Spooncraft

This information is what really gets me going about the expansion. We got information on how Northrend raiding and dungeons are going to work!

• All 5-man dungeons will have a Heroic mode. Yay!
• Heroic dungeons will have a separate loot table than non-Heroics. Yay x2!
• A new token system will be used, similar to the Badge of Justice one used now. This is normal, that just means you wont be able to easy mode farm for badges in Outlands for WOTLK loot.
• The 5-man instances are designed to not take more than an hour. I like this. Sometimes I don’t want to spend ALL NIGHT in an instance unless it’s a raid.
• All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 10-person and 25-person versions. So at level 80, every major encounter and every big boss fight can be experienced with a group of 10. (Gamespy.com) THANK YOU. Yes I know “this will be the death of raiding”, cut the crap people. There will still be 25 man raids, the gear will still be INFINITELY better and you can wave your epeen until it’s sore when you have the big honking equipment to show your ability to hit the 25 man raids. What a lot of people are missing is the fact that this will open up the game for smaller guilds, closer groups of people, and allow everybody willing to see the content. Not necessarily casual gamers. The ideal of only the top elitist percentile of players getting to see all the content is gone. Gaming as a whole industry is growing up, and frankly the vast majority of gamers out there don’t dedicate 7 days a week 6+ hours a day to only raiding. Get over it and in the words of Drysc “don’t be selfish”
• 25-person raiding progression is not dependent on 10-person raiding progression. (Gamespy.com) This means that you won’t have to do 10-mans in order to hit 25-mans only to then move onto another 10-man. Basically all the raids will have a 10-man or 25-man “mode” and you progress that way.
• There will be no attunements or keys to obtain, and you won’t be locked out of a 25-person instance if you decide to attempt the 10-person version, and vice-versa. (Gamespy.com) I don’t like attunements but I do agree that there should be some sort of quest or key to get into certain places simply for the lore reasons. However it does add a time sink into the game and getting people keyed is such a royal pain in the ass that Blizzard is opting to please the masses with this one. The fact that you will NOT get locked out of a raid for doing either the 25-man or 10-man is amazing. I like this a lot.
• 25-person raids will earn more, higher-level rewards, in what should be the equivalent of one “tier” of loot quality. (Gamespy.com)
• A new instance focused on the different dragonflights “The Chamber of Aspects” might be added to the game, but this isn’t confirmed yet. (Gamespy.com)
• Zero raid bosses have been designed at this point. (Gamespy.com) That means if you see somebody speculating on this boss or that boss, they’re full of it. Wait until us in the press get some info from Blizzard before getting all nutty.