I've been reading through review after review after review that piles praise and medals on Blizzard Entertainment for their latest expansion to World of Warcraft - Warth of the Lich King. Sadly, I think that the age of the neutral review is well and truly over and entities like IGN, GameSpot and PCGamer are all in the pocket of the big corporations.
What I am going to do here is hopefully provide you with a neutral and informative review that actually covers the truth, rather than fabrications of the truth.
Wrath of the Lich King adds a whole new continent to explore in the form of Northrend. For those of you not familiar with Warcraft lore, Northrend is the frozen wasteland that the Lich King has claimed as his kingdom and it is from here that his armies of Scourge launch their conquest on Azeroth. The Lich King wants one thing and one thing only: Death. Sadly for the Lich King, the Alliance and the Horde aren't willing to accept this version of the future and are now taking the fight to Northrend, pushing the Scourge back into thier own homeland.
The diversity that Northrend presents in the way of environments is quite impressive; frozen tundras, burning forests, expansive vistas and underground caverns to name but a few. Now, we are all aware that the graphics in World of Warcraft are not the best of the best. They never have been. That said, the environments and the art direction that Blizzard take with WoW don't require anything more than they already have. Of course, Blizzard have thrown in some improved textures, such as better snow and ice, just for the kicks. Sadly for anyone wanting a completely new and improved graphics engine, you won't find it here. There are some improvements but nothing major along the way. It's not just the new continent that Blizzard have spent time improving. Some spells and abilities have gone through the mill and come out looking rather impressive, although I'm a little disappointed that only a handful of spells have been improved visually. This is where Blizzard get thier first mark down from me: If you are going to spend your time improving the look of the spells and abilites, you should do all or none. It doesn't feel right having 2D crayon effects coupled with 3D glossy effects.
Talking of spells and abilites, Blizzard have once again expanded the various talent trees in the game. Players can now take advantage of the 51-point talent trees which come with some rather epic abilites at thier end. Sadly, not all of them manage to find epicness and there are a couple that seem to have been thrown in as after-thoughts. Of course, new spells and abilites comes with new problems but for the most part, balance hasn't been comprimised too badly. Things aren't ideal but they could be a lot worse. Those of you who played vanilla WoW in the day when DoTs could crit will be pleased to know that this has been reintroduced in Wrath. Resilliance seems less of a boredom with this taken into account. You may be wondering why the spells and abilities section of this review isn't longer? Well, spells and abilites are spread across the now-10 classes and I don't play all 10 of them, so what you make of your own spells and abilites is up to you.
Moving on, we have the first of our hero classes - the Death Knight. Frankly, there is nothing heroic about the Death Knight. It is just another class. Granted, from level 55-58 you get one of the best quest lines ever to be made by Blizzard Entertainment, but this is short lived. The moment you step into Outland, the game returns to being a mindless quest grind through the 60s. Once you get to 70, the story starts to pick up again - as it does for everyone - but I was quite disappointed that Blizzard hadn't spread the evolution of the Death Knight over the first 15 levels, rather than piling it all in to two levels. Outland was underused as far as I can see. The mechanics of the Death Kight are very interesting and it does look like it could be quite an interesting class to play at 80, if not for the fact that all of its spells look better than every other class' in the game. Again with the inconsistency, just to remind you that WoW isn't real and never will be. Roll a Death Knight and you won't be bored, at least for a while. They are interesting and they are fun but they aren't what we were led to believe and they certainly aren't the heroic class I was expecting. It'll be interesting to see what Blizzard learns from thier first hero class.
The story in Wrath has improved greatly over the story in TBC. Blizzard decided to introduce the Lich King right form the start. You will find yourself running through seemingly generic quests and suddenly being presented with the Lich King himself, interfering and manipulating right across your journey to 80. He will always be only a whisper away... literally. He will even interupt boss fights and quest objectives just to be a grade A pain in the arse. The story really has improved and there is actually a reason to do things that you might not have done before, such as low level dungeons and grind quests. Take taht into account when you play as it is probably the most noticable addition to rath beyond the achievement system.
In the next part of the review, which I shall post later on, I shall cover the various forms of PvP, accusations of plagirism and what the future could hold for Wrath. I will also give you my final score for the new and "improved" World of Warcraft.
