World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Preview

IGN adds a hands-on take on Blizzard’s upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm, from the pre-E3 showings of the studio.

Grim Batol, at the northern end of the Wetlands, is another area players have been dying to see since they first fought their way past the red dragons that guard it. Within the walls lies the first raid dungeon or the Naxrammas, if you will of Cataclysm. It pits players against the Twilight’s Hammer and their leadership in a mostly-grey series of chambers, lit by bright purple torches. Like Ulduar, fulfilling certain requirements within Grim Batol will unlock a secret final boss, where the floor opens up and the group plummets deep into the caverns below. Blizzard stopped short of showing us what was within this cavern, though I distinctly saw lava and a very large number of black dragon eggs. We’re guessing (or perhaps hoping for) the triumphant return of Nefarian.

In vanilla WoW, most raids needed a full 40-player group. When Burning Crusade launched, that was lowered to 25, with a couple extra 10-man dungeons for good measure. By Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard had ensured that every raid would be accessible by both 10- and 25-player groups. For Cataclysm, Blizzard wants to close the difficulty gap between the two versions, thus allowing the loot between versions to be similar. Groups who enter the 25-player version will have a higher loot-per-player ratio to make up for the extra coordination required in a larger group, but the quality of the loot itself, they hope, will be the same. On top of this, should your guild fail to get together a full 25-players for a dungeon that you’ve already begun, you can split that dungeon into up to three 10-man versions and continue from where you left off. Finally, if you’ve slain the first boss of a dungeon, you won’t necessarily be locked to that instance. If you enter an instance that is further along than yours, you will be locked to that instead, meaning if you land in a crummy group where everyone has spoons for fingers and is incapable of defeating more than the earliest boss in any given dungeon, then you won’t be stuck there for the rest of the week. You can team up with another group and push forward. There’s no going backwards, though, so if you’re halfway through a dungeon and try to enter a dungeon that is isn’t as far through, you’ll be locked out.