Wrath of the Lich King Information

General

- There is concept art of Dalaran and The Nexus - both look pretty cool. The Nexus looks like this huge purple beam of magic shooting towards the sky, with rings surrounding it that look like little islands you could probably land on with a flying mount.
- Metzen says he doesn’t want the end of Arthas’ story to be predictable, as he says a “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I expected” type of feeling.
- Metzen feels the Burning Crusade never really had an “ending” moment. Killing Illidan wasn’t it because he didn’t like the Legion either. So Sunwell will be it
- The Blood Elves are trying to reinvigorate the Sunwell using energy ported from Netherstorm (i.e. the Mana Forges), but supposively rebuilding the Sunwell is an excuse to summon Kil’jaeden.
- There is that quote that someone posted earlier in the forums that Kil’jaeden is not fully summoned, thus you can kill him with 25 lvl 70s.

Zones

- Dalaran will have one or two instanced dungeons in it (like Stockades or Ragefire they said).
- Dalaran won’t have Auction Houses or class trainers again (*sigh*). Same bass-ackwards reason as with Shattrath. It will probably have portals like Shattrath though, and they said possibly one to Shattrath as well.

Dungeons

- Sunwell area will have “tweaker Blood Elves, high on magic” and 6-8 bosses.
- Info about Utgarde: will be similar to Ramparts, but with more memorable moments to break up the “pull-rest-pull-boss” structure of other instances (way they put it). One is a giant flame forge that kills you if you step into it, but if you kill the workers operating it, it dies down. Another is a guantlet area like in Shattered Halls. One boss will be a Lich, another will be a Vrykul who summons scourge minions.
- There’s a map of Utgarde Keep (low level dungeon).
- It mentions the Stratholme CoT dungeon (which isn’t new news but it’s recent at least).
- There will be more “micro dungeons” (i.e. non-instanced dungeon-like areas.. I guess Deatholme is probably a good example). One is called Gjalerbron where the Vrykul are working side-by-side with Liches.

Professions

Inscription
- Inscribers will be able to sell scrolls.
- Only a handful of core spells can be inscribed. Example they used was you cannot extend the range of the Priest’s Mind Vision, but you CAN extend the duration of the Hunter’s Freezing Traps.

Turn and face the strange

We now are starting to see just how big patch 2.3 really is. It's turning out to be almost as big as the heralded Before the Storm patch that led to The Burning Crusade although as of yet no hints have been dropped that this is leading up to Wrath of the Lich King.

Still, we're seeing a lot of class changes, new mounts including one for engineers, and even a whole new stat which will have an effect on pretty much every melee class in the game for good or ill. And, just as in previous wide ranging patches, it's going to change the way people play the game to some extent. Anyone who played Warlocks from release can remember how drastically the class has varied from its conception to now, while us old-hand warriors can remember the days of the Arcanite Reaper. It is impossible to dispute that changes like the upcoming patch can entirely alter the way you can play a class.

I remember tanking Ragnaros with a 31/5/15 build, and the only person in my guild who had more points in protection than I did was our designated MT. It simply wasn't considered necessary to tank any end game content, ultimately - I even tanked Nefarian and Anub'Rekhan successfully with the spec. It was a time when a warrior could PvP and main tank with the same spec, and almost everyone did. And clearly, it's a time long since dead and buried, swept away alongside the Arcanite Reapers into the dustbin of expansion.

How have you changed over patches and class reviews? Did you start playing after a momentous patch and have gotten tired of old warhorses telling you what it was like before shamans could dual wield? Are you a better player for having been with your class for a long time, or do you feel like a fresh perspective uncluttered by what used to work sets you apart? How have the changes changed you?

Will Druids be getting reliable indoor CC in Wrath?

Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In Burning Crusade the Druid class got a new spell, Cyclone, that worked indoors as well, but with a 6 sec duration (and diminishing returns), it was only effective in limited situations.

Druids have asked loud and long for more reliable crowd control abilities. And now it looks like they might get it.

Player Wisperella recently specced Moonkin and feels she would be more desirable in groups if the Druid Entangling Roots spell were usable indoors. With a 27 second duration and a 1.5 second cast time that can already be made uninterruptible through Talents, it could make Moonkin an integral part of many groups. Especially since Moonkin with their high armor won't get squished so easily trying to crowd control a mob that's pounding on them.

