Saturday, June 21, 2014

Update on Dungeon List

Fairly recently, I wrote an article speculating on the upcoming 5-man dungeons that will be releasing with Warlords of Draenor. As it turns out, it looks like some of their names have changed, and might actually have a very different feel to them.

Grimrail Depot is the new name for Blackrock Depot. This one actually has a loading screen, which depicts a speeding train. Might we be attacking a train in a kind of western train-heist? Given that Gorgrond looks a lot like the American Southwest, it would be pretty awesome to have a kind of western-themed dungeon.

Shadowmoon Burial Grounds looks largely the same. Indeed, this was one of the early confirmed dungeons, and has us taking down Ner'zhul.

Upper Blackrock Spire is getting a Feat of Strength - or possibly a different category of achievement that will be strictly for deprecated achievements - for killing Drakkisath. So who is going to be the final boss there? Warlord Zaela. Yes, Zaela survived our fight against Galakras and is firmly on the side of the Iron Horde, but given that she's an Azerothian Orc (I assume she was born on Azeroth) she's going to be taking up residence in UBRS. Pretty sad, as I liked her, but then, she was always raving about purity of blood (admittedly when talking about fel-taint) so screw her. Actually, come to think of it, the Dragonmaw and Blackrock Orcs seem to naturally have grey skin. Can the Draenor-B orcs tell that she has the same fel-taint as our Horde's orcs?

Bloodmaul Slagmines, like Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, probably doesn't need any more of an explanation, and has not received any obvious changes.

Iron Docks has no equivalent that I can think of. In fact, it appears that there is actually one more dungeon than we previously thought existed. I suspect this will be in Gorgrond, as there is a large harbor there. Alternatively, it could be in Nagrand, as there seem to be some docks to the south there.

Overgrown Outpost is another dungeon that I had not heard of previously. The name "Overgrown" suggests that it could be in Tanaan Jungle, especially given that I don't think any of the other dungeons are obvious for Tanaan.

Auchindoun will obviously be exactly where you expect it to be (though no Bone Wastes surrounding it.) The interesting tidbit here is that not only will there be a definite demonic, Burning Legion presence, but the final boss is Teron'gor, who I highly suspect is the Orc Warlock who in our timeline became Teron Gorefiend, the first of the Horde's Death Knights. (I considered it a bit of a pilgrimage to kill him in Black Temple on my Death Knight. Scourge... ahem, Alliance rules! Old Horde drools!)

Skyreach is the newest name for the Arrakoan Spires/Spires of Arrak dungeon (the latter name being the name of the zone, which would have just been confusing.) I expect we'll be fighting through tree-tops, or at least some kind of tall buildings and dealing with sun-powered arrakoa. Supposedly there's a golem-like construct too, which is always fun (now that I've said that watch that turn out to be a real pain in the ass boss...)

The "Iron Barracks" is nowhere to be seen, though for all I know they might have redesigned it to become the Iron Docks or perhaps totally scrapped it in favor of the Overgrown Outpost.

Anyway, it's good to see that it looks like there will be eight launch dungeons instead of seven, though this will still be the smallest number of 5-man dungeons an expansion has ever launched with. I hold out some hope that with patches, we'll get at least a Cataclysm number of dungeons (there were only 9 at launch, but they added 5 in patches.) Still, I miss the days when expansions would launch with dungeons in the teens and then continue to add more.

I look forward to finding out more details about these places and how they tie into the leveling process and the story.

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