Reviewed: December 30, 2008
Reviewed by: David Shattuck

Publisher
Blizzard Entertainment

Developer
Blizzard Entertainment

Released: November 13, 2008
Genre: MMORPG
Players: Online

10
8
9
10
9.9

System Requirements

In 1998, Starcraft ushered in a new era of RTS by demonstrating that a game with three completely unique factions could be balanced. Warcraft III took RTS even farther with four factions and the addition of the powerful "hero" characters. Finally, and most recently, World of Warcraft exploded onto the gaming scene in 2004 and has been incredibly popular since release. All along, Blizzard has been collecting awards, breaking records, and just generally being awesome all around.

Blizzard also conducts business in fairly unique ways. Most game developers will set a release date many months in advance and it is quite common (practically expected) for the release to be pushed back several times. In some cases, developers will even rush to meet their self-imposed deadlines resulting in missing content, cut corners and an unpolished finished product. Blizzard, on the other hand, has gained infamy with their playfully annoying response "When it's ready." Apparently every Blizzard employee has been trained to give this answer whenever anybody asks when a game is going to be released.

This approach gives Blizzard the time they need to develop a quality product. It also means that when they do announce a release date, you can engrave it into your calendar because that date isn't moving. It means that the game is finished, polished, and ready to blow you away. Although Starcraft II and Diablo III are still in the "when it's ready" phase, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is here. While it must surely be difficult to be the second expansion to the most popular video game in history, WotLK meets expectations, exceeds them, and then crushes them into the ground.

Wrath of the Lich King picks up the storyline of Arthas Menethil where Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne left off. Having lost the final shreds of sanity during his increasingly desperate quest to save his beloved kingdom of Lordaeron from a plague of undeath, Arthas has fused with the spirit of Ner'zhul and become the immensely powerful Lich King. Now he sits upon the Frozen Throne with his fierce runeblade Frostmourne and commands the very Scourge he originally set out to destroy. The Warcraft universe has a rich and thoroughly engaging lore at its core and WotLK does an excellent job of giving the player the feeling that they are part of the action from the moment they set foot on the new continent of Northrend.

The new continent features nine new and unique zones which are teeming with monsters, quests and environments that have lore of their own. Although this "mini-lore" is often unrelated to the overarching goal of defeating the Lich King, it is interesting nonetheless. Most players start out in Northrend at level 70, which was the level cap in the Burning Crusade expansion. Players can gain experience points and levels by completing quests and fighting monsters on their own, or they can group with up to four other people to face stronger foes in dungeons for a chance at improved loot in the form of cash, powerful armor upgrades, and more experience points. Once a player has gained enough points, they will reach the new cap at level 80.

For many players, the process of leveling from 70 to 80 is actually a fairly insignificant part of the expansion and will be completed within the first few days of playtime. Despite this fact, Blizzard pulled out all the stops when it came to designing, decorating, and populating the new zones in Northrend. Quest chains are unique and engaging, environments are detailed and do an excellent job of supplementing the local storyline, and every turn reveals something new and exciting to explore.

Once a player reaches level 80, a myriad of new adventures are available to undertake. The fifth arena season is in full swing, giving players the opportunity to test their skills in player vs. player combat, battling on teams of 2, 3, or 5 in a fight to the death. The classic battlegrounds are still available and largely unchanged, but a new battleground called Strand of the Ancients pits the Alliance vs. the Horde in a D-Day-esque beach invasion scenario. Although the battle is confusing at first, a player is an expert and having a great time after a few rounds.

This is the first battleground to feature vehicles, which are another new addition to the World of Warcraft. While it is always exciting to have a new twist to an old game, player interaction with vehicles (particularly vehicle mounts) is a bit clunky. While normal mounts can be dismissed instantly by casting any spell, a vehicle mount requires the player to push a special “Leave vehicle” button and wait almost 2 seconds (read: an eternity) to have control of their character. Late word is that Blizzard intends to fix this, but for now it remains annoying.

