World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade beta -- Hellfire Citadel (PC)
We take a run through the first few dungeons of the upcoming WoW expansion, and come out a bit richer.
By Sal 'Sluggo' Accardo | Oct. 19, 2006

With quite a few World of Warcraft addicts here at GameSpy HQ, we've been having some fun since the Burning Crusade beta test kicked off last week. After taking my mage out and clearing most of the initial zone, Hellfire Peninsula (read our report here), it was time to get serious and venture into the first dungeon of the expansion: Hellfire Citadel. Located right in the middle of the zone, HFC is split into a few different wings, two of which players will able to access right off the bat: Hellfire Ramparts and the Blood Furnace. As part of our ongoing beta reports, here's what we found.

LFG!

The first step in hitting Hellfire Citadel was getting a group together, which gave us a chance to try the still-in-testing "Looking For Group" (LFG) system. The interface allows you to add your name to a list of players looking for a particular dungeon, quest or instance; the system currently populates the dungeon list based on your level, and the quest list based on what quests you currently have in your log. There's also a "Looking for More" (LFM) panel, where you can browse players and groups trying to round up more people. Here's a look:

The "Looking for More panel is probably the most useful aspect of the system so far, since you can browse the list and send tells in advance to make sure the group will be a good fit. In its current form, the system is still a bit lacking, and we're expecting more tweaks in the coming weeks, but it's already far better than the global LFG chat spam that plagues WoW at the moment, and a good step towards the bulletin-board-like LFG system WoW players have been in need of forever.

The Citadel

Sitting right in the middle of Hellfire Peninsula, Hellfire Citadel contains four separate wings. The first two, the Ramparts and the Blood Furnace, are immediately accessible 5-man dungeons, while a third, The Shattered Halls, requires a key from the final boss in the Blood Furnace and has level 70 elite mobs running around inside it ... so it'll be some time before we test that out. Entrances to all three instances can be found along the pathways of the upper wall, while a fourth dungeon, a level 70 25-player raid instance, has an entrance at the base of the rear wall.

The Ramparts

For our first run, we started with the Ramparts, which we already had a quest for: "Weaken the Ramparts." At this point in beta testing, it's both a fairly short and fairly easy wing, populated with level 60-62 mobs grouped 3-5 at a time. With any bit of crowd control, like a mage sheeping, it's almost trivial, save for a few big pulls.

The first half of the dungeon is just a long, narrow outdoor run with the first boss of the instance, Watchkeeper Gargolmar, patrolling the end with two guards. The elites in this area currently have some abilities that will annoy melee classes, like disarm, demoralizing shout and mortal strike, but are otherwise easy enough to drop. Gargolmar is a straightforward boss, but makes some entertaining sound effects when he dies, which players seem to be getting a kick out of (and we're hoping Blizzard does more of in the expansion).
The second half of the Ramparts heads upstairs, where there's a cluster of groups to clear before the final few bosses. To the side is Omor the Unscarred, a giant level 62 demon with a few fun abilities that we won't spoil here, aside from summoning felhounds to fight at his side on a regular basis.

The final event of the Ramparts actually includes two bosses: Vazruden, who flies around the final area on his dragon mount, Nazan. When the final guards in this area are killed, Vazruden drops down to attack, while Nazan bombs the area until landing himself. If nothing else, it's an entertaining fight for the first dungeon in the expansion. Here's a look at the final bosses:

If the first dungeon was any indication, Blizzard clearly intends to make the quality of loot in the expansion vastly better than what's available in the "old world." Case in point: here are several of the drops we got off the various Ramparts bosses:

By comparison, most of this gear is far beyond anything players can get in 5-man instances in WoW today; in fact, much of it rivals loot you'd expect out of "tier 2" dungeons like Blackwing Lair. For players who have never been able to raid, even this first 5-man dungeon looks like it'll offer a simple, speedy way to gear up.

The Blood Furnace

After killing Vazruden at the end of the Ramparts, he drops "An Onimous Letter," which kicks off one of two quests we had for the Blood Furnace. It seemed this indoor wing was only slightly harder than the Ramparts; there were still plenty of humanoids that could be sheeped, making most the pulls relatively simple with a mage on hand.

One of the most interesting events of the Blood Furnace is the Broggok fight, the second of the wing's three bosses. Here, orcs are released in several waves, leading up to Broggok being released and attacking.

The final event of the instance is a fight against Keli'dan the Breaker, who has a small group of minions who fight for him. Reaching this area completes a quest to explore the entire Blood Furnace, and Keli'dan also drops the key to the Shattered Halls, although it'll be quite a few levels before we plan on heading in there.

And while we won't get too hung up on loot, here are two of the drops we saw in the Blood Furnace (the two quests for the instance also offer some Zul'Gurub-level quest rewards).

Perhaps the best thing about both these new wings were the length -- it's possible to run through either of them in 45 minutes, and since Hellfire Citadel is located so close to the Alliance and Horde cities, it shouldn't be too hard to round up groups and start running without much delay. With Hellfire Citadel out of the way, we'll be back soon with a report on the second major zone of the expansion: Zangarmarsh.