Azshara’s Eternal Palace Wings Two and Three

My guild’s progression through Eternal Palace has been a blast, and this video has more fun and interesting fights. From this (long) video, my favorites are Orgozoa and Lady Ashvane. Part of the excitement of Orgozoa’s fight for me is that his model looks really cool, and he’s one of the neatest-looking bosses yet that I’ve pried loot from. I like the second phase, where the boss takes off down the ramp, and players have to quickly yet deliberately run through a mine field of eggs and magical projectiles. We started making it into a competition to see who can run down the ramp the fastest, and I’ve found that usually I’m one of the last. Slow and steady doesn’t always win the race!

Lady Ashvane is a weird one for me, because on Heroic difficulty it’s totally different. So even though I bring mixed feelings from the time we struggled with Ashvane on Heroic, it’s a fun fight on Normal. I like the part when random players get symbols above their head and go break the coral that spawns around the boss room. The other fights in this video were all great, it’s just that some of them were way more intense and I had less time to appreciate them. Namely, the last two fights with Za’qul and Queen Azshara herself.

The fight with Azshara is long and dramatic, and filled with lore tidbits, as could be expected. It was a good fight, I just think the first phase (with Aethanel and Cyranus) was unnecessary and could have been replaced with something cooler. Like, say, Azshara showing off her magical prowess. You might not know it from the fight alone, but Azshara is one of the most gifted sorceresses on Azeroth. I was disappointed that she spent much of the fight attacking the raid with her spear, instead of doing some cool magic stuff like the Jaina Proudmoore fight from Battle of Dazar’alor. Despite this, the fight was still epic and defeating Azshara was an accomplishment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this raid. It looked beautiful and all the boss fights were really well done. I do wish that more of the bosses were call-backs to old Night Elf lore, but who would they have chosen for this raid? Xavius, once the advisor to Azshara, has already been defeated in last expansion’s raid (The Emerald Nightmare). This raid felt different than Battle of Dazar’alor, though, as it seemed to hold less lore significance in a way. In BoD the whole raid was telling the story of the progression of the War Campaign, through the perspective of both Horde and Alliance. The whole raid felt like an epic battle, and ended on pretty epic notes.

To be fair, BoD and Eternal Palace had different stories to tell. BoD told the story of the Alliance (from my perspective) charging into battle together to confront the King of Zuldazar. There was a real sense of togetherness in BoD. In Eternal Palace, it’s the complete opposite. We are infiltrating this dark, nightmarish place deep in the inky ocean to confront a Queen who has long been hidden from us. In a way, we all stand alone as N’zoth is released from his prison despite our best efforts. At that moment our story becomes one of solitude and fear, each of us now living in a world with a freed Old God who could be anywhere. The ending of Eternal Palace is a stark contrast from the bright lights and shining gold of the previous major raid.