End-game raiding has been a popular portion of Warcraft since beta. These "Player vs. Environment" encounters match the wit, cunning, and organization of a large group of players against huge and deadly monsters. Wrath of the Lich King continues the Warcraft tradition of raiding with two new dungeons as well as a revamped and relocated version of a dungeon that made an all-too-brief appearance in the original game. Blizzard has made it clear that they want end-game raiding to be accessible to more than just the most hardcore players, as has been the case in the past. Every raiding dungeon is available in a heroic 25-man format, as well as an easier 10-man version.

Blizzard also did an excellent job of listening to feedback on little things that were annoying the majority of their player base. As a result, countless small improvements have been made to the overall Warcraft experience. Repair and reagent vendors are more common, professions are suddenly useful, graveyards aren't as far away, movement speed in the spirit realm is faster, mounts and vanity pets no longer consume inventory space, the list goes on and on.

Although this review doesn't award a 10, only a few trivial flaws keep the game from perfection. Tiny, almost insignificant, portions of the game still have a few bugs to be worked out. For example, hunter pets don't always work correctly in certain arenas or during certain raid encounters. During one of my scuffles in Strand of the Ancients, I fell through solid earth and plummeted to my death.

There are also a few quests and achievements in the game that are undoable, and on a rare occasion, a visual glitch will pop up. These bugs are so infrequent that they are barely worth mentioning and a casual gamer probably wouldn't even notice them. Not only that, but Blizzard has always done a fantastic job of tracking and fixing these minor glitches. They will likely be patched and repaired in fairly short order.

Another flaw that WotLK currently has is that the end-game raiding content is a little bit too easy and there isn't enough of it. Apparently this is working as intended because Blizzard has been winking at the collective Warcraft community since release and saying that the hard stuff is coming. The raid dungeon Ulduar is expected to be released with the next major content patch, and at least three more top-end dungeons are scheduled to be implemented during this expansion.

The graphics in Wrath of the Lich King are the weakest link, simply because the game is still running on the same engine it has been using for the last 4-5 years and the character models and environment textures are starting to look dated. With that said, many players are quite fond of the cartoony feel of the game and prefer it to the not-quite-right attempt at realism found in other RPGs. It also means that players do not need a powerful computer to run the game smoothly.

Considering the age of the game engine, the visual presentation in WotLK is brilliant. The new spells are flashy, several old animations have been spruced up, the new environments are rich in detail and enormous in scale, and there is a whole host of brand new NPCs with new models and animations of their own.

Many of the sounds in WotLK are recognizable from the Burning Crusade and even the original game. Most of the character voices, spell-casting, and other basic audio clips have been in the game since beta and are still getting the job done today. In addition, virtually every new bit of content is (obviously) coupled with a new bit of sound, and these have been combined quite well. Two in particular stand out…

The background music is excellent. Although it's a few notches below Hans Zimmer and John Williams on the scale of epic music, it perfectly compliments the game. Every zone and dungeon has a unique and appropriate soundtrack associated with it, so it will be quite awhile before the music grows tiresome. The other particularly awesome audio work is the voice of the Lich King himself. The average player will only encounter him a few times, but when the king speaks, his booming icy voice is enough to stop blood in veins and chill the souls of even the most battle-hardened warriors.

As many wives, girlfriends, and mothers will tell you, World of Warcraft has an incredibly high replay value. Between arenas, battlegrounds, dungeons, city raids, professions, exploration, quests, heroics, dailies, auctions, world events, and achievements, it is exceptionally difficult to run out of things to do. With 11.5 million currently active accounts and roughly $2 billion per year in subscription revenue alone, it's hard to imagine that Blizzard will stop supporting this game with new content any time soon.

Blizzard has added yet another phenomenal game to their list of achievements. Wrath of the Lich King has all the components necessary to hold the attention of the gaming community for several years to come...or at least until Blizzard decides which game we're going to be playing next.

Thanah
Crushridge Alliance
Feb '05 - Present