In the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games can there be any bigger game than the World of Warcraft series? I know that Everquest players are likely to argue with that statement but this is not the place to debate about that at the moment. Wrath of the Lich King is the latest expansion to the game that was originally launched almost five years ago and currently has in excess of 11 million subscribers. This latest expansion (the second since the launch of the original) has an incredible amount of new features and details to add to the original game including a new player cap. This has now been boosted up to 80 and the most fascinating thing is that you need to be a higher quality player before the new continent that comes with this pack is allowed to be accessed by you. There is also a new class of character introduced – The Death Knight – which comes into play at level 55. Again this is strange, for any long standing players will have to go back to level 55 to take advantage of this.
Death Knights are quite different to the other characters that you can play in the game. They start fights by consuming two distinct types of runes to activate available skills. They also differ in that for a brief period they can come back to life after being killed as a kind of ghoul and providing a distinct but stationary anti-magic zone and also inflict damage on foes and destroy corpses by blowing them up. This heavily armoured warrior is certainly both a welcome newcomer to the genre and also one of the strangest class oc creatures yet seen in a RPG either on or offline. The new continent – Northrend seems to have a much stronger central narrative than previous including frequent appearances of the character Arthas. It is this narrative that makes the levelling process within the game much more interesting than before in WOW. Having said that, the narrative is still nowhere near as strong as in Mass Effect but that can be explained by the very nature of a MMO game. The PvP (Player-Versus-Player) aspects of the game has also been improved. What was previously the weakest part of the whole WOW experience has been revived by Wintergrasp, a dedicated PVP zone where one side will attempt to take the fortress of another every four hours. Between battles there is the chance for skirmishing. The whole PVP aspect of the game is now dramatic and fun with good rewards to any player that decides to take part. Graphically the game has had quite a significant update for this expansion. All the visuals are very bright, clear and colourful and the design and the animations of the game make the new continent of Northrend not only a pleasure to play in but also bright and alive. It is hard to believe the attention to detail the designers have lavished on the product.
The sound within the game is similar to what has gone before with certain pieces of music used to enhance the mood and the game where needed. For a MMO game however it is an excellent soundtrack. Overall although there is a lot of new features etc to this new expansion pack, the one thing it does in spades is make the whole experience and deeper one than before. Whether this adds to the addiction level or not will be up to the individual player. However the game has also been made easier on the eye which can only be a good thing, considering how many hours the addicted player is going to exist in this world. The new storyline, whilst more interesting is still not as strong as offline RPG’s, however the fact that this franchise is making steps to do something like this rather than the usual randomness is welcomed by myself if not by others. It appears that a new expansion pack for this MMO is expected every two years and you can see how much work etc has gone into this new experience, it is certainly going to be interesting to see what changes and improvements are made for the next one in 2010. Anyone who has played WOW before are certainly not going to be disappointed with this one because what it delivers it delivers in spades & is the best MMORP available at the moment.
Very recommended.
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