World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

"To the mountains of thunder and plains of dead snow, The Lich King awaits."

World of Warcraft is not just any online game anymore. Ever since it was released, it has continued to reinforce itself as the breakthrough of Massive Multiplayer Online Games, the game that made an entire genre of games household. After many years, the first expansion finally arrived, The Burning Crusade. It did not disappoint, and only further ensured that World of Warcraft continued to grow. But there was always the question about picking up the pieces left from Warcraft 3 and it's expansion The Frozen Throne, so Blizzard set out to finally let us take up the fight against the one and only Lich King.

Behold, Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion of World of Warcraft was released to once again critical acclaim and massive sales. It's soon a year since it was released, and it struck me that I had still not reviewed it. You want to know why? I have simply been too busy playing it.

But here it is, with some thoughts ten months later on why Blizzard once again has made an all around excellent expansion pack to the already biggest and best MMORPG on the market.

Story and Concept
Illidan has been taken care of. Turns out the heroes of Azeroth were more than enough prepared for him after all. The threat from Outland has been stopped for now, and life goes on. But both the Alliance and the Horde knows that there has always been a greater threat waiting for them, in the cold lands of Northrend. The fallen paladin Arthas, who once took up the mighty and cursed sword of Frostmourne and turned into The Lich King, has been waiting and plotting to eradicate all life and turn everything into undeath. His plans are now coming into motion, but both factions led by the newly formed Argent Crusade have landed on his doorsteps to take up the fight and prevent the Lich King from eradicating all life.

So it begins, as both Alliance and Horde crosses the frozen sea over to the unwelcoming lands of Northrend to begin battle with the most dangerous threat Azeroth has ever faced. Along the way, uneasy alliances must be formed, new friends awaits and old foes reappear in an epic journey into the frozen heart of Northrend.

The story of Wrath of the Lich King is so much better told than Burning Crusade. Where that expansion suffered heavily from a lack of focus and integration between gameplay and story, Lich King improves greatly on this and finally puts the villain of the story in the center of everything. Arthas's presence is felt everywhere as he pops up several times during the course of the expansion and directly interacts with both NPC's and the players. The end result is a much better experience than Burning Crusade, a better focus on getting the story back on track and progressing the world as you quest and level. This was one of the issues that both players and even Blizzard themselves complained about with Burning Crusade, as the main villain of the story was never really felt throughout the game until his defeat, and even that didn't do much for those who didn't actually slay him. It's good to see that they have taken this seriously, because it really does add to the experience to know that there's an omnipresent threat watching you. The fact that he shows up to mock or taunt you for many of your triumphs only adds to the sense that you're dealing with someone so powerful, but arrogantly confident in his own abilities that it really motivates you to put an end to him.

Gameplay
The basic gameplay of WoW remains identical, and thus should need little explanation or mention in this review. This section will focus only on the additions and changes brought by the expansion, and will require some basic knowledge about the core mechanics of WoW to fully understand.

WotLK further improves on the basic concept of the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade. It adds ten levels from 70 to 80, which is gained on the new continent which this time is Northrend. Northrend is divided into several zones just like the other continents, split up in different level ranges to ensure a smooth progression from 70 to 80. You can actually start questing in Northrend at 68, but most veterans playing the game will most likely already have a 70 character waiting. All zones provides enough quests to do one or two levels, almost regardless of where you are on the level range. This is great, as it gives you the liberty to play around and pick zones you want to quest in. Although you cannot challenge yourself too much as quests just a few levels higher than you are unavailable until you reach suitable levels, you're still free enough to generally choose at any time between several places to level and quest. Not enough to reduce the feeling of repetition when you replay with alts, but it does help the few first times to mix things up.

Northrend itself, as previously mentioned is divided into ten new zones. Not all of the zones are used for questing and leveling, there's a dedicated PvP zone where Alliance and Horde fight each other to gain control of the zone and a special raid instance. This is not mandatory, and players freely choose if they want to participate in the battle or not. There's also another zone that doesn't really serve any other real purpose than for lore and to contain the brand new (or Old, depending on how you look at it) city, Dalaran. But except for those two zones, you got eight zones full of quests and instances to ensure a very enjoyable experience from 68-80.

