Posts with tag abyssal-maw

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

When last we left Neptulon the Tidehunter, the brave lord of elementals was assisting us in defeating the foul kraken Ozumat in the Throne of Tides 5-man instance. But, of course, Ozumat was not killed -- merely weakened. The beast disappeared into the deep, and Neptulon disappeared along with him!

What happened? Well, we may not find out. Blizzard, defending its choice to not include an Abyssal Maw 5-man instance (or raid) in patch 4.2, said this past week that:

We've decided for now that the Vashj'ir quest line along with the Throne of the Tides dungeon does a pretty good job of finishing the Neptulon story.

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Those of us at WoW Insider respectfully disagree; there's more story here to be told. And since we all loathe untied ends, I decided to pose the question to our writers and editors this week: "Using your best predictive and story-telling abilities ... what happened to Ozumat and Neptulon?"

Patch 4.1, the first major content patch of Cataclysm's life cycle, has been mentioned a few times lately here on WoW Insider, sparked by Alex Afrasiabi's commentary narrating a zone overview for G4. Since then, many players have asked the question: What is actually in patch 4.1? What do we know about it? Do we know anything?

We don't know everything that will be contained in patch 4.1, but between BlizzCon and more recent information, Blizzard has already outlined a number of the major features from the patch. Let's take a look at those features, shall we?

The Dungeons and Raids panel is now in Q&A mode, and Cory Stockton (lead content designer) gave us a lot of new information concerning what to expect when patch 4.1 goes live. I've assembled everything we know below:

• Firelands raid This is the elemental plane of fire and an outdoor raid located in Mount Hyjal. You'll be able to mount up and run around.
• The final boss will be Ragnaros, and you'll fight him in a building called Sulfuron Keep. Sulfuron Keep looks very similar to the building you'll see when you fly into Hyjal for the first time (and may in fact be the same one).
• The Firelands raid will provide more backstory and lore on Ragnaros' presence in Azeroth. I thought I heard that he won't be moved out of Molten Core (he'll be in both raids simultaneously) but I'm not 100 percent sure.
• Expect 7 bosses.
• The Abyssal Maw The elemental plane of water. A new 5-man in Vashj'ir thematically similar to the 5-mans shipping with Cataclysm.
• "Oh, and it's nothing Oculus." Players will be moving around a lot in the dungeon and they're doing their best to avoid the "Oculus effect" of quirky mechanics being unintentionally annoying.
• The entire dungeon will be underwater. They've overhauled underwater combat and you can fight normally if you're on the floor. Most of these mechanics are already in place in the beta Vashj'ir zone, so some players will already be familiar with it.
• They're planning on four or five bosses.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

We're up to water now in our survey of the elemental forces of the Warcraft setting. Having covered fire and earth previously, we now take a look at the forces of water led by Neptulon the Tidehunter. Unlike his rivals, Neptulon is devious enough to manipulate the other elemental lords into combat, crafty enough to gain a foothold on Outland with followers among the Naga and Twilight's Hammer (Neptulon's influence reaches far enough that he managed to have a powerful minion, Frost Lord Ahune, summoned to the Coilfang Slave Pens in an attempt to outflank Ragnaros), and of all elementals, those of water are even willing to work with mortals in an attempt to sabotage their enemies.

What is known about Neptulon is that he fought alongside the other elemental lords in the war with the titans, that even as powerful as they were, the lords of the elements eventually fell and were banished. However, despite the defeat of the Old Gods and the imprisoning of the elementals on artificial planes created to house them, Neptulon found ways to affect the mortal world. The ancient troll empire of the Gurubashi eventually felt the wrath of the Tidehunter and his krakken servitors.

The Third Troll Legend

But the Krakken are old, very old. They remembered when the land was first born from the sea.

They remembered when the Old Ones ruled and when the Travelers came and cast them down. They remembered when magic was new.

They are old and they hold many secrets. And though Min'loth's spell was strong, it, like the troll, was mortal.

And so it failed.

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While we didn't get the full fledged Maelstrom expansion that some people were predicting, Cataclysm still promises to have some water-related content, such as the Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water. And where there's water, you need a boat. The recent Twitter developer chat revealed that we will, in fact, be using new transports to get to certain places in Cataclysm, and that these transport would be submarines, built by the gnomes and goblins for their respective factions.

We taped our podcast a little early this week, on Wednesday night, and rather than having you wait all the way until Monday for it (not to mention that Pirates' Day will gone by then), we figured we'd post it up for you today). Matt "Matticus" Low was kind enough to join us (he writes the Spiritual Guidance and Raid Rx columns), and while Turpster was on a business trip, he did end up making it to provide us with his usual sparkling insight. We talked about that wacky 2v2 team rating and what it means for Blizzard's Arena system, the Abyssal Maw and what else we've heard about Cataclysm's dungeons and raids, and whether being in a guild really can calm you down (Matt, our only guildleader on the show, says no).

And as usual we answered your emails (including why Gamestop claims to know Cataclysm's release date) and chatted live with listeners, and you can listen to the show at any of the links below. Haven't subscribed to iTunes yet? Why not? Not only do you get the show automatically every week, but you can also leave us a rating and a review in iTunes, and we appreciate every single one. We'll be back a week from Saturday (on the 26th) at the usual time (and between you and me, we've got some nice guests planned for the next few shows, too!), so we'll see you then.

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We've all been waiting with bated breath since BlizzCon in hopes of getting more solid news about the expansion, and today, it seems like we've started getting it. Blizzard has updated the official Cataclysm site with some screen shots and lore information of one of the new areas of the expansion, the Abyssal Maw.

The Abyssal Maw is the elemental plane of water, one of the four such planes created by the Titans to contain the elemental servants of the Old Gods so that their own creations could thrive on Azeroth. Deathwing's prison break will break the walls between the elemental planes and Azeroth, with the Abyssal Maw being no exception.

Cory Stockton and Scott Mercer gave an in-depth look into the dungeons and raids available at the launch of WoW: Cataclysm during the Raids and Dungeons panel today at BlizzCon. We'll look at the dungeons first.

OVERVIEW:

At launch, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will ship with eight 5-man dungeons and two heroic versions of old-world dungeons.

Grim Batol: One level 85 5-man.
Skywall: One level 80-82 5-man.
Abyssal Maw: Two 5-mans; level 80-83 and level 82-84.
Deepholm: One level 80-83 5-man.
Uldum: Two 5-mans; level 83-84 and level 85.
Blackrock Caverns: One level 85 5-man.
Shadowfang Keep: One level 85 heroic 5-man.
The Deadmines: One level 85 heroic 5-man.

Descriptions and info after the jump for dungeons that were covered in depth in the panel.