WoW Dev Interview: The Heart and Souls of Icecrown Citadel'); document.write('
posted on November 21, 2009 07:23:23 am'); document.write('

WoW Dev Interview: The Heart and Souls of Icecrown Citadel

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

To shed some light into the chilly gloom of Icecrown Citadel, we sat down to talk about the decision-making process behind Wrath of the Lich King’s ultimate dungeon, the World of Warcraft team’s design philosophy, and the dangers that lurk in the heart of Arthas’s stronghold.

Check out the resulting interview to learn more: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p3/icecrown-interview.xml

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

With the final battle against the Lich King just on the horizon, Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street discuss what awaits players inside Icecrown Citadel and offer a glimpse at the design process behind Wrath of the Lich King\'s ultimate raid and dungeon encounters.

What were you looking forward to most about developing Icecrown Citadel?

Cory: I think the most exciting thing about developing Icecrown Citadel was just knowing that we were working on the final chapter of the Northrend expansion, and that we\'d really be able to give players that ultimate sense of completion of the storyline. Arthas is a huge character in Warcraft lore, so we took a lot of pride in making this the best experience we possibly could.

Icecrown and the Frozen Throne are important parts of the world of Azeroth and have quite a bit of history, especially for longtime Warcraft players. How do you convey the significance of these places and the events that took place there in design?

Cory: History was a large factor in the design of Icecrown Citadel from the very beginning. When we first sat down to discuss the layout of the raid itself, we immediately went back to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne to think about how the spire from the ending cinematic could be translated into World of Warcraft. We decided to actually build Icecrown Citadel around the original spire to pull players even more into the storyline. This kind of thinking carried on throughout the entire design process.

Greg: We want Icecrown to be an epic experience from top to bottom, and that includes the loot you get. We\'re not going to shower players in items -- well, more than we already do -- but we do want to make sure the items are sufficiently powerful so that they\'re upgrades for all of our players.

Is there an existing model in World of Warcraft for Icecrown Citadel\'s itemization or style of play? What lessons that you\'d learned from earlier projects wound up being applied to Icecrown Citadel?

Greg: The nice thing about Icecrown Citadel from an itemization perspective is that we have lots of bosses. That\'s something of a relief coming from the Crusaders\' Coliseum, where we had only five bosses. For Icecrown, we can afford to have multiple options for a particular slot -- say a healing leather bracer or a melee trinket -- and even itemize some of the more unusual pieces. We have a pretty effective system for figuring out who is going to drop what to make sure that an individual boss will be interesting to a variety of players in terms of loot. Most of our lessons learned are in the realm of what differences there should be between 10- and 25-player itemization, the role of tradeskill recipes, and what kinds of items to place with badge vendors.

Cory: I think we learn lessons from every raid that we do. We didn\'t model Icecrown specifically after any of our previous raids, but you can definitely see influences. For example, we have a winged structure in Icecrown that players will remember from Naxxramas. Another example of an influence would be the teleporters from Ulduar. We know that players really loved that concept, so we brought it back in Icecrown.

Can you talk a little about how artists and designers on the team collaborated on the creation of Icecrown Citadel?

Cory: The design and art teams worked extremely closely throughout the entire development process. The biggest single influence on the look and the layout of the dungeon comes from our concept art, and there was no shortage of that for Icecrown Citadel. Once we locked down the layout, we were able to get to work on the final art extremely quickly thanks to the existing style we\'d developed for the Icecrown zone. We really wanted the players to feel connected to the environment, but we wanted to make sure it still had an amazing look. Oftentimes, these two things are hard to mix, but in this case, I think we\'ve been able to pull off an amazing dungeon from both the art and design standpoint.

What sorts of new loot and item abilities will we see in Icecrown?

Greg: There are three main sources of loot for Icecrown: the bosses themselves, the Emblem of Frost badge vendors, and a new faction, the Ashen Verdict, that will provide suitable rewards as well, particularly at the Exalted level.

As far as the items themselves go, we want them to feel epic. In addition to having favorable optimization, we also want to try a lot of experiments to make the items feel cool and unique. We are going to try to do a lot of weapon procs, for instance, which is something we haven\'t done much since the original World of Warcraft.

