I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about the change to the spellpower stat, even if from just the naming perspective. In Utgarde Keep, the Priest had won the "Blah De Blah Blade of Evocation," whereas I was now hauling around "Life-Staff of the Rabblerabble Blah." You'd assume one would be meant for healers and the other for, uh, not-healers and while the other stats probably reflect this, the most important one is the exact same.
I could do a further discussion of this, but I'll refrain ... for now.
We move down the spider-web that Hadronox had so thoughtfully cleared for us, and come to a large hole that is obviously meant for us to jump down. So we do. It feels slightly like a similar moment in the very first dungeon back in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and that's probably intentional - but that's just fine with me, because Ocarina of Time kicked ass.
Thankfully, our landing is cushioned by water in a thorough thumbing-of-the-nose at physics, and we exit the pool to see (granted, a ways away) Anub'Arak himself, the final boss! ...however, the passage to him is cut off by what is apparently the world's strongest spider-web. Despite being five seasoned adventurers with enough destructive power between us to equal the army of a small nation, we're stymied by this little sheet of silk.
That was kinda anti-climactic.
Of course, it's Beta, and if a dungeon isn't complete, it isn't complete. That said, Azjol-Nerub is already ... well, it feels like they may have scaled it back a bit too far, because it's already startlingly short. There are a few pulls before the first boss, then a few pulls before the second boss, and I can't imagine there being all that many more in the one chamber before we're staring Anub'Arak in the face. Of course there's nothing inherently bad about having quick dungeons. Personally, I appreciate them. Even so, it seems like something with the potential scope of Azjol-Nerub deserves ... well, something a tad grander, know what I mean?
The same goes for Anub'Arak: of all the lore characters we've seen so far, he's really the first to not at least be the boss of a max-level instance. He deserves bigger, though I suppose that there always is the possibility that we'll see him make a triumphant return from the dead in Icecrown Citadel. I certainly hope so.
While it's short and perhaps less ambitious than it could have been - or even should have been - what is there in Azjol-Nerub is pretty damn fun, and I look forward to going back to it when it's fully complete to see how the whole thing holds up. For the moment, though, we'd had our share of spiders and creepy-crawlies. After a port to Orgrimmar and a zeppelin ride to the Borean Tundra, we were headed to the third dungeon available for our level range: the Nexus.
Coldarra, the stronghold of the Blue Dragonflight in northwestern Borean Tundra, is walled off by an imposing mountain range. Without access to our trusty flying mounts, we were stumped as to how we were supposed to get in. There weren't any ground passes as far as we could tell, and the server's dying spasms of lag didn't help our search for a teleportation device or something along those lines.
Once the server restart came and we could actually see and interact with NPCs, we finally found it - a Red Dragon at the Amber Ledge that handily doubles as a flight point, taking us directly to Coldarra and the Nexus.
It bears mentioning that the Nexus looks really cool. No, seriously. It looks awesome, and screenshots do not do it justice.
Coldarra is a quest hub in and of itself with backstory to further flesh out the war against the Blue Flight, though it basically all falls under the category of "Malygos is crazy, k? Insanity and obscene magical power usually don't mix well."
From what I've heard, the quests leading up to the Nexus are actually pretty awesome, but we'll get to those when it's time to give this place another visit! 
