Some of the biggest raid-info leaks was never really shown on many websites that 'documented blizzcon'. They were during the quest and lore panel when chris metzen noted a few things

- Azjol nerub will be a huge, fully underground area with an evil Old God in there , presumably the final boss (he said it was an old god himself)

- the titans themself have sent harbingers to deal with the mess of conflict on Azeroth/Northrend. They reside in Uldular(Metzens quote was something like: 'If I was a titan and created the world and saw the state I was in... id be pretty angry' Thats not the exact quote but the general theme - he implied the titans are pissed. So maybe they arent the big/gentle giants who will embrace mortals when they return, which alot might be expecting?

- Malygos has regained his sanity and is hellbent (for good reasons which metzen explains) on eradicating all Azeroth magic users. He implied we will have to confront Malygos, with the help of Alexstrasza and the red dragonflight as our ally.

From this info You could speculate what four major 25 man lich king raid instances (and their respective end-boss) will be:

1 - Frozen Throne + Arthas = Obiouvs
2 - Azjol'Nerub + Old God = Liklely (theres no way an old god is going to be a 5/10 man boss)
3 - Nexus + Malygos (malygos is an aspect, same as above - he would have to be a uber-raid boss for end game content)
4 - Uldular + Titan Harbinger or maybe a Titan = (If the instance is full of titan-emissarys, it would be natural to assume the final encounter will take this another step)

That would be nice. Maybe have Gruul/Mag/Prince drop a vortex too.

I for one will not make that bet <against> you.

I seem to remember reading something last night on World of Raids or MMO Champion that they're going to have Karazhan and Zul'Aman bosses drop Badges of Justice, which of course can be turned into nethers (9 bosses in Kara = almost a nether per run).

I'd track down the post, but it's blocked here at work, sadly. Boo. Can anyone find it?

There's a link to Tigole's interview a page or so back in this threat where he confirms kara and ZA bosses dropping badges.

IMO the quest giver should be Inigo Montoy... because perhaps KT kills his father and should prepare to die =)

Metzen described it as Malygos basically withdrawing in his mind after the time when Deathwing murdered his flight. He's basically been in a mental coma since. He mentioned something about a netherdragon blood infusion causing him to rejuvenate. The first thing he notices when he comes to is all these assorted lesser races dicking about with magic and causing demons to have invaded Azeroth and decided that we're not good enough for magic anymore.

Well as the master of magic & protector of magical artifacts, seeing the denizens of Azeroth running around 'playing' and making their own version of Animal Farm, disrespecting magic in general.... I think thats the jist its ment to be (oh and inscription perhaps..?), theres not much more we will find out until we see the quests involving it in Northrend.

Heh. He's probably right.

Thanks for the info.

I know it does, which is why I thought a scenario like that would seem so plausible to me.

He meant Nether Vortex, the one that only drops from SSC/Eye. Perhaps they'll add purchasable vortices for 25 or so badges?

For what it's worth, at Blizzcon's Raids and Dungeons panel (or at least I believe it was R&D), they had a list of the dungeons that were released in content patches and those that were scheduled for future release.

2.2 - No dungeon (voice com & other changes)
2.3 - Zul'Aman
2.4 - Next 25-man dungeon.

Now, obviously this 25-man could easily get pushed back to 2.5 or 2.6 if they have other things to add that crop up, but for now we can expect 2.4 to bring us the next 25-man.

(ps - sorry this is so late, but just got caught up on a few pages)

Azjol-Nerub has a lot of potential, and I'm pretty psyched about it. Nerubians, Crypt Lords (by far my favorite hero unit from WC3), Scourge, Faceless Ones, Old Gods ... there's a lot going on down there, several different groups vying for control, and there is TONS of space. You could easily stick in 5-mans, 10-mans, and 25-man raids in here, covering a wide variety of types of enemies.

I am *really* hoping that with Ulduar and the Earthen/Titan story featuring prominently in WotLK, they also release Uldum finally. It's the natural progression, and I am dying to see what goes on in there. Plus, it's always nice to see content developing in old-world Azeroth.

