holiday-bosses
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Breakfast Topic: What do you think about the new holiday boss style?
We've come to expect our holiday bosses to work a certain way here in World of Warcraft. Once every few months, we get a chance to go queue up for a unique boss that drops some nice loot to provide easy upgrades for casual players, and we get a daily package with a chance at some sort of fun pet or mount, as well as a BoE weapon. This has been a very nice arrangement for all involved. This year on Winter Veil, Blizzard muddied the waters a bit. Rather than put the boss in a dungeon, Blizzard put him right smack dab in Alterac, uninstanced, and made the daily package come from a daily quest. Now, if you want to kill him, you have to fly out to him and grab a group, then take him down.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Zarhym clarifies new holiday boss mechanics
So one of the new changes coming in Patch 3.3.3 is that one will be able queue up using the dungeon finder in order to fight world event bosses such as the Crown Chemical Trio or the Headless Horseman. However, the actual extent of the changes is a bit more involved, as Zarhym clarified in a recent forums post. Here's the rundown:
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: User interface updates
Blizzard has added some major and minor improvements for the user interface in their minor content patch of 3.3.3. Some of these include the addition of a random battleground finder, a holiday boss random dungeon group, as well as others. It is still early in the patch process, so some of these things may undergo more changes as it works its way along. There are still a few rough edges on the interface for the moment. We don't have everything that's been changed thus far in the gallery, but we thought we'd give you as much as we could muster on short notice. Plus, we included the new Frozen Orb vendor in the gallery for you to drool at things you can do with all of those spare orbs from your daily rampaging of Northrend instances. Keep an eye on WoW.com for more updates on what patch 3.3.3 is bringing to you. %Gallery-86064%
Ghostcrawler: There will (not) be at least 31 bosses in Icecrown
Ghostcrawler has posted an interesting little hint at the next patch (we know of) headed to the game. In response to a discussion about "tanking niches," he talks about Icecrown Citadel over on the forums, and just happens to mention that people might think of tanks as waiting outside until "boss 4, 17 and 31 (yes, IC is that big)." 31 bosses? More like Icecrowded, am I right?Blackrock Depths is the largest 5-man in the game, if not the largest instance, and it boasts over 40 bosses (that's mostly counting encounters, though -- you wouldn't count The Seven, for example, as seven different bosses), including lots and lots of optional bosses and even a holiday boss. Ulduar, by comparison, has about 14, and Karazhan is about that same size (though that depends on how you count random bosses, like the Opera Event). No matter how you slice it, 31 raid bosses is a ton of bosses to go through -- Icecrown could be a return to a really epic, large-scale instance.Of course, there will likely be wings involved (Naxxramas' Quarters have worked out pretty well, I think), and with the new changes to raid lockouts, Blizzard no longer needs to squeeze the raiding experience into an average of two or three nights a week (which is what it seemed like they were usually aiming for before). If yours is the kind of guild that likes to clear everything in one night, though, you might want to start freeing up some time now.Update: GC now says he didn't mean the instance would have 31 bosses, he was just throwing in some ridiculous number to prove a point. Our question: why did he say "yes, IC is that big" if he didn't mean it would be that big?
