WOW to support cross-server dungeons

Amid the deluge of information on World of Warcraft: Cataclysm released at BlizzCon this weekend were a few morsels on the content and changes coming in future patches. The most interesting were at Saturday's dungeons and raids panel: a preview of Icecrown Citadel, and news that Blizzard will introduce cross-server dungeon grouping.

The latter feature will be implemented for five-man dungeons at first, although the technology does support larger raids too. It will work much like the current queue system for player-versus-player Battlegrounds, and draw players from the same pools of servers in their region, known as Battlegroups.

The feature will make it much easier to find "pick-up groups" to run dungeons with, and reward the leader of a successful group. It will be implemented before Cataclysm, tentatively in patch 3.3.

Also coming in 3.3 is Icecrown Citadel, the climactic encounter of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, containing the fight with Arthas, the Lich King.

Icecrown Citadel will not only contain a 12-boss raid for 10 or 25 players, but multiple five-man dungeons. The latter will be have 8 bosses between them and be unlocked in series by an epic quest line featuring many key characters from the game.

Meanwhile, the raid will ascend through four floors of action, at one point boarding its faction's airship and engaging in a mid-air battle with the opposing faction's craft between floors. The third floor will have multiple wings, while the fourth will consist of Arthas' throne room, which will break apart during the fight.

Don't expect to see any of this until next year: the next major update will be the fifth-anniversary celebrations, with the revamped Onyxia, in November.

For more on World of Warcraft, look out for our comprehensive Cataclysm preview soon.