Heart roaring, adrenaline pumping, and stomach churning, the thick breeze howls bringing a bitter chill that chisels away at your bones. Old battles with Onyxia, Ragnaros and Illidan no longer haunt your thoughts. Instead a voice thirsting for hunger continues to cleave your skull open. You must stay focused. Tomorrow you land on the cold, harsh shores of Northrend where the Lich King and the Scourge reside. Their machination is supremacy and destruction too any that stand in the way.

Finally after two years in development, the next installment to Blizzard Entertainment’s highly popular World of Warcraft arrives all over Australia and the servers go live TONIGHT! Before we continue please keep in mind this isn’t a complete review or hands-on of Wrath of the Lich King but instead a small preview covering some of the additions to the game.


What kind of World of Warcraft player are you?

This question is very important because in Wrath of the Lich King there isn’t something for every player. The expansion does add a lot of new content: the first hero class, a whole new continent, siege PvP, ten levels of content which includes gear progression at the cap, and more. The downside is that almost all this content caters to existing players with high-level characters.

New players or ones with no characters leveled to 55 won’t find much new content outside Northrend. Blizzard has already acknowledged this fact and wants players to reach the new content at a quicker pace, so they've changed how long it takes to level to 70. Reaching level 70 is much faster than when The Burning Crusade first launched. Depending on your playstyle it should not take you more than 10 days played to reach level 70 and it’s much quicker if you participate in the recruit-a-friend program.

It’s not always about how fast you can level, but taking your time and relishing the journey. If you are an achiever you may never see the level cap because the achievement system was recently introduced and it opens up alternative objectives for players of all levels.


Hero Class: The Death Knight

One hero class will launch in every expansion starting first with the Death Knight. The Death Knight first appeared in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness but the correlation with the Death Knights in World of Warcraft comes from a second generation lineage seen in both Warcraft III: Reigns of Chaos and Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. The campaigns feature the whole storyline of Arthas evolving into the Lich King. Every World of Warcraft player that is interested in the lore but hasn’t played Warcraft III should check it out.

Starting a Death Knight

Despite a once popular belief preexisting classes do not morph nor are they sacrificed to create a Death Knight. Instead they are created like any other class at the character creation screen but in order to create one there is a requirement. The class is unlocked by having another character already leveled to 55. For the beginning duration of the expansion a Death Knight can only be made on the same realm as a level 55 character. And of course, every race can be a Death Knight.

All Death Knights begin at level 55 in Acherus: The Ebon Hold over the Eastern Plaguelands. Multiple spells and abilities are ready for use, a set of uncommon gear and all the flight paths for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms already learned. The beginning Death Knight will level you all the way to 58, the level required to enter Outland.

There are many places to find the numbers and theory-crafting on the different combination that make the best Death Knight but for the sake of brevity we won't get into the complexities.

There are three roles that all classes fall into: limiting damage, dealing damage and sustaining damage. Most classes combine all three in some form and of course fall under all roles in group or solo situations but are quite formidable in one role more than another.

Death Knights rely on avoidance so a combination of limiting and sustaining damage. They aren't the best DPS class but they hold their own and beta reports indicate they do more DPS than Warriors. Talent wise each tree is beneficial to situational tanking: Unholy provides more utility for AOE tanking, Frost benefits more in raid tanking situations, and Blood is good for threat generation while tanking.


Dungeons and Raids

There’s something about the exuberance thrill from fierce raid instances that culminate into a final battle with the likes of Kil’jaeden or Illidan. It’s hard to beat the rush from such premiere epic battles but most World of Warcraft players never set foot in the Black Temple or Sunwell Plateau because it simply isn’t accessible.

Opening up raid accessibility is crucial and in Wrath of the Lich King every raid instance is tuned towards 25 player groups but also 10 player groups. The loot tables differ in quality with one tier higher loot dropping in the 25 player scenarios. There will be no attunements or keys necessary to enter any raid instance. The 10 and 25 player instances are also on separate timers. The difficulty will scale between the two versions but overall raid difficulty in the expansion isn't as crazy as it was in the Burning Crusade.

All five person dungeons have a Heroic mode and drop tokens or badges that can be used to purchase gear. The major difference from TBC is that heroic dungeons in WotLK have a completely different loot table than non-Heroics. Also the days where it took hours to run a dungeon are a thing of the past. Dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King are designed to take around an hour to finish.


Major Innovations: Phasing

“There’s nothing new. It’s more of the same. There’s a lack of true innovation.” You hear these criticisms often and there’s a cynical truth to them. Expansions are additions to existing based games and not radical departures. So innovations tend to happen in small steps and normally they aren’t innovations to the genre but they are to the game. There is something in Wrath of the Lich King that is significant enough to be considered a major innovation. It is a technology that Blizzard calls phasing and it will be used on a wide scale.

Phasing is sort of instancing without loading a traditional instance. This technology opens another dimension in a space where the state and surroundings differ. So for example if you complete some quests the world around you changes to reflect the outcome, but for other players that haven’t completed the quests the world hasn’t changed. This is done without a traditional instance.

The technology first appeared in the Burning Crusade with the quests in Shadowmoon Valley that require Spectrecles and the Intercepting the Manacell quest in Blades Edge Mountains. In the later quest, the Bashi’r Phasing Device transforms your surroundings into a darker atmosphere and new monsters but the transition is seamless.

This phasing technology is more advanced and is used in other parts and quests all over Northrend. It makes the world feel more dynamic and immersive, and it revitalizes content by reusing the same areas without traditional instancing.


Collector's Edition!

The Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition is quite handsome and very shiny. Forking over the extra dough isn’t the problem. It’s finding that trove of goodies that has you salivating at the mouth. What makes it worth the price? Check out the loot inside:

-Two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game started decks from the March of the Legion card expansion. Along with two exclusive cards only available in the Collector’s Edition.
-The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a 208-page book filled with the awe inspiring and never before seen images from the game.
-An exclusive in-game pet: Frosty, the baby frost wyrm.
-The official sound track CD, containing 21 tracks from Wrath of the Lich King including other bonus tracks.
-A behind-the-scenes DVD, featuring an hour of developer commentary, the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic with director’s commentary, and more.
-A mouse pad that features Northrend on it. Never get lost again!

Well, that brings us to an end for now. I'm disappointed that we did not have the time or beta access to bring you a better overview of the game before the launch day. I will be playing an unhealthy amount for the next few months and I wish you all the best in your new adventures in Northrend.

“Those of you, who have the will to save this land, follow me. The rest of you… get out of my sight!”