Memoires (Part 7 - Into the Core)

The Molten Core

Nowadays in World of Warcraft, it is possible for Molten Core to be completed by less than five players (indeed, some have even managed to solo it), however, in Summer 2005, this place was the hardest and most hardcore dungeon that players could tackle.

It consisted of ten bosses, separated by many packs of lesser monsters (known as trash mobs). In order to make progress in the Core, raids needed to be long (typically 2+ hours), well organised and well led. It was also the first dungeon where the reset mechanic really began to matter. What's a reset mechanic? I hear you ask. Well, Blizzard realised that their dungeons would take a long time, so they made it so that once you killed a boss in the Molten Core, it would stay dead for a week, and then the dungeon would be reset meaning that the raid would have to start all over again.

It also meant that you were locked to that version of the dungeon for the week, so you couldn't jump from one instance of the dungeon to another one, killing the first boss over and over for the items, for example.

Flush from our success with Onyxia, Kindred began to organise raids to the Core. By this time, I was beginning to establish myself as a fairly respectable priest within the raid and so was often given the task of off-healing (where I would be healing one of the secondary tank groups).

I stood beside my frostsaber, Saer, along with the rest of the assembled warriors in front of a massive set of iron doors, which were slightly ajar. I stroked his mane, fingers twirling the soft fur absent mindedly as I listened to King Bronzebeard's edict, read out to us by Gigamo.

We stood on the precipice, steeling ourselves for what was to come. Over the past months, investigations by various factions had uncovered the true nature of the Blackrock Mountain. The Emperor of the Dark Iron Dwarves, who were sworn enemies of the bronzebeard dwarves, had freed the Firelord Ragnaros in his quest to gain greater power. Ragnaros was a malicious elemental spirit that had been trapped far underneath the ground for over a thousand years. His first act upon being released was to take control of the Dark Iron Dwarves, and put them to use creating an army of golems for his revenge. Ragnaros hollowed out the depths of Blackrock Mountain, making it his home, and opened a rift to the fire plane, allowing malcontent spirits into the world of Azeroth.

Today, we would be assaulting his lair, with the aim of stopping whatever schemes of destruction he had in place.

I patted Saer on the head, sending him away to the wild - the fiery depths of the core would be no place for a frostsaber. He nuzzled me gently and licked my face, a parting gift of affection, before loping off into the distance.

"This is not a suicide mission!" said Gigamo, raising his voice, "We can, and we will prevail. We have studied these lieutenants of Ragnaros, and we have studied him. We know how to beat him!"

I mentally checked over my list of provisions for the umpteenth time; potions, salves, bandages, food and water.

"Brothers and sisters, share your strength with each and with me, and we will not fall. Ragnaros will die. This I pledge, for Azeroth!"

Gigamo raised a fist in the air, rousing us all.

"For Azeroth!" came the unified response, our solidarity warming my heart.

Gigamo turned and marched through the doors, into the heart of the mountain. We followed, ready for anything.

As I passed through the thick iron of the doors, a wave of heat blasted my face. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the dim light, and once they did, I saw the scope of what lay before us. The inside of the mountain had been carefully crafted by the dwarves. We stood on a walkway which circled the whole cavern. Far below this walkway, in the centre of the mountain, lay a huge broiling pit of lava, casting dancing lights of orange and red onto the walls. Suspended above the lava was a shard of rock, carved into a spiral walkway that connected the depths of the mountain to the entrance where we stood. It was held in place by great chains, each link being bigger than a person, which lashed it to the bare rock of the mountain interior.

Blackrock Mountain Interior

As I peered over the edge of the walkway, feeling the heat from the molten rock thrashing about hundreds of feet below, Chaspal came to my side.

"And guess where the entrance to this place is?" he said, a little sardonically.
"Down there?"

He nodded. "Come on, let's go."

Gigamo led the group over one of the chains onto the spiral walkway, and we followed it down and down into the bowels of the mountain. The air was thick with the smell of sulphur and ash, and with each passing step my breathing became more laboured.

The walkway led us to a small alcove with a window frame set in it, big enough for a man to fit through and carved ornately from the rock. Beyond it, I could only see lava.

Gigamo held up a small pumiced piece of rock. "Everyone, hold out your core shards!"

I did as instructed.

"Now, go through the window," he said, pointing at the alcove.

A bunch of murmers swept through the assembled raid. Gigamo did not wait to be questioned, he walked calmly through the window and leapt off the edge. We rushed forwards and put our heads through to see if he had fallen into the lava below, but there was no sign of his body.

Zacker shrugged. "Let's go!"

She was the next to leap, and as she impacted the lava, there was a flash of light and suddenly her body was gone, transported through the dimensional portal into the core itself.

"Talk about your leaps of faith," I murmured to no one in particular, before I jumped myself. I could feel the heat of the lava ripping at my body as I fell, and then, suddenly, I landed on the coolness of a rocky floor.

I was in the core.

We made progress quite quickly at first, going through the trash mobs. There were several wipes of course, as we had to learn the tactics on how to defeat each kind of monster. Gigamo was a very experienced player, having beta tested this dungeon, and so he knew his way around and provided us with valuable tactics that guided the raid. I concentrated hard on his every word, trying to commit them all to memory.

There were Molten Giants, huge behemoths that came in pairs and dealt a big amount of damage to the tanks, stressing the healers. Then there were Firelords, flame elementals who spawned little copies of themselves that would quickly replicate and overwhelm the raid if not killed in time, this tested the reactiveness of the damage dealers. There were also Core Hounds (referred to affectionately later on as doggies), which came in several different flavours and had various different abilities ranging from a mass stun to mass area of effect fire damage. Then there were various rock elementals which were hard to tank and liked to punt people left right and centre - they became a constant source of amusement / frustration as if you were not positioned correctly they would punt you off the edge and into the lava, where you would swim around taking damage until you died, and of course, the rest of the raid would point and laugh whilst this happened.

That first raid in the Molten Core was awesome. I really felt like a pioneer. This was the cutting edge of the end game and we were the first to attempt it. We were the best. I like being the best.

Finally, after some hours we made it to the first real boss. Lucifron.

Lucifron the Harbinger

Lucifron had some fairly nasty abilities which completely stomped us at first. There was an area of effect curse which doubled the cost of any ability (if it wasn't removed promptly, the healers ran out of mana extremely quickly). There was another area of effect curse which counted down from ten seconds and then inflicted a massive amount of damage. This led to no end of wipes as he would apply the curse to everyone in the raid, the curse removers would take too long and then half the raid would die instantly. He also mind controlled random players in the raid, and came with two helpers, just to cause extra chaos.

Even though Gigamo had told us all of this beforehand, the execution of the tactics was still difficult as it was the first time any of us had encountered this type of fight. I was assigned to heal one of the off tanks. By the end of the first raid, we had made some progress on the encounter, but had not fully managed to beat him.

Screencap of the Lucifron fight taken from a video made in 2006. By then, the encounter was routine.

On the second raid, we nailed it and he died, to rapturous celebrations. We had officially made our first steps into the Molten Core. Word spread quickly through private messages and various guild chats and soon the congratulations began to roll in. The mages set up a town portal to Ironforge, the major hub city of the game at the time, and we rode in, announcing proudly in the general chat that Lucifron was down - it felt like we were heroes returning triumphantly from battle, which I guess, in the context of the game, was exactly what we were.