Hellfire Citadel - Level 59: Sunday, April 10, 2011

The enemies that you encounter most frequently immediately after you show up on the scene in Hellfire Peninsula can be divided into two groups, the first being the demons of the Burning Legion, and the others being a hostile, savage line of orcs that seem to be coming from Hellfire Citadel in the center of the zone.  After a few introductory quest chains, you receive the order to go into the Citadel to investigate.  Hellfire Citadel is divided into four wings, and houses two Level 58-62 five-mans, one Level 70 five-man, and finally, a Level 70 raid for larger groups.  The first of the entry-level dungeons is the Ramparts.  

This wing is the wall of the Citadel, and your group navigates its way across, and eventually into the higher tower, which is where the Blood Furnace, the second dungeon is located.  This dungeon was meant to get players' feet wet in the new expansion, and isn't much of a difficulty increase from the hardest Azeroth dungeons.  The first boss you encounter is the wall's watchman, who has replaced his hands with large swords.  He pulls with two healers, so he must either be completely obliterated before they can get a heal off, or controlled while your group takes down the healers, and then the boss.  

After a short hallway, the wall splits into a Y-shape, and your group can go one of two ways, each route just a short walk from another boss.  The first is a Burning Legion demon named Omor the Unscarred, who summons smaller demons who are pesky, but not too much trouble.  

The other boss is named Vazruden the Herald, and he begins the encounter atop his dragon.  When you pull him, he jumps down, and the dragon bombs you with fire from the air while you fight.  After the orc has taken enough damage, the dragon will land and fight fair, so people need to be on their toes so that he doesn't run free and destroy your group.  

The next portion of the Citadel, and a ramp-up in difficulty, is the Blood Furnace.  

This is the indoor portion of the Citadel, and involves you going in and finding the source of the fel orcs power.  You eventually discover that the orcs are holding a demonic pit lord hostage in their basement, and siphoning his blood to their forces to make them stronger.  

The first boss in here is the Mo'Arg named The Maker.  The Mo'Arg are a race of demon that are gifted in science and tinkering...so much so that they often rip out and off their pathetic biological parts, and upgrade them with machinery and weapons.  

The next boss is a gigantic floating eye named Broggok.  We don't know what it is, how it got here, or what its purpose is.  Just kill it and take your things.  

 Finally, you reach the center of the tower, and find a group of orcs performing some kind of restraining spell.  The strongest is named Keli'dan the Breaker, and killing his minions causes him to break his concentration and attack you.  

After you kill him, you are able to look through the grating of the floor, and see that the ritual that you interrupted was keeping the giant pit lord, Magtheridon, captive.  Way to go!

The Level 70 Hellfire Citadel 5-man dungeon is called Shattered Halls.  It is the home of the leader of the Fel Orcs in Outland, another sword-fisted fighter named Kargath Bladefist.  Other nasty surprises in here include stealthed orc rogues that can kill your more fragile party members in one shot, and a trip through the sewer system. 

The Level 70 raid in Hellfire Citadel calls for you to enter the base of the fortress and put an end to Magtheridon, now that someone was careless enough to release him.  This is a one-boss raid, with only a small amount of trash leading up to it, similar to the way Onyxia was handled in the game's original vanilla release.  

Those who are successful have the honor of impaling his head on a spike at their home base in Hellfire Peninsula.  

Outland & Hellfire Peninsula: Level 58: Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion, was released in January of 2007, when the game was just over two years old, and made some significant changes that players had to adjust to.  The Level Cap was raised from 60 to 70, and a new race was added for each faction, with the Horde receiving blood elves and the Alliance receiving draenei.  With this new arrivals, Horde players were able to create paladins, and Alliance players were granted shaman for the first time.  In addition, an entire new continent was added for players to explore; the shattered planet of Draenor, the original home of the orcs and former refuge for the draenei, before their doomed flight to Kalimdor.  

The main antagonist of The Burning Crusade is Illidan Stormrage, a disgraced Night Elf, who through a series of events involving his obsession with turning back a demon army, even going so far as to become a demon himself.  His backstory is very complex, but at the time of the Burning Crusade, he has claimed the Black Temple on Outland as his stronghold, and waits for adventurers to challenge him.  His most formidable allies are Kael-Thas Sunstrider, the traitor Blood Elf ruler, who has commandeered the portion of the Draenei's vessel that remained in Outland, and is draining the magic from the core of the planet, and Lady Vashj, a naga queen who is draining the scarce water sources of Outland in order to control supply.  They are the bosses of the Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern raids, respectively.  

So now that we've established the previous reasons for heroes to travel to Outland, it's time to bring up a fundamental flaw with the story flow of World of Warcraft's first two expansions.    The major antagonists in the Burning Crusade, and later, Wrath of the Lich King, have been destroyed.  Even the newest loading screen for Outland reflects this change, as it no longer shows Illidan and Kael'Thas, who players have already defeated, but the new heroes of Outland that helped players in the past.  These changes have been made to the loading screens, but when you go into the new areas, its as if nothing has happened, and your character is the first to experience everything.  However, every character has to level, and Outland, and later Northrend, are the only places to level, so off we go.  

Your first destination of the expansion is the aesthetically harsh Hellfire Peninsula.  The color scheme from the Blasted Lands carries over into Outland, as the desolation wrought by the unstable planet is evident from the moment you enter.  

You immediately encounter the Burning Legion (big bad demon group, cause of everything bad in The Burning Crusade) forces that have begun invading Azeroth through the portal, and are thrust into the defensive fight.  Alliance players make for Honor Hold

while Horde players report to Thrallmar.  

Every player, regardless of faction, begins The Burning Crusade here in Hellfire Peninsula, so when the expansion first launched, this zone was a bloodbath of player vs. player combat, so crowded and almost unplayable that when Blizzard designed The Wrath of the Lich King they implemented two starter zones, so that the player base would be divided.  In addition, they had to find a way to make the new content playable for both players who had only recently hit Level 60, and those who had been 60 since the game's release and had obtained powerful gear from dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.  As a result, the game goes through a gear 'reset', so that in your first couple of hours in Outland, everyone receives extremely powerful upgrades to armor and weapons, so that they can all progress on pretty much the same path.  

Aside from getting recent arrivals acclimated to Outland, a majority of the quests in Hellfire Peninsula are designed around streamlining players into the first two dungeons available, the Ramparts and Blood Furnace of the Hellfire Citadel, which is located in the middle of the zone. 

Here, the leader of the orcs on Outland, Kargath Bladefist, in an effort to hold off the recent arrivals from Azeroth, has made a desperate attempt to preserve himself and his people by infusing them with the blood of a powerful demonic pit lord.  Naturally, it's your job to go in and put a stop to it.  


Also, and not because they're a huge part of the game, being involved in only one quest to my knowledge, Hellfire Peninsula has these giant mechanical things called Fel Reavers that patrol all over the place, and will instantly kill anybody they are able to sneak up on.  This was quite a surprise the first time it happened to you!