World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack

Binding: Video Game
Brand: Blizzard Entertainment
EAN: 0020626728195
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Blizzard Entertainment
Manufacturer: Blizzard Entertainment
Model: 020626728195
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Release Date: 2008-11-13
Studio: Blizzard Entertainment

Editorial Review:

Amazon.com Product DescriptionFans of World of Warcraft, prepare for Blizzard Entertainment's next installment -- World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich. In this latest expansion, something is afoot in the cold, harsh northlands. The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. The necromantic power of the plague and legions of undead armies threaten to sweep across the land. Only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King and end his reign of terror.

The tuskarr, a walrus-like race of nomadic fisherman, inhabit the icy Borean Tundra. View larger.

Half-giant warriors, the vrykul, once inhabited the land. View larger.

You'll enjoy exploring Northrend and all its environments and dungeons. View larger.

Explore Northrend and battle the Lich King with World of Warcraft's first hero class character -- The Death Knight. View larger.

One of many new environments, Dragonblight is an arctic wasteland surrounded by dense forests. View larger.

Many strange and terrifying creatures inhabit this frozen continent. View larger.

Enter the Death Knight
This expansion adds a host of content to the already massive existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore Northrend (the vast icy continent of the Lich King), and battle high-level heroes to determine the ultimate fate of Azeroth. As you face the dangers of the frigid, harsh north, prepare to master the dark necromantic powers of the Death Night -- World of Warcraft's first Hero class. No longer servants of the Lich King, the Death Knights begin their new calling as experienced, formidable adversaries. Each is heavily armed, armored, and in possession of a deadly arsenal of forbidden magic.

If you have a World of Warcraft account with a character of at least level 55, you will be able to create a new level-55 Death Knight of any race (if on a PvP realm, the Death Knight must be the same faction as your existing character). And upon entering the new world, your Death Knight will begin to quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way. This expansion allows for only one Death Knight per realm, per account.

New Environments in Northrend Await
Journey through the remote, diverse lands of Northrend and explore Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra, and Howling Fjord. Named for bones of perished dragons and majestic shrines to the fallen creatures, Dragonblight is an arctic wasteland surrounded by dense forests.

Not everything is frozen in Northrend. The lush mountains of Grizzly Hills are the ancestral home to the furbolgs, who have grown accustomed to relative peace. Although their tranquility is being challenged by trappers, goblins, and ice trolls, Grizzly Hills remains a vast and dangerous wilderness.

The southwestern tip of Northrend is home to the sprawling Borean Tundra. The Horde has established a dominant presence in this icy portion of the continent and has formed a bond with the tuskarr, a walrus-like race of nomadic fisherman. Magical energy is afoot in the region, and it has caused increased tension.

High above the Great Sea at the southeastern tip of Northrend lies the Howling Fjord. Ancient mythology holds that a race of half-giant warriors, the vrykul, once inhabited the land, founding a prosperous civilization. They mysteriously vanished, leaving deserted villages and abandoned temples. In present times, the Alliance and the Horde have come to Howling Fjord to confront the Lich King. Strangely, this has prompted the return of the vrykul, who are attacking the Alliance and Horde settlements. Howling Fjord presents a difficult challenge on two fronts: withstanding the vrykul's onslaught and battling the evil Lich King.

A Multitude of Monsters
Strange and terrifying creatures inhabit the frozen continent of Northrend, such as Nerubian Viziniers, Plague Eruptors, Shoveltusks and Flesh Giants, to name just a few. Half-spider, half-humanoid, the viziniers utilize sorcery and high intelligence to emerge as the rulers of Nerubians' underground kingdom. The Plague Eruptors are walking corpses created by the Lich King's evil experiments to spread horror and chaos across the living world.

Massive curved antlers make it easy to identify the Shoveltusks. These grumpy beasts are very dangerous, territorial, and best left alone. The Flesh Giants are nothing short of nightmarish abominations. Cobbled together from the pieces of giant body parts, the Flesh Giants employ tremendous strength to carry out the Lich King's wishes.

The World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich expansion pack allows you to engage in epic siege warfare. The pack presents the first Hero class and allows you to transform your Death Knight's look with character customization that even include hairstyles and dances. You'll enjoy exploring the Northrend and all its environments and dungeons, filled with some of the deadliest creatures -- and greatest treasures -- on all of Azeroth.

