Wrath of the Lich King
So the big news from BlizzCon last weekend was the announcement of the new WoW expansion: Wrath of the Lich King. There will be a new continent to explore (Northrend), the level cap will be raised to 80, a new profession (Inscription), a new class (Death Knight), and many other things such as new /dances, the ability to customize your character’s look in new ways and more.
The first thing I thought when I heard about the expansion was, “So soon? Man, I’m still trying to get to 70… .” I realize that I took a break from WoW and started over with a new character (and am therefore far behind the typical WoW player), but I really feel like I haven’t had a chance yet to fully explore everything that the Burning Crusade brought with it. Maybe it’s just me?
Anyway, no release date has been set for WotLK yet so it may be far enough out that I’m able to hit 70 easily and still have time to explore the different options. BC was originally announced back in October of 2005 and then released in January of 2007 (although the original target date for release was December 2006). If an similar timeline holds true here, then we would get WotLK sometime around November/December of 2008. I think I’d be ok with that… OK, proceed Blizzard!
Death Knight Hero Class
The idea of a “Hero Class” has been tossed around since… well, pretty much since the very beginning of WoW. The basic concept, which grew from the hero classes in Warcraft III, is that there are certain lore-based classes that could be implemented in the game, but that would be (at least conceptually) more powerful than the typical characters. This is an excellent concept but it will be difficult to execute well. The challenge in implementing them was (and will be) how to balance them, so that on the one hand, they are powerful enough to be called a “hero class”, but on the other hand, they are not so powerful that they are overbalanced.
There is not a lot of information on the Death Knight class yet but here’s what we know. Once a player reaches a certain *level on his character, he will be able to begin a long quest chain that will, on completion, unlock the Death Knight class. He will then be able to make a new character as a Death Knight, which will start out at a high level, somewhere between 55 and 70 (so we won’t have to level them up to 80 from level 1). Other Hero Classes will reportedly be made available at some point, likely through patches after the expansion is released. The Death Knight is believed to be the only Hero Class that will be available at launch.
* EDIT: Tigole said in a recent interview that the Death Knight-access-level will be lower than 80 to try and prevent people from blowing through the new content just to get the DK. However, he did not specify what level it will be at.
I gotta say I’m pretty excited about this class. Just the idea of a Hero Class is very cool but seeing it get fleshed out as Blizz talks about how it’s going to be developed is awesome. I’ve also enjoyed playing as a DPS warrior in the past and it sounds like this class is going to be conceptually similar (although it will probably play quite differently).
Northrend
One of the things that I’ve admired about Blizzard since I’ve been playing WoW is their ability to learn from their mistakes. One of the problems that I (and many others) had in the BC launch was that there were lots and lots of people all trying to do the same few quests in Hellfire Peninsula. This led to over-crowding, spawn-camping of mobs and general confusion and messiness. To solve this problem, Blizzard has announced that the new continent will actually have two starting zones geared toward players level 68 to 70: the Howling Fjord and the Borean Tundra. I’m very impressed by this idea. Not only will it help with over-crowding, but it will make leveling your alt characters more interesting. Tired of one area? Try the other!
Northrend will have about 11 zones in total and a number of new dungeons. There are 6 confirmed dungeons, including Utgarde Keep, the lowest dungeon and the first that players will go though, and Icecrown Citadel, which is the seat of the Lich King and will presumably be where players face him. Additionally there are at least 6 more dungeons that have been discussed but not confirmed.
Inscription
The new profession will let players modify and augment various aspects of their spells. For instance, you could reduce the cooldown of Soul Fire or add additional damage to your Fireball. Non-magic users can use it as well. For instance, a warrior could use it to make Bloodthirst crit more often. It will be interesting to get more information on this profession. There are usually several BoP items in the crafting professions which can only be used by the players that craft them, and I’m curious to see how that will work here.
I’m also interested to see how the new profession will affect the various realms’ economies. I remember when Jewelcrafting came with BC, the cost of several materials needed for high-end JC recipes skyrocketed. Thorium, in particular, became insanely expensive - it more than doubled in cost on my server. We don’t know yet what mats will be used for Inscription (enchanting mats? sounds reasonable to me), but if you plan on powerleveling it at the WotLK release, it would be wise to stock up on mats beforehand.
Other Resources
Official WoW Site
Wowwiki
Wrath of the Lich King.com
Wikipedia
BlizzCon coverage from Blizzard.com
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