The Old Kingdom
Upon the encouragement of an anon, we decided to give Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom a whirl and see how it was even though we all gave up a few levels to it. To put it in context, think of doing Slave Pens at level 60-61 with skilled raiders in Naxxramas gear. It's an incredibly fun instance and damn epic. It's hard not to be impressed by the sheer scale of the place once you start running around and seeing huge ancient buildings draped with dusty webs.
The guy in the first picture is Elder Nadox, the first boss. Well, apparently he is; we ended up killing him last. We happened to guess right and go left at the first choice and saw Prince Taldaram off in the distance, not knowing Nadox was quite literally next to us in a turn off. He only really had one trash pack you had to kill which hastily patrolled around the general area akin to the fast pace Skitterer packs from Spider Wing. He didn't really do a lot, just spawned adds, did intermittent Shield Walls and did some kind of DoT. I can't see this guy being a danger to any group composition I can think of unless Blizzard neglect to do something with Druid's apparent lack of AoE threat tools.
I'm guessing this guy was supposed to be on the platform atop of the big blue pillar thing next to him. Or inside of it. Instead, he was awkwardly next to it but hey; this is beta! When we had killed Herald Volazj and were going back on ourselves to find the boss that we'd missed, we decided to go push the two orb things Ally had noticed earlier had a use cog upon mouseover to see what they did. After some confusion, I noticed that we had caused the blue energy pillar to withdraw and the thin platform it carried was hovering at ground level.
Prince Taldaram, again, wasn't hard. Now and again he would vanish for a few seconds, send out a flame orb and then do a channeled stun on a random person. As great as all that sounds, the flame orb ticks for an inconsequential amount of damage, his vanish seems to be completely pointless and his stun breaks at a very low amount of damage.
Jedoga Shadowseeker is easily the most difficult boss we've fought in the handful of instances we've tried. We actually wiped a few times trying to figure out where the adds were coming from. Initially, we just assumed it was the stuff we'd left up in the room zerging us on the pull but even after we'd cleared it all, it still happened. We then realized that upon initiating her descent, as well as the passive guards that congregate around her in martyrdom, a few elite packs spawn and kneel at the base of the stairs. Due to our level difference with them, we were aggroing them from a fair old distance. We countered this by forcing ourselves into a corner where she then preceded to destroy us because we didn't realize she had a whirlwind and an AoE ground lightning attack thing that we had to move out with.
Oh, she also sacrifices one of elites that spawn bubbled. They slowly walk a very short distance to the circle and commit hara-kiri which you must stop.
We got her on the forth or fifth attempt.
Blizzard are really getting good with their new phasing technology; we've come a long way since Maintaining the Sunwell Portal! At certain percentages of his life, everyone gets put into their own little trance where they have to kill your other four party members as shades. Think of how Leotheras is but not nearly as hard. They appear as elite but they're incredibly easy to kill (unless you're trying to kill a Resto Shaman with no interupt). As I was always the last to be done, it appears that everyone needs to kill before the event can continue.
Easily the most fun boss so far though the game stats that the graphic is a placeholder and he has no voice. It'd be cool if they could add an AQ40 element to it so you get whispered demoralizing statements with regards to your friends loyalty levels. C'thun knew how to create an atmosphere.
The only thing I was confused about in the entire instance was this meat sacrifice item buff thing we all got at the start. I noticed there was a brazier after Volazj. We'll no doubt go back again and do it all without wiping so we'll find out then.