I don't know if you all have noticed yet, but the 5 man dungeons in Outland are hard. Like they actually require skill, group coordination, and class knowledge hard. Like Coldlight on the forums, I love it.

When you first get in there, things start out fairly easy-- Ramparts and Blood Furnace bosses have their quirks (the last guy in Blood Furnace plays out like a mini-Geddon with the AoE, but he gives you so much warning, it's no real trouble to get away in time), but the good stuff starts coming later. In Slave Pens, there are trash mobs (not bosses) that lay down mind control, and they come with a whole crowd of people. There are 5 man bosses in Auchindoin that do some nasty AoE and bosses that require DPS control (the stuff that Dives yells about). Durnholde and Black Morass in CoT are two tough instances that grab on to you and don't let go until you're all dead or the instance is over. And then, just when you think you've broken everything Blizzard has to offer, you try Heroic mode, and the difficulty ramps right back up again (perhaps in disproportion to the gear offered, but that's another story).

WoW is not a hard game by any means-- that's why so many people like it so much. But especially now, when almost no one has picked up the top endgame gear, more than a few groups are actually finding a serious challenge. I'm having a lot of fun working through it (wiping isn't that fun, but winning after the wipe is), but players who were just messing around in PUGs before are being forced to learn their stuff, or wipe out. It's a whole new endgame out there.

Alistairover of Thunderhorn (who is an oomkin guildie of mine, and, I must say, regularly outdps's higher level warlocks, rogues and hunters) dropped a note to me in guild chat about Talon King Ikiss, the last boss in Sethekk Halls. We ran that place together last week, and the boss has an Area of Effect spell that hurts a lot, but can be interrupted with kicks, Earth Shocks, or any other interruption spell. Not so much anymore, however, says Ali.

Apparently 2.07 made him invulnerable to almost any type of interruption, and players aren't happy about it. I'll still say the fight's not completely impossible (there's a strategy where you can all group around him to keep him from blinking, and then hide behind a pillar to avoid line of sight on the AoE, and another strat where you just do what you can to time heals with the AoE and keep clothies out of range, and I'm sure interested parties will include more in the comments below), but I haven't done it myself since the patch-- I've just heard it's very, very hard.

Additionally, Illhoof, a boss in Karazhan, got a nice undocumented buff-- his shadowbolts hit harder, as does his Imp. Players at that level (that's a fight I haven't done at all yet) say he's so hard he's not even worth the drops at this point. And another boss in Karazhan, the Maiden of Virtue, got a little bit of a buff on her "Repentance" spell, but apparently the fight's still easy.

As of this writing, there's no official Blizzard response to any of this, which could be taken either way, but is probably a pretty good indication these are all working as intended. Sethekk Halls, it seems, just got a bit harder.

Update: Our own Eliah Hecht reports that Tseric has said "working as intended" on the Illhoof and Maiden buffs, but "communication breakdown" prevented it from showing up in the patch notes. More info in the comments.