Watch it be some new storyline being made where the Old Gods and Sargeras are working together. Least I would hope they are not working up to something like re-using AQ :p

The Twilight Hammer clan was only loyal to Gul'dan, and it was no secret to Cho'gall the entire time what Gul'dan really wanted(IE, no loyalty to the legion).

Well, C'Thun in the comic does look alive "in spirit", so to speak, since he can whisper to Med'an. Cho'gall keeps saying that "chaos will be brought unto the world" or something, so it's probably the Old God of chaos, like Yoggy is the god of death - but I don't know if C'Thun is that god.

Also, I totally called Medivh being Med'an's father.

Ugh, you know I can see that happening actually. Wouldn't mind it that much if they remodelled it a bit to make it shorter and didn't reuse the same bosses/boss models but new Twilight ones.

Could always have a "oh they moved to Uldum" and so you have twilight's hammer fighting with whatever is in there plus us going in after both a la Ulduar and iron dwarves + yogg.

It defiently looked like C'Thun is not fully gone. Cho'gall even mentions resurecting his master. At the end of the issue he draws on his master's power and his amrs goo all huge and look like something that could have popped right off of C'Thun. It's pretty unmistakable, as he is shown off in the last pannel glaring down at Valeera.

This could explain Yogg Sarron's reaction to getting "killed", it knows that such a thing really will not be an impediment.

What if this is the main reason why killing the Old Gods involves them being able to do something really bad in spirt form? Maybe along the lines that to make a new body they would ahve to devour the host? The more that get killed, the fast the process advances.

WoW -> Info -> Under Development
That answers that. It does tie 3.2 in with the overal story arc, and certainly will be a part of "Act 2" that Blizzard mentioned. In hindsight, I think the Matthias Lehner questline was one of the first "scenes" of Act 2, since it set up Tirion's active desire to go after Arthas.

I guess that's the final nail in the coffin for an Azjol Nerub raid. Oh well.

I just saw that news item and was just about to post that. I'm not sure about that being the end of Act 2. It's possible also that Act 2 was the siege of Ulduar and the whole colisseum is the start of Act 3. It's unlikely for there to be much in the way of story elements unless there's a twist in the storyline. This just seems like those training sessions in shounen manga where the good guys have to get stronger to beat the new bad guys.

I can see it now, Super Saiyan Tirion Fordring + Ashbringer.

This would be WoW's first real non-hostile raid I think. Like, no bad guys, just an event with Crusaders.

I wonder if they'll rez us after they horribly kill us per attempt. Also wonder about the scale of said raid. I mean it's not like you can stick 11 bosses in a tournament raid...can you? Or trash for that matter.

They could do trash in a similar mechanic as Hyjal though where it is part of each encounter. Skirmishes against packs of knights and footmen and champions in waves before the vanquisher comes to fight you after passing his 'test' of these encounters - Rend as another example of it.

I'm still holding out for the hope that in the building process of the coliseum, a Nerubian tunnel is breached. Thus poureth out a myriad of Angry Beatle Monsters, requiring adventurers to ride their trusty steeds with lance equipped into the maw of darkness and beat back the manxome foes.

There should be tunnels all over the place. Hell, a Nerubian tunnel could be the "backdoor" into Icecrown Citadel. Don't lose faith in more Azjol Nerub action. Let's just hope it isn't trolls.

I think it is time to give up on a AN raid since I think any hope of that disappeared the moment they dropped AN as a zone.

But for Cho'gall I'd imagine we will be fighting him eventually although I'd bet that will be in the next expansion and not this one.

The Argent Coliseum is a disappointment and I'd bet you that it is a result of them wanting to find anything to fit into 3.2 after they decided to drop AN and change the entire Northrend storyline. Least we can hope it is a fun raid and will advance the story at least. Maybe it could play out that the Scourge have overun it and we end up fighting Bolvar/Saurfang in the end. At least I am hoping it is a full blown raid since I doubt we will see Icecrown before May next year and they better not pull what they did with the wait between BT and Sunwell again.

Edit:

Seems it will be like Ring of Blood and Amphitheater.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Blizzard Shop Talk - Under Development

The advantage of it is that they have less storyline constraints in crafting the encounters. I think there's more they can do that they might not be able to do on hostile raids.

God, i feel so disappointed right now.

Ofcourse we'd still have to wait and see how things turn out but i for one am not excited at all about the whole Coliseum deal. I honestly was hoping for an exciting raid (Ulduar has been really great so far) but for some reason this plan feels like a PvP fest all the way.

And i do hope there will be some noteworthy characters making an appearance of some sort in the Coliseum because the way i view it right now is something like this: "We need to be sure you're ready and good enough to assist in the siege of Icecrown. Here's some big monsters you need to fight, come back once you killed them"

I wonder if we'll perhaps see conflict between Tirion and Darion at the Coliseum. The Ebon Blade has an as-yet-unused presence at the tournament, and that might give the Coliseum the lore boost it needs to be a "legitimate" raid.

Well it will be interesting if its the only raid, because fitting 10-14 (normal number of bosses available when a new Tier of gear is introduced) bosses inside that Colessium doesn't seem possible. I still have hopes for a new Old World Raid with 3.2, but we shall see as more information as released.

Compare it to Violet Hold for a second.

In Violet Hold, you had a pretty short instance which featured several bosses that were random every time you ran a new one on a daily basis with the final boss always being the same.

Now think about turning that into a raid encounter. You could potentially have a lot of bosses, but due to randomness you will be limited to a certain few every reset.

The biggest question remains, how will they weave lore in it? Preparation for a siege on Icecrown is hardly what you can call lore, and i doubt there will be any big surprises in a freshly built coliseum.

Unless Tirion comes and tells you that he found Sargeras and locked him inside the coliseum but that he's growing out of control and wants you to kick his butt. Not that it would be any good lore, but it sure would be a surprise.

I don't think we can expect a new tier of gear in 3.2. It will most likely be the ZA or AQ type deal. There are 3 tiers of gear per expansion so far, including vanilla and I'm pretty sure T9 will be in Icecrown.

Yeah, but we also had Ahn'Qiraj and Sunwell. So.

It's not unused, but you don't see it unless you're a death knight. As a DK, instead of being sent to Eadric the Pure for the Battle Before The Citadel/Threat From Above, you get your quests from Crok Scourgebane. Correspondingly, Scourgebane's quests give Ebon Blade faction and not Argent Crusade. It's a nice nod to the lore, that the Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade are working together against the Lich King but do not have the same methods or attitudes.

I seem to remember on the beta forums that there was a blue poster who thought having a coliseum with old raid bosses tuned to level 80 was a good idea. So maybe the fights in the coliseum will be Conjured Ragnaros or Onyxia or something like that.

Just found it...it was Tigole who liked it:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - PvE Arenas!