Utgarde Keep Preview

Gameriot published a short footage of Utgarde Keep which is the first dungeon appearing in Wrath of the Lich King. It will be found in the starting zone, Howling Fjord, and intended to be completed by 5 level 70's. This footage is probably featuring the first of four Wings (only that wing was available for play at BlizzCon 07).



Prince Keleseth is the first boss of Utgarde Keep. He is a Vrykul warlock in Tier 6 armor.

From Relentless of Kilrogg

"He spawns 5 undead skeletons, with about 6-8k HP. these can be stunned/feared/shackled or tanked. Once they have died, they all respawn and need to be dealt with again.
Keleseth also will Ice Tomb one party member. The tombs last for 30 seconds and cause a DoT to the Tombed target. The DoT ticks for roughly 300-500 Frost Damage. These tombs can be targeted and killed much like the Demon Chains in the Terestian Illhoof encounter. The tombs have about 6-8k HP. A pally divine shield, stone form and ice block can break the tombs."


Curse interviews Tigole

During their BlizzCon trip, Curse managed to get an interview with Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan (Lead Game Designer), he answered a few questions about "his experience going from a player to a designer, what exactly Blizzard would like to receive in terms of feedback, Naxxramas returning in Wrath of the Lich King, what Blizzard learned from Karazhan and 10-person raids, Arena teams abusing well-equipped players to power-level poorly equipped players to extremely high ratings, whether Burning Crusade quest itemization will remain in WotLK, and some new information regarding the Zul'Aman patch".

- About Zul'Aman patch, they will add heroic badges to Zul'Aman and Karazhan bosses, also tons of new items will be added to the heroic badge vendor (according to Tigole, some of them should fill the itemization gap for Moonkin Druids and Retribution Paladins).

Interview on Curse

Teza
WoR reporter

First of all: thanks Teza for this nice video.

Second: as i can see from this video they all are geared with lvl 70 blues and epix so maybe the lvl 80 items wont be so much better as lvl 70 ones was compared with 60's. As all know lvl 60's epix (naxx and AQ ones) can be used untill 68-69 sometimes untill 70, but generally 70's blues are better, and in this video they use lvl 70's blues. That make me think this.

Its a level 70 instance, why wouldn't they be wearing level 70 items.

Also when I click the link it loads a blank page for me, would this be something to do with my browser restrictions?

ok filling the itemization gaps eh? how about to resto shaman items

LoL i got owned i thougt it was a lvl 80 dungeon

Well, I'm happy with his answer about the power of the green and group quest items. From the original transcripts from Blizzcon, it seemed that they were perfectly happy with everything they did on that front. This interview gives me some hope that even those these items will be progressive, they are likely to be more restrictive (i.e. not having greens that have crit AND spell damage, or items with agiliy, strength AND attack power).

haha i said like 2 months ago that raid bosses should drop heroic badges. i think its a good idea especially for the starting raids where everyone still has mediocre gear and itll make upgrading and progressing all that much faster. depending on the new heroic gear it could make farming a stupid boss for one drop unnessacary

Nice, glad to hear about the Badge changes

My friends and I managed to clear the instance at blizzcon, we skipped the concert and managed to get the computers long enough to clear it. First boss is pretty much as described earlier to add he had a disease that lowered stam by 200 If I remember correctly.

Second boss was clearly unfinished. It was 2 mobs that were actually labeled as boss mobs and seemed to be a joke one doing a random charge and the other spamming shadow bolts that hit for about 2.5-3k

The Third and final boss was somewhat challenging, starts out as a tank and spank with. Once you take him down to zero, a banshee spawns and resurrects him, you then continue to fight him. he now has a shadow aura (that seemed to be LoS-able), a counter spell attack that would show dust/smoke coming from his feet (he might of had this in p1 I dont remember though, he would toss his weapon in a random location and it spun like the Teron trash in BT, and a slam that would nearly 1 shot our bear tank that seemed like like it was avoidable by the tank running out of melee range while he was casting it.

They all dropped items that were from TCG... monkey pet, imp in a ball last guy dropped the spectral tiger mount, lol.

All and all seemed like a ok instance, with some challenge with the first and last guy and we had our own copy over characters that had mostly tier 6 equivalent gear.

I cant remember the names of the last guy, I will try to dig around for pictures my friends might of took.