Cute Fuzzy Meow

Have you ever flown over the huge keep behind Gundrak and wondered what Blizzard had planned there? Have you wandered around Ahn’Kahet, marveled at its beauty, and wondered why there is so little down around Azjol’Nerub? I’ve often wondered about the things Blizzard didn’t have time to include. Ever since I heard about Legion Hold having been on the drawing board for Burning Crusade I find myself wondering at parts of expansions that never were. Lately, this tendency has had me thinking about Violet Hold.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Violet Hold, it’s the dungeon inside Dalaran City around level 75 where you assist the Kirin Tor against waves of Blue Dragonflight infiltrators. It’s just like Black Morass all over again, you run from portal to portal facing groups of dragons intermixed with a couple of bosses and then a very large dragon. While helping my fiancée’s best friend gear up her paladin tank in some random heroics we found ourselves in Violet Hold and I found my mind wandering. How had the Blue Dragonflight managed to open portals into a secure prison? If they could open portals here, next to the Kirin Tor’s best guards, why hadn’t they instead opened portals somewhere more important? Or hey, why not open a portal somewhere in the sewer and bring in a large army at once? At this point, I began to come up with some of my own ideas for Violet Hold. Here’s how I would have approached Violet Hold if I was on the design team.

My first angle of attack comes in the form of “why,” as in “Why are the Blue Dragonflight attacking the prison?” Something I noticed was that there were no blue dragons held captive, so it couldn’t be to rescue someone important to Malygos’ cause. But wait, who is that on the left bottom? An ethereal? While we never get a chance to find out if this ethereal is Etheream, Consortium, or independent it does start my mind working. Questing back in the Dragonblight I recall a moment where I’m forced to kill an Ethereum Ambassador attempting to contact the Blue Dragonflight. While it’s obvious that the Kirin Tor are too cautious to capture and hold any blue dragons, obviously they don’t have a problem holding ethereals captive. I see two ways for this to play out. First, your quests in the Dragonblight lead to you apprehending the Ethereum. Believing you’ve captured him before he has made a pact with Malygos, the Kirin Tor ships him off to Violet Hold. I would have this happen perhaps halfway through the quest series. Later, as you face off the threat of the Blue Dragonflight, you find out that the ethereal’s wrappings have been replaced with special wrappings. When you head to Archmage Modera to notify her in Dalaran, a warden shows up and announces that Violet Hold is under attack and portals are opening up inside of it. You’re sent off to deal with it while the Kirin Tor prepares reinforcements. While I like this approach, it would also be possible that you confront the Etheream Ambassador and find out from him that another spy has already been sent to Violet Hold. Wrath of the Lich King seems to have had a reoccurring theme where you end up accidentily falling into the bad guy’s trap, however, so I like the first method.

Now, for the boss encounter. Once you enter Violet Hold, I’d like to see the whole instance be similar to the end of Arcatraz. Instead of portals opening up haphazardly and you running around mindlessly, I’d rather see the Ethereum, Xevozz, changed to be like Warden Mellichar. When you enter Violet Hold you see the Kirin Tor get destroyed by Xevozz. You rush in to fight and he casts some big spell of protection on himself, then begins opening portals. Instead of them opening at random, it gets personal as you watch Xevozz opening them to try to stop you. I like the idea that after every four of five portals you close down he gets so frustrated he says something like “I need… more time” and he opens the lock to one of the cages in the area. Finally, at the very end before he dies Cyanigosa comes through the portal to see what the problem is and you face both of them at the same time.

The reason I feel this approach is better is because I think it really makes Violet Hold personal. It also helps the players understand how the Blue Dragonflight managed to infiltrate Dalaran, and why there aren’t portals appearing all over. And if Blizzard wants to do a short fix, the way to do it is to add a little bit of flavor text to that Dragonblight Ethereum questline. Just a few lines here and there would be enough, something about Xevozz being an Ethereum and smuggling in an item to aid in teleportation. That’s all it would take to make me happy!

Speaking of teleportation, and while I’m on the topic of dungeon changes, it seems odd that while Jaina has no problem teleporting out of Undercity or any other bit of trouble she can’t just teleport out of the Halls of Reflection. It’s probably too much effort to change now, but I had an interesting idea for that. The Lich King is extremely powerful, and all it would take is one demonstration of power to drive the point home. Instead of starting by running away down the long hallway, why not have Jaina attempt to mass teleport everyone…. just to have the group find that they’ve been mass teleported back to the same location. That would be a simple thing to do that explains why Jaina doesn’t simply teleport out of the Halls of Reflection. There are two other variants that may or may not be better options. One is to have Jaina actually teleport everyone to safety. Keep the players stunned with “Teleportation Sickness” or something, but then have Arthas teleport everyone back into the Halls of Reflection a moment later. Second, and maybe this is a bit too cheesey, but have the portal open up and everyone goes into it. Then maybe have Jaina start talking only to have Arthas Death Grip her back through the portal. The party, being slaves to the instance script, has to click the portal and return to save Jaina.

What do you think? What instances would you change?