Uldum: Halls of Origination

Located in the new Egypt-inspired zone, the Halls of Origination is an interior 5 player dungeon that will have you continue the lore of the Titans that you've seen in the Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone.

This means, of course, that Brann Bronzebeard will be involved somehow, though Blizzard promises that he'll be a little less wordy this time around.

This dungeon will also be non-linear, with multiple paths available for you to finish the dungeon.

Storywise, the Halls of Origination are the rumoured site of an ultimate weapon designed by the Titans, and of course, everyone from Deathwing to the Horde and Alliance want to get their hands on it!

Blackrock Caverns

Blackrock Caverns will be a brand new dungeon located in Blackrock Mountain, allowing you to go back into an old area for some new experiences!

Here, you will explore one of Deathwing's peripheral bases, and attempt to find out just what the Twilight's Hammer plans to do there in Blackrock Mountain.

One little teaser Blizzard revealed is that you might once again encounter The Beast!

BRC will be a linear dungeon.

Raids

But enough about dungeons, what about raids?!

Icecrown Citadel

Let's start off with the raid coming in the more immediate future: Icecrown Citadel.

Icecrown Citadel will be a 10 & 25 player raid.

Contrary to GhostCrawler's hyperbolic post in the forums, Icecrown will involve *only* 12 epic bosses. The instance will be one of larger instances in the game, so Blizzard will continue to use the teleport technology first introduced in Ulduar in order to ease travel times through Icecrown.

The main architectural feature of Icecrown is the central spire, which will run through all four floors of the dungeon. The first floor houses the entrance and some starting bosses, but it's the second floor where some of the really cool stuff happens!

The second floor of Icecrown will be quite the special event! Here, you and your raid will board an airship, and race the opposing faction's airship to the third floor. As you find your way to the top, you'll have to fend off boarding parties that will attempt to jet over to your airship using rocket packs; you'll be able to retaliate by using your own rocket packs to try and board their airship!

You'll also be able to use cannons to fire on the other ship, and hopefully destroy them before they reach the top!

If you're able to beat the other faction to the third floor, you'll be faced with three different wings, all of which will need to be cleared in order to get access to the Lich King's throne room.

It is here that you will encounter Sindragosa, the ultimate frost wyrm.

Once you gain access to the fourth floor, you will finally go up against the Lich King himself, and send him to a cold, permanent grave! Blizzard shared with us some ideas they have in mind for this encounter, dealing with the platform his throne sits on breaking apart, and part of the fight centered around keeping yourself from falling down the side of the citadel.

As an added bonus, Icecrown will also involve 5 player dungeons, with eight bosses spread across three different dungeon wings that will interact with the Lich King. Access to each wing will be granted via an Epic quest line, giving you access to each one in turn as you advance further in the quest.

Cataclysm Raids

Cataclysm will be shipping with a full four raids available right away, so raiders will have plenty of content to pick from!

We only got to see two of the new raids today: Blackwing Descent and The Firelands.

Blackwing Descent

Blackwing Descent will be accessible by flying up Blackrock Mountain into Nefarion's Throne Room (which all of you BWL raiders will be *very* familiar with), and entering a portal right there.

BD will have Nefarion making a comeback, with some old friends coming back, and a new raid dungeon inspired by BWL, in order to bring back some fond memories for us old players.

The Firelands

The Firelands will also be a 10 & 25 player raid, taking place in an exterior instance, much like the beginning of Ulduar.

The instance will be located in the elemental plane of fire, and have you facing off once more against Ragnaros, but this time on his home plane and at his full strength!

Onyxia: WoW 5th Year Anniversary!

In order to celebrate WoW's 5th year aniversary, Blizzard will be updating and re-releasing the Onyxia raid encounter, to have you relive the days of Deep Breath terror, now in level 80 flavour!

Slated to be released in November, the new Onyxia will replace the current level 60 Onyxia. She will gain new abilities and spells, but still retain classic mechanics and feel (like Deep Breath and wyrms.)

The loot will be composed of all the old models from both Onyxia and some MC loot as well, newly updated with level 80 appropriate stats for you to wear! For you weapon buffs, Quel'Serrar will also make a return, with updated stats!

All the T2 helms will make a comeback, using their old models and textures, with one available for each spec of your class.

Onyxia will also drop a new epic flying mount that will have you riding one of her brood.

As a bonus 5th anniversary celebration gift, anyone logging in during the celebration will also receive an Onyxia Whelp pet, which is disgustingly cute! Blizzard is very excited about the animation work done on the pet, which will attempt to Deep Breath at random intervals, sometimes failing in a heart-breakingly cute way, resulting in smoke rings!

Cross Server Grouping

New dungeons and raids are all well and good, but none of it does you any good if you can't find a group to do them, and that's where the big announcement at this panel comes in: cross server grouping!

Slated to be released along patch 3.3.0 (though Blizzard admits this is tentative), the new technology will let you search across servers for people to group up with and enter a 5 player dungeon with, similar to how cross realm battlegrounds work now.

In order to encourage people to use the system and make it even easier to find groups to crawl dungeons with, Blizzard is also implementing a reward system: if you flag as a leader of a cross-realm group and successfully take the group through a dungeon, you will get rewards for your leadership and initiative!

The technology for this cross-realm grouping can also scale to raids in the future, though Blizzard will keep it confined to 5 player groups at the offset in order to test the load and work out the kinks.

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