If there is one thing to critize with the way the actual leveling and questing is done, it is that more than ever before it starts to feel like you're questing on a rail. You're constantly guided by hand from start to finish in every zone, new items opening up quest chains conveniently dropping of a mob you need to kill in a quest you're already are doing. More than ever, the sense of freedom to choose your own path is getting reduced. Compared to leveling up a character in the old continents from 1-60, the leveling from 68-80 feels really predestined and too convenient. There's hardly any exploration needed, hardly any surprises or choices needed to be made. You always have a few hubs you go through until they're depleted of quests, and once that's done you'll rarely ever have any reason to go back. Low level zones will never ask of you to visit a high level zone, or offer tempting reasons to go back once you've long past the level range recommended for that zone. While I guess this is Blizzards attempt to streamline the leveling of the game, it does actually make leveling alts more boring as you're bound to follow the same paths over and over for each alt, despite trying to vary between the zones. For the first two times or so however, leveling in Northrend is a great and hugely enjoyable experience that provides you with several great moments, fun quests and lots of gold and good rewards. It's hard to complain too much about the progression path as Blizzard has clearly put in a very polished and balanced journey from 68 to 80, but one can only hope that some of the sense of choices and freedom is restored in the next expansion.

Blizzard has added something called "Phasing" to the game with Wrath of the Lich King. Phasing allows the game engine to adapt itself to your current status in the game. One questchain in the later zones begin as you clear out a heavy undead attack, before advancing into heavy undead territory to build up a new base. As you complete your quests, you'll see how the environments and NPC's changes until you have managed to secure and build a brand new outpost complete with a flightpoint. Only those who have completed the chain will see the new outpost, for those who haven't yet it will still be an undead-infested location. While the system isn't put to full use in the entire game yet, it shows a promising beginning to the number one problem, "How to advance the virtual world while providing the same content to everyone on all levels". An option to turn it on and off would be handy, as it can also cause some problems if you're trying to help someone who haven't done those quests yet. You're then not seeing the same thing as your party members, which causes some problems especially for later group quests. But overall, phasing is a fantastic new technology of the game that can really help you feel like what you do effects the game world.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Lich King is the new class, The Death Knight. Even more than the two new races in previous expansion, this is a game defining moment where Blizzard finally added a brand new class into an established game with preset roles and classes that have been finetuned. How would the Death Knight work with the old roles and classes? The answer is surprisingly well. That Blizzard has managed to create a brand new class, deeply planted in lore, while balancing it so well this late into the game, is a testament to the great skill and ability the staff has.

The Death Knight is essentially a hybrid Tank/Melee Damage class that is more proficient at fighting magical bosses. Unlike Warriors and Paladins, they usually tank with a two-handed weapon backed up with the proper talents to make up for the lack of damagemigration, and are not only capable of tanking everything the other classes can, but also deal a great deal of damage. Death Knights doesn't have to be Tanks, and can be pure Melee Damage classes as well where they tend to be really powerful and can stand up to most pure Damage classes. At first, Death Knights were too powerful, which created alot of tension and overflow of them. As they have gradually become more balanced, the amounts of Death Knights have started evening out, and at this point they have started to gather a proper playerbase on the same size as other popular classes. It is still a very popular and powerful class with high survivability and damage, but they are no longer the undisputed best class and like all other classes, now require correct skill and gear to master properly.

When it comes to talent specs, Death Knights have three different trees. Blood, Frost and Unholy. Blood is mainly for singletarget melee damage with plenty of self healing and damage. Frost is the main tank spec, focusing on important talent to make up for the lack of a shield and improving survival while maintaining the high damage. Unholy is more focused on using the various undead minions, diseases and magical attacks for damage and offers some unique talents. Overall, all three talents work well enough, while Blood and Frost definitely seem to be the more popular ones Unholy is still a fun spec.

Another unique thing about Death Knights, is that unlike other classes, they start at level 55 and quickly gain their unique mount and plenty of good gear to help them through Outland. As soon as you start playing a Death Knight, you get the feeling that it's a powerful class and this is really evident once you hit Outland as the monsters there drops fast and easy.

Death Knights have their own starting zone with an epic introduction quest chain where they break free from The Lich King's grasp, and joins up with The Alliance or The Horde, depending on what race you picked. All races can enjoy Death Knights, which have been met with some complaints as it was hard to take Gnome or Tauren Death Knights seriously, but this has died out and the class is starting to become a natural part of the game.

The new content doesn't stop with Death Knights. Another profession is introduced, this time it's Inscription. Inscription is a form of enhancement to spells and abilities, where the Inscriptor makes glyphs out of crushed herbs and parchments. These glyphs can then put in a new glyphs Windows to enhance your stats. All classes have different glyphs as they are Class-specific, and while there's a healthy selection of glyphs for each class, not all of them are useful. But variety is the spice of life, and there's a big chance every player will find a few glyphs they like. It's only possible to have six glyphs equipped at the same time on max level, so one has to choose carefully. However, glyphs can be swapped and changed anytime, but the old glyph will be destroyed if overwritten by a new one. A short description would be that Inscription works like Enchanting, but on your spells and abilities instead of gear. An interesting profession that has taken it's place along the older ones as yet another well-tuned and useful choice.

