World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Preview
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At the base of Howling Fjord is the first Lich King five-man dungeon, Utgarde Keep. You enter it through a giant stone skull, bashing your way through the Vrykule villages that flank the entrance. Inside, the Vrykule are offering up their hardiest warriors to the Lich King. You'll fight them through three separate instances: a level 70 five-man, Utgarde Catacombs (expect zombies), a level 80 five-man (Utgarde Pinnacle) and a 10- and 25-man raid dungeon.
There's just enough time to admire the fire-breathing multi-storey skull at the entrance of Utgarde before leaving. Above, two beta testers are dropping giant cloth packages from their twin-seater helicopters, dangling them like wrecking balls. Cool.
But there's no time to stare. Grizzly Hills awaits. As with all of Wrath of the Lich King's zones, there is a central fiction to be uncovered. In Grizzly Hills, the story is this: the Furbolgs, keen gardeners, were growing a world tree, which would become their capital city, Grizzlemaw. But they planted it in a bad place. Underneath all of Northrend, and currently bursting through cracks in the ground, is an ancient society of angry insects, the Nerubians. Bad magic, and bad foundations. The World Tree collapsed and its rotting corpse, tall as any mountain, dominates the zone. Read its rings to see how long it lasted.
The real problem, though, for players and the Grizzly Furbolgs, is the trolls. To the North of the fallen World Tree is a troll temple, Drak'Tharon Keep. It's a two-wing dungeon meant for players between level 72 and 76, a strange place filled with dinosaurs and lizards, and teeming with undead. Its final boss fight takes place on raised terraces, where the wizard will bounce players from platform to platform. You're sent in to discover just why the Trolls are leaving their home zone of Zul'Drak. That's the next stop on the tour.
