World of Warcraft – Patch 1.7 ‘Rise of the Blood God’

Patch 1.7, “Rise of the Blood God” in World of Warcraft introduced the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, a new PvP Battleground called Arathi Basin, and a new 20 man raid instance called Zul’Gurub. The Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza allowed players to test there fishing skills in a competition. Unfortunatly, Stranglethorn is a contested area on PvP servers. This means that one can be beaten to death while trying to fish. It also means that on unbalanced servers (servers that have a bad Horde to Alliance ratio) there will be only one faction that will participate. If most of Stranglethorn is Horde, any Alliance player will be murdered instantly.

Arathi Basin was the third PvP Battleground to be introduced to WoW after Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley. Arathi Basin (commonly abbreviated “AB”) worked on a zone control system. Players race to “cap” strategic zones on the map. The more zones you control, the more points you get. Overall this went over well with players. The teams were also a little larger than Warsong Gulch, and quite smaller than Alterav Valley.

Zul’Gurub, located in Northern Stranglethorn, was the first 20 player raid introduced to World of Warcraft. Players fought their way through the crumbling Gurubashi ruins, earning the favor of the Zandalar troll tribe. Players fought insane trolls, turned mad by the will of Hakkar. The bosses encountered were High Priestess Jeklik, High Priest Venoxis, Bloodlord Mandkir, High Priestess Mar’li, High Priest Thekal, High Priestess Arlokk, Jin’do the Hexxer, Gahz’ranka, and Hakkar. Aside from some sweet loot, head enchants, and leg encants, players fought for the right to ride some of the special Zul’Gurub mounts, like the Swift Zulian Tiger. These were highly sought after, especially just before the shattering of Azeroth. Zul’Gurub, as of patch 4.0.3 is now a normal zone, and no longer a raid instance.