Patch 4.3: Blizzard's official preview of the Well of Eternity heroic dungeon
by Anne Stickney 
Sep 19th 2011 at 3:30PM
Today seems to be a huge day for patch 4.3 news, as Blizzard has just released a second 4.3 dungeon preview, this one for the Well of Eternity. After opening the gateway to the past in End Time, players will be transported back in time to Azshara's palace during the War of the Ancients to retrieve the Dragon Soul. Sounds easy enough, right? Yeah, not so much -- the Dragon Soul is busy hovering over the Well of Eternity and being used to open the portal that will allow Sargeras into the world.
In order to retrieve the Dragon Soul, players will have to fight and defeat the enemies that stand in the way, including Queen Azshara herself. Also seen in Well of Eternity are two names that should ring a bell to those familiar with lore -- the pit lord Mannoroth, whose blood is responsible for the corruption of the Orcish race, and Varo'then, head of Queen Azshara's personal guard. We already know what happens to Mannoroth and Varo'then in the future, so what will happen if we mess with them in the past?
It seems as though all this mucking around in time is something players will have to be considerate of, however. According to Zarhym, "The tragic events which took place at the Well of Eternity must ultimately come to pass, leading to the Great Sundering, the creation of the Maelstrom, and the loss of countless lives."
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm looking forward to saying hello to the younger versions of Tyrande, Malfurion, and Illidan. Check out the official website for the full preview, with plenty of images and more information on the various bosses in the dungeon.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
In order to retrieve the Dragon Soul, players will have to fight and defeat the enemies that stand in the way, including Queen Azshara herself. Also seen in Well of Eternity are two names that should ring a bell to those familiar with lore -- the pit lord Mannoroth, whose blood is responsible for the corruption of the Orcish race, and Varo'then, head of Queen Azshara's personal guard. We already know what happens to Mannoroth and Varo'then in the future, so what will happen if we mess with them in the past?
It seems as though all this mucking around in time is something players will have to be considerate of, however. According to Zarhym, "The tragic events which took place at the Well of Eternity must ultimately come to pass, leading to the Great Sundering, the creation of the Maelstrom, and the loss of countless lives."
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm looking forward to saying hello to the younger versions of Tyrande, Malfurion, and Illidan. Check out the official website for the full preview, with plenty of images and more information on the various bosses in the dungeon.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back! Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Raiding, Lore, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 3:35PM
OK, seriously, these NEED a normal mode! This story should be for everyone, not just the "climbers" incensed with perfecting a twitch-skill-set for a roleplaying game in a beautiful world. Let those folks have their heroic mode, heck, I'll run it too, but I'd like to be able to savour this place without edge-of-my-seat nerves tainting the experience.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 3:38PM
And for the record, I am indeed this emphatic about this because these dungeons look AMAZING! Not hating on anyone, I just think options would be nice. They've bridged accessibility to raiding, acknowledging that PVE content it part of the story they want us all to see... a normal mode would do the same here!
Moonfaxx Sep 19th 2011 3:53PM
Interesting. I'd like to be able to savour this place BECAUSE OF edge-of-my-seat nerves enriching the experience.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 3:57PM
I personally get enough "stress" from the non-escapism portion of my day, but to each their own ;)
Excitement is one thing, stress from "performing" among a hostile community is something else. I'll just have to keep these heroics as special guild events. I'll see them either way, frequency is the only barrier that a lack of normal mode represents.
Shinae Sep 19th 2011 4:06PM
Omedon666, don't you run dungeons with friends? Heroics are not that hard when done with a coordinated group of people. Even roleplayers like me and my friends get through the Zuls just fine. We even cleared ZA and ZG the first night they were on the live realms. (However, raids remain difficult for us, as they should be.)
It's not necessary to make normal versions of these new dungeons. They might be tough at first, but, like the Zuls, they will become easy in time.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 4:13PM
Shinae: I do indeed have twice-a-week instance nights with my very friendly and awesome guild (where I am one of two tanks), but (when subscribed) I play seven days a week, and I guess I'm sad that these can't be a 7-day-a-week experience without risking exposing myself to the cancer in the community.
The net feeling here is joy at this amazing content, I'm just annoyed that there is no "PUG mode". I don't like feeling gated by the understandable and accepted availability of my friends, as my fun should be covered by my subscription, not theirs.
