Wrath of the Lich King: Looking back

I've been scrambling a lot lately in World of Warcraft. Never really standing around just talking with people, shootin the breeze. No, anything social I have been doing in the game has been accompanied by a flurry of activity, whether it be heroics, questing for The Seeker title, or trying to get Rivendare's damn horse. All of this is being done for one simple reason: Cataclysm is coming out soon, December 7th actually. What always seemed as this nebulous, far off thing now has a concrete date, the beta is winding down and there is light at the end of the Lich King tunnel. While running around like a madman though, I have been thinking this entire time, how good is Wrath? Can I even really judge how good the expansion is, as it was my first full WoW experience. I got in on the game three years ago, when BC wasn't new, but not old either. So do I really have the experience needed to accurately talk about Wrath? I think so. I raided, did the PvP, did all the dungeons, so let's give this a go. Read on for more.
This expansion to me, at the very least is one that was leaps and bounds above of Burning Crusade, on many levels. A few though the neon predecessor has it beat. I mean first of all, I don't think anyone can really deny the setting of Wrath is beautiful. Each zone has a different flavor to it that makes questing a visual joy, for the most part. High points for me being Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills. Both are heavily forested areas, that while still not directly tied to the Scourge or Lich King, are still a joy to go through thanks to nice long chains that lead well from one hub to the next, making a story all its own. And actually that is kind of a lie, one of the first places you see the Lich King is Howling Fjord, but it is more of a small part of the quests, the zone really more has to do with you finding out about the various Vykrul races, who all worship the Lich King as an all around swell guy. These zones also kick the crap out of just about all of the Outland Zones, and their bizarre color coding. Give me Borean Tundra any day, especially over the neon fucking rave purple of Netherstorm. Also the zones all have certain story elements tied into them, but all the story elements also tie into each other. Sholazar ties into the Titans, which ties into Storm Peaks, which has Yogg-Saron, which ties into Icecrown and the Scourge mining his black blood in the form of Saronite. Really when you connect the threads woven through the two main conflicts (The Nexus War and the war against the Lich King) you end up with an intricate narrative that makes the disjointed and piecemeal storytelling of Burning Crusade look like it was done by an eight year old.

Another source of praise is also flavor related. Weapons and armor look fantastic in Wrath, especially compared to Burning Crusade and Vanilla WoW. The armor tends to show off the Norse themes inherit in the expansion, and best of all, you do not look like you were raped by a pack of Skittles, like I often felt in Outland. The tier armor, most of all tier 8, looks amazing. Pretty much anything from Ulduar is absolutely inspired.

As far as gameplay in Wrath of the Lich King goes, the expansion was very much a mixed bag. The raiding of Wrath started off pretty badly by re-using Naxxramas. Now I never played WoW in the Vanilla days, but from what I understand, Blizzard always felt they didn't get enough mileage out of this instance, due to it coming out in the tail end of the level 60 days. But from what I have read and seen, little effort was made at all to change the dungeon in any meaningful way, instead simply taking the dungeon and re-tuning the encounters to level 80. Things got much better with Ulduar though. Never had the chance to finish it myself, but I have seen every fight I didn't personally do, and I have to say, the place is pure joy. From creative bosses, to lore heavy scenes, to the final amazing encounter with Yogg-Saron, it's easy to see that Ulduar was the raiding high point in Wrath. Ulduar being the high point though, is almost a bad thing given that it was followed up by the dumb as fuck Trial of the Crusader. Way too easy, with only one good encounter, the Twin Valkyrs. Everything else was either just time consuming (Beasts) or gimmicky in a bad way (Faction champions) The final boss was also overgeared so fast, even for a casual raiding guild that he was never a problem at all. ICC, from what I have done is much better, but still not as good as Ulduar. That could also be because my recent ICC raiding is PuG based...which makes me want to fucking stab myself in the eyes.

I don't PvP a lot, but when I do, I like to mix it up in a Battleground. Two new BG's made an appearance in Wrath, Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest. Strand of the Ancients functions kind of like a mini-Wintergrasp attack/defense thing, with each side trading. It was actually a lot of fun, much for the same reason Wintergrasp is actually fun. The goal was kind of the same too, get the Titan relic. I enjoyed this BG a lot and became happy whenever I got it as a random. Isle of Conquest though, plays like a shittier Arathi Basin with a wall demolition mechanic built in. To this day I still have no clue what I am ever doing in there. Arenas...I cannot comment on at all. Tried it once, didn't like it, just not for me. So like raiding, PvP in wrath is a mixed bag.

Last thing I want to talk about is what WoW did to existing things that changed how the game is played. First of all, mounts are a joke to get now. This is fantastic. The whole idea of running back and forth everywhere is just so...annoying. Blizzard seemed inclined to agree and lowered the basic mount level from 40 to 30, then down to 20...and with that the fast mount speed was lowered to 40, and basic flying was made to be 60. On top of all of these great changes would be a lowering of the training prices. Another addition to the game was the Looking for Dungeon tool. No more trolling trade chat for a group, begging for a tank. Now from what I can tell, the times you wait for a random dungeon is comparable to the time spent trolling in trade way back when, but hey, this is so much easier. It's like a Ronco grill, set it and forget it. Go farm Saronite while you wait, it's amazing. The last change I want to touch upon is the heirloom gear you can purchase. If you have a level 80, you are able to save up emblems and buy gear for your alts that not only levels up with them, but gets stronger, and gives an XP bonus in the case of armor, weapons do not. While some of the models used could have been better, this overall has made leveling an alt a painless experience and has ushered in a new era of replayability for a lot of people. It did it to me, I have no complaints here. For all three of the things I just mentioned, I really only ever saw elitists complaining on the forums. "Catering to casuals!" they would type, fingers crusty from Cheetos dust. To some degree this is true, but that is not a bad thing. The crazy hardcore fucks of any game, including an MMO do not make up the majority of revenue, so Blizzard helping the people who once in a while want to experience sunlight firsthand is a perfectly fine idea. To anyone that disagrees...really you just need a life. Making the grindy part of a game less grindy helps everyone. Besides, none of these changes are mandatory. Don't want a mount faster? Wait till the old level marks, then buy the training, and then throw away the fucking gold you would have saved. Don't like the lfd tool? Troll trade chat still, though good luck finding 4 other people doing the same. Hate heirlooms? Don't use them, it's as simple as that. Really I think I only go on forums to make myself angry.

So in conclusion, Wrath...is a damn fine expansion. While it does have some rough and not fun points to it, on the whole it is leaps and bounds ahead of anything put out for the game previously, in both pushing new ideas and streamlining the existing experience. From a story standpoint the expansion was top-notch, finally closing off a main story that has been in the making since Warcraft 3. While the experience overall was fun, I do hope for Cataclysm, Blizzard takes into account what the community said and doesn't fall into the old traps of this expansion. Trial of the Crusader and Naxx 2.0 sucked, so basically do not repeat those and I think WoW forward will be a grand old time.