Kry Reviews: WoW: Wrath of the Lich King

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion is World of Warcraft’s second expansion, released 11/13/08, nearly four years after the original release of WoW. I’ve played WoW pretty extensively throughout it’s lifespan, and especially the last month; enough hours that I am certainly equipped to write a real review of the expansion.

The first thing that really jumped out at WotLK’s release is, once more, Blizzard’s stunning eye for detail and polish that’s seen as you adventure through the frozen continent of Northrend. It is equatable to a work of art, whether it be the graphical design of the zones or the monsters inhabiting them, an actual, culminating storyline, or the musical score. The one blight on the music design, however, is the vrykul theme that plays in almost every zone and creates a disharmony with the rest of the score in that area.

3.0 saw the most brilliant addition to World of Warcraft, the achievement system. In a game where you choose to set your own goals and the challenges are what you make them to be, this system truly shines. There are myriad achievements for every kind of gamer, and to some players, they are pretty much like crack.

What was probably the most anticipated addition to WoW in Wrath was the new Death Knight class. This is the class I wanted to make when I first started playing WoW, so personally I was thrilled to play one. And the death knight experience is truly groundbreaking, starting with the epic starting zone, which incorporates an ingenious new mechanic , phasing, that allows for each individual player to see their actions truly make an impact on the world (and this is all over Northrend, as well). The class itself has truly been a blast to play, although they are quite overpowered and are seeing many balance fixes in the 3.0.8 patch. I feel that after this patch, they should really fit the “epic but equal” moniker that Blizzard gave them.

Class balance, raiding, and PvP are where the expansion is marred. Burst damage is at the highest point it’s ever been in WoW’s history, which it not necessarily a bad thing, however, it creates a skewed environment especially in arenas where classes with extreme survivability are notably successful. You will find very few top teams that do not use a DK, rogue, mage, or paladin (all classes with immunity shields or ways to mitigate large amounts of damage frequently).

Another reason burst is so very high at the moment is due to the ease of the introductory raids in this expansion. Though optional, difficult challenges do exist (made possible through the achievement system) for dedicated guilds to show off, the fact remains that it takes little organization to run the current raid dungeons, as a result, a large amount of people competing in arena and/or battlegrounds are bedecked in the best damage gear currently in the game, whereas there is a paucity of resilience this early in the expansion to counter the burst. Blizzard has stated Ulduar (the next raid dungeon, due in 3.1) will be a more difficult challenge, but still designed around the mantra of optional challenges for greater rewards. This along with more prevalent resilience and balance changes down the pipeline should bring everything closer to perfection.

The expansion also saw the release of a new battleground, Strand of the Ancients, and world pvp locale, Lake Wintergrasp. Strand is a map with horde and alliance alternating sieging and defending a keep, with a heavy focus on vehicular combat. I like this idea, and, it’s implemented very well, except for the glaring imbalance of having alliance always starting on offense. Lake Wintergrasp is pretty much the same thing as Strand, but with a lot more people. Unfortunately, Blizzard severly underesimated how many people, and as a result, it is in it’s current iteration one of the biggest design failures in WoW’s history. If you are on a high population server (like me), expect to never truly be able to pvp here unless you play on offhours. The lag from people duking it out here is so bad that it hampers the rest of the server, and at peak hours, often runs the risk of a server crash.

All in all, Wrath’s a good expansion, and I am really looking forward to see how the rest of it plays out. There are problems with it, as aforementioned, but as a whole, it has really revitalized my interest in WoW.