World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) Review

Posted by Derek Robbins on 01.18.2009

The World of Warcraft is one of the most popular PC games today. Does the latest expansion improve on what it does well already? 411's Derek Robbins takes a dive in and gives his take on it.



Compared to consoles, PC gaming today gets very little love from the general public. There is one major exception to this rule though. World of Warcraft currently has over 10 million subscriptions and in the month of November, they released an expansion on their popular game entitled: “Wrath of the Lich King”. Haven’t heard of it? Well, golly, welcome to the year 2009 you time traveling miscreant! Since I assume you’re from the past or have been living the life as a hermit, allow me to describe WotLK for you. I know, I’m a charitable person.

Gameplay

It’s not surprise that WotLK plays the same as Burning Crusade. It would be plain weird for a game to just drastically shift play-styles in an expansion. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t changes made. The most obvious one is the new terrain that the game adds. Burning Crusade gave us the Outlands, an area which most of us can agree best resembled a barren wasteland (outside of Nagrand). Wrath of the Lich King gives us Northrend. Northrend is a snowy area intended for higher level characters. Essentially, if you’re buying WoW for the first time and decided to get both expansions at the same time, it’s going to take a while to get to the level necessary to explore the new terrain. So consider yourself warned.

Northrend itself is easily the most stunning area WoW has to offer. Visually speaking, each zone offers something different for you to enjoy. Also, unlike in Azeroth, there really wasn’t a zone that leapt out at me as a drag to grind through. This is a big deal to me because when I first played through World of Warcraft, I found that the 30-40 zones were almost intolerable to pass through and I really had to force myself to level if I wanted to get beyond that. There’s really no area like that here as each zone offers you something new and different to experience.

For instance, let’s take a look at the starting areas in Northrend. The Borean Tundra is a pretty no-frills zone to get you used to the environment of Northrend. The quests here are generally easier than anything else you find in Northrend, but if you’re a player who is coming back after a long sabbatical, you will find that this is a very welcome intro. Borean also contains a very easy dungeon for you to work your way through called The Nexus. This dungeon is a great introduction to the things you’ll encounter in Northrend and also is a good test for Death Knights – the new class - looking for their first “real” instance. I certainly recommend the Nexus as the first heroic instance for a fledgling 80 to run through.



The other starting area, the Howling Fjord, is quite a bit different. The Fjord is full of breath-taking scenery that at times can remind you of a ski-resort. You’ll have to take lifts to reach certain platforms and generally speaking it takes more time to get used to than the Tundra. That said, once you get the lay of the land down, you’ll probably enjoy this zone quite a lot. If you’re someone who has been playing WoW non-stop, the Fjord is my recommended destination. It’s harder, but it just feels more rewarding.

Now, listen, I’m not crazy enough to think any experienced WoW veteran hasn’t already tackled both regions. If you wanted to make a Death Knight alternate character, this is how I would recommend you do things. The Death Knight, the first hero class to be introduced into the game (so we can assume that there will be others), is a very interesting one. Even though you need to be at least level 55 to unlock the class for play, which implies that you have some experience with the game, the Death Knight plays very “new player” friendly.

Let’s say for instance that you don’t have a lot of friends who will help you with quests at every whim. You love questing alone. So what can you do? Simple: make your “toon’s” specialty unholy. You can act as a hunter in this way. It’s also, conveniently enough, a great option for Damage Per Second in most instances. So, it’s the sort of spec that one can easily convert from solo play to group PVE play and PVP play. For beginners who have no idea what they wish to do, the un-holy Death Knight is easily my class of choice.

Not everyone wants to be a damage dealer though. Actually, if they wanted to be, they’d probably choose to select a class such as Rogue or Mage or one of the more “respected” damage dealers. Luckily, the Death Knight has another specialty that you can go on, unlike those classes. The Death Knight also has the ability to tank (be the guy that absorbs the brunt of enemy attacks). I’ve never personally tanked with a Death Knight, but I’ve been in group that has a Death Knight tank and if you have a good one they are more than serviceable. Ice Death Knights seem to be the preferred tanking unit, but I would assume blood – with its healing capabilities – would be an excellent choice as well. Really, whatever the case, you’ll be in good hands. Even Un-holy Death Knights can tank thanks to the high health that plate armor and the Death Knight’s frost aura gives.



