'Mists of Pandaria' raids will come in stages, first due a week after launch

"World of Warcraft" will introduce raid content for "Mists of Pandaria" in stages.

Blizzard will introduce raid content for "Mists of Pandaria", World of Warcraft's latest expansion, in delayed stages, with the first possibly hitting "a week or so" after launch, Battle.net reports.

The first raid instance will be the Mogu'shan Vaults, an abandoned complex housing powerful artifacts of the ancient ogre-like mogu race. Players will team up with a non-playable Loremaster – one of Pandaria's historians – to guide them through the vault and its six boss encounters. The dungeon will have both normal and Heroic modes with both 10- and 25-player versions and a special 25-player Raid Finder version.

"One idea we're considering is to delay opening Mogu'shan Vaults until a week or so after the expansion's release, similar to how we've always handled the start of the PvP season, just to give players a little time to reach level 90 along with their friends and get acclimated to Pandaria's new 5-player dungeons, daily quests, and scenarios," said lead encounter designer Scott Mercer. "In any case, Mogu'shan Vaults is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the raid content we have lined up for Mists."

"Mists of Pandaria" will include two other raid zones, the Heart of the Fear and the Terrace of Endless Springs, which Blizzard will make available a few weeks after the Vaults. These raids will feature a two-part story and 10 bosses between them. "Both of these instances are a higher tier than the Mogu'shan Vaults and are designed to be tackled using gear obtained in the Vaults, which is why we plan to make them accessible a few weeks after the Vaults unlock," said Ion Hazzikostas, lead encounter designer alongside Mercer.

Blizzard will reveal more information on raid content prior to the release of patch 5.1. "Mists of Pandaria" will release on September 25th.