When you set out to itemize "sister" areas -- like the Icecrown Citadel dungeon and raid, or Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, and Ulduar -- do you take any steps to make loot from these places feel similar?

Greg: Absolutely. We approach that on two fronts: the art and the names. When we did the Halls of Stone and Lightning, we hadn\'t completed the Ulduar raid yet, so the items there didn\'t necessarily have Titan-influenced art models for us to use. We are doing the Icecrown dungeon at the same time as the raid, and it\'s a style we already know pretty well, from Naxxramas and even the Warcraft RTS games.

Naming is something we\'ve had a lot of fun with. There\'s a ton of lore to draw from for Icecrown loot and it has a very strong "kit." World of Warcraft players know to associate the Scourge with spiders, bats, and cultists along with more traditional forms of undead, like skeletons and liches.

Do you itemize Icecrown\'s "trash" -- the enemies between bosses -- differently from elites elsewhere in the world elsewhere?

Greg: We make sure there is epic trash loot -- specific items that only drop from trash. It helps keep players interested between bosses. However, we aren\'t doing Heroic trash, just Heroic bosses, so there won\'t be unique trash loot for Heroic versions of the 10- and 25-player versions of the raid. We try to construct the trash in such a way that it isn\'t trivial to go farm the first pull or whatever in hopes that an epic drops. We make our raids more accessible now in general, so I\'m not sure the motivation is there to try stunts like that the way it once was. We want players who have raided so far in Wrath of the Lich King to be able to actually fight the Lich King, so chances are a lot of raiders will have plenty of opportunities to gear up. Now, the Heroics are another story -- those will be as challenging as they were in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, and the items will likewise be even better.

What have you done to make the tier-10 sets feel like a meaningful advancement from tier 8 and tier 9? How do they visually represent Icecrown\'s lore and history?

Greg: Not only do we want them to be a meaningful advancement, but we want them to feel really awesome. This is Arthas loot you\'re talking about. We started by spending a lot of time on the concept art to make sure it tied into the type of creatures you\'ll encounter and the whole Icecrown art "kit" in general. For example, the rogue tier-10 set has a strong geist look to it, while the hunter set has strong Nerubian elements, and the mage set looks a lot like the Blood Princes. You can see the Icecrown look and feel in a lot of pieces, which itself drew strongly from the Lich King\'s original helmet. Look for lots of blue, ice, skulls, and spikes.

We have also spent a lot longer on the set bonuses than we usually do. It\'s important that they feel awesome for every class and spec. Going back to the Crusaders\' Coliseum, part of the challenge we made for ourselves was to create an instance that didn\'t require as much time or resources as Ulduar to develop, yet was still cool. We had set bonuses for the tier-9 gear, but they were often simple -- more crit on a common ability was a typical one. For tier 10, we\'re really going for set bonuses that change your game up a little. At the very least, you should want to change your rotation a little, though this is easier with some classes than others.

If you had something like a mission statement or a slogan for itemizing Icecrown, what would it be?

Greg: Epic. Cool things. Proc\'y stuff.

Seriously, that\'s our mission statement. One of the risks of itemization is making things feel too formulaic. We know that when we step outside the bounds too much, players can have a bad reaction to it, like, "Why does my gear for this tier suck?" It\'s easy to fall into the trap of making the new gear feel just like the last gear with 20 more stat points. That is the exact design approach we use for the PvP gear, and left unchecked, it would be easy to go the same direction with the PvE gear as well. We\'re trying not to do that. We think we owe it to Icecrown for the gear to be memorable, but that means we\'re going to take a few chances.

Can you talk about any of the new mechanics we\'ll see in the raid?

Cory: One of the coolest new things we\'re doing in Icecrown is the gunship air battle. Players will be able to board their respective faction\'s gunship and then take to the air for a battle to the top of the citadel. They\'ll be fighting on the decks as well as using vehicles\' cannon emplacements. If you\'re really daring, you can put on a goblin rocket pack and propel yourself back and forth between the two battling gunships. Needless to say, this will be a type of encounter that our players have never experienced before.

Icecrown Citadel\'s structure is extremely vertical -- what challenges does that present from a layout perspective?

