Patch 6.2, unnamed as of now, will let us follow Gul'dan and the Iron Horde back into Tanaan Jungle. It's very much the same jungle area from the Warlords starting experience, but with some new areas to explore as well as a new daily quest hub. Most exciting of which is Hellfire Citadel, our new tier 18 raid zone. As many of you may remember, Hellfire Citadel was a dungeon and raid zone in Hellfire Peninsula during Burning Crusade. It held 3 dungeons, Hellfire Ramparts, the Blood Furnace, and the Shattered Halls (featuring our timelines Kargath Bladefist), and one raid, Magtheridon's Lair. As a side note, it seems silly to call it Magtheridon's Lair when he is being held captive there by the fel orcs to drain his blood. Hellfire Citadel in Tanaan Jungle has a similar look to it, obviously minus the red tint of shattered Outland, however this time it has become Gul'dan's hideout used as a fortress for the demons of the Burning Legion. Of course, as the biggest bad asses Azeroth has to offer, it's our job to storm the Citadel and take out the Legion's forces concluding with our favorite tree lover, Archimonde. As someone who began playing in Burning Crusade, but wasn't current with raiding for Mount Hyjal, I'm excited for a chance to take this guy on. The other bosses are just as exciting. A newly Fel-corrupted Kilrogg, a soul-gorged Gorefiend, and a reanimated Mannoroth! A great way to get me excited about a raid is to introduce interesting bosses for me to kill. While I enjoy Blackrock Foundry a lot, it is a little boring at times killing mostly orcs with different jobs. There is some diversity to the bosses, but not as much as there seems to be in Hellfire Citadel.
There are goodies to earn in the new raid other than shiny new loot of course. There is a follower to earn similar to Aknor Steelbreaker in the Flamebender Ka'graz in BRF. We also will have a chance for a Felsteel Annihilator mount which is an awesome reskin of the Sky Golem mount in the form of the iconic Fel Reaver from Burning Crusade. Players who finish the Glory of the Hellfire Raider will be rewarded with the Reins of the Corrupted Dreadwing, a Fel corrupted version of the Warlords Deluxe Edition mount reward. All in all Hellfire Citadel seems like a great raid tier that I'm extremely excited for.
Once again, our Garrisons will be getting another update. This time we will need to add on a shipyard in order to make our way to Tanaan and confront Gul'dans apparent naval force. I don't have much information yet on how all of this plays out, as the PTR is currently bugged and won't allow quest progress. I'm going to try and progress through it and see how it all ties together because it all just seems a bit clunky to me right now. Adding in naval missions doesn't feel interesting to me. There is already barely a difference between the different types of missions outside of what rewards they give, and I'm skeptical that naval missions will feel any different.
We will also be getting Mythic difficulty 5 man dungeons as well as Timewalker dungeons. Mythic 5 mans are interesting to me simply because its another attempt from Blizzard to keep 5 man dungeons relevant after the initial launch of the expansion. Challenge modes have help somewhat but the rewards become less and less worthwhile as the expansion goes on. Right now Mythic dungeons will reward 680 gear with a chance for 700 gear off of the last boss of the instance. This will prove useful for most raiders who aren't farming Mythic BRF. However, once we have a few weeks in Heroic Hellfire Citadel the reward for these may not be worth the effort anymore. Timewalker dungeons are definitely cool. Scaling down to current item level for Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King dungeons is an interesting test of what the technology is capable of and how much external tuning is required. Dungeons in BC were tuned and designed around different sets of truths, and the same is true of WotLK. As the game grows and changes the basis on which things are designed changes. The danger is that the games current state requires too many changes to be made to previous content as it is made current. If Blizzard has to spend time rebalancing old content for the Timewalker feature, it may be too burdensome for us to see a Timewalker Black Temple run or something along those lines. I'm optimistic that that won't be the case but its something to keep an eye on.
I'm going to keep it to a short post for now. I will be putting some time into writing up a sort of mid-expansion report card for Warlords of Draenor. I want to take the time to talk about what I like so far and what things have missed the mark. It's a subject which everyone has some thoughts on so please check back and take a look and let me know what you think.
Thanks again for reading, Chris
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