by Byron Mudry on Nov 09, 2013
One of the things that I personally look forward to most when any expansion launches are all the new instances that come with it. Warlords of Draenor is no exception to this, and even brings more excitement than normal since we already have some background on some of the locations that we are likely to see in the game.
When Warlords of Draenor launches it will bring with it 7 different 5 player dungeons. 6 of these instances will be completely new, while 1 of them will be a Classic instance updated for the expansions.
So far we know the names of almost all of them, leaving just one instance unknown. The ones we do know are:
Bloodmaul Slag Mines Auchindoun Arakkon Spires Shadowmoon Burial Grounds Iron Barracks Upper Blackrock Spire (Classic Instance)Of these we know that 4 of them will be for you while leveling up, and the remaining 2 new ones and the re-made Upper Blackrock Spire will be for max level players.
It was also made known that all of the instances will also be available in normal, heroic, and challenge mode. This is a change from the Mists of Pandaria model where the max level instances were heroic and challenge mode only.
Just one of the new bosses that awaits players in the new instances.
This 5 player instance was used as an example of the new instance content and therefore we know much more about it than the others.
This instance is located in the Frostfire Ridge zone, and is a slave mine found inside a volcano, run by the Thunderlord Orges. The mines labour force is made up of captured Frostwolf Orcs and Draenei. Your mission in this instances is to help free the captives and stage a revolt to shut down the mine.
The instance houses 4 different bosses and is almost completely non-linear. You can make your way through all but the final boss in any order you choose. The map makes it fairly obvious that you can do so since it is setup around the center of the volcano in a circular fashion.
The layout of the Bloodmaul Slag Mine instance makes it fairly obvious that you have a lot of freedom in how you go about completing it.
When Warlords of Draenor launches, it will do so with a similar raid setup as Mists of Pandaria launched with. It will have 2 different raids, each with timed releases and several wings. The two raids are:
Highmaul Blackrock FoundryHighmaul is home to the high Ogres in Nagrand and will house 6 different raid bosses. It will be the first raid made available. Having 6 bosses it is likely that it will be opened in 2 phases.
Blackrock Foundry is home of the Blackrock Clan of Orcs and where Garrosh has the Iron Horde producing his warmachines. This raid will have 10 different bosses and will finish with a fight against Warlord Blackhand himself. Having 10 bosses it is likely that it will be opened in 3 phases.
Each of these raids will be made available in 4 different difficulty levels. Those levels will be Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic, and Mystic. The first three levels are all 10-25 player capable and will automatically use the flex raiding system. Only the highest level, Mystic, will be hard coded to a certain number of players. This is the raid level that is meant for the hard-core progression raiding guilds and will be set for 20 player raids. Mystic level raids will be the most highly tunes raids so far, and will expect at least 1 of each class to be present in them.
The new raid structure and how it relates to the old structure from Mists of Pandaria.
There will be a lot more information being released about World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor and the instances it contains. However, it is easy to get excited about the new instances even with the little we know so far. We already know we will see several completely new instances, as well as new versions of a few places we have already seen. There will also be quite a few raid bosses to deal with right from the start, and on top of that it was announced that there will be several outdoor world bosses to fight.
With even just this first batch of information, what do you think about the new instances? Let us know in the comment section below.