As we are beginning to see the news and blog posts of people making preparations for the upcoming expansion,
I felt it time to begin working on this planned series of articles.
When you look down the path and see change coming, it is natural for us
to look back on what has been, and to look forward to what will come.
That is the plan for this series of articles of indeterminate length.
Wrath of the Lich King is being lauded as having a lot of new features, from the mundane to the long overdue. This post will look at some of the more popular ones and we will talk about a few of the leaked features that may or may not be coming in 3.0. Overall this expansion is aiming to be more feature rich and view changing than the Burning Crusade was, but in the end the launch day will tell us if Blizzard can hit the mark that their customers expect.
The first feature coming is something that is an idea a couple of years old. Originally the Alterac Valley was planned to be an open air PvP zone that players would be flagged for PvP with objectives that could be fought over. Lake Wintergrasp will be that and more, with not only an entire open PvP zone, but destructible buildings and siege weapon warfare. For the PvP set this is no doubt one of the coolest features coming in the expansion.
The next features I will sum up as instance changes. From the 5 man regular and heroic dungeons having different loot tables, to the sheer idea of raid dungeons having both 10 and 25 person versions, there is a lot more changes coming to this next expansion than we had come in Burning Crusade. I am sure the coming boss fights and raid mechanics that we do not know about will be huge as well and will only add to the excitement many of us feel as wrath approaches.
On the game play side of things we have a lot of changes and new stuff coming. We have 10 more levels and the accompanying addition to all of our 27 talent trees for the classes in the game now. We will have new gear and a whole new look to weapons and gear, moving from a sci fi look on to a raw and rough look to the new items. We know now that there will be new changes to current zones, no longer in the realm of leak and now more fully in the realm of changes, like the Stormwind Harbor addition to the human city.
As for the new stuff, the big news is that druids will now get a out of combat resurrection spell. Ok, all kidding aside, the really big stuff is the upcoming Death Knight hero class, which will be a massive change to the game. Add to that the forthcoming Inscription profession and all the new gathered materials in Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism, and you quickly see there is a lot of game play stuff that doesn't lie inside of an instance.
Beyond the changes coming to Stormwind, we of course have the expansive continent of Northrend, with almost a dozen zones and quests galore. The floating city of Dalaran on the newly accessible content in Wrath will also be a really cool addition, and the two chosen factions in that city are really intriguing to anyone used to the current Scryer and Aldor faction disputes.
Then we have the fluff features coming in the expansion. New hair styles will allow players to customize their characters in ways they haven't been able to before, even though the dreaded ugly faces will not be changing. We have new dances, so that your character will not /dance like every other character of the same race and gender combination. No doubt that will be a boon to the mailbox dancers everywhere. The last of the big fluff features is dozens of new emotes coming in the expansion including /facepalm and .
With all of these and more features coming in the expansion, I wonder what feature are you the most excited about? What feature are you just bright eyed and eagerly anticipating from Wrath? Are you a hardcore raider looking forward to standing over the corpse of the Lich King? Will you do it as a Death Knight? Or are you looking forward to progression of lore and the stories that are the foundation of World of Warcraft?
Wrath of the Lich King is being lauded as having a lot of new features, from the mundane to the long overdue. This post will look at some of the more popular ones and we will talk about a few of the leaked features that may or may not be coming in 3.0. Overall this expansion is aiming to be more feature rich and view changing than the Burning Crusade was, but in the end the launch day will tell us if Blizzard can hit the mark that their customers expect.
The first feature coming is something that is an idea a couple of years old. Originally the Alterac Valley was planned to be an open air PvP zone that players would be flagged for PvP with objectives that could be fought over. Lake Wintergrasp will be that and more, with not only an entire open PvP zone, but destructible buildings and siege weapon warfare. For the PvP set this is no doubt one of the coolest features coming in the expansion.
The next features I will sum up as instance changes. From the 5 man regular and heroic dungeons having different loot tables, to the sheer idea of raid dungeons having both 10 and 25 person versions, there is a lot more changes coming to this next expansion than we had come in Burning Crusade. I am sure the coming boss fights and raid mechanics that we do not know about will be huge as well and will only add to the excitement many of us feel as wrath approaches.
On the game play side of things we have a lot of changes and new stuff coming. We have 10 more levels and the accompanying addition to all of our 27 talent trees for the classes in the game now. We will have new gear and a whole new look to weapons and gear, moving from a sci fi look on to a raw and rough look to the new items. We know now that there will be new changes to current zones, no longer in the realm of leak and now more fully in the realm of changes, like the Stormwind Harbor addition to the human city.
As for the new stuff, the big news is that druids will now get a out of combat resurrection spell. Ok, all kidding aside, the really big stuff is the upcoming Death Knight hero class, which will be a massive change to the game. Add to that the forthcoming Inscription profession and all the new gathered materials in Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism, and you quickly see there is a lot of game play stuff that doesn't lie inside of an instance.
Beyond the changes coming to Stormwind, we of course have the expansive continent of Northrend, with almost a dozen zones and quests galore. The floating city of Dalaran on the newly accessible content in Wrath will also be a really cool addition, and the two chosen factions in that city are really intriguing to anyone used to the current Scryer and Aldor faction disputes.
Then we have the fluff features coming in the expansion. New hair styles will allow players to customize their characters in ways they haven't been able to before, even though the dreaded ugly faces will not be changing. We have new dances, so that your character will not /dance like every other character of the same race and gender combination. No doubt that will be a boon to the mailbox dancers everywhere. The last of the big fluff features is dozens of new emotes coming in the expansion including /facepalm and .
With all of these and more features coming in the expansion, I wonder what feature are you the most excited about? What feature are you just bright eyed and eagerly anticipating from Wrath? Are you a hardcore raider looking forward to standing over the corpse of the Lich King? Will you do it as a Death Knight? Or are you looking forward to progression of lore and the stories that are the foundation of World of Warcraft?
Awesome. So now, gameplay can go something like this:
/say The drunks are climbing the roof of the inn, again.
/ facepalm
This cracks me up. :)