World of Warcraft: The War Within has been collecting dust in my digital library (and a bit of subscription money, oops). Not for any particular reason, I've actually rather enjoyed myself—it's just that I happen to be a games journalist, and as such I have to keep up with a lot of different games for work. I'm also back into fighting games again, which is an affliction that claims me every four months or so.
If my Skyriding achievements list is any indication, however, I'm going to be very busy come February 25—because that's when WoW's 11.1 patch, Undermine(d), will be releasing, as per a recent Blizzard post. It's also when Plunderstorm will be going away, so ye best be plundering them chicken dinners if ye haven't already, yarr.
The update will introduce the expansion's properly-sized major zone: Undermine, the beating, polluted, and hyper-industrialised heart of the goblin empire. It's got all the hallmarks of a big new patch—a new raid, new dungeons, new delves, and a customisable goblin rig you can do donuts in. You know. Normal fantasy MMO stuff.
I am a huge fan of Skyriding—so much so that I've gotten basically every gold medal achievement for every Skyriding race I've been able to access, and the D.R.I.V.E system will have similar racing challenges littered around Undermine. While you'll be busy gearing up, I'll be studying the gearstick.
While I'm doing donuts in the Gallagio parking lot, though, the rest of you might actually be wanting to do some content. Luckily, Blizzard's also posted its schedule for The Liberation of Undermine raid. March 4 will see the raid's first Raid Finder wing, as long as its Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulty.
The game's new Story Mode difficulty, which lets players hop in solo (or with a couple of mates) to experience the cutscenes and vistas without worrying a raid leader shouting at you, will then be arriving on March 11 along with the second Raid Finder wing, followed up by the third and fourth Raid Finder wings on March 18 and March 25, respectively.
I'm honestly quite excited—as mentioned, I don't have much in the way of free time for MMO grinding. I've tried to expense cloning myself, but it's apparently 'prohibitively expensive' and 'not a good use of company resources' and also 'scientifically impossible'. I will, however, be carving out a solid chunk of my weekends to have a riot in goblin town when this thing hits the servers February 25.
