I’ve been waiting for this patch for five years. Far and away, my favorite feature of World of Warcraft patch 3.3 is the new “Looking for Dungeon” interface. It’s more than an interface, though, it’s completely changed how I play the game.

Azjol-Nerub

When I first signed on last night, a tank from my guild was asking if anyone wanted to run a random dungeon with him. I joined him in a party as DPS, and we were inserted into Azjol-Nerub. Right away, we headed down the ramp and started pulling. I buffed everyone along the way. The first boss went down with no problem, and we began chatting about the viability of a dual-wielding, tanking Blood spec for Death Knights. The other bosses went down easily, and I had my first two Emblems of Frost.

Utgarde Keep

I then partied up with a friend of mine, and switched back to my main spec (Protection). We put ourselves in the queue for a random dungeon and were selected for Utgarde Keep. During the run, I noticed something interesting about the party members for these cross-realm dungeon groups: nobody talks. Now, I’m a big fan of no talking, but this was a little strange even to me. The only chatter we had during our UK group was a question about who was tanking, and why the Hunter wasn’t rescued while inside a frost tomb (which I didn’t mind since I still needed the achivement).

Forge of Souls

After a fast and successful run, we decided we would do another random dungeon. In under two minutes (maybe even one minute), I was prompted to enter the dungeon. After clicking the button, a loading screen appeared that I didn’t recognize. It was for the Forge of Souls! I panicked for a second since this was new to me, but wanted to see the new content so we went forth in hopes of obtaining victory. The instance was really cool, and gave off a great perception of depth. It was a mixture of the Nexus and Utgarde dungeons, sprinkled with the Icecrown look and feel. We ended up taking down both bosses in one attempt, and both were fun fights. I did feel bad for the Hunter that refused to move and died in Bronjahm’s vortex. Actually, I didn’t.

Gundrak

Still partied with my friend, I figured why not keep going while we’re hot. Next up was Gundrak; not one of my favorite instances to run, but at least it wasn’t Drak’tharon Keep. While the first three random dungeons were quick, painless, and quiet, we had our first taste of a real cross-realm PUG. About three-quarters of the way through, our Shaman healer started to get pushy and was telling me to keep pulling because he had to leave soon. During the Gal’darah fight, it seemed as though he was distracted, and let two of the DPS die. We prevailed, though, and completed the dungeon. He said, “sorry,” rolled need on the Frozen Orb, and quickly left the group. Who ninjas Frozen Orbs these days? Sheesh!

Caverns of Time: Stratholme

My friend ended up logging for the night, but I wanted one more shot at a random dungeon… especially since the dailies had reset. I wanted a break from tanking, so I switched to Retribution and entered the queue. I watched for several minutes as the estimate to enter the dungeon was frozen at a five-minute wait. It was getting late, so I swapped specs and went back to Protection. I re-entered the queue as a tank and almost immediately found a group. A minimap configuration problem, pushy and undergeared players, wipe with only three minutes left to engage Mal’ganis, and me pulling the gauntlet without talking to Arthas in “Caverns of Time: Stratholme” later… I was done.

Conclusion

In summary, I picked up twenty-three Emblems of Triumph, six Emblems of Frost, over eight-thousand Knights of the Ebon Blade reputation, and well over a hundred gold in profit (not counting Dream Shards and Abyss Crystals). Needless to say, I’m super-pleased with this feature. Time will tell, though, if my luck and success with the groups was due to the fact that the patch was less than twenty-four hours old, or if it was because Blizzard has finally solved the “looking for group” problem and implemented it in a way that everyone loves. You can count me in on the latter.