World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
- This expansion pack REQUIRES the original World of Warcraft game and The Burning Crusade expansion pack in order to run
- World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich expansion pack for PC and Mac opens the new continent of Northrend
- Death Knight is Warcraft’s first hero class and is available for any player with at least a level-55 character
- Northrend offers new environments, including Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra, and Howling Fjord
- New creatures inhabit the icy continent, such as Nerubian Viziniers, Plague Eruptors, Shoveltusks and Flesh Giants
Fans of World of Warcraft, prepare for Blizzard Entertainment’s next installment — World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich. In this latest expansion, something is afoot in the cold, harsh northlands. The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. The necromantic power of the plague and legions of undead armies threaten to sweep across the land. Only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King and end his reign of terror. .caption { font
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(out of 195 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.99
Price: $ 29.97
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
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I have been playing World of Warcraft since a month after it came out. Not quite consistently, as I’ve taken a couple of 6 or so month breaks in that duration, but I’ve been there through all the changes. Having started playing the game again 2 years ago when Burning Crusade came out and being pretty disappointed, I have to say that restarting the game again this time with Lich King has been a much better experience. At first, I only got the expansion because all of my friends and all the old folks from my guild were getting back together. So I figured that even though I wasn’t really looking forward to getting into the game again, at least I’d have the fun social aspect of it. But I’m having more fun playing the game with this expansion than I have had since the game started and everything was new.
So does that mean that the game has totally changed and we’re playing a whole new WoW? Not exactly. It seems that this is the expectation that a lot of people are having. I’m reading a lot of negative reviews saying that this is more of the same. Well, unfortunately for them, it is. It’s the same game, just more of it. There are still plenty of obnoxious people with bad manners and even worse skills in English, still plenty of quests that involve killing mobs and gathering items, still an opposing faction that kills you while you’re questing (for me there is anyways) and so on. But in my opinion, the new content in Northrend has much more depth, much more detail and is just plain more fun than anything I experienced with the Burning Crusade Expansion. It really seems that Blizzard took their time in making the quests much more unique and varied as well as many other aspects of the content.
A lot of people jump on WoW to plow through the quests and instances and get to level 80 as soon as possible. Why? There probably won’t be another expansion for 2 years, so what’s the rush? That’s my feeling about that anyways. I find that when I play the game more sparsely, I’m able to appreciate the time that was put into it and also prevent myself from getting burned out. I pay attention to a lot of things in games that other may not care about at all, such as environment and music. The new zones in Northrend look really cool (at least by the standard that WoW looks considering the graphics are outdated in general, but with an MMO that’s not really a problem for me.) With the first zone in Northrend, Borean Tundra, I was just impressed by the scope of the place: four flight points, 130 quests, NPC ships raiding NPC towns, undead crawling out of the earth, gnome planes flying all over the place… It was all a little overwhelming. And I didn’t find that much annoying repetition as I did the quests there, despite the fact that there are twice as many quests in that zone as there are in the first zone of Outlands. In fact, some of the quests were pretty innovative. And the environment for the second zone I went to, Howling Fjord, was simply amazing to me. The boat ride into the huge cove with the towering canyons, waterfalls, all around was unlike any WoW environment I had seen. Continually as I go into each zone, everything about Northrend just seems bigger and more grand than anywhere else.
Another thing that’s impressed me with the expansion is the music. Most of the up-tempo quasi Lord of the Rings style score has been replaced with more mellow and melodic fare. From the first boat ride into Northrend you’ll hear a somber but really amazing fiddle tune and much of the music in the many zones matches that tone. It’s sometimes a little odd to be in the midst of slaughtering enemies to the sounds of fiddle and pipes in the background, but somehow it all works. A lot of the music throughout the rest of the world has been changed and enhanced for the better as well.
These things aside, everything else about the game seems to be enjoyable. PVP is one of my favorite WoW pass times and there’s no shortage of that here. Admittedly, the Wintergrasp PVP zone isn’t quite as huge and amazing as I’d hoped, but it’s still fun, as is the new battleground. The instances are more attuned for my liking, since I rarely get a time to play video games for more than an hour or two at a time. The new smaller, more easily accessible dungeons are much more fun and like a lot of the quest lines, they’re actually pretty fun and unique.
So perhaps it was the fact that I bought it with low expectations, or maybe it’s just because Blizzard really put out a good product, but I really like Wrath of the Lich King. If you’re looking for the childish and a**hole players to disappear, looking for less questing to do, less… Warcraft, then you’re looking for another game. This is still World of Warcraft, but now it’s as good or better than it ever was.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
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For the most part, this is by far the best incarnation of WoW yet. Northrend is joy to quest in since it looks nice, has excellent lore (at least for the alliance) that involves you like never before, and a new class that is really fun to play. However, after awhile the novelty of all this new stuff wears off and you’re left with the end game content to keep you playing. As someone who can’t raid, I was really looking forward to getting to run the new heroics and things. However, Blizzard’s new philosophy on the “difficulty scaling” of the game has pretty much completely changed the way end game content runs. After less than a month of playing, my friends and I were tearing through the heroics like nothing. Its hard to get psyched for new gear when you can already dominate in what you have. Heroics in TBC were basically hard as heck raids for 5 people, and I miss that. Heroics aren’t the only casualty to the new system: I’ve never seen so many people with the best gear in the game before just running around. My friends that do raid have nothing left to do, and are now just epicly gearing out all their alts. That situation will be fixed with patches, but it stinks to have to just wait for everything. This is basically the first time playing the game I (and my friends) were left with nothing to do except level alts. I can’t really comment on the pvp state of the game since that’s not my thing (bg’s are the most frustrating thing ever… especially on Alliance).