A normal mode would also allow people to learn the fights in a "safer" environment. Everyone learning on "our VP time" (in PUGs) was a huge social problem with the Zuls, repeating that isn't a good idea, IMO.
Guess that's what my DPS spec is for ;)
Shinae Sep 19th 2011 4:23PM
Omedon, I appreciate the response. Your reaction is more reasonable to me now, and I understand your point. :)
I don't know why they wouldn't do normal versions like they did the ICC 5-mans.
Mr. Crow Sep 19th 2011 4:39PM
It's in a 5-man. That means it IS for everyone. (I am sorry, people who subscribe to an MMO to play by yourselves...)
Besides, I haven't seen any solid information saying they're going to be heroic-only. Even if they are, if your regular 5-man crew is able to handle the ZA/ZG remixes first night, pre-nerf, then these will provide a worthy but no means insurmountable challenge.
I would be much happier playing through challenging content for the first time with my friends rather than seeing the same content in EZ MODE with a bunch of pugs first, and THEN coming back to it with my friends later on.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 4:43PM
Mr Crow:
Oh don't worry, I see your point, and no one is asking to play alone (yet), I'm just one of those tanks that's sworn off heroic PUGing. Like I said, that's what DPS spec is for. ;)
To each their own.
loop_not_defined Sep 19th 2011 4:58PM
I think it's strictly because of the new random dungeon "tiers" they implemented with the Zuls.
If they added Normal versions, the Random Dungeon Tier list would have to be either:
1) Expanded with both an additional Normal Queue and Heroic Queue, totaling 5 (I think?) options. It would also confuse players, since Tier 2 Normal would be more difficult than Tier 1 Heroic and comparable to Tier 2 Heroic. Research would be required to figure out exactly which queue a player should be using.
2) Included in the original Normal Queue...least likely option, since the ilvl requirements - even for Normal - wouldn't match those of the existing Normals.
Personally, I would much prefer having Normals, even if it means leaving them out of *all* queues. :(
Blazing Rain Sep 19th 2011 5:00PM
I think this would be a problem if heroics were actually difficult. ANYBODY can put together a 5 man group, but its more difficult to find a raid, hence they make it a 5 man, next you'll be asking them to turn it into one big cutscene so EVERYBODY can see it, and by everybody you'd mean all the people too lazy to run a dungeon, or the people who have less than an hour to play, which if you're on that kind of schedule, you probably shouldn't be playing WoW. Sorry for the rant, but CMON, it's a 5man.
Skarn Sep 19th 2011 5:19PM
"Excitement is one thing, stress from "performing" among a hostile community is something else."
It's interesting that "Heroic mode" automatically says "hostile community" to some people. I'm guessing that much of what you would be doing is running in the RDF, which might indeed lend to that. I personally don't run Heroics in a "hostile community." I run them with friends and guildmates and it's a lot of fun.
Actually, my favorite times of each expansion is when new dungeons come out. I like to run them that first day having little to no idea what to expect. This inevitably leads to wipes and longer dungeon runs, but it's a blast. We all know it's going to happen, so no one's hostile. We joke and tease each other about silly mistakes then turn around and beat the boss. It's not fast, it's not clean, but it sure is a ton of fun.
I think one of the biggest failures of the RDF is that so many people consider "Heroic" mode the "standard" mode. It's the mode everyone "expects" to play on. No one thinks that about the raids! We all expect Heroic raids to be hard. Why not the same for 5-mans? One of the big problems there in Cataclysm is simply the lack of level-capped Normal mode dungeons. This was, unfortunately, NOT helped with the Zuls and looks to be non-helpful with the "Deathwings." Adding all 5 of those as normal mode dungeons would have expanded the amount of dungeons available, making running only normals much more reasonable. The other big element is the community. Especially after Wrath, we just "expect" that Heroic 5-mans should be easy to run by anyone, which is really a silly concept. That's what Normals are for...if they exist.
Anyway, while I think Omedon is overstating the "twitch-skill-set" needed, I can't find a good reason to NOT include a Normal mode. In fact, I think that's exactly what's lacking right now.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 5:38PM
Skarn gets it.
Like I said, I'll run the heroics, with guild and friends, leading the charge with a smile on my face. Â I will PUG only as DPS, for the same reason:
I respect heroic mode.
