Wrath of the Lich King

The new World of Warcraft expansion module, called “Wrath of the Lich King” (WoTLK) had a midnight launch November 12, 2008.  There were huge lines at these events, which were only held in major cities.  Those players who were not near such an event found themselves with a back-order at their favorite game store.  Within the first month, more than 4 million copies were sold.  It was reported that the World of Warcraft’s global community has now grown to more than 11.5 million subscribers.

So what the heck does this new launch do for us, besides making the parent company, Blizzard Entertainment, and its founders, very wealthy.

Well, it introduces a new character, the Death Knight Hero Class.  It now allows players the ability to change facets of their character’s appearance, introduces a new Inscription profession, provides a host of new Counties and Dungeons to explore, and also newly created quests with a new design that allows players to level up from their previous cap of 70 to a new level 80.

I would first like to say that the quests in WotLK are by far the best designed of any MMORPG ever made.  This goes far beyond simply doing excellent quests that keep you entertained as you advance in your levels.  Blizzard has taken a very interesting approach here of instancing the game for you as you level.  What this means is that the world will alter around any players who are on a particular quest, making those players feel as if they were enjoying a single-player experience.  Once the “instanced” quest line is finished, the world is seamlessly, and without any additional software loading, switched back into “persistent-world” mode.

So Blizzard first introduces you to this new feature as you create and level your new Death Knight character.  This allows the player to fully get involved in the story, and tells how the player is able to free themselves from the Lich King Arthas.

I was able to thoroughly enjoy this new story of the Lich King, and I found the changing of my environment was creating a fully understandable life of my characters roots.  It is too bad that Blizzard cannot go back and upgrade all of the game like this, as I found it to be the most fun.

The biggest problem that I have seen so far today is that there are too many Death Knight characters created.  This means that every server on World of Warcraft has an abundance of “tanks” and a limited supply of Priests (“healers”).  As an example, while I level up my Priest in Northrend (a new territory), I am constantly being sent private messages to please help them with group quests, instances, and raids.  I believe it will be quite awhile before each server has enough “healers” to satisfy everyone.  So if you are first starting out with the game, choose a “healer” and watch how popular you will become.  This means that you will always be able to join in on Raids and obtain all of those sweet purple, elite gear to wear.  You will be the envy of your guild.

So overall, I will have to admit that this expansion module has been well worth it!

By: Daniel Evans