Crusaders' Coliseum Nears Completion

Blizzard details the next raid in store for WoW players.

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By John Gillooly on 18 June, 2009

During last year’s BlizzCon, mention was made that Wrath of the Lich King would include three new raid instances, released over three ‘major content patches.’ Blizzard confirmed that the 3.1 patch would include the Ulduar raid and that 3.3 would cap off the storyline with a raid on the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel. But most excitingly, it said that the 3.2 patch would include a mystery raid instance.

Speculation on just what this was ran rife, with the underground kingdom of Azjol Nerub and the long neglected area of Grim Batol as the hot tips. However, it is now clear that by ‘surprise raid’ Blizzard meant something completely out of left field, thanks to the announcement of the Crusader’s Coliseum raid for the 3.2 patch.

In the next major content patch, the construction of the Crusaders’ Coliseum on the Argent Tournament grounds will be complete, and it will hold new challenges for players. We’d like to share some details on the new dungeon, which represents the next tier of content for the game, but keep in mind that this is still in development and subject to change. The Crusaders’ Coliseum will include:

New epic 10- and 25-player raid dungeon with five encounters, with each encounter being unlocked one week at a time

A more intuitive structure for harder encounters. This raid dungeon will have four different versions: 10-player, 25-player, 10-player Heroic, and 25-player Heroic, with each one using a separate lockout.

Introduction of the Crusaders’ Tribute! Each of the Heroic mode instances has a new tribute system that will limit players on the number of attempts they get in the Coliseum each week to present a greater challenge for the most battle-hardened heroes. Additional rewards can be earned depending on the number of attempts left in the tribute run each week when the final boss is defeated.

New 5-player dungeon with three encounters that will include Champion’s Seals as each one is defeated

New tier of armor and weapons that are modeled with Alliance- or Horde-specific themes

It certainly isn’t the epic lore-based dungeon that players hoped for. The premise behind the instance is that, in the lead-up to the inevitable assault on Icecrown Citadel, the paladins of the Argent Crusade have been holding a grand tournament to find champions worthy of the fight. We suspect that the only major lore connection this raid will have is that the ‘tribute’ hard mode will be somehow involved in obtaining the legendary Ashbringer sword, wielded by head paladin Tirion Fordring.

Unfortunately, so far, progressing through the tournament has involved committing to a long and boring series of ‘jousting’ quests each day. The 3.2 patch should at least make the reputation and attainment of the special ‘Champion’s Seals’ used as currency for tournament items a lot easier. Apart from that, five boss encounters seems underwhelming after 15 bosses in Naxxramas and 14 in Ulduar. Blizzard seems to be making up for this by adding separate normal and heroic versions of the instance for both 10- and 25-man versions (previously, hard modes were activated by doing specific things in the lead up to an encounter). Add to that a five-player dungeon that only includes three bosses, and you have a relatively poor content patch for those who enjoy the group PvE side of the game.

What really disappoints me is this five-player dungeon. While Blizzard managed to fix a lot of the mistakes of the past with Wrath of the Lich King, they managed to screw up the system of heroic dungeons that they successfully implemented in The Burning Crusade expansion. Over the lifespan of Burning Crusade, Blizzard continued to release new items that could be purchased with the special ‘badges’ dropped by heroic bosses. This encouraged even those with good raid gear to keep running heroics. However, in Lich King, the heroic dungeon badges soon become useless to the average player. This leads to a resurgence of the inability to find tanks or healers for groups, a problem that the introduction of the death knight class was supposed to solve.

Rather than somehow fix the lack of demand for heroics, Blizzard has instead introduced a different currency to a single dungeon in the form of the Champion’s Seals. This means that, unless there are other unannounced changes in the works (beyond announcing that epic gems will be purchasable with badges), all that this new five-man will do is focus demand, further reducing the number of people around wanting to run the existing heroic instances.

There has been a lot of information released this week about the 3.2 patch, including profession tweaks, much needed shaman and paladin buffs, and a new 40 vs 40 PvP Battleground. This usually indicates that it will be making a debut on the public test server soon – although, Blizzard has already stated that it will be on the server for an extended period of time before release.

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