After the release of patch 4.1 for World of Warcraft Blizzard is opening the flood gates for patch 4.2. We expect the patch to hit the public testservers relatively soon and had a chance to talk with Blizzard's Cory Stockton -- Lead Content Designer for World of Warcraft. He shared new information with us about what's in store for patch 4.2. You want to know what the new raid Firelands looks like, or what to expect from the epic quest line that's built around Thrall? You want more details on the upcoming legendary caster weapon, more info on the new daily quests with dynamic progression or the long awaited encounter journal? We covered it all.

getbuffed: Could you give us an overview of what you have in store for us with the Firelands raid?

Stockton: It is our new tier of raid content for patch 4.2. There are seven bosses in the dungeon and there will be a full new tier of itemization to go with it. So there will be all new class sets for every class in the game with all custom unique art. The raid culminates in a fight against Ragnaros. That fight specifically is pretty hardcore. The heroic version of the fight is actually completely different from the normal version. We really wanted to go all out on that and make sure Ragnaros had a really awesome cool unique feel. All the bosses in the entire instance will also have new models. So it feels like a really fresh new place for players. We really wanted to make sure we didn't reuse anything and that it felt new and different.

As far as the look and feel goes -- it takes place in the Firelands. Anyone who played through Hyjal will probably have a good idea of the Firelands from the quest line there. But essentially it is built completely outdoors. So it will feel similar to the Obsidian Sanctum where we fought Sartharion. But it is about ten times more intense than that. If you look at our raids, we haven't really had a lot of exterior raid experiences like this. The closest thing for something that's completely outdoors would probably be Mount Hyjal. So this will feel very fresh and different since you're not inside a building for the entire time.

getbuffed: What size should we expect from the actual raid zone? How does it compare to past and current raid instances? Especially since the tier 11 instances are rather small and there's not a lot of running time between bosses. Firelands on the other hand seems to be pretty huge.

Stockton: It is pretty big, but we are going to allow players to use mounts. So you will be able to ride in between all the different areas. As far as size goes -- let's see what a good reference point would be. It is probably four times the size of the Obsidian Sanctum, Alterac Valley might be a good comparison as well. It is built in a way that when you come in you can see everything. We tried to build unique areas. So off to the left there's a spider type boss, a lava spider. And you can see the web right when you come in. Off to the right there's a giant boss that's basically made out of volcano himself. So when you come in you can kind of see the areas and they feel unique.

What's also really cool is that the first four bosses are non linear. So you choose what you want to do first and in which order you want to kill the bosses -- before you get to the final three that are in a linear fashion, with Ragnaros at the end.

getbuffed: Is Ragnaros really the final boss of the instance or are we going to see another heroic only boss similar to Sinestra in the Bastion of Twilight?

Stockton: Ragnaros is the final boss. Instead of doing a separate boss like Sinestra we decided to do a really epic heroic mode specifically on Ragnaros.

getbuffed: Community Manager Zarhym mentioned in a bluepost that Ragnaros got his legs specifically for the heroic mode.

Stockton: His heroic mode individually will feel very unique and different as far as mechanics go. It won't just be something like an upgrade of numbers or him getting one new ability. The entire mechanics of that fight will feel different on heroic. We wanted to make sure that it felt like something special for people who want that challenge. Specifically because Ragnaros is such a classic boss that holds a lot of precedence for the game -- so we wanted to make sure his heroic mode is pretty hardcore.

getbuffed: In the current raiding tier we've seen a lot of interrupt based mechanics and several bosses with unique mechanics based on special energy bars. Are there any details you can tease for the Firelands raid? Or do you keep them a secret?

Stockton: Well, we are going to have Firelands on the PTR, so we are definitely going to have people play and are looking for bugs and feedback. But those mechanics for which we are using new energy bars are definitely being employed here. We continue to get new art and more support for that specific feature where a boss can have a unique energy bar. We found that explaining the mechanics to the players is much simpler when they can see the bar itself rather than having a stacking buff where you have to look at the number on the buff.

