5.2 and the Thunder King

Is it weird that I like to say "Thunder King" in a troll accent, despite the fact that he's a Mogu? Guess it's those Zandalari folks to blame.

Well, following the release of the teaser screenshot for 5.2, I had a whole bunch of speculation I just deleted because there's now a lot more info to be had.

The new raid, Throne of Thunder, will have 12 bosses, but like Ulduar and Bastion of Twilight, it will have a bonus boss for defeating the final boss on heroic mode. We know that Lei Shen, the Thunder King, is going to be the final boss (not the Algalon-type one, that is.) There are a whole lot of new models for various Mogu and Troll adversaries, so yes, there's going to be a big Zandalari presence here. Actually, some of the models on MMO-Champion look quite cool. Nice to see Trolls with beards (when the player models are updated, I need to give my Troll Mage a kick-ass white wizard's beard.)

There will be three new factions added as well. The Kirin Tor Offensive and the Sunreaver Onslaught will be the Alliance and Horde equivalents of each other (and given the events during Operation Shieldwall/Dominance Offensive, it'll be nice for Horde to play the good guys and the Alliance to play the not-so-good guys - well, we'll see.) These will likely play out just as the other Mists factions have, though I hope they skew more Shieldwall-style than, say, Golden Lotus. Interestingly, the intent is for there to be an option between more PvP-oriented quests (including fighting the other faction) and more PvE-oriented ones. It would actually be pretty cool to allow you to make an in-character choice to either oppose the other side or focus on taking down the Mogu.

The third faction will be the Shado-Pan Assault, and is actually a new raid reputation, which frankly, I think they should do for every raid (we're going to be in those things a whole lot anyway, might as well get some rep.) This means that, if you raid regularly, you'll be able to get Valor rewards without doing dailies. I hope that they allow you to gain this rep in Raid Finder as well.

Wrathion will, of course, also be getting more quests (still don't have the Sigils I need for him yet,) involving an investigation into how the Mogu were able to create the things they did (presumably going beyond "they used Titan stuff!")

Likewise, Warlocks will finally get their Green Fire quest chain, though I do not know how one gets the item that begins the quest. I hope that it is not terribly uncommon, as I'm not a big fan of the "only if you get super lucky do you ever get to see this thing" stuff like the Battered Hilt quests. (Never got to see those, and I ran those dungeons A LOT.)

The Zandalari will be invading in many parts of the continent, allowing people to team up to take down elites for various rewards. Likewise, there are going to be two new world bosses. It would see World Bosses are the new VoA. Actually, there's a cool change here in that as long as you're on the same faction that tagged the boss, as long as you participate, you'll get credit and a chance at loot (as if lag wasn't bad enough with 40 people!)

There are new scenarios planned (though I don't know much of the details about them,) but as of yet I see nothing about new 5-man content. I know there were concerns about awesome rewards in late-expansion 5-mans allowing people to skip raids, but frankly, I think that with the Raid Finder, anyone who's putting any effort into gearing up and wants to see the raids is still going to be able to see them. They might gear up more easily through the 5-mans, but they will still have plenty of opportunity to see the raids.

I expect we'll not see this patch for at least a couple months, but so far, it looks pretty exciting. They're clearly trying to hit it big with Throne of Thunder, and whether it hits Ulduar-level or not (or hell, exceeds it, because they've got to shoot for that after all) it sounds pretty cool.

From there, I really don't know what to expect next. I imagine we'll at least have another 5.1-style patch before we take Garrosh down (we've also got to see the Horde resistance grow) but for now, I'll be watching the 5.2 news eagerly.

PS: Druid tier 15 looks AMAZING. Serious Emerald Nightmare vibe there.