Cory: Well, we knew from the start that the layout was going to be vertical, just due to the nature of the original spire. There are a number of things that we\'re doing to help players get around and not get lost. We\'re using elevators, teleporters, and even gunships to get players where they need to go in the dungeon. We are also going to have an in-game map with full support for all floors -- that should help too.

Icecrown is the last major raid and dungeon before the release of Cataclysm -- how has that affected the design?

Greg: The major challenge from an itemization perspective is that the items have to last basically until Cataclysm. That means we can\'t afford to give them away too quickly, but they also need to feel powerful enough that players are motivated to keep trying for them. On the other hand, the really fun thing about doing a final raid tier is how it unties your hands. We can afford to make these items great because nothing needs to follow on their heels. It\'s cool to be able to optimize the items very well, because it\'s okay if players don\'t want to replace these items for a long time.

Cory: We are really pushing as hard as we can to deliver the most epic experience possible. We know that our players have been waiting for this for a long time, and we plan to deliver. Everyone should expect to see this sort of storytelling and attention to detail in Cataclysm as well. I think we are always striving to pull the people who play our game into the storyline and really give them an explanation for why they\'re there. It won\'t be too long before they\'ll get a chance to bring the pain to Deathwing!

Thanks, both of you - we\'re looking forward to playing through Icecrown Citadel after patch 3.3 is released!

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Lady Deathwhisper Encounter: Normal and Heroic Details'); document.write('
posted on November 21, 2009 07:23:23 am'); document.write('

Encounter Details

Lady Deathwhisper
$\"\"$
Health: 13.4m (25) / 3.3m (10)	Mana: 14m (25) / ?? (10)
Phase 1
Lady Deathwhisper has a mana shield up which heals any damage she takes at the cost of mana. During the encounter you must deal with adds while slowly whittling away at the shield. Once you\'ve run her out of mana she loses her shield and phase 2 begins. Adds also stop spawning at this point. There are 3 gates on both the east and west sides of the Deathwhisper\'s room, and the adds spawn at them as follows: East: Cult Adherant, Cult Fanatic, Cult Adherant West: Cult Fanatic, Cult Adherant, Cult Fanatic At some point during the fight (unsure how this mechanic works at the moment) she will reanimate a dead adherant / fanatic. These reanimated versions largely have the same abilities as their live counterparts.
$\"\"$ Death and Decay 4500 Shadow damage inflicted every 1 sec to all targets in the affected area for 10 sec.
$\"\"$ Dominate Mind Charms the target for 20 sec, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. This could potentially be an AoE mind control based on the spell data.
$\"\"$ Mana Barrier Envelops the caster in a powerful barrier that continually replenishes any lost health, at the expense of the caster\'s mana. Barrier fades when mana reaches 0.
$\"\"$ Shadow Bolt Inflicts 9188 to 11812 Shadow damage to an enemy. 2 sec cast. She uses this during phase 1 only.
$\"\"$ Touch of Insignificance Reduces the target\'s threat generation by 20%. Stacks to 5.
Cult Adherant
$\"\"$ Curse of Torpor Afflicts an enemy target with a curse that increases ability cooldowns by 15 sec.
$\"\"$ Dark Empowerment Empowers the recipient\'s spells, causing them to deal area damage and making them uninterruptable.
$\"\"$ Dark Martyrdom The caster surrenders to dark energies, exploding to deal 12000 Shadowstorm damage to all enemies within 15 yards, and leaving only skeletal remains behind.
$\"\"$ Deathchill Blast Deals 11563 to 13437 Shadowfrost damage to all enemies within 10 yards of the target.
$\"\"$ Deathchill Bolt Deals 8788 to 10212 Shadowfrost damage to an enemy target.
$\"\"$ Frost Fever A disease dealing Frost damage every 3 sec and reducing the target\'s melee and ranged attack speed by 14% for 15 sec.
$\"\"$ Shroud of the Occult Envelops the caster in a powerful barrier that deflects all harmful magic, prevents cast interruption, and absorbs up to 50000 damage before breaking.
Cult Fanatic
$\"\"$ Dark Martyrdom The caster surrenders to dark energies, exploding to deal 12000 Shadowstorm damage to all enemies within 15 yards, and leaving only skeletal remains behind.
$\"\"$ Necrotic Strike Strikes an enemy with a cursed blade, dealing 70% of weapon damage to the target and inflicting a lasting malady that negates the next 14000 healing received.
$\"\"$ Shadow Cleave Inflicts 15913 to 17587 Shadow damage to enemies in front of the attacker.
$\"\"$ Vampiric Might Empowers the caster with dark might, increasing all damage dealt by 25% and heals the caster for 300% of his damage dealt. Lasts 15 seconds, can be dispelled.
Phase 2
During this phase Lady Deathwhisper will spawn Vengeful Shades in addition to using the abilities listed below.
$\"\"$ Death and Decay 4500 Shadow damage inflicted every 1 sec to all targets in the affected area for 10 sec.
$\"\"$ Dominate Mind Charms the target for 20 sec, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. This could potentially be an AoE mind control based on the spell data.
$\"\"$ Frostbolt Inflicts 44850 to 47150 Frost damage to an enemy and reduces its movement speed by 50% for 4 sec. 2 sec. cast.
$\"\"$ Frostbolt Volley Inflicts 10800 to 13200 Frost damage to nearby enemies, reducing their movement speed by 30% for 4 sec.
$\"\"$ Touch of Insignificance Reduces the target\'s threat generation by 20%. Stacks to 5.
Vengeful Shade
$\"\"$ Vengeful Blast Inflicts 19300 to 20700 Shadowfrost damage to an enemy.