System Requirements
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating System	PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs) Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer
CPU	PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+ Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor	PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2 Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better
Graphics Hardware	PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better	PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better.
Memory	PC: 512 MB Mac: 1 GB	PC: 1 GB Mac: 2 GB
Hard Drive Space	15 GB of free space
All Platform Requirements	Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play.

Features:

World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich expansion pack for PC and Mac opens the new continent of Northrend
Death Knight is Warcraft's first hero class and is available for any player with at least a level-55 character
Northrend offers new environments, including Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra, and Howling Fjord
New creatures inhabit the icy continent, such as Nerubian Viziniers, Plague Eruptors, Shoveltusks and Flesh Giants
Transform your Death Knight's look with character customization that even include hairstyles and dances

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- More of the same -.-
I really wanted to build onto my achievements in tBC when I went to Northrend. Sadly, they disabled flying until 77 and you have to re-purchase it just for Northrend (I think that's just stupid; like my mount can't handle the cold air @.@ I also felt like that was a blow to my esteem since I worked hard for my flyer), and the quests are more of the same! Monsters grant hardly squat for exp so you're forced into doing all of the quest hubs, which don't even have good directions most of the time. All of that frustrated me to the point where I wanted to do something else.

OK, the second part of the expansion is the addition of the Death Knight class which starts at 55. So after making my DK I was quickly surprised to see what appeared to be the Lich King standing in front of me. Now, I don't know about you, but for me it kinda takes the thrill out of defeating a epic boss like Arthas when you get to train under him and do his bidding. Anyways, I proceeded to do the introductory quests and quickly noticed that the DK was so powerful that you could literally just randomly hit 4 buttons and decimate any target your own level(up to 3 levels higher than you and elite also).

I didn't mind the quest's in the DK area to much bcus it was cool to actually play the 'bad guy' for once, but I thought the story ended rather lamely with the battle at Light's Hope Chapel.

After finishing the "noob" area for DK and becoming a member of the Alliance by presenting a note to the king (after getting spit on and food thrown at you by all the guards in SW [I felt humiliated, honestly!]) I preceded to locate and see the what info I could find on the forums about the DK class.

Well, I found out that DK was so powerful that they could tank in any spec and that since they started gear with better than tBC gear, they were decimating the 50-59/60 bracket battlegrounds, and were dominating world pvp as well. Now I kinda thought that was interesting, bcus I thought Blizzard always kept balance in mind, but I guess they didn't see this happening. This made me mad because I was unfairly treated due to the release of tBC when I was 51, It made it very hard to level; And now, to see that DK was one of the most overpowered classes and over populated classes made me feel sorry for people trying to level the classic classes.

Blizzard also killed pvp for me IMO. The new arena sets look terrible, and IDC what kind of stats the items have. If they don't look brutal and represent my class I'm not going to wear them, period.

Over all I give blizzard some props for making a game that I enjoyed playing with my friends for about 2 1/2 years, but I also have to put my foot down and say that I'm not impressed with the quality of game dynamics and content Wrath brought. I'm going to quit playing WoW since it just isn't together anymore. Hopefully another company will make a game that can compete with WoW [Maybe Warhammer Online, but I'm not happy with EA bcus of the male-ware and limited install stuff they have been putting with games recently]

for those that said "Wall of text" and didn't read; I made a easy Con/Pro chart below.

-TL,DR-
Cons:
-Recycled quests (e.x.: kill X then deliver Y; Kill X loot Y; Kill X and return)
-Quest grind from 70-80
-Loss of flying mount in Northrend until 77 and cost of 1k gold
-Imbalanced implementation of the Death Knight Hero class
-Poor lore and story (mostly concerning DK IMO)
-Poor pvp item design
-Easy Dungeons

Pros:
-New content including: a new class(DK), land mass(including quests/dungeons), ten levels (on top of 70), new Arena/battleground, higher level professions, and a new profession (inscription)
-New multi-person land mounts (If you can afford it)
-Siege warfare
-A few new quest designs that were interesting, but too short

Rating:

- Blizzard makes a great game better, wow!
The Lich King expansion has been out for almost two weeks now, and whereas I can only review portions of the expansion, what I have seen and done has been amazing thus far.

As soon as I got to Northrend, I could tell this place was built correctly. The beginning areas of the continent have a very old-world feel to them, and you can immediately understand that this place has history. Anyone who played the prior Warcraft games knows that Northrend is a place with a certain feel to it, and the creators of the expansion have hit that dark, evil feel on the head.

The expansion is typical of a WOW game with numerous quests available the moment you get off the Zeppelin. There is a lot of variety, and as soon the starting areas clear out from all of the people looking for new continent, there really is a lot to do.

