Hi I’m back.
What is one dungeon that you think could have made a zone or expansion better (or at least more complete)? This could be anything from cut content to something you’ve thought of yourself. You don’t have to go into a huge write up like I am going to do here, but a little detail on why you think the dungeon would work into the story of the expansion or zone you’ve placed it in you be nice.
For me, I think that we needed a dungeon in Krasarang Wilds in Pandaria. The entire zone was so under-utilized and nothing more than a daily farm and the zone’s storyline was anemic at best. My first time through Pandaria, I never even touched the place.
So I feel like giving us a temple to Chi-Ji, much like all the other August Celestials have their own temples. The way I see this instance, aesthetically, is playing up the old, forgotten, overgrown temple feel…And have it take place at sunset. Typing it out I see more than a few similarities with the Temple of the Jade Serpent but…meh. I still think this would have been a good thing for the zone to have.
Temple of Chi-Ji.
The instance would begin on the beach in the afternoon, securing it for the Alliance/Horde. You fight off a few waves of your opposing faction’s troops and then you fight a named main character, but the boss fight is interrupted as Sha burst out of the place and possess the story characters on both sides. You then have to flee into the jungle with the help of the Shado-Pan/Children of Chi-Ji and have to race through the jungles to a crystal clear shrine behind a towering waterfall.
From here you regroup with the surviving story characters from your opposite faction. I don’t really know who these would be, but Horde would have to follow an Alliance character and vice versa, with the objective given to you by the Pandaren NPCs to get to the temple of Chi-Ji and help him before he is consumed by the Sha. This isn’t the Shrine of Chi-Ji on the island, but a full temple. The Temple of Chi-Ji lies far down the coast, accessible only by river due to the fierce reefs that surround the cliffs and even Chi-Ji himself has, over the millenia, abandoned it to the jungle and preferring his Shrine on the island. All that remains to protect Chi-JI’s source of power is a single guardian, one of Chi-Ji’s first followers.
But now that the Sha have been unleashed, Chi-Ji’'s essence is vulnerable to corruption. You have to save him so that the Sha do not overrun Krasarang. It is your fault they appeared, so it is your responsibility to fix. Out of the collected Pandaren survivors, Fat-Long-Fat says that he will guide you to the temple…But that trying to push through the ancient and savage jungle would only result in your deaths. You were lucky enough to reach this safe haven due to the chaos unleashed by the eruption of the Sha, but the jungle has recovered. Within it you would be only prey to the predators within, and the Sha.
The next phase would be on a makeshift raft floating down the river as the sun begins to drop low in the sky. You start the encounter fighting off a swarm of crocolisks, and at the next bend in the river you have to fight off some more well organized Hozen…And then you float through the ruins of a Mogu fortress…right as the Mogu awaken. You have to fight off successive waves of Mogu before dealing with their warlord, who upon his death after a standard tank and spank, destroys your raft and you all tumble into the swift moving waters and are flushed down-river.
You wash up up on the rocky shores of Chi-Ji’s temple as the sun nears the horizon, the sun and sky turning a deep red as, in the distance, the smoke from the Alliance and Horde oil refineries drift across the sky. The temple is old, very old and heavily overgrown. Old growth trees press out of the structure, covering many openings with their thick roots, and the setting sun has caused most of the temple grounds to be covered in ominous shadows.
You regroup and push forward into the temple led by the Faction story character and your Pandaren guide, only to come face to face with the enraged Temple Guardian, who says that he/she had already failed to keep outsiders from the temple once, they won’t do it again. Then you’d engage in a battle with the Guardian, who utilizes high speed, high power melee attacks from long range and occasionally leaps so high into the sky that you drop combat and they reappear elsewhere in the arena. Upon their defeat, the Guardian collapses and begs to be ended for their failure, they themselves consumed by shame, anger and hate…But Fat-Long-Fat then reveals himself to BE Chi-Ji, and re-assures his old friend that Chi-Ji never ordered them to guard the temple, and that doing so was nothing more than an act of good faith and devotion.
But Chi-Ji cannot go any further than here. The temple oozes with corruption, and you are almost too late to save it. If Chi-Ji enters the temple he will be consumed by the Sha and fall. You must continue on alone, though Chi-Ji and the Guardian will do what they can to support you from the exterior. The Guardian gives the faction character a amulet that is inscribed with protective chakras/mantras and says that this will bring light to you in the darkness within.