In summary, exploring the new world for the first time is fun, but that’s about it. If you can’t raid and aren’t obsessed with pvp, find an alt you love or be prepared for boredom.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
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This expansion has been out for a week, and there are some who would say you can’t really review MMORPG content until it’s been out long enough to see how it affects the play environment as a whole. There are hundreds of hours of gameplay in this expansion set, and it will be months before anybody has played through the bulk of it. And of course, the release of an expansion has wide affects on style of play, the in-game economy, and the community. Nonetheless, I’ve played through the entirety of the first two zones, a couple of the new instances, and visited a few other zones, and I think I can give a fairly good assessment of this content.
I’ll assume that if you are a devoted and regular player, you’ve already purchased this or are planning to do so soon. Reviewing the game for them would be pointless. But what about the casual player, or the lapsed player interested in coming back to WoW? For them, this expansion is really top-notch.
To start with, if you enjoy the questing aspect of the game, you’re in for a treat. Each zone now has more flypoints, the quest hubs are easy to identify, and there are more quests at each hub. There’s less travel time and less hassle keeping track of your quests, which makes the experience of questing much more enjoyable — and rewarding. I was able to reach lvl 74 solely by completing the two lower-level areas of the new continent, Northrend. In general, the quests are designed very well. Where to go and what to do are usually quite clear from the quest description. Quests are also designed to lead you to other points of interest, such as another travel or quest hub or isolated quest that you might otherwise have missed. There’s no more need to grind out part of a level before heading for another zone, the quest experience is more than sufficient to get you prepared for the subsequent zones. This has come quite a long way since the game was released.
The environments are quite pretty, especially for a game running on a 4-year-old graphics engine. The graphics have reportedly been upgraded a bit, but my NVidia 8800GT is still able to play the game on fully maxed-out settings in the range of 50-80fps in the outside enviroments, and up to 200fps inside. The art design is fantastic, especially on the low level zone Howling Fjord. It’s impressive that these designers and programmers can do so much visually with a game that needs to be able to play on alot of computers, including those without high-end graphics cards.
If you are one of those casual or lapsed players who are on the fence about this expansion, consider giving it a try. The revisions to the game over the past couple years have really cut down on the things that often gave MMORPG players the biggest headaches. If you have a character at or near lvl 70 and can hop right into the new zones, all the better, as their design seems to be the best yet.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
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WoW sucked me in for quite some time when it first came out. Quit for several months and came back for 1 month for BC and 1 month for LK. WoW is a finely crafted time sink…I mean game. You can putter around doing solo stuff, but the amount of effort, preparation, and time commitment for end game raiding is mind boggling.
This type of game is impossible at end game without a guild. The buildup of levels and the amount of statistic boosts on gear to convince people to play and try to collect new pieces for their paper dolls makes it so that there is a very low element of skill, since geared out people will slaughter without good gear.
WoW does offer other options, such as playing PvP instances to collect gear, but that is just a different time sink. Instead of raiding you get a PvP team together and try to kill other players.
The game itself is fun, but to be competitive it is a full time job that is only realistic for college kids skipping class, the unemployed, retired, or people who have no real life outside the game.
WoW is brilliant in the addictive factors of the game. You may not be the best at anything in real life, but in WoW you can feel pretty powerful and important.
However the longer you spend in game and if you type /played and see you spent 250+ DAYS in game on the one character alone and realize all that time is gone forever it is a pretty empty feeling.
So if you want to see, fight, and kill the Lich King, just realize the politics, time, effort, and what you have to give up for a chance to be part of a guild that does end game content, much less does in game content well.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
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The first thing you should know is that this product is not for you unless you already have World of Warcraft and its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. There is nothing for you in Wrath of the Lich King unless you have both of those titles and a level 55 or higher character (level 68 if you intend to go to Northrend straight off). If you don’t have a level 68 character, don’t bother with this expansion until you do (unless you just want a Death Knight, in which case you just need level 55).
That said, Wrath of the Lich King truly does the Blizzard brand proud. Unlike Burning Crusade in some ways (which is still worth it on its own merits), WotLK seems to return WoW to its roots as players explore Northrend. The famous Blizzard polish and attention to detail are everywhere, from the storylines that unfold as you quest to the visuals and terrain as you explore. The base game was great, but it’s clear that with WotLK they took what they learned as they made it and went forth to produce an amazing product.
I took my time leveling up to 80. While I got the expansion on the day it was released, I did not reach 80 until early February. I wanted to spend the time enjoying what Blizzard has to offer. But even at 80, there is still good things happening (though not as much yet as there was at 70 in BC). Naxxramas is a very well-made instance. Experienced raiders won’t have much difficulty, but there are definately some fights that people with little to no raiding experience will have trouble with. Malygos is a very entertaining fight that definately keeps you on your toes. As is the Obsidian Sanctum. Definately a good start for the level 80 raiding scene, and more to come is promised with the Uldaur instance coming in patch 3.1.
As for PvP, a new battleground and an outdoor PvP zone (that feels much like a battleground as you are engaged in it) keep the Horde/Alliance conflict fresh, while the arenas are still around for level 80 players to test their mettle. While I feel that Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients are a little heavy on the vehicle combat (a new mechanic introduced in WotLK), they are fun nonetheless.
If you enjoy WoW, then this expansion is a must-buy. Really, what it comes down to is you will either buy the expansion or cancel your account, as if you don’t buy it everyone else will quickly pass you by. But even were that not the case, it is worth every bit of money you will put into it.