World of Warcraft: Upper Blackrock Spire
Lore:
Like Lower Blackrock Spire, this is a staging area for Rend Blackhand and his Dark Horde. Because apparently the regular Horde just wasn’t violent enough for ol’ Rend. Also because he thought he should be the Warchief and not Thrall.
The unique lore feature of Upper Blackrock Spire is that it’s the last outpost in Blackrock Mountain before Blackwing Lair, the home of Nefarian and the Black Dragonflight. Rend holds the fort down, trying to protect his master from intruders, and the black dragons share their power, mounts, and wealth with the Dark Horde. Sounds like a good deal, right?
Degree of Difficulty: Hard
There are a lot of enemies in Upper Blackrock Spire and they all come fast and hard. For a fully geared (even at the time) group of 10, it was tricky, but not impossible. But if you were even the least bit unprepared for the instance, you were going to get mopped up. Especially during the Glyth/Rend battle. General Drakkisath was actually pretty cake compared to that.
In fact, most of the boss fights were wars of attrition more than anything else, even back in the day. Once you have a good grasp of the mechanics of each fight, it’s just boring chipping away. Sort of like raiding is now, but with even less options for how to get things done, and less interesting boss fight mechanics.
Special Features:
The Jenkins title, of course. One of the easiest titles to earn in the game, and one that just about eveyrbody wants to get, even if they never use it. Even people who claim to hate it more than anything, probably have it. Also, completing this instance will get you the quest that starts attunement for Blackwing Lair.
Recommended for Levels: 60-80
It’s an old school raid. Either you’re one of those people that’s fascinated with doing vanilla content, especially soloing it just because you can, then you’re probably going to run it. This is especially true of those “Retro Raider” guilds out there that level cap themselves at 60 and pretend Vanilla never ended. And there are a lot more of those groups out there than you think.
I can’t recommend it for anyone else at all, though. I mean, it’s worth going to once and seeing how starter raids looked four years ago, but past that UBRS is the most worthless of the Vanilla raids. The bosses aren’t too difficult once you understand them, and the trash packs are just mildly annoying. Take a friend so you can laugh at the old style raiding and make an afternoon of it, but otherwise avoid this one.