Your party enters, led by the faction character, while Chi-Ji and the Guardian take to the air in crane forms. The temple is dark and oppressive, the over-growth blocking out much of the setting sunlight…And what isn’t directly exposed to the light is covered by Sha energies. The faction character lights a torch and your follow them through the temple, fighting Sha-shadows of your inner conflicts, taking damage the entire time from the corruption. The faction character lights wall torches every so often, and you have to fight against the surging darkness (and waves of elites) until the faction character is able to purify the area, keeping it permanently lit. Once the waves are over you’re able to rest and heal before moving on to the next torch. Eventually you make it through the temple interior and reach a long, open bridge section that leads to Chi-Ji’s nest; the heart of the temple and the final boss.
The sun is dropping below the horizon, the shadows are darker than you’d ever thought possible and there are many large support pillars that separate the remaining rays of the sin. The amulet carried by the faction character crumbles away, it’s protective power spent, and a gust of unnatural wind extinguishes the torch and rips it out of the faction character’s hand and send it tumbling to the rocks below. You cannot go back, as the amulet’s destruction has led to the protective wards failing around the torches. They fade, one by one, in the darkness behind you. You can only go forward, but the shadows are long and the light cast by the fading sun is weak and interspersed between the pillars. Without the amulet the corruption could take you, but the only way to survive is by pushing forward. The Guardian and Chi-Ji swoop by outside and tell you that they will protect you as best they can if you can stay in the light.
This next phase would be racing through the shadow areas and taking heavy damage. You have a chance to heal when you get into the strips of sunlight, where Chi-Ji and the Guardian give you some burst heals. You then have to fight more Sha Shadows, but not just of yourself, but of Pandaren, Mogu, Hozen and races of your opposing faction (which appear the closer you get to the end of the bridge).
When you arrive at the entry to Chi-Ji’s nest though, the sun finally sets below the horizon and casts everything into darkness. You group together to fight to the end as the Sha corruption begins to consume you…Only for the Faction character to find their inner strength and begins to channel their Chi, creating a barrier between the Nest and the Sha. It’s up to you to end this, and you rush into Chi-Ji’s nest and find yourself face to face with the source of the darkness; the Sha possessed version of YOUR faction character from the beach assault.
They want to claim the power of Chi-Ji for themselves, so they can crush the Alliance/Horde, bring glory and power to themselves and crush the weakness within them, to make others suffer as they have suffered, to doubt and cower in shame of their failures.
You then have to fight the character in a very tightly confined chamber that would again focus on proper positioning and staying on top of it, with safe zones being limited and constantly shifting during the battle, requiring all players to keep rotating to new locations in the boss fight.
But near the end of the fight, it’s too much. The faction character you made the journey with falters and falls, being consumed by the darkness…which then floods the Nest and incapacitates your party. Right as you’re all about to be consumed by the Sha, the Guardian bursts through the domed ceiling of the Nest and sacrifices themselves to knock back the darkness and purify all of you, and the Sha coalesces into a shapeless blob in the center of the Nest, and you have one last chance to defeat it. Which you do by channeling your own inner strength, which vaporizes it and purifies the temple of the darkness.
You get the loot and Chi-Ji drops in through the dome breach and the two faction characters have a heart to heart about how powerful they are if they just believe, etc etc, that with the power of working together they were able to free the other from domination and put an end to the corruption of the temple. Perhaps if the Horde/Alliance had simply done this from the beginning instead of pursuing a conflict of hate, they could end the threat the Sha pose entirely…Or perhaps never would have even released them.
The dungeon story ends with the moment of introspection…But it’s not a clean ending, and ends on an ominous note as the two faction characters depart with an understanding…But still plenty of suspicion of the other, and doubt that their counterpart, and by extension the Horde/Alliance can ever truly change.
And yeah the ending is a little corny, but I feel it maintains the theme of what Mists of Pandaria was, that even in the heat of the conflict and tensions between the Horde and Alliance, there were very clear examples of what would be possible if the two factions put aside all their hate, their anger, their doubts and distrust of each other. It’s only because of their failure to do so that leads to Garrosh finding the Heart of Y’shaarj and the Siege of Orgrimmar, all the things that followed.
Also my apologies to the lowbie Gnome rogue I ganked in Krasarang when going for the Zandalari Warscout. I love you and it was an accident because I forgot to click off you and kept autoattacking and then I figured I may as well just put you out of your misery.
But on the plus side, you lead me to thinking about all of this!
So yeah, what dungeons do you think should have been in the game, what dungeon ideas do you have that, be they of your creation and ideas or just expanding upon cut content, and how would they have made the zone or expansion they are in better?
Look forward to hearing your ideas!