Community Manager Eyonix responded that an idea along these lines is "possible" in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. He couldn't guarantee that it would happen, but let us know that he has been campaigning for it "a very long time."

Time will tell if this will be one of the handful of new abilities Druids will get in the expansion.

The skies of Northrend

One of the latest screenshots of Wrath of the Lich King shows a pink-colored sky over Northrend, with some possible cloud-moving effect I haven't seen in WoW before. When I look at this screenshot I imagine all those clouds roiling in the sky and I wonder if Northrend couldn't possibly beat Outland in most interesting skies after all.

It's a tough comparison -- Outland planets floating above the horizon are hard to beat, whereas Northrend will be limited to a more terrestrial skyscape. When The Burning Crusade first came out, I remember being impressed that the skies had any animation at all, whereas now, of course, the bar has been raised much much higher. Still, there's a lot that the skies of Northrend could offer us, especially if Blizzard were to go crazy with clouds and colors inspired by the Aurora Borealis.

What do you expect of future WoW skies? Do you hope for ever-increasing complexity, or do you think simple and realistic is always best?

WOW Wrath of the Lichking

It's four days to Blizzcon, and Boubouille, long-time source of quality information, thinks he knows what the next expansion is going to be called: Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously this supports previous information pointing to a Northrend-themed expansion, as Northrend is home to Arthas, the Lich King himself. The original post on the MMO-Champion forums claiming this to be the expansion name also asserts that there will be a new class: Death Knight! This seems to be less substantiated, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be true. Rumors aside, we'll almost certainly know for sure in just a few days. Are you excited? I am.

As far as the Death Knight rumor goes, the WoWWiki page lends a bit of support: apparently, Death Knight (as well as Necromancer) were originally planned to be classes in WoW, but didn't make it to release. Furthermore, there exists a green called Triumphant Shield of Shadow Wrath, which is confusing as no shield-using classes (Warrior, Paladin, Shaman) can use Shadow magic. This could just be an oversight in the random-enchant-generating code, but it could also be a hint at a Shadow-wielding, shield-using class...

Update: Over at MMO-Champion, they suggest that this is accurate because the link www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/ leads to a "forbidden" error, whereas accessing any other non-existent page on the site will give you a "not found" error. Continue to enjoy your rumormongering, everyone!

Update 2: Again from MMO-Champion, the title World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was found on the web site of Usk.de, which is apparently the German equivalent of our ESRB (i.e. the agency that assigns content ratings to games). It seems to have a "12" rating; although I don't speak German, I assume that means "suitable for 12 and up."

WoW's Second Expansion is Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard has gone and made it official today: the second expansion to its staggeringly-successful MMO World of Warcraft is titled Wrath of the Lich King. Yes, it may have been this week's worst-kept industry secret, but that didn't dampen Blizzcon attendees' rabid excitement for what was exposed. What was surprising, however, was the level of its presence at the show. Personally, I was expecting an announcement, and perhaps a guided demo. In actuality, the game was present in the realest sense: running on a gang of PCs on the show floor, playable by any and all.

Impressions follow the jump.

The playable demo consisted of one of the game's starting areas, the Howling Fjord. As its name implies, this verdant, ice-touched land is literally riven across the middle, and it's surrounded by cliffs on all sides. The look of the place is stark and brutal, and it's easily one of the most beautiful zones in the game (though, to be fair, I may just be enamored by its novelty). There a single instanced dungeon in the Blizzcon version of the zone: Utgard Keep, a citadel inhabited by a race of 13-foot Viking dudes called the Vrykul. I managed to coax some of the buddies into run the instance with me, but we only got as far as the first boss: a necromancer dude who hurled shadow bolts with wild abandon, summoned grips of skeletons, and froze unwary party members solid for 20 seconds at a time. Needless to say, he mercilessly pwned us.

Anyway, many details emerge: the level cap will be raised to 80; the first hero class, the Death Knight, will arrive with the expansion; a new profession called inscription will be implemented, which will allow players to customize their characters' core class abilities; siege weapons and destructible buildings will be introduced, primarily for PvP, but with possible PvE applications; and players will be allowed to customize their characters' appearances after creation, as well as learn new dance moves.

That's it in a nutshell, and yes, it's all stuff that was leaked well before the announcement. I guess some secrets are just too good to keep. As Blizzard proved with The Burning Crusade, though, the details revealed at the first announcement seldom cover the breadth of what their games will offer when release