World of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids

This panel opened with discussion about how they made sure that the dungeons tied closely to the lore of Wrath of the Lich King. Pushing the story is just as important as kills and loot. They also wanted to make shorter unique instances that still had a feel of being epic and important. They have constructed the dungeons so that they are in very large spaces but the actual playing space is smaller. There was a fly through of Halls of Lightning which showed some of the excellent detailed elements of the dungeons. One of which was windows which give you a view out into the surrounding zone and continue to give you a feel of space. Unique boss models will make bosses feel special and give them some importance.

Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, another five man instance, again works very effectively to make you feel like you’re in a huge space. There is a lot of background story which will be new to many players from this zone. This area is where Naxxramas was originally from, you can see this in the architecture. Also if you don't like spiders you really won’t like this instance. Phasing is also used in Ahn'kahet, the last boss fight will do some really interesting things with this technology where each player will have to fight their own group in a different phase. Once you have killed all your phases enemies you can then help others meaning your healer won't hate this encounter.

Moving to raids, they are learning from and building on Burning Crusade. The first raid they discussed, Chamber of Aspects, is an expandable raid. Depending on how many of the mini bosses you take out the main boss will be easier or harder and will have different loot tables. Then they looked at Eye of the Eternity, sadly they messed up triggering the event by attempting it real time while invincible, apparently the boss knew this so wouldn't engage them... opps. Well apparently when it all starts to go to hell the Red Dragon flight turn up and help you out.

What about loot? Well Heroics will have much better loot than standard dungeons not the current situation where most of it was the same. They are also working to tweak the badge system to have two different badges allowing for purchase of different tiers of gear and avoiding people well through the end game 'farming' badges. There will also be separate gear sets for 10 and 25 man raids but they will be interchangeable for the same set bonus and a couple of these set items will be purchasable with badges.