The titans wouldn't really have a reason to be 'angry/pissed off' at humans/orcs. Sargeras (a former titan) is the one that's responsible for basically everything bad that's happened in Azeroth and the universe.

As far as Uldum and Uldar and the other crypts, I'd love to see a tomb-raider style quest where you have to goto all the crypts and retrieve parts of an item. Preferably a legendary 2.9speed offhand mace, but I'll take what I can get.

I'll be happy to show the batty old wyrm just how much I respect my fireballs

You get a little more freedom to play around if you remember that they can also tweak the coefficients of all the healing spells, too.

Now, damage and healing has a cost coefficient of 0.855. Damage for a specific school has a cost coefficient of 0.700. And healing has a cost coefficient of 0.455. So if you have 10 points to spend, you can get roughly 12 points of "damage and healing", roughly 14 points of "shadow damage", or roughly 22 points of "healing".

I'm sure we've all seen people complain that the amount of +heal available on an item was so much more than the amount of, say, +firedamage on an item. Could kill two birds with one stone here.

Imagine if the cost coefficient of healing were increased to 0.700, but the actual coefficient of healing spells was multiplied by about 1.54 (which is 0.700 / 0.455). So, like, today, Healing Touch has a coefficient of 1.0 normal, or 1.2 talented. Imagine if it was instead 1.5, or 1.8 talented.

Every item with +heal on it would be exactly as effective as it is today, in terms of really using it -- the item budget cost would remain the same, and the amount of +heal on the item would go down by exactly the same multiplier that the healing spell coefficients all went up by. But, it would look the same as a comparable item with just, say, frost damage, which might help with DPS caster envy.

And on top of that, the actual effect on healing of simple non-specialized "damage and healing" would be about 50% more powerful than it is today.

So on the one hand, the itemization could be re-done in the way you describe, but weighted even more heavily towards raw damage without gimping heals. And on the other hand, individual healers could supplement their gear with pure +damage items, and it would be less of a silly choice than it is today.

Just a thought.

Whatever they do, I'm looking forward to the result -- I know too many moonkin suffering from itemization issues. Heck, if they do something really decent, I may go from a hybrid feral/shrubbery spec to a Dreamstate build.

Orcs are alien corruption. At least three of the Guardian Dragonflights are either corrupted to one extent or another or have lost their minds. Forsaken are pollution and perversions of life created by the Lich King, elves have almost blown up the entire thing a few times. The dwarves summoned an Elemental Lieutenant into Azeroth. Burning Legion warlock magic is pervasive and tolerated. One faction of said elves is pretty much all warlock vampires.

Not to mention the multiple reviving Old Gods, their worshipers, the Qiraji, Azshara and the Lich King himself.

The list of things that need a curbstomping on Azeroth to bring back primal uncorrupted glory is a very long one.

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Maybe Arthas should be kept around, if only to have a big gun to throw at angry Creator Gods.

If we learned nothing else from TBC, can we please agree that the ship dates mean nothing and people's insistence that expansions will be out before the holidays also means nothing? Blizzard has never rushed a game out until they were comfortable with the quality of the game and if that means missing a marketing time that lay people think is ideal they haven't flinched. Until Blizzard announces a date you should probably disregard any date you hear about.

History has repeatedly shown me that game stores have no more information on when a game ships than the rest of us. Game Stop probably had several people sit down, formulate a tentative timeline based on complete speculation, and come up with something that sounds like it could be right.

Don't forget the Draenei crashing the Exodar somewhere off the coast of Kalimdor, I believe Metzen actually specifically mentioned that, mentioning that was one sure thing that could cause the Titans to freak out.

or they could just use this already existing item stat and make it the default +healing stat.

From Gamestop's online site:

On a side note a friend of mine who participated in the previous BC Alpha testing asked when those F&F keys would go out and again and they said maybe late September, early October, nothing in stone though.