In honor of today’s release of WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, this week’s IOTW will, obviously, be WOTLK.

WOTLK marks the second expansion and approximately the fourth year running of the World of Warcraft expansion. It adds a host of new features and, possibly, makes a bigger leap in game-play than Burning Crusade did. Achievements, new 5-man dungeons, 10/25-man raid content, a whole new heroic class, and much more can be found in this expansion and there is no telling what the developers have in mind for later versions of the 3.0 patch. Whether you PVP, PVE, RP, or anything in-between, you will find plenty to do in WOTLK.

Achievements

I’ll start with a system they rolled out in 3.0 but was really a debut to the WOTLK beta, thus I feel it is appropriate to mention it as part of WOTLK. The achievement system is a new feature that tracks particular goals that a player can obtain and awards them points, pets, mounts, tabards, and titles for their effort. There are a huge range of different rewards and an even bigger range of achievements to complete.

Many have brushed this system off as not more than an e-peen meter, but there are numerous achievements I found myself addicted to completing. For instance, while there was no reward for it, I was far beyond driven to complete the ‘Classic Raider’ achievement. This had a particular nostalgia value to me, coming from the vanilla game and starting when Molten Core and the fight against Ragnaros had only just began.

There are MANY achievements to complete and they are all of varying difficulties, from getting 50 mounts, to looting large amounts of gold, to simply getting level 60/70/80, or even just going 5 daily quests in your whole career. Some of these carry a points reward which is nothing more than a measure of the number of achievements you have completed. Others carry heavy rewards such as the Black Proto-drake or the ‘The Immortal’ title. Some of these will be easily obtainable, others impossible save for a few.

Either way, they offer something to do on those non-raid nights when you hate to PVP.

Death Knights

WOTLK marks the introduction of a new class, and the first heroic class. No doubt if you are, at all, interested in WOTLK you have read all about it. The Death Knight is a 2-hand wielding, dps/tanking, master of frost, undead, and blood. They use brutal combinations of diseases, melee white damage, and summoned aids to beat their opponents down. They tank with naught but a 2-hander, relying on sheer health, armor, and mitigation to take less damage.

While they were initially well-overpowered versus the other classes, Blizzard has well-balanced the death knight making them fit well into a dps or tanking role. Starting at level 55, you must have a level 70 to begin playing a death knight and you must be willing to roll through Outlands one last time.

While starter DKs are sure to face pressure from opposing faction DKs during the start and level 80s who are bored waiting for others to level up, they will eventually surpass this stage and become valuable group members in any 5, 10, or 25 many group.

To me, they will be naught more than an alt… at least until I get one to 80.

Parallel 10/25 man raids

Blizzard took a major step with raid content which will hopefully pay off. They have listened to the concerns of the many and decided to create parallel lines of raid content: one for 10 man raiders, and one for 25.

While the 25-man content will hold better gear, it will hold greater challenges both inside and outside the dungeon. For one, guild leaders will have to deal with the struggles of managing ~35 people to ensure a proper raid crew from night to night, a more in-depth loot distribution system, the possibility of more drama, and the struggles of down-right harder instances.

10-man content carries lesser loot in quality, but saves on these troubles. It allows you play exclusively with a small group of friends that you know and trust, you can play independent of 25-man content so there is no need to recruit beyond the 10-man capacity, and loot can be divided up on a very ad-hoc basis because virtually everyone will be assured some piece of loot.

I’m not for or against either one especially, I will personally begin by undertaking 10-mans, but there will be 25-man crews looking for their own glory.

Other

Other odds and ends include:

• Revamped talents which were released in 3.0
• Shorter (and easier) 5-man dungeons and heroic dungeons
• Emblems of Valor and Emblems of Heroism (same idea as Badge of Justice)
• Many revamped spell animations, most of which were included in 3.0

Conclusion

All-in-all I am both impressed and excited for WOTLK. It brings a lot of things I think the game needed, but not quite all of them. Hopefully future expansions and patches will bring more of the changes the game needs to be wholly rounded out.