Generally speaking, that’s Death Knights for you. They are a very easy class to adapt to, and I would recommend anyone who hits 55 to try one for a short period of time at least. They are, in my opinion at least, the most fun melee class to mess around with. Who cares if people call you a “nub knight?” Anything is better than being a “ret nub”. Eh? Eh? It’s all about having fun.

Of course, fun only goes so far. You’re going to reach level 80 eventually, so you’re going to need things to do at that point. In my humble opinion, the dungeons in WotLK are…a bit simpler to undertake than the dungeons in Burning Crusade. So when you’re doing heroics at level 80, almost everything is a breeze. Maybe it was because I sucked back then, but I remember running heroics such as Sethekk and Underbog and having great difficulty. The only one that really has given me trouble to this point is Old Kingdom, and that was just one boss that’s optional. So if you were hoping level 80 content would be more challenging, well, as far as heroics are concerned you will be a tad let-down.

The real meat and bones of 80 content though is the raid instances. I only ran through one, Naxxramus, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Yeah, there were a couple of tricky bosses, but if you know your stuff you can do it. 10-man Naxx is actually very easy, 25-man on the other hand can take a bit of work and patience. Of course, if you’ve raided before, you generally know what you’re getting to and me explaining to you that a 25-man instance is tough is going to be redundant. Trust me, there are a couple of bosses on 25-man Naxx that will drive you bonkers. This is to be expected. For people looking for tiered gear, I think you’ll be more than satisfied.

Not everyone likes the end-game PVE though. After all, it often times requires that you know a lot of people who like to do similar things. That’s not always the easiest. For those people, we have the PVP content. The arenas return from Burning Crusade with a couple of new battlefields to fight on – including one where you start next to each other – and I have to say that…a lot of them just don’t do it for me. I absolutely loathe this one where you’re fighting in a sewer and there’s water blasting all around you. It’s a pain in the ass.

There are also some new battlegrounds for you to peruse. You have Strand of the Ancients, which forces you to either raid or defend a base. Your main goal in this map is to break down different walls in order to reach the crystal at the end (offense) or, if you’re on defense, you need to prevent the other team from doing this. I enjoy that the offense gets the use of tanks, which is nice and refreshing compared to your average battleground, but as a whole I think for the time being this battleground falls flat. Most PuGs just run around and don’t know what they’re doing, and even then, the rules aren’t made blatantly obvious to me. It feels weird that, as the offense, I can destroy the crystal...but the defense (on the next turn) does the same thing and somehow wins the map? It’s just…I think some kinks could be worked out. Why don’t you just have it where the first team to successfully defend their base wins? It seems too confusing to me, but maybe I’m just attacking it wrong.

Taking a page out of the book of Warhammer Online, Wrath of the Lich King also introduces a fairly robust world PVP event in Wintergrasp. Now, we’ve had world PVP in WoW before. Remember areas in Terokkar Forest and Nagrand? The problem with those, is that it felt just like 1 v 1 PVP on a grand scale. Compared to battlegrounds where you had an actual task, it really wasn’t anything special. In Wintergrasp, things are a bit different. Here’s how it works: One team plays defense. This team, horde or alliance, is the one that won the game before. They want to keep Wintergrasp in their possession. The other team, the offense, is the opposing alliance. This plays a lot like Strand of the Ancients with the usage of vehicles and destruction of things, but I also felt it threw in some Arathi Basin with the seizure of areas. I found that I like Wintergrasp a lot more than Strand of the Ancients because it was one-shot. Either the offense wins or the defense wins. Right now, on my server at least, it seemed like the offense always won. I assume as people get more used to it, that will change. Still though, I want to see more PVP areas like Wintergrasp added in future patches. It will be awesome.

The expansion seems to add a fairly decent amount and is certainly worth plunging yourself back into WoW addiction to enjoy. Sure, things may be a bit easier than they were back in the old days, but they offer enough new things for you to do that I really can’t tell ya’ to stay away. For those people pondering coming into WoW now that the newest expansion is out, take heart in knowing that leveling is much faster. They WANT people to experience that new content. It’ll get a little jarring when you get to Northrend and see your experience progress deflate, but hey! Getting there is half the battle.



