World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

It is no great surprise that World of Warcraft is as big a hit as it has clearly become. Its 10 million subscribers (no doubt increasing by the second) have been captivated by its ability to be simple to learn, but complex to master. In recent times, it has even managed to keep the more casual gamer playing with its daily quests scheme and an easier levelling curve, a feat that is no mean task when you look at how other MMOs have struggled to maintain their user base. Throw in some excellent marketing (who hasn't seen Mr T or William Shatner advertise this? It even made my mother pay attention) and you're onto a winner. But to keep that trend up, Blizzard needs to keep adding innovation to its Warcraft world and it certainly looks like it's doing that with Wrath of the Lich King.

Unlike The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King is primarily aimed at the end-game players, with nine new zones aimed at level 68+ players with a variety of new instances suitable for a variety of different purposes; the level cap being increased to 80, a new and unique outdoor PvP area and a new neutral capital city, Dalaran. Lake Wintergrasp will be WoW's first non-battleground zone that is solely devoted to PvP action, even on PvE servers. There are plans for a fixed schedule of attacking and defending the area for both factions, as well as a variety of new daily quests. For those more interested in new instances, there are many dungeons aimed at 70+ players with a mixture of five man instances and larger 10 or 25 raid scenarios. Ulduar is one that will interest many end-game players as it is planned to be the next progression step from Naxxramas. Some of the five man instances should only take a couple of hours to complete for many groups which makes it ideal for those who can’t devote a full day to raiding. After all, Blizzard have to contend with the fact that many of their players have now grown up with the game and may not have as much time to raid as they used to. Thus there is plenty for both hardcore raiders and more casual players to sink their teeth into.

Besides new zones for high level characters, there are a few bonuses for all players. There is the addition of a barbershop facility, to be implemented in Ironforge, Stormwind, the Undercity, Ogrimmar and Dalaran, which look like they will be added in the new patch around the launch of Wrath of the Lich King - rather than solely for expansion owners. Nothing has been confirmed yet. These will enable players to change their haircuts for a small in-game monetary fee; a small, cosmetic effect but its always nice to see little things added to a long-running game such as this, especially for free.

With a nod to Xbox Live’s method of doing things, there will be a new achievement system available to all players encompassing 500 unique achievements with more to come, Blizzard assures. From what I have seen, they range from the standard ‘reach level 50/reach level 60’ tasks to such randomness as ‘fall 65 yards without dying while drunk’, and slaying a number of turkeys in a set time. There is even one devoted to hugging corpses of players you have killed in PvP. Blizzard promise that some of these achievements will be linked to in-game rewards such as tabards, pets and unique titles although nothing has been demonstrated yet. Everyone likes to be acknowledged for their accomplishments so it will be nice to see rewards for even the most obscure of achievements. The eventual plan is to link these to a universal Blizzard account so that other Blizzard products can also have achievements, essentially leading to a gamerscore system much like Xbox Live.

For the professional grinders there will also be the addition of the Glyph interface. These glyphs add another layer of depth to the game's upgrade system with the ability to add up to six Glyphs, comprising of Greater, Lesser and Minor. All of these Glyphs provide upgrades to spells at various levels, ranging from greater Glyphs enabling abilities such as increased damage in spell-casting to minor Glyphs merely changing the colour of a spell graphic. These Glyphs are created through the use of the new Inscription skill, which is bound to make more creative players very happy, as will the new increased profession caps.

Of course, I can't forget to mention arguably the most exciting part of the new expansion - a new class to play: the Death Knight. However, this is a new class with a twist. For one thing, you can't play as a Death Knight from level 1, one of your other characters has to be level 55 or above. You can then create a Death Knight as a separate entity from your original 55+ character, meaning you don't lose access to any of your existing characters. You start as a level 55 Death Knight in Archerus, the Ebon Hold within the Eastern Plaguelands. The Death Knight is the first 'hero' class within the game. A plate-wearing DPS based tank character; the class uses a new resource system based on cooldowns. Instead of using mana or rage like other classes, you can carve runes into your character's weapons and then use those runes to power abilities. The initial few opening quests teach you all of this as well as help you acquire and learn to use your new skills, which include your own skeletal Deathcharger mount. The early stages of playing as a Death Knight are cleverly scripted in a manner that quickly grabs the player’s imagination, drawing you into the world of the Death Knight very well. In a strange sort of way, the scripting added a bit of morality to the character, pillaging villages felt so easy in early quests; it felt cruel on these simple NPCs, they didn’t stand a chance against the might of my Death Knight. This seems to be the exact reason why the early quests are so tightly scripted, they are meant to make you realise just how powerful your character is and it adds a nice role-playing element to a game that is often lacking in 'true' role-playing. Plus it’s just plain fun to feel quite so incredibly powerful, even if these villagers are just minions in the grand scheme of things. Most of the early quests are reasonably entertaining, and are even fairly humorous in places such as one quest involving stealing a house being called Grand Theft Palomino, a nice homage to GTA.

As well as these large additions, there are also graphical updates to be introduced with the expansion launch patch and some fairly major class changes. As so many long term Warcraft players know, every class seems to have its day of being amazing before getting ‘nerfed’ in favour of another class. This time round, it looks to be Paladins that may have the most successful improvement with this patch, but only time will tell just how long that will remain the case. There are a few minor bugs floating around such as NPCs being impossible to click on, but already this pack shaping up to be a quality addition to the World of Warcraft franchise. It is perhaps a bit of a shame for lower level players that it's not really worth their time buying this expansion yet, as so many of the relevant features for them look to be introduced in the patch anyhow, but at least it will give them impetus to get levelling-up to see just how much fun it is to play as a Death Knight, and it's certainly much easier to level up from 1-55 than it used to be.

I honestly can’t see any Warcraft player being annoyed by any of these additions; it is shaping up to be a worthy supplement that will keep many addicts going through those dark winter nights. I should know, I’ll be one of them.