mount-hyjal
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WoW Moviewatch: Archimonde Encounter by Curse
At last, we see a teaser of the final encounter of Mount Hyjal! Curse from Vek'Nilash has gone up against Archimonde to give us a preview of this epic, world-changing battle. They bring attention to a few of his abilities, and particularly how incredibly difficult he is. I can't wait to see what kinds of items he has in store for us! [Thanks, WarcraftMovies.com]
PTR Notes: The first four bosses of Mount Hyjal
The lucky ducks of the guild Impervious on Stormreaver had a fun night on the public test realm Tuesday. With the help of a GM, they faced the first four bosses of Mount Hyjal. The GM deathtouched two of the bosses at a certain percent so that Impervious could test the next fight. The first boss, Rage Winterchill, is a lich with a Death & Decay spell. Impervious got him to 30 percent before the GM deathtouched him. He dropped some resto shaman bracers and rogue boots. Anetheron is a dreadlord whose abilities include Carrion Swarm, which hits for 6k and reduces healing done by 75 percent for 15 seconds; Vampiric Aura, which causes him and his adds to get 300 percent healing from melee damage done; and Inferno, which summons infernals pretty much constantly throughout the fight. Impervious got him to 50 percent before the GM asked them to move on (sorry, no deathtouch and therefore no loots.) Next up was Kaz'Rogal, a nasty-looking Kazzak thing with an interesting ability: he mana drains you for 600 periodically, and if you don't have enough mana, you take 10k damage. This ability gets sped up as the fight goes on, so it looks like you have to burn him down fast. According to Impervious, they actually did kill this boss on their own on the second attempt, receiving a nice healing mace and a tanking shield. However, they did get a bit of help from the lovely giant Tauren Flaskataur, who sold them a ton of consumables including the Flask of Flaskocity (I am not making this up.) The final boss Impervious faced was the pit lord Azgalor. Azgalor was sort of a hyped-up warlock -- he had a Rain of Fire, a Howl of Terror, and some sort of Curse of Doom-like thing that spawns a Doomguard upon your death. His aggro was highly tetchy, so Impervious called it a night and went to bed.
PTR Notes: Climb every mountain
It looks like the Battle of Mount Hyjal has been opened for testing on the PTR to everyone with Honored reputation or greater with the Violet Eye. Boubouille of MMO Champion, Bistustal at World of Raids, and the stalwart testers of the Elitist Jerks forums have gone and taken some lovely screenshots for those of us not on the PTR. You start out at an Alliance base commanded by Lady Jaina Proudmoore, who is apparently both 20 feet tall and totally okay with the non-scourge undead. The Scourge come over the hill in Black Morass-like waves. Without the help of your team, the Alliance and Jaina get owned, and everything despawns. According to the lore, after the waves at the Alliance base, you should go to the Horde base (commanded by Thrall) and the final Night Elf base (commanded by Tyrande.) You'll fight your way up the mountain until the final battle against Archimonde the Defiler. Wowwiki also suggests that you fight two other major lore figures from Hyjal -- the dreadlord Anetheron and the pit lord Azgalor. All in all, Mount Hyjal looks like a fun instance. Too bad I'll probably never see it until level 80. What kind of instances would you like to see in the Caverns of Time? Do you wish you could run Hyjal?
Tier 6 names and bonuses
I heard these were out a few days ago, but the link I got was to the official forums, and the thread had been deleted by the time I got there. Well, MMO-Champion has them now. Delete that, Blizz! Now keep in mind, as MMO-Champion warns us, these aren't "official" bonuses, but were rather extracted from the currently game files somehow, and will most likely change when 2.1.0 goes live (which according to Tseric will be "soon"). Still, this should be something to get your mind going.The bonuses mostly follow the same pattern: 2-piece bonuses makes a skill cheaper (or sometimes return more mana), and 4-piece bonuses makes a skill stronger. Since the 4-piece bonuses mostly affect our "bread and butter" skills (e.g. Greater Heal for healing priests, Fireball, Frostbolt, and Arcane Missiles for mages) and mostly by about 5%, they seem pretty cool. The 2-pieces vary in how much they impress me. Tier 6, if I'm not very much mistaken, drops in Mount Hyjal the Black Temple [thanks, klink-o], which is certainly out of the reach of most guilds, but I'm sure some of us will see it eventually. Without further ado, all the Tier 6 names and (provisional) bonuses are after the cut.
The Burning Crusade: A long path to Mount Hyjal
Without getting too much into the lore, you may recall Mount Hyjal as being a pretty pivotal place in the history of Azeroth. It was there that the Battle of Mount Hyjal was fought at the end of Warcraft III, and the destiny of the night elves was forever changed.We've known for awhile now that the Burning Crusade will let us access some moments in Azeroth's past, including Hillsbrad, the Dark Portal, and Hyjal. What we weren't really aware of until now, is the apparent gargantuan effort it's going to take individuals to get ready for and attuned to the Battle of Mount Hyjal.Blizzplanet has a rundown on what you'll need to do in order to be admitted to the Caverns of Time for this epic event. Keep in mind that there will be some spoilers in there, but I believe it's worth the read just to get a grip on what Blizzard has in mind for us to get ready.This is not like getting attuned for Onyxia or BWL. In fact, this seems like it's a bigger deal than the AQ40 event was, on top of which every single person in your 25-man raid group has to have completed all the steps.Personally, I think this is pretty cool. Instead of slugging through raid after raid, you get a big build-up to that raid. No more walking into a giant event without some idea of what lead up to it. I think this shows that the Blizzard developers are thinking about the world they're creating, and the lore behind it. This can only be good for the continued success of the game, and I'm sure it works as a nice timesink for the beancounters, too. What do you think of lengthy prerequisites and jaunts around the world before being let in to a big raid event? Does this encourage you or discourage you from pursuing quest chains and following the lore?
