Today Blizzard added a sneak peak at Ulduar to WorldofWarcraft.com, and I have to say that while I was excited before to jump into this content, now I am fairly bouncing in my chair with excitement. Ulduar has been one of the many areas in Northrend that fills my need for lore and story, and both Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning (with their connected Storm Peaks quests) have really been a delight to experience. Now Blizzard is giving us a taste of what the raid instance will be like, and that appetizer has me begging for more. Hit the jump for a peak into Ulduar, lightly peppered with spoilers.
There will be two raid areas in Ulduar: first an epic vehicle section, where you and your companions are pitted against vast armies; then there's the heart of the dungeon proper, where your raid group will come face to face with the secrets of the Makers. Most of the bosses you meet in Ulduar will have a hard mode (11 out of the 14 to be exact), a concept we first encountered in the Obsidian Sanctum(three drakes up, anyone?). It appears that Blizzard is playing with the hard mode concept in multiple ways, and I think it's a great idea. It's the sort of thing that adds longevity to a raid encounter, and variety is important when your guild expects to hit Ulduar every week until its pummeled into achievement submission.
If you were worried that Ulduar was all stuffy and serious, have no fear, even here there are those pop-culture references that make WoW so very delightful. One example they list on the website is Mimiron's creation of the VO-L7-R0N weapons platform, which contains one of the bosses you face in the vehicle section, a nasty named the Flame Leviathan. You'll need both ground and air vehicles to defeat this bad boy, and from what I can tell the vehicle gauntlet against the Iron Army will be one helluva ride.
I for one am so eager to check out Ulduar I will most likely spend some time on the PTR. If I am fortunate enough to get a crack at the raid dungeon, you can be sure I'll share what I glean with you guys. As we get closer to Patch 3.1's release, I expect we will also get more information about the boss encounters within Ulduar. Unless of course they just spring it on us, which is fine too.