Graphics

It seems like Blizzard upped the graphics a little this go around. Don’t mistake me for a second, the game is hardly visually stimulating, but with each iteration it gets much more enjoyable to look at. This time, character models seemed to be much more detailed and there were also shadows on the ground that seemed, well, accurate to how they should be. Perhaps I am peculiar, but I think that it’s really cool to be able to watch your character ride along and see his shadow go along with him perfectly.

Now, with that said, there are still issues. There is no collision detection in the game at all, which you know, is obvious if you’ve ever played. Also, compared to current PC games, it’s not exactly a looker. You’re not going to be walking away from WoW and talking about the graphics, I’ll say that. It’s not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s simplistic. I guess that’s the point though. It’s supposed to appeal to a large number of people, and a large number don’t have the technology to play WoW on anything high tech. The low system requirements have been a Blizzard thing though. Remember Starcraft? I guess it’s all for a point.

So, yeah, simplistic. Not bad, not good, just simplistic.



Audio

The game sounds alright. I mean, look, if you’ve played WoW before you generally know what you’re getting. Still though, the sound can go a long way in improving the mood and you got to like that. With that said, after a while I just switched it off and found myself listening to iTunes as I grinded. It’s nothing against the music, it’s very serviceable…but after a while ya’ just quit caring and want to listen to what you want to listen to.

It can improve the experience, but it’s not going to rock your world by any stretch of the imagination.

Fun Factor

The thing with the World of Warcraft is that you’ll get from it what you put into it. If you put your heart and soul into the game and try to get every achievement and get every piece of loot, you’ll probably like the game a lot. Hell, if you just mess around with your friends on weekends and casually stroll through dungeons, you’ll most likely enjoy yourself. If you’re not committed, I guess it would hurt the amount of fun that you have, but it’s really, really hard not to enjoy the game at least a little.

Essentially, as long as you are decent at communicating with people you will have fun in some way. The World of Warcraft is one of those games that it’s almost impossible not to have fun in, and WotLK continues to prove that point.



Lasting Appeal

Wrath of the Lich King is a game that I probably will be playing for a long time coming. I haven’t even begun to get all of my tiered gear, I haven’t gotten a new motorcycle mount, I haven’t been to every raid dungeon, really…there’s a LOT left I’ve got to explore. I’ve played WoW lifetime for a long time, longer than I am proud to admit, longer than I ever thought I would play a game. The thing is, this game will suck you in and own your life if you let it. To say that it has lasting appeal is a bit of an understatement. I am a man who enjoys JRPGs, but I’d say I’ve invested more time in the World of Warcraft than I have every Japanese RPG in my life COMBINED. That really says something.

That’s just in part to how many things there are to do in the game. WotLK adds a lot of new content that will keep you coming back for more. It’s fun and if you have a good group of people to play with, you’ll probably be playing for a very long time to come. That’s no exaggeration.

The 411

Wrath of the Lich King is a very competent expansion that adds enough new content to keep experienced WoW players busy for months at a time. It even offers a few new things for those growing tired of the tedium that comes with grinding on a daily basis. Really, Wrath of the Lich King is a game that you can enjoy in many ways. Even though it may not over-whelm you with difficulty or astound you with originality, the game is still good and damn addictive. I don’t really follow the lore, but those I spoke with seem to enjoy it, so that’s there for you as well. Really, that’s all you need. Now, excuse me if you will…I have some arena dates to catch up on!

Graphics	7.0	The graphics are fairly simplistic. They won't wow you, but they won't make your eyes bleed either. The cartoony look suits it, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not the best looking game out there.
Gameplay	9.2	It's pretty much what you've come to expect from WoW by now. The new instances and PVP scenarios are fun and make the experience all the more gratifying
Sound	7.5	It's serviceable. I prefer to listen to my own music while I play, but when I do elect to listen to WoW's music it helps absorb me in the atmosphere which is a good thing.
Lasting Appeal	10.0	Yeah, let's just say that odds are I'll be playing this game at this time next year. There's a lot of content there and it can last for a long, long period of time.
Fun Factor	9.0	What you put into WoW is how much fun you get out of it. It's impossible to spend so many hours on a game and not at least enjoy yourself a little. Unless you cannot socialize with people at all, this experience should be enjoyable for you.
Overall	9.1   [  Amazing ]

Screenshots
All 3 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Screenshots