Lady Deathwhisper
$\"\"$
Health: 26.8m (25) / 6.6m (10)	Mana: 14m (25) / ?? (10)
Phase 1
Lady Deathwhisper has a mana shield up which heals any damage she takes at the cost of mana. During the encounter you must deal with adds while slowly whittling away at the shield. Once you\'ve run her out of mana she loses her shield and phase 2 begins. Adds also stop spawning at this point. There are 3 gates on both the east and west sides of the Deathwhisper\'s room, and the adds spawn at them as follows: East: Cult Adherant, Cult Fanatic, Cult Adherant West: Cult Fanatic, Cult Adherant, Cult Fanatic At some point during the fight (unsure how this mechanic works at the moment) she will reanimate a dead adherant / fanatic. These reanimated versions largely have the same abilities as their live counterparts.
$\"\"$ Death and Decay 6000 Shadow damage inflicted every 1 sec to all targets in the affected area for 10 sec.
$\"\"$ Dominate Mind Charms the target for 20 sec, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. This could potentially be an AoE mind control based on the spell data.
$\"\"$ Mana Barrier Envelops the caster in a powerful barrier that continually replenishes any lost health, at the expense of the caster\'s mana. Barrier fades when mana reaches 0.
$\"\"$ Shadow Bolt Inflicts 11375 to 14625 Shadow damage to an enemy. 2 sec cast. She uses this during phase 1 only.
$\"\"$ Touch of Insignificance Reduces the target\'s threat generation by 20%. Stacks to 5.
Cult Adherant
$\"\"$ Curse of Torpor Afflicts an enemy target with a curse that increases ability cooldowns by 15 sec.
$\"\"$ Dark Empowerment Empowers the recipient\'s spells, causing them to deal area damage and making them uninterruptable.
$\"\"$ Dark Martyrdom The caster surrenders to dark energies, exploding to deal 12000 Shadowstorm damage to all enemies within 15 yards, and leaving only skeletal remains behind.
$\"\"$ Deathchill Blast Deals 14800 to 17200 Shadowfrost damage to all enemies within 10 yards of the target.
$\"\"$ Deathchill Bolt Deals 11563 to 13437 Shadowfrost damage to an enemy target.
$\"\"$ Frost Fever A disease dealing Frost damage every 3 sec and reducing the target\'s melee and ranged attack speed by 14% for 15 sec.
$\"\"$ Shroud of the Occult Envelops the caster in a powerful barrier that deflects all harmful magic, prevents cast interruption, and absorbs up to 50000 damage before breaking.
Cult Fanatic
$\"\"$ Dark Martyrdom The caster surrenders to dark energies, exploding to deal 25000 Shadowstorm damage to all enemies within 15 yards, and leaving only skeletal remains behind.
$\"\"$ Necrotic Strike Strikes an enemy with a cursed blade, dealing 70% of weapon damage to the target and inflicting a lasting malady that negates the next 20000 healing received.
$\"\"$ Shadow Cleave Inflicts 19000 to 21000 Shadow damage to enemies in front of the attacker.
$\"\"$ Vampiric Might Empowers the caster with dark might, increasing all damage dealt by 25% and heals the caster for 300% of his damage dealt. Lasts 15 seconds, can be dispelled.
Phase 2
During this phase Lady Deathwhisper will spawn Vengeful Shades in addition to using the abilities listed below.
$\"\"$ Death and Decay 6000 Shadow damage inflicted every 1 sec to all targets in the affected area for 10 sec.
$\"\"$ Dominate Mind Charms the target for 20 sec, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. This could potentially be an AoE mind control based on the spell data.
$\"\"$ Frostbolt Inflicts 58500 to 61500 Frost damage to an enemy and reduces its movement speed by 50% for 4 sec.
$\"\"$ Frostbolt Volley Inflicts 14400 to 17600 Frost damage to nearby enemies, reducing their movement speed by 30% for 4 sec.
$\"\"$ Touch of Insignificance Reduces the target\'s threat generation by 20%. Stacks to 5.
Vengeful Shade
$\"\"$ Vengeful Blast Inflicts 23160 to 24840 Shadowfrost damage to all enemies within 20 yards of the target.