The encounter guys have really just gone crazy in Firelands specifically. I think you are going to find that the fights are super unique, they will be some of the most tuned fights that we've had. Looking at where we are in the expansion we've had a good chance to see what the dps values are across the board and really tune the fights in a way that we think is going to feel as best as they can feel when they come out.

getbuffed: We already know that the theme for the next tier set for Warlocks will be based on fire spiders. Can you give us any details on what kind of visual styles some of the other classes will be wearing? Will it all be fiery or will there also be other themes?

Stockton: We are definitely trying to do a fire type theme for all the sets so that they feel like they specifically come from the Firelands. Something that is really awesome and unique about the sets is that the set bonuses are actually all themed around Firelands as well. It is something unique that we have never done before where we are trying to make sure that the set bonuses feel like they match the area. So the set bonuses might have names and mechanics that are similar to some of the things that you might see the bosses doing.

getbuffed: If the bonuses are so specifically designed around the Firelands content -- are some of them perhaps even tailored to make certain aspects of the fights easier?

Stockton: Well, hopefully they make everything easier when you get them (laughs). But yes, the idea is that we can theme the mechanics so that they fit. It makes sense from a lore perspective and we want to make sure everything fits together. It wouldn't make sense to have an icy type bonus on a Mage set -- so why not use a fire related bonus, something that comes from Firelands? We basically took that as a design challenge to come up with all those aspects for these sets.

From an art perspective these sets look awesome. There has been a ton of concept art, we have been working on them for a while. They have really awesome unique looks. Although they will invoke nostalgia of the original Molten Core raid they will also fit well to the Firelands. Players will be really excited when they get a chance to see them.

getbuffed: Do you have an example for one of the sets?

Stockton: An example would be one of our plate sets where the whole theme of the set is the Molten Giant -- the Molten Giants that were originally in Molten Core. We have Molten Giants in Firelands as well, but they've got an all new model and a new texture skin on them so they feel new and different. But the whole armor kit was kind of based on them, so the shoulder pads look like the faces on the Molten Giants. That's just one example of something that came out really cool, that looks very unique specifically to this raid.

getbuffed: So, for all the people who've been through the original Molten Core we have to ask -- how much fire resistance will we need for Firelands?

Stockton: I don't think we're planning to (laughs) ... From what I know we are not really planning to have fire resistance play a huge part in the raid. You are not going to have to build up a 300 or whatever fire resistance to be able to do the fights. We have kind of gone away from that historically just because it tends to gate the fights too much. So when things come out and players want to get right into the new content and we require something like 450 fire resistance then they wouldn't be able to do that content right away. Instead they would have to do a bunch of other content to get that armor first. So we tended to stray away from that in general.

getbuffed: So the bosses themselves don't pack too much fire resistance either and the poor fire Mages don't need to worry?

Stockton: Definitely not (laughs). We are trying to take all that into account.

getbuffed: Players love epic crafting patterns -- will we see any in Firelands?

Stockton: We are definitely going to have profession patterns that only drop in the Firelands raid.

getbuffed: Will this be just for professions like leatherworking or tailoring or will there be something for everyone?

Stockton: The impression that I have is that you will find plans for all of the professions. I don't know if we are going to have something for every single thing across the board but we are trying to get in as many as we can.

getbuffed: As far as we're aware, one of the goals for Cataclysm was to introduce multiple raid dungeons per tier throughout the expansion. So should we expect additional raids on top of Firelands? Maybe a new boss in Baradin Hold?

Stockton: There will definitely be a new boss in Baradin Hold in 4.2. Argaloth will have a new buddy in Tol Barad for sure, and he'll be itemized just like you would expect. He'll be a random loot machine similar to Argaloth.

getbuffed: We heard there would be an epic quest line that involves Thrall in patch 4.2?

Stockton: Yes, this is a quest line that we are putting in for 4.2. It is specifically there to build a lot of story and flavor and lore around Thrall. We want to give players a chance to learn more about what he has been up to, what he is doing right now and how he is planning to influence the remainder of the expansion. Players will get to experience that with him along that quest line. Since Thrall as a character is important to both the Alliance and the Horde it makes sense for players to know what's going on here, especially since Thrall has been so involved with all the events of the Cataclysm.

