Wrath of the Lich King PvE Overview

A few days ago I addressed World PvP and have since received interest in the changes coming to PvE in Wrath of the Lich King. At the World Wide Invitation, this past weekend, Blizzard held a Dungeons and Raids panel and released a lot of good information. Along with that, I dug around the old blue posts to help illustrate the changes coming to PvE in Wrath of the Lich King.

Progression from TBC to WoLK
One big concern with players is the lack of permanent progression. When The Burning Crusade was released practically every piece of gear was ridiculously and immediately outdated. A level 60 blue set which required weeks of running 5-man instances was replaced by one of the first quests in Hellfire Peninsula. Even my High Warlord Blades, which took an insane amount of time to earn, were replaced at level 65. Blizzard reassured us that '...we don't currently plan to rework an entire statistic like that [stamina], so instead the items will just get more powerful at a more consistent rate.' But as far as permanent progression is concerned, don't look for any of it in a World of Warcraft expansion, Blizzard has made it very clear they want to let casual participate in the high-end content quicker.

PvE and PvP
Throughout The Burning Crusade, there has been a void of PvP driven players interested in doing PvE. Simply put, PvE didn't provide many rewards for PvP players, especially compared to the original World of Warcraft. A PvP minded player is almost always better off watching TV while hitting the space bar to earn their honor gear than coordinating with a group of players to achieve a shared objective. At the World Wide Invitational, Blizzard announced they will increase interest in PvE dungeons by adding PvP items both to dungeons and reputation rewards. However, Blizzard has not mentioned anything regarding how quickly and significant new season rewards will be available. So after a few arena seasons have taken their course on Wrath, the PvP items found in dungeons will once again become antiques.

Heroics and Attunements
In The Burning Crusade each character had to obtain revered with a specific faction to earn access to specific dungeons (until patch 2.3). In Wrath, there will be no required attunements for heroic dungeons. Blizzard has also promised that remaining attunements will be 'very simple to understand.'

Old Content
A lot of old content has a place in our hearts, especially mine. Straholme was a very fun instance, and it was depleted to an instance used exclusively for power leveling alts (and that we did much of). Blizzard will be bringing back Stratholme, to some degree. Caverns of Time: Stratholme will be a level 80 instance. It will be scripted just like Durnhole Keep (Old Hillsbrad) but promises to provide non-linear progression and time encounters. In the new Stratholme you will fight with Prince Arthas, before he falls to the Lich King.

The only other content being revived is Naxxramas, which very few people actually experienced in the first place (link). Naxxramas will be removed from the Eastern Plauguelands and added to Northrend. It will be an entry level dungeon but contain a large degree of difficulty, requiring more hardcore groups to make a full clear.

Finally, and probably most importantly, all raid dungeons will have both a 10 and 25-person format. The 10-person format will result in less rewards than the 25-man. Blizzard has acknowledged the significant impact this will have on raid achievement (link) and suggested that, perhaps, Arthas will first need to be killed in the 25-person format before being attempted by a 10-person group.

It's going to get pretty difficult to recognize World of Warcraft in Wrath, with bombers and fighter planes wizzing over Northrend. What do you think about Blizzard's expansions?