I was the tank that still asked the healer if they were comfortable healing through Loken's lightning nova while Ruby sanctum was out, I wanted hard heroics so my small guild could feel progressive pride...
But I also am not hubristic enough to think that everyone plays like I do, and I would like the option of normal mode for my personal time without the guild, because I respect heroic mode, and much of the community does not.
Smashbolt Sep 19th 2011 6:10PM
Sure, I'm all for the notion of a normal mode for these dungeons, though I'm not even remotely sure for what ilvl they could tune it, or what ilvl gear it could drop without either of those being absurd compared to everything else...
What I don't really understand is the notion that the RDF is this volatile hellish place where everyone spits on you for every little mis-step.
Certainly, there are fail groups that disband or end in abuse worthy of a harassment ticket... but since the implementation of RDF, I've run as tank, healer and DPS, and never found it to be particularly any worse than when I was pulling people from trade chat to run the daily heroic back in early Wrath. Maybe it's a memory bias, but for every group in RDF that is high-stress and devolves into flaming and cursing, I've had at least as many that were pleasant and chatty, and countless many more that were 100% uneventful, and all of these seemed independent of how well the people in them were playing.
Speaking practically, I can understand that these groups can easily slant toward bad experiences: heroics have evolved over time to be considered a simple path to a "must farm" reward and so should never be failed, and of course the notion of internet anonymity and so on. From experience though, I really can't say it has been all that bad. I can't help but wonder if some of this effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy where players go in expecting failure and vitriol so strongly that they're cynical and hyper-defensive about keeping that from happening to themselves and they lash out pre-emptively.
Sorry to derail... but this opinion of RDF is all over the internet, and I just don't see it happening in practice.
Marius W. Sep 19th 2011 6:16PM
It is a hostile environment, BUT you are at the advantage of the new heroics being new so no one knows what is going on. Tanking is also easier now as it is harder to steal threat away.
If you queue up at the start of 4.3 you'll be at the same level as everyone else and learning as the whole party learns it.
It isn't as hostile at the start of patches or xpacs.
People work together a lot more than they do a few weeks later when the hostilities start.
Not to say you won't get the occasional big e-peener who will demand perfection at all times, but at the beginning it's rare as even they don't know what is going on.
You are also a tank so you have the luxury of re-queue'ng and getting in right away if you get a QQ group.
Once you get the hang of it, you'll love doing heroics again :)
Moonfaxx Sep 19th 2011 7:00PM
Piling on to what's been said... If you're going to make a normal difficulty dungeon, make the heroic brutally difficult. Heroic difficulty is not for "experiencing the content," and it certainly shouldn't be for pugging. There is no reason heroic 5-mans shouldn't be as difficult as heroic raids. This would be a bit more feasible if regular difficulty 5-mans would gear people up adequately for regular raiding.
omedon666 Sep 19th 2011 7:12PM
I'm with ya moonfax, 100%! Heroic mode should be a respectable mode of guild-and-friends achievement...
So long as there's a normal mode for "experiencing the content".
Without a normal mode, this paradigm is broken.
I disagree with the idea of story as a reward for "mad skillz". Gear and point-based things serve that role just fine, story and lore should be accessible and available, on an individual basis, for more reasonable criteria. Tiered heroics, as cataclysm has presented them, do not meet this ideal, given the "I'm not here for fun, gogogo" mentality that the community has come to expect of the dungeon finder, coupled with the execution involved.
Just my opinion. :)
Byeble Sep 19th 2011 7:32PM
I completely agree, and that is why I think the LFR feature is gonna be such a great thing. It will let people experience the story when they might not be able too, and slowly, but surely, they'll be able to gear up too! Maybe not to the same level as regular raiders, but still, something's better than nothing. Besides, I still don't have Catalysmically Epic because of those stupid shoulder and head slots, and I need to have it. I NEED TO HAVE IT! :D
goldeneye Sep 20th 2011 11:19AM
I concur having Normal modes for these dungeons would be fun. But normal like ICC5 Normals were on par with Wrath Heroics. Like:
1. Cata Normals
2. Cata Heroics
3. Troll Heroics and Dragon Normals
4. Dragon Heroics
Vrykerion Sep 19th 2011 3:35PM
I kinda wonder if Queen Azshara will be wearing her ugly cotton candy colored dress?