Written by Sil
Monday, 15 October 2007

The Black Temple captures the flavour of the zone perfectly in its graphics and sound. Not since Naxx has an instance felt this good; the dripping walls, the dragons circling the vast courtyards, from the Hydross wannabes to the Ashtongue - all combine to enrich the gaming experience.

We first entered BT a few weeks ago following our Kael’thas kill and tested ourselves against the initial boss. After our encounters with the annoying green dweebs (joining the ‘big flappy things’ in TK as appropriately named trash) we took a right turn because - well the green blob there looked easier than the lightning-stick-wielding-hydra-baiters. This route took us straight to Naj’entus or ‘hermit crab thing’ as he is aptly described. There was mercifully little trash although some of it could be described as unfriendly.

Naj’entus, aside from looking like a gimp, is a fairly simple one-trick pony. That is not to say that it is not a good trick. A very healer intensive fight - our first visit saw us try him with 5 healers. Erm no. Our cunning plan of doing our first Kael’thas with 6 healers was not looking like a good thing as far as this boss was concerned. Returning the next week we took a more sensible number of healers and poked him repeatedly until he stopped moving. The fight itself is enjoyable - but from a healer view not one you wan to wipe on repeatedly. Now if just we could convince him to stop dropping leather healing items…

The second boss, Supremus, is clearly just designed as bonus free loot for killing Kael. His trash is numerous and dies fast. Losing only our token gibbed-by-trash-every-pull mage Darkmage (or Flatmage as he is widely known) we cleared through and faced the giant rock. Rumours about bosses spread like widlfire and so we are never sure exactly what to expect before a pull, we were certainly not expecting this. With an enrage timer so ludicrous its only purpose seems to be to prevent hunters soloing him and abilities so simple and easy to predict/control that any guild killing Void Reaver will instantly be able to grasp, the fight is little more than a waste of 10 minutes of your life (epix aside). The only real enjoyment comes from spotting the afk/tabbed out people who die to volcanoes - as being afk/tabbed out is about the only way to get killed by them. We are all for easy bosses but some level of difficulty should be present. On the other hand this boss has enabled our paladins to replace their ******* pink Maggy shields.

After Supremus the trash to Akama faced us - causing more problems than Supremus himself. Entertianing and mildly challenging the trash is pretty much as it should be - suited to the instance and easily killed if people concentrate and play acceptably. Shade of Akama is a two part fight, the first part a mini-version of Nefarian’s initial phase and the second a aggro-free epeen-boosting dps zerg. This is quite refeshing and solves any issues about people having to ‘hold back on dps’. It is vastly entertinaing to watch people quaff short duration pots to try and leap up the charts and even prot warriors taking a rare opportunity to pop recklessness and execute their way up to erm 18th.

The fight is an enjoyable one, fast and furious, and after liberating the happy chappy the Ashtongue are nice to you and gives you coookies and things - and more importantly stop trying to kill you. Which is nice.

Some more trash awaited us, which was duly cleared and we popped upstairs to take a look at Teron Gorefiend, our next target in BT. He looks like a nice fellow.

Following our foray into Black Temple we switched our attention back to Hyjal and the Kazzak-wannabe Kaz’Rogal. See how out attmepts there progressed in our next update and you might even get to put this quote in context!

After the cock block that is Kael and the morale sapping effect he has on people we were pleased to see that our tanks were getting back into debating who gets to tank in an adult fashion.

Recruitment remains open in limited classes.