Achievements

Below are the achievements Lady Deathwhisper is directly involved in.

Achievements
$\"\"$ Full House (10 player) Defeat Lady Deathwhisper with at least five different types of Cultists active at the time of her demise in 10-player mode.
$\"\"$ Full House (25 player) Defeat Lady Deathwhisper with at least five different types of Cultists active at the time of her demise in 25-player mode.
$\"\"$ Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10 player) Complete the 10-player raid achievements listed below.
$\"\"$ Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) Complete the 25-player raid achievements listed below.
$\"\"$ Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10 player) Defeat the first four bosses in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player Heroic mode.
$\"\"$ Heroic: Storming the Citadel (25 player) Defeat the first four bosses in Icecrown Citadel in 25-player Heroic mode.
$\"\"$ Storming the Citadel (10 player) Defeat the first four bosses in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player mode.
$\"\"$ Storming the Citadel (25 player) Defeat the first four bosses in Icecrown Citadel in 25-player mode.

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Patch 3.3 Background Download, Shadowmourne - No Hunters, Blue Posts'); document.write('
posted on November 21, 2009 07:23:23 am'); document.write('

Patch 3.3 Background Download

It looks like the background downloader for patch 3.3 is now running. This doesn\'t necessarily mean it\'s coming next week, but soon is a good way to look at it. A lot sooner than Blizzard\'s typical "soon" timeframe. This is the enUS version of the patch as you can see; players in Europe will see a download of around 482mb.

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Shadowmourne - No Hunters

I guess Blizzard changed their mind since BlizzCon, because there is no hunter version of Shadowmourne.

Quote from: Valnoth (Source)

The quest requires friendly Ashen Verdict rep to begin. It may also only be acquired by Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights.

Blue Posts

Icecrown frostwyrm mounts (Source)

There will be a Frostwyrms up for grabs for Icecrown raiders, achievable in a similar way to previous rewards such as the Ulduar proto-drake.

Chill of the Throne (Source)

The "Icewell Radiance" is designed to account for very high avoidance levels. It lets us lower the damage bosses do per hit because their hits will connect more often, keeping boss dps the same but lowering spike damage.

However, I also know what that message says to some people. It says that if I go into Icecrown and wipe on a boss all night that Blizzard lied to me about boss damage. We\'re just sort of bracing ourselves for the inevitable "I couldn\'t beat Marrowgar because he hits so hard. I thought bosses wouldn\'t hit hard."

Bosses hitting less hard does not mean bosses can now be facerolled. It just means they hit less hard. To be fair, most of the folks posting in this thread understand the difference. But it\'s not uncommon for us to see our quotes misused in other forums where we can\'t necessarily bop in to correct the misunderstanding.