Of course there is also new abilities and talents, as the players are given ten additional talent points to spend from 70 to 80. Combined with some very popular and powerful new talents, it has opened up new builds, or improved multibuilds that were previously a few talents too short to be possible. All classes are given a pretty decent collection of talents, and none really walk away as the one class with best new abilities. With the introduction of Dual Specialization, players can now pay a one time fee to have two sets of talentbuilds at any time and switch between them for free out of combat. Hybrid gameplay is greatly improved as it makes it much more attractive to take those classes to a raid as they can provide healing, DPS or tanking as the groups need.

One must also mention the new city, Dalaran. While being old in terms of Warcraft history, it makes its grand entrance floating above Crystalsong Forest. Dalaran is probably the most living, breathing cities Blizzard has ever made. The place is full of details, it's even fun to just windowshop and look at the various items and objects in every shop. There's even a petshop where you can look at various beasts in small cages. Dalaran is the smallest city in the game, but it's also the best because it contains almost everything one could want. Portals to all cities, even to Caverns of Time and the new PvP zone when your faction got it. It got the obligatory group of daily quests, tons of NPC's, profession trainers and banks. The only thing lacking is class trainers and auction houses, which really must remain in the old cities to ensure population is spread around. Otherwise, Dalaran is a smashing success, although many experience heavy lag in the city.

Once again, new instances and raids are introduced, both during the leveling from 70 to 80, and also in the current endgame. These are generally of a solid quality, shorter than they were in both the original game and Burning Crusade, but they suffer from the same problem as the more streamlined content. It really feels more than ever like you're on rails. Small stationary trash groups standing around in linear progression, with bosses that generally have a very small loot-table. Heroic instances works a little better as once again you're rewarded emblems that you can gather up and use to buy gear, but normal instances feel almost pointless as soon as you hit 80 because of the low difficulty and even lower reward. Raid instances are better, it starts off with a visit from an old friend Naxxramas, who many might remember as the ultimate 40 man instance back in the original game. Here it's available in two versions, both 10 and 25 man, and is on the whole an entertaining raid instance, but much easier and accessible than raiding was at the beginning of Burning Crusade, which leads me to one complaint many has brought up. Overall difficulty of the game seems to have decreased, and while some optional raiding challenges truly only are for the best of the best, much of the content seems easier than before all over the board despite Blizzards attempts to ramp up the difficulty with new raids.

The core gameplay is what it has always been, and fans of the original game and Burning Crusade need not worry about Wrath of the Lich King. It introduces a new solid class, a good profession, tons of quests, gear and content and enough addiction to keep people hooked for months upon months until the next expansion arrives. It does however also further show a few problems that started becoming visible in The Burning Crusade, a redesigned focus on how to level and play has streamlined the game, perhaps turned it a little too easy and linear and removing much of the open world feeling there once was. Not only during questing and leveling, but also normal instances gets boring really fast because once you've done them once, you've seen all there is. There's no random elements, no super-rare bosses or mounts or special items to make it extra exciting to do them several times. It really gets old fast, and not even the first time manages to quite capture the excitement as it should. Raids however continue to be exciting and rewarding.

Graphics
Cranked up in highest possible resolution with all details activated, World of Warcraft is still a very pretty game. While not spectacular anymore it still manages to look just as charming and beautiful as it did four years ago. In a world where realistic looking MMO's are everywhere, having a more cartoonish look is refreshing, and logically enough it ages much better than most other games that goes for realistic graphics. Take a look at Snow White. It's as enjoyable now as it was then, despite the initial awe being less after being used to fancy animation and 3D and even sharper 2D animation. So while WoW is getting on the years, it holds up surprisingly well as the engine seems to be very capable of gradual improvements that maintains the original look while enhancing the visual quality and effects.

Some visual elements have been improved especially for the expansion, with Shadows and Fire the two biggest improvements. Fire looks better and more natural, although not completely right yet. Shadows can look very good now, but at a heavy cost of system requirements. It's very taxing to even increase from standard shadowing to a slightly more detailed one, and with a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, 4GB DDR2 Ram and a Geforce 8600GT and the game already running very smooth at 1680*1050 resolution, the framerate was already dropping quite notably for every step of increased shadows, more than any other visual change. However, the payoff is worth it if you got the system. It really does look alot better.

