20 days until BlizzCon: Rob Pardo sits down with the OC Register

It's down to almost two weeks until the big event. E3 saw some info released about the new instance on its way, Zul'Aman. Yesterday Blizzard game design guru Rob Pardo sat down with the Orange County Register. In his interview he spent a lot of time deflecting questions about what big announcements the company might make. Just as Barb mentioned, we're going to have to hold our horses on the expansion front until BlizzCon, but he did run TheGadgetress through a demonstration of Zul'Aman, and gave us some lovely tidbits about the instance.

My first favorite note is the instance's seeming similarity to Zul'Gurub. Once again it appears we will be battling animal-themed bosses, with my current favorite of them (current in that I haven't set foot in the instance yet, and am only talking about what I heard in this interview) Nalorakk, the bear boss, which has a chance of dropping a rare bear mount. Some might be dissappointed at the similarities between these instances, but to me it's simply a continuation of the story set out in Zul'Gurub, which I found to be one of my favorite pre-TBC instances. I still get groups together to hunt down the Fishing Boss in there, hoping one day the Poly Turtle tome will drop.

Zul'Aman will be like Karazhan in that it will be a 10-man dungeon, but Pardo mentions that it will be smaller than Kara, so players will not have to spend the time in Zul'Aman to finish the dungeon since it will be about half the size. Not having gotten to experience Kara in all its epicness, I admit this is good news for my little guild. This info about the dungeon released so close to the convention strikes a bit of similarities with the previous BlizzCon, where we were introduced to Ahn'Qiraj. I dunno about you, but the wait is killing me.