The quest line is going to feel really cool. It is going to employ the cinematics technology that we had in Uldum. It is also going to have a lot of custom voice over. We also really worked a lot on the Thrall model that is going to be used in this quest line. It is the new model that was introduced with Cataclysm, but it has been upgraded with a ton of new animations and a lot of new things so it looks really great. It is really a fan service with a quest line like this for one of our most popular characters.

getbuffed: During the last BlizzCon Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Metzen sort of hinted at the possibility of Thrall becoming the new aspect of earth. Does the quest line deal with that story arch or will it give us more insight?

Stockton: You will have to wait for the quest line to find all that out (laughs). But it sounds like you are interested, so I think we are on the right path here. We have been working on this for a while, and players are going to love it. I think it is going to be really cool. It is something we don't get to do very often. But with the storyline we have for Cataclysm it just makes a lot of sense to do it with Thrall right now.

getbuffed: At what level can players start that quest line?

Stockton: It will be a level 85 quest. But there won't be any prerequisites. So anyone will be able to pick it up. And you will know about the quest. There will be things in Orgrimmar and Stormwind that will let players know how to pick up the quest so everyone can get into it without having too much trouble.

getbuffed: Will there be specific rewards for the completion of that quest apart from the story aspects of it?

Stockton: The reward for a quest line like this is definitely going to be the story. You will not get an epic or anything like that. But we're using the voice over and the cinematics and all the animations and the new things we got specifically for this to really reward you for putting the time in with awesome scenes that really play out the story of what is happening.

getbuffed: Is this quest line solo content or will players need to group up?

Stockton: It is completely solo.

getbuffed: We were told we'd also get a chance to talk about the legendary weapon today.

Stockton: This is something we first mentioned at BlizzCon last year. The staff itself is going to be a magic caster staff legendary item. As you know we don't do legendaries very often. I believe this is our seventh for a game that has been running for six years -- so they don't come out very often. The staff is based on the blue dragonflight, which is why it is focused towards magic. In terms of mechanics it is going to play somewhat similar to what players experienced with Shadowmourne. As far as what you can expect on how to get it -- it is obviously going to require a lot of raiding to collect the parts and put it together. However, we have mixed up the mechanics so it feels a little different. It is not going to be the exact same as it was for Shadowmourne, but it is definitely going to require a large amount of effort from an entire guild in order to actually get the staff.

We've also built in a huge quest line around the staff which features a lot of cool story that is going to explain the background of what's going on with the blue dragonflight right now with Kalecgos and what's happening after Malygos was killed at the Eye of Eternity. And the player will be able to take part in all of that, so there are cinematics for the quest line and a lot of voice over. Not only should the item feel really epic but the player doing this quest line will really feel like he is involved.

getbuffed: Is this questing experience exclusive to the players crafting the item or will guildmates and friends also be able to take part?

Stockton: One thing we made sure of is that the final event -- where you actually get the staff -- takes place in the capital cities. There is an event for both Stormwind and Orgrimmar and this entire event takes place right in the middle of the city. It also is a pretty long event that involves blue dragons and a lot of voice over. Anyone in the city will be able to see the event when it plays out and know that that person on your server has earned the legendary.

getbuffed: So it's pretty legendary.

Stockton: Yeah, it is going to be pretty cool. We are also able to do another cool thing because of the new guild system. We are now able to do a reward for the entire guild. So when one person in your guild gets the legendary it will unlock the guild achievement for that. And in turn that achievement will unlock a reward from the guild vendor that everyone in the guild will be able to purchase. Since only one guy in your guild will have the legendary but needs the support of the entire guild to get it, we felt it was important to recognize that effort. Other people might have been at all those raids but don't end up with anything at the end. So this way they can all be rewarded as well.

getbuffed: Any details on that reward you can share with us?

Stockton: The reward we are looking at doing is a player companion pet.

getbuffed: Awww -- a fiery one?

Stockton: We are still figuring out what the pet itself will be. But we are thinking that the reward will be a pet. We are trying to pick something that will fit well with the legendary but also feels very cool and unique. When someone sees you with the pet they should know that your guild has that legendary.

getbuffed: Is there already a name for the legendary staff?

Stockton: No. We do not have a final name yet and the art is still in progress.

getbuffed: You said it was a dps caster staff -- so it's not all that interesting for healers?

