First Look at Dazar'Alor

My guild, after months of no raiding, waltzed into the Battle of Dazar'alor raid this first week and...

Got curb-stomped by the first boss.

Now, part of it is that WoW is not registering my mic, which is a pain when you're typically the guild's raid leader and main tank. But this champion of the light fight (we're Alliance, so it was a troll paladin - which is a thing for Zandalari, and that's pretty cool) has a LOT going on.

First off, you've got a boss that stacks up the tank-swap debuff at a pretty fast clip. Next you have one add that can disorient the whole raid (oh, and that makes the boss drop aggro on the tank while they're disoriented.) There are a million other nasty things that the boss does, and so it's a bit of a wall to start with.

Granted, we only got about halfway through Uldir, so we might go back and finish that (and shake off the raiding rust.) And hopefully I'll figure out a way for the voice chat to work for me!

Anyway, Dazar'alor is interesting in that, rather than an ending cinematic, there's an intro one (and one in the middle after Rastakhan.)

We get a pretty awesome cutscene from the Alliance perspective in which Jaina brings her fleet in and Gelbin Mekkatorque gets a heroic moment after it looks like he's dead.

As great as it is to see the Alliance get a win (and yes, it's a bit of a qualified win, but not nearly as subverted as Undercity had been) it's also pretty clear that what we're doing is really just laying the groundwork for N'zoth.