Icecrown Citadel

Very late in 2009, the Icecrown Citadel opened its doors. Supported by three, introductory 5-man instances, Icecrown Citadel will be the final achievement in Blizzard's raid design of 2009. While only one wing of the massive raid is currently available, we're already seeing lessons learned from all five raids that came before it in Wrath.

Let's start with the way tier gear is purchased. Tier gear dropped in Naxxramas, using the similar multi-class token that's been around since Karazhan. In Trial of the Champions, however, you had two options. You could buy the 10-man tier pieces using emblems, or you could buy the 25-man tier using emblems and a trophy.

The immediate problem with that model is that if you were a "good" raider, you bought upgrades to help fuel further success in the instance. But if you bought the 10-man tier piece as soon as you could, you'd have to re-collect all of the emblems in order to use your Trophy. This led to a situation where raiders sat on their emblems until they had the appropriate trophy, and didn't upgrade until that happened.

In Icecrown, the 10-man tier pieces are bought using your Emblems of Frost. Then, if you get the necessary drop from 25-man raids, you spend that drop and the 10-man tier piece to buy your 25-man tier piece. It's an elegant, beautiful system which is both raid friendly (since there's no impediment to upgrading) and easy to understand. It's intuitive and it makes sense.

The next upgrade to raiding in Icecrown Citadel is the elegant solution to Heroic mode versus Normal mode. Raid leaders can designate in the raid interface which level of difficulty they want for each boss fight. This is a trumph of design because some raids can find a certain fight doable in Hard mode, but not another. This allows raid leaders to customize their raid experience, and tailor it to fit their raid's specific needs.

The boss fights themselves are interesting improvements over previous raid encounters. Even if many of the fights seem like gear checks, or coordination checks, they are all unique and complex in their own ways. Lord Marrowgar, the very first boss fight, encourages dance-coordination even while serving as a gear check. As Matt Low pointed out, Dreamwalker becomes a new and interesting role for healers in a raid.

The Gunship Battle is a fan favorite. Not only does it enjoy the legendary Rocket Bear, but the Gunship Battle gives characters the ability to rocket-jump from ship to ship. That kind of interplay has a really epic feel, and makes this encounter some of the biggest fun yet.

The rest of Icecrown Citadel is on a delayed release until January 5th, 2010. There's certainly a lot of reasons why this might be, but it definitely gives us time over the holidays to make sure we're all caught up and ready for the content. It will certainly make 2010 an interesting raid gear, since that will be when we finally get to show down with Arthas himself.

The final thing I want to mention about Icecrown Citadel is that it enjoys a new mechanic that reinforces the design philosophy of accessibility. With each passing week, the faction leaders will provide a buff to raiders entering the Citadel. This buff will help tugboat raids who are challenged with the DPS, heal, and tank output, by making them relatively more powerful with each passing week.

This makes the Icecrown Citadel a much more effective raiding experience, since you will not only have your own learning curve bolstering your effort, but you will also have this buff helping you speed through the content. It's easy to chalk that effect up to "catering to casuals," but I don' t think that's what it's about. If you're raiding to experience the story, then that's the facet you're most interested in. Your goal isn't to maximize your best-in-slot gear choices for output: you just want to see the boss fights. This tugboat effect lets you focus on your story goals.

If you're into the hardcore, super-challenge experience, you'll still have the option to turn that buff off. You have the choice to customize your own experience. This accessibility to both the story-experience and the hardcore-experience is Blizzard's big win for the year, in my opinion.

Summary

In the end, the raids of 2009 did two different things. First, it opened up raiding to a whole new group of players. It morphed World of Warcraft raiding into a customizable experience that catered to both the hardcore raider and the more story-experiential player. Second, it vastly took design away from "focus on exact specifications" and over toward "focus on the dance steps and the people you're playing with."

The stories of 2009 were intrinsically tied to everything in the expansion. We got involved with the dragon disputes by fighting Sartharion and Malygos. We saw the corruption of the Keepers, put down the old god Yogg-Saron, and saved the planet by keeping Algalon from pressing the self-destruct button. We beat down the Lich King's minions in Naxxramas, we trained up our skills in the Trial of the Crusader, and now we're on the way to slay Arthas in the Icecrown Citadel.

It's been an exciting year. It's going to be a challenge living up to all this in 2010, but I have faith Blizzard can do it.

Good hunting, folks.

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