It's worth talking a little bit about Northrend itself. Generally, Northrend should be a cold and nasty place where the temperature is freezing and life struggles to survive between the biting cold and the undeads crawling around. However, one can't help but be surprised about how lifelike and varied the continent actually is. Neither of the two starting zones, Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord presents any bitter winter except for a few areas with snow, and it's not at all devoid of life. Harsher climate and nature is all around but the first impression one gets when entering Northrend is not what one would believe from the continent under Arthas' icy grasp of death. Actually, there's really only four zones that is under a bitter winter and it doesn't really seem so bad as one got the impression from the previews. There's even a lush junglelike zone, not unlike the Un'Goro Crater from the original continents. While having ten zones full of ice and snow wouldn't be all that interesting, it does somewhat lessen the impact of going to Northrend. Dun Morogh and Winterspring from the original continents feels just as cold and harsh as anything in Northrend, with the exception of Icecrown.

Icecrown is the final zone in Northrend, with the biggest amount of group quests and it houses the home of The Lich King, Arthas himself. Much of Icecrown contains his absolutely massive fortress of cold, dead steel and his citadel is an impressive structure that oozes dread and undeath. While undoubtedly ripped off Tolkien's visual style, at least Peter Jackson's version of Lord of the Rings, there's something to be said about his Citadel and it's imposing might.

The general visual quality of the game remains pretty much the same constantly, but small subtle improvements continue to appear, and while a full engine overhaul would be needed to make up for the now aging graphics, the game continue to look pretty good, while running nicely on just about any system out there. If you can play the original, or Burning Crusade, Lich King will run just as fine with perhaps a few hit to your framerate during the more intense moments.

Sound
Blizzard has always had a strong focus on the quality of the sound in their games, and Wrath of the Lich King is no exception. The music is absolutely stunning for a videogame, with several themes being both beautiful and powerful. The mighty and glorious theme for Dalaran never fails to impress, the subtle and quite frankly hauntingly beautiful parts of the theme to Storm Peaks left me stopping up for a moment just so I could hear it all in it's quiet glory. Grizzly Hills has a simple and striking melody played partly on a fiddle which goes well with the woodland theme of the zone. Most of the soundtrack is definitely much more enjoyable than The Burning Crusade (Which starts out strong, but really dives into a more ambient soundscape during the later half of the score), but they both contain different highlights and themes that remain important musical moments of the franchise.

Arthas is not directly represented with his own theme, but a haunting lament is connected to his introduction movie and gives his fate a sad twist. For after all, it was his good intentions to save his people that ended up dooming them instead. For all the evil that might linger within him, one can't help but feel that there's a sad, honest sympathy to the Paladin who became the wrong kind of king. And this is expressed perhaps the best way through the introduction score.

Otherwise, there's not at all that much to mention. There's more voiceacting in Wrath of the Lich King than in Burning Crusade, many quests that involve Arthas contains voiceacting, and there are certainly more of it during both normal questing, instances and raiding. The quality of the voiceacting is on the whole very solid, some highlights include the ever awesome Cam Clarke as the mighty blue dragon Malygos, and of course Michael McConnohie's excellent work as The Lich King himself. His voice is delivered with just the right amount of power and might you'd expect and is generally a joy to listen to.

Apart from the stunning music and overall good voiceacting, there's not that much to say. The normal battle and gameplay sounds sounds pretty good, but they're not changed much from the original game. Mounts, pets, beasts, new characters and spells have the right sound without being overly remarkable, it all helps to enforce the immersion into the game.

Conclusion
Wrath of the Lich King is yet another outstanding expansion pack to the ever growing World of Warcraft. It improves on everything they attempted and did right in the previous expansion, adds a ton of new content, while also managing to introduce a brand new class this late into the run of the game without the class being completely dominant or useless. Despite some complaints that Death Knights have been massively overpowered, which they were at first, they have been gradually balanced to match the old classes to a point where they are pretty equal to everyone else. Some issues about easier overall difficulty and a more and more linear experience, less rewarding entrance content compared to raids both in terms of loot and experience doesn't really subtract much from the fact that on a technical and gameplay standpoint, this is a really good expansion. With a better flow to the leveling, more storybased focus, plenty of quests, improved rewards and a generally enjoyable gameplay, Wrath of the Lich King can be strongly recommended to any fan of World of Warcraft.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/09

Game Release: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (EU, 11/13/08)