of Blizzcon ‘09 has shown that there are some cool stuff planned for us for the future of Dungeons and Raids. The coolest part about it is that while most of the announcements that came out in this year’s Blizzcon was to build up excitement for the coming expansion called Cataclysm, Blizzard has proven that more cool things are to come way before that. The announcement of the Onyxia comeback for patch 3.2.2 is just a step towards that direction. We’ll see more in patch 3.3 and then more cool stuff when the expansion hits.

Gates of Uldum

Patch 3.3 will see the release of the Icecrown Citadel where we’ll see a 5 man dungeon and the raid dungeon. Since this is the lair of the Lich King and the scourge army, we should expect this place to be really epic. The raid dungeon has 12 planned encounters which include the frostwyrm to beat all frostwyrms, Sindragosa and of course the Lich King himself. The raid dungeon will also make use of the way point system that was made famous in Ulduar. The 5 man dungeon will have 8 bosses spread out through different wings, which I guess makes this place really big for a 5 man dungeon if you want to do all 8 guys but also gives players some flexibility by splitting it up into wings.

The following are the announced dungeons and raids that we’ll be able to see in the cataclysm expansion:

5 man dungeon

Abyssal Maw

It’s one of the two dungeons of the sunken city of Vashjir. One of the interesting things about this place is that the sunken city is well, underwater. Yes, we’ll have a whole underwater zone where we’ll be able to ride special underwater mounts (I forgot where I saw this info though). Anyway, back to the Abyssal maw, this dungeon will be non linear so I guess it’s a bit like Halls of Stone in that sense. In HoS, you can fight the first three bosses in any order before getting to the last boss.

Uldum 5 man dungeons

Uldum will finally be opened up as a zone for the expansion and there will be a couple of dungeons there. There will be moretitan stuff and more of our favorite dwarf explorer Brann Bonzebeard.

new Blackrock Spire 5 man dungeon

It seems like Blackrock Spire will be an entirely new place from what we currently have and we’ll be able to find out what the Twilight hammer is doing and more Beasts!

Raid dungeons

Blackwing Descent

It’s basically the new raid based on the classic raid Blackwing Lair and we’ll possibly see some of the old guys in there back.

Firelands

It’s an outdoors raid like CoT: Mount Hyjal that takes place in the elemental plane of fire. This is where players get to fight our old friend Ragnaros at full strength! He hopes to purge us by fire!

Cross Server LFG

This picture from WoW.com on one of the slides from Blizzcon shows that as early as patch 3.3 we’ll be able to run at least 5 man dungeons with players other servers. I’m guessing that we’ll make use of the same system that makes the cross server BG’s work and we’ll probably even use the same battlegroups. This feature is to make looking for players for PuG’s easier. Apparently there will be some sort of reward system for party leaders for successfully completing a run (to make running PuG’s more rewarding).