Stockton: Well, the proc definitely won't be based on healing because we have just done Val'anyr which had a very specific healing proc. The proc on this legendary staff will be dps oriented. So if your guild gets it, they will definitely want to give it to a dps caster and not to a healer.

getbuffed: A recent bluepost stated that 25 player raids will probably have a slight advantage over 10 player raids in terms of time investment for the crafting process. Can you give us more details as to how this is going to work for 25 and 10 player groups?

Stockton: Our goal is to have that as balanced as possible. The real time investment for this will be the individual raiding that you will have to do and the pieces that you've got to earn. Larger raid groups might be able to get through the professions part quicker just because they have more players -- but in the overall grand scheme that is not going to make much of a difference. As far as the time investment goes ... that part is definitely minimized in comparison to what you'll have to do in actual raiding. So the goal is to have them feel as balanced as we can.

getbuffed: Patch 4.2 is also supposed to introduce the encounter journal. What can you tell us about this new feature?

Stockton: This is a super awesome feature that we are crazy excited for players to get. It is something we talked about at BlizzCon as well. We have actually been working on this for a long, long time. Essentially it is a place to get information on our instance bosses -- both for raids and dungeons. It is important to note that it is not a player guide that would give you hints and tricks on how to fight the boss, on how to avoid the fire or anything like that. It's a reference for the bosses.

Let's take Throngus from Grim Batol as an example. You'd be able to pull him up in the encounter journal and there would be a big 3D picture of his ingame model to the left that you could rotate around. And on the right you would have all his spells and abilities in little fly-outs that you can click and then read up on what the abilities do. For fights that have multiple phases those abilities can also be separated out into all the different phases. So the interface will actually break the abilities down into "phase 1" abilities, "phase 2" abilities and so forth. Throngus is actually even more complicated as his set of abilities depends on which of his weapons he is using. So in his case there would be a tab for each weapon and you would see which abilities belong to which phase. The description for the abilities tell you what it is and what to expect from it. It does not tell you how to avoid it or how to deal with it. But it definitely lets you know that for example when his shield is out he might be doing an AE. So you can be on the lookout for that.

What it really does is helping out with tactics explanations. When you get a pug group -- and we expect to see more pug raids starting as we get into patch 4.2 for the lower tier raids as players acquire better gear -- there's less to explain about the individual boss fights. They can just pull up the encounter journal and get all the info on what's going on in that fight.

Secondary to that there is another part of the encounter journal: we are listing all of the loot directly within the game. So you will be able to click on a boss and see his entire loot list. You will also be able to click on a whole dungeon. So if you just want to see the loot list for Throngus, you can click him. But you could also click Grim Batol and get the list for all the loot for that dungeon. And that loot can be sorted by normal mode, heroic mode, by your class and by your individual spec. In the case of a raid you can sort loot by 10 player, 25 player and heroic modes individually.

And all that works anywhere in the game. You could be standing in Stormwind and sort through loot or standing in Stormwind and looking at the abilities on the Iron Council raid fight. And everything in the encounter journal is hotlinkable into chat. So you'd be able to click on the name of a boss and link him right into chat. Someone else could click on that, which would open the encounter journal for that boss with his info. The same goes for abilities and loot.

getbuffed: Can players create wish lists within that system?

Stockton: That is something on the list that we want to do. We know it has been requested on the forums and we have already talked about it here. But we didn't get it in for the very first version. But it is something that we definitely want to add to the system.

getbuffed: Will all of that information be available right away or will certain bits and pieces unlock over time? For example: Will boss abilities only show up after players have actually encountered the boss?

Stockton: No, it will all be available right away. One of our reasons for doing this is that -- if you really think about it -- the only way to learn boss fights in WoW essentially is to die. If you do not know what's going on you really just have to die a few times. And we didn't feel that's the best way to encounter a new fight all the time. So hopefully with the journal you will be able to at least have a little bit of info about what's to be expected or what might happen. We are not tell you how exactly to play it, but we will give you at least some of the basic info.

getbuffed: Will this feature be available for all bosses right from the start and will we see this on the PTR?

