WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Preview

[Re-published from Forge Press: Issue 1]
By Elliot Thorpe

The chances are you’ll have heard of World of Warcraft. Well you should have unless you’ve spent the best part of the last three years on the surface of the sun.

Opinions are probably more wide ranging on this game than any other…possibly even more than the awful/excellent (delete according to preference) Halo series. If you are one of the people that believe that WoW is the gaming equivalent of a mix between God and heroin then your latest fix comes under the premise of Wrath Of The Lich King.

The two most exciting ‘new’ features to be introduced are an increase of the level cap to 80 and the much anticipated hero class, the Death Knight. Not much can be said about the new level cap; another 10 levels to travel through the new continent of Northrend killing all who stand in your way, pretty much a standard WoW affair.

The Death Knight does however bring something completely new to the world of Azeroth. As well as a new combat system working on runic power it is the first ever Hero Class in WoW. This allows you to start your Death Knight at a much higher level, on a completely new island floating in the air where Naxxramus used to be. (Apologies to the more casual gamer if the next sentence doesn’t make much sense; just bear with me…) I mean, sure when it originally comes out it’ll be a massively overpowered class and will soundly be trounced with the nerf bat on every patch thereafter, but it’s all in the name of balance.

Other additions include the new profession inscription that allows you to customise your favourite abilities and customisation seems to be a common theme with the new ability to alter everything from your character’s hair to the way that they dance.

Plenty of new dungeons will be added of course, some of which look really unique and promising, and the new option to do every raid on either a 10 or 25 man setting seems a possible improvement, although many hardcore players will disagree massively with this statement.

It appears that the approach taken to the design of the new expansion pack was: “Right, stuff the good players that play it now, we’ve got their eight quid a month nailed down for the foreseeable future. What can we do to make this game more attractive to new money, I mean gamers?” Any opinion returned involving the words ‘game’, ‘easier’ and ‘make’ in any particular order was soundly applauded, and they all went to the pub for six months and handed over to the designers.