World of Warcaft: Blackwing Lair
Lore:
While the Dark Iron Dwarves toil away in the middle of Blackrock Mountain trying to raise Ragnaros, the black dragon Nefarian sits at the top plotting away how to kill Raggy when he wakes up. Normally, that would make us best buddies with Nefarian, but he’s mostly trying to eliminate his competition for world domination.
The other part of this is that he’s pulling blood from all the dragonflights together to make the Chromatic Dragonflight, following up on his father (Deathwing)’s plan to make super dragons to kill off the other flights. So there’s plenty of motivation to stick a fork in ol’ Neffy.
Degree of Difficulty: Hard
I’ll make the point that, while Blackwing Lair is at least partially soloable, you won’t be able to do the first section of the instance without at least one other person, probably more. One person has to mind control a mob and destroy the chromatic eggs, while the others defend it.
Nefarian himself is not all that difficult any more, especially since you probably won’t be fighting him at level, so you’re going to pass all the gear checks by default. The biggest issue with that fight will be handling the waves of mobs that he summons in short order so that you can down the boss himself.
Special Features:
The biggest thing about this instance is that Elementium ore drops here, which you need to craft the game’s first legendary weapons. If you’re interested in owning one (just to own one at this point), you’ll likely have to clear Blackwing Lair up to Nefarian at least a few times. You can also get Nefarian’s head, which starts a nice Level 60 quest which not many people have completed. You can also get the red shard for the Scepter of the Sands questline, which was the introduction to Ahn’Qiraj. For all currently available servers, it’s meaningless (You can’t become a Scarab Lord or get the black Qiraj mount anymore), but it’s one of the most amazing and worthwile vanilla questlines.
Recommended for Levels: 60-65
Vanilla raiding at it’s finest, I think. There’s an interesting gimmick at the beginning, one towards the end (a DoT that you need to clear with sand that drops off mobs in the area). And the rest of the place is mostly one giant loot corridor with clear direction and some good fights and bosses to battle through.
There’s not much to it any more though. It’s a good primer for Cataclysm, because Nefarian sets the storyline for his father’s return well, and there are some really fun gimmicks to fight through, but the lack of reward doesn’t make them worth learning. If you’re looking for the achievement or to make Sulfuras and Thunderaan? You’re already running it. If not, you can probably skip it.