Stockton: It will be enabled on the PTR when the PTR goes up. We are currently in the process of implementing bosses into it. We are planning to initially support the Firelands raid and the Cataclysm dungeons. We are hoping that we can very quickly get in the prior raids and Northrend dungeons, Burning Crusade dungeons and then the classic dungeons. But we are going to start off with Cataclysm and the raid tier of 4.2. Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub from patch 4.1 will be included as well.

getbuffed: We also heard about Hyjal becoming a new hub for daily quests wit patch 4.2

Stockton: That is correct, we are putting new daily quests into 4.2 -- our solo content for 4.2. We see it essentially as another evolution of daily questing. We are always twiddling with daily questing and are trying to find ways to make it cooler, to make it not feel grindy, to make things feel more random -- and that is what you are really going to see here. The concept behind it is that the Guardians of Hyjal are taking the fight into the Firelands themselves. So the daily quest line starts in Hyjal and from there it moves into an entirely new instance we built specifically for the daily quests that is actually inside the Firelands. So it is all new terrain and it is going to feel really awesome. It's the same environment that players are fighting the raid in. So solo players will be able to do their daily quests in an environment that looks just like that.

The big thing about this however is that it has progression, but it is personal to the player. If you remember what we did in Quel'Danas and Sunwell Isle, the entire server had to contribute to basically unlock the next set of daily quests. The difference here is that you earn currency for doing the daily quests with which you get to pick and unlock whatever you want just for you.

getbuffed: So, let's say I do a set of quests five times and then I can pick up another set of quests?

Stockton: You would -- and there would be, say, three different sets for you to choose from. So you would start off doing a set and earning a certain amount of currency. Let's assume you have 10 currency and then you have a choice of three quest hubs that you can essentially purchase. And each one would cost 10 currency. So you can kind of set your path as you go, buy each of these hubs and each hub will come with a certain amount of daily quests in it. And all that would be phased for you, but it won't affect you playing with any of your friends because it's stuff that only you can see. So your friends would still be there with you and you wouldn't have any of the issues of normal phasing where you can't play with one of your friends. We tried to take all that into account. It feels like a natural play experience, but it also feels like something that is really custom specific to what you would want.

getbuffed: Very interesting -- that's something we didn't expect.

Stockton: It will also be fully itemized. It will have gear and vanity items. It will have mounts and all kinds of items really. We are really hoping it will be something that both our solo players and our dungeon and raid players will be interested in because of the way we structure the content so it feels random and fresh and will have a great selection of loot for players to get.

getbuffed: There were a lot of debates when you announced that Firelands wouldn't make it for 4.1 -- and we've kind of given two reasons as to why it would be delayed for 4.2. First we heard that the majority of playerbase didn't yet need a new raid tier and then we heard that Firelands simply wasn't ready. Could you give us a brief overview of what led to Firelands being delayed to 4.2?

Stockton: Essentially what's happening is that we have been working on all this content at the same time. When we work on content we don't break it down into patches individually and say "this is going to go here and that is going to go there" and plan a year in advance. What we tend to do is work on the content and ask ourselves "what does the game need most right now?" and "what are our players looking for?", because that's what we want to give them in the patches. So as you have seen on the PTR patch 4.1 had a lot of the Firelands content in it because we are working on all that content at the same time. We have been working on those boss fights, creating those models, building the areas. But when it got down to it and we looked at the timeline for when we wanted to get a patch out, we just felt that not enough players had cleared through enough of the raid content to make it feel like it was time to release another raid. We really felt like players could definitely use some more time to get through this current tier of raid content before we introduced something else. The situation made us think about Wrath of the Lich King when we released 3.2 pretty quickly after 3.1 and a lot of players weren't even finished with Ulduar by the time that the tournament came out. Ulduar probably could have gone on a bit longer just because of the number of bosses and the amount of content that was there.

So we looked at it and asked ourselves "Do we want to do one or the other?" If we wanted to get Firelands done and get it shipped for 4.1 we could have done that. But we really felt like at that point in time what we needed were more heroic dungeons. That is why we decided to release Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub together as a new tier of heroics. And what is cool about that is that it gives these players a chance to get some higher end gear to actually get into Firelands quicker. And at the same time Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub also help make the current endgame content more accessible to people that so far haven't been able to get into our existing raids that we shipped Cataclysm with. So it really just came down to the timeline.