Druid

Feral items in Cataclysm (Source)

We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won\'t appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it\'s not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don\'t worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change.

Mage

Fingers of Frost (Source)

The Fingers of Frost issue is really challenging to solve. It it procs on hit then the procs don\'t get eaten but you may have to interrupt a Frostbolt. If it procs on cast, the procs can get eaten. Those are really the only ways it can proc though. Mixing travel-time spells and instant spells can muddy things up. Things also get more complicated when you have silly amounts of haste, which through no fault of their own, many mages do.

Fingers of Frost seems to work fine so long as you have Frostbite, but due to some technical limitations, the two talents don\'t play well apart. A long-term solution might be to make Frostbite a prereq for FoF or just merge the two talents together.

Letting Fingers of Frost display its charges is a good idea. We might not be able to get that in for 3.3 but we\'ll put it on "the list."

Rogue

Weapon swap addon in 3.3 (Source)

We also killed the addon, but we didn\'t want to do it without also trying to fix the problem it was trying to fix.

Shaman

Elemental tier-9 nerf (Source)

We don\'t want players to stick with older tier sets when new pieces become available. (It\'s one thing if it\'s a really good trinket -- it\'s another if it\'s your entire set..)

We balance some things around absolute values (we\'re shooting for a target) and other things around relative values (how X looks compared to Y). A lot of shaman were saying they weren\'t going to upgrade to tier 10 despite the, frankly, gratuitous stats on the new gear. We concluded that was because the T9 set bonus was too good and the T10 set bonus was too weak. We suspected the T9 was too good for some time, but didn\'t want to nerf it while the T9 was all that was available. We did the same thing with a few other sets (or relics).

We try to pick interesting set bonuses, but that means that they will sometimes end up being over or under-budget once players figure out the best ways to optimize their play style around the bonuses. A little of that is okay -- it\'s interesting when a new set changes your spell rotation a little bit. But when an older set is so good that players feel like upgrading is a bad thing (ignoring the pain of having to get new enchants and gems or whatever) then we think we have a problem.

From a player point of view, I can understand why the attractive answer is always just to buff the new stuff. But continually buffing an outlier instead of bringing the outlier back into the pack is a good way to lead to power inflation on gear.

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Shadowmourne Discovered'); document.write('
posted on November 21, 2009 07:23:23 am'); document.write('

Shadowmourne Discovered

Shadowmourne has been discovered on the 3.3 PTR! Apparently certain devs (or maybe GMs) had it equipped during the encounter testing. Also don\'t forget to check out the Shadowmourne preview. Thanks to Might for tipping me off on this. Click through on the image for a shot of the model too.

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Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression'); document.write('
posted on November 21, 2009 07:23:23 am'); document.write('

Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression

This doesn\'t come as a huge surprise since Ghostcrawler let slip of it in our interview with him, but check out the planned progression for raid access in Icecrown Citadel below.

Quote from: Daelo (Source)

Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. I want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we\'re now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, I wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point I can\'t give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I\'ll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana\'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

There are other elements that gate access along the way. Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. Similarly, players must defeat the Lich King in a 25 player raid before they can attempt a Heroic 25 player encounter. So players must master every normal difficulty encounter in Icecrown Citadel before attempting Heroic difficulty.

The Lich King may not be attempted until Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana\'thel, and Sindragosa are defeated. Furthermore, the Heroic difficulty of The Lich King encounter may not be attempted in any week unless the three aforementioned encounters have been defeated in Heroic difficulty that week.

The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week to defeat the four most difficult encounters in Icecrown Citadel: Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana\'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. As these boss encounters are unlocked, the number of attempts available per week will increase. The initial number of attempts provided for defeating Professor Putricide is only five. When Blood-Queen Lana\'thel unlocks, the amount of total attempts remaining will increase to 10. Then when Sindragosa and the Lich King unlock, 15 total attempts will be available to defeat all four bosses. After a raid has exhausted their attempts for the week, the Ashen Verdict must withdraw their support and the four most difficult bosses all despawn and become unavailable for the week. The limited attempt system is a feature of both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).

In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available. This represents the Ashen Verdict growing more powerful and gaining a stronger foothold in Icecrown Citadel. To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell\'s effect if they so wish.

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