Hands on with Zul'Aman

During my time at BlizzCon I was able to take a couple of moments to experience some of the upcoming content we are going to see in the future. Initially I was very excited to get my chance to see Wrath of the Lich King, but as I was wandering around Howling Fjord I noticed a helpful looking NPC in one of the villages, and when I spoke to him he offered to transport me to Zul'Aman. I am never one to pass up the opportunity to check out new content, and so I allowed him to port me to the front steps of the instance.

I'm going to give you my experiences with the instance after the jump, since it's very much spoiler territory there, and if you are the kind of person that likes to be surprised I don't want to take that away from you. Those looking for more info on the instance, read on.

The first thing I found was the trouble I had getting a group. I did manage to wrangle myself an invite to a group with a hunter and a rogue that were dueling in Ghostlands and begged them to make it a raid group. Once inside the instance I had entered all by my lonesome, I encountered an antechamber with very Tomb Raider-esque music and piles of Troll paraphernalia lying around. The room was shaped like a box, with the center taken up by a huge square column. With more than a little trepidation I wandered around the column, certain that I would be ambushed by level 72 elite mobs at any moment. I was not ambushed, but what I found was equally as surprising.

I encountered a man named Harrison Jones, who warned me to leave the place immediately. When I insisted I wanted to continue into the temple (the reference making me grin and giggle), Jones put on his signature hat, announcing that his work was too important. He wasn't about to allow any treasure hunters to ruin the dig. He began to open a set of huge doors, warning me not to follow him. As the doors swung open, Jones began to stealth into the temple proper, only to be accosted by two huge Trolls and cut down right before my eyes. Quick as I could, I began to polymorph one of the guards, only to find out that he was immune. As he and his cohort shredded me like so much loose leaf paper, waves of more trolls began to pour up the stairs, while a countdown appeared at the top of my screen: 20 minutes until next sacrifice. That doesn't sound good at all.

I am so pumped to get a chance to run this instance. Now that I realize it's a place with Indiana Jones-themed encounters, I can't wait to see what traps lie beyond that staircase. It also looks like mages will have to keep their wits about them in the instance, since at least some of the mobs are immune to CC.

As the Murloc-suited NPC ported me back to Howling Fjord, I vowed I would one day return and serve vengeance to those axe-wielding trolls. Revenge will be mine, ah yes, it will be mine.