Graphically they've improved the look of the game completely, which is saying a lot because the prior content looked amazing as well.

I've only run one instance, which was Uthgarde Keep and it was stellar. The difficulty was there, the place was just crazy looking with a huge forge and an outside area where dragon riders fly over head. The loot has been upgraded to be in line with players over level 70, and unlike Burning Crusade, not everything is as obvious an upgrade. Many of the stats on items have been redefined so you won't always be looking for the same stats you had looked for previously.

I've only played myself to level 72 which is a lot of play considering Blizzard has DOUBLED the amount of exp it takes to gain a level. It's been alot of questing and hunting, and more questing for my Warlock as I've been trying to balance finding new places with upgrading my character.

All in all, an excellent upgrade, WOW never fails to impress me.

Rating:

- Great game, horrible players....
Pros: The new class, Death Knight, is fun to play. They have a lot of advantages with any of their Talent builds. There are a lot of quests to complete, comparable to Burning Crusades. The new zones are big, and are visually appealing. Items in this expansion are also nice. The game is stable compared to Everquest 2's latest expansion. Server down time hasn't deviated from the weekly update, aside from server restarts.

Cons: Every Tuesday brings apprehension that a patch will nerf Death Knight abilities. You need to reach level 77 and spend even more gold to be able to use flying mounts in Northrend. The terrain in the lower leveled zones requires you to wait for automated traveling systems.

I like this game, and I like the concepts this game brings to the table compared to other MMOs. The problem with World of Warcraft in general, is that it's full of griefers and people who lack common ethics and courtesy. It's a problem in all MMOs I suppose, since a lot of people overcompensate when they aren't personally held accountable for how they act.

Rating:

- very appealing to most wow enthusiasts
I played WoW two years ago, and briefly played the last xpac. This new xpac has very creative quests that are technically well done. I've run seven of the 5 man instances, and while they were quite creative, they were also simple and I enjoyed them the first time but don't plan to go back. The Wintergrasp siege battles are also technically well done, but the machines seemed to have only one or two skills, so I'm not sure about the long-term playability. The musical scores are exceptional for a game and integrate a new arrangement of the old scores with new music. The lore is well done and alludes heavily to WC3.

On the negative side, the game is extremely focused on gear grinding, and the people I know who play WoW sincerely enjoy (or think they do) doing repetitive and time-consuming activities to get gear, rinse and repeat. Compared to say, Guild Wars pvp edition, where paying $5 unlocks full sets of pvp gear enabling you to enjoy arena combat immediately, WoW involves much repetitive grinding just to get a basic set of gear for pvp. The forums and general chat consist mainly of constant 3rd grade insults, and reflect a huge gap in the quality of the community compared to other mmos (for example, Eve Online).

Rating:

- More of the same just in an icy and cold theme
I can't believe after 4 years Blizzard give this to us. Let's see some
facts:

1 The game was not it for casual players, now it is worse. Do you remember how impossible it was to gather 5000 gold for a casual player for the flying epic mount?, Now there is a mammoth mount that transports 3 players, and it costs 20,000 gold! fantastic Blizzard!

2 The quests are the same:
Go kill X of Y.
Deliver some box.
Gather X of Y.

3 Death Knight: an overpower class, it is ruining the amusement of the other classes. Now all reroll as DK. 95% of players online in any battleground are DKs. Also they start at level 55! awesome Blizzard!

4 Naxxramas: an old level 60 raid zone is level 80 now! For the next expansion, what we would get, perhaps Ahn Qiraj in level 90?

5 No world PvP: if you try to attack some town of the opposite faction,
from nowhere a bunch of high level guards rape your character. Bottom line: you have to pay a bunch of gold in fix your armor. Is this fun?

6 Just one more Battleground! At least you can add 4 or 5 more. Is it so difficult to make a map for a BG?

7 No gnome healers! After 4 years the gnome is the only class with no heals at all! come on Blizzard! Imagine how cute a gnome priest or druid or shammy could be!

8 They removed all Attunement from outlands raids, but no in the classics raids. WTF?

9 They nerfed almost all classes in patch 3.0. But what about the infamous "fear" of the warlock? fear is the worst game mechanic ever.

10 Leveling from 1-80 can be a nightmare for new players to WoW. The fact that I have to level up 80 levels make myself sick. I'll never make a new char again. No way!

But don't worry at least you can get a haircut in Orgrimmar if you
are horde or in Stormwind if you are alliance. :-)

clatpanel
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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack

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