World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion of World of Warcraft. This expansion was released November 13, 2008, and was probably the most anticipated game of the year. Everyone had high expectations for this awesome new expansion, and the enthusiasm was shown at the night of the release. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and some would argue the best of its kind. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade was a great expansion to the game, and all of Blizzards users had faith in them to continue the greatness with Wrath of the Litch King.

First impressions-

You would think that this World of Warcraft expansion is the greatest game ever to be released. Look at the lines to get the game on the release, ridiculous wait times and people dressed up as fictional characters… this game should be awesome! I of course got the game on the release, and played for a long while into the morning. It was extremely fun for me, especially since I was leveling with a friend of mine. Overall, the leveling to 80 is fun, and you will never have to spend time grinding out a level, since there are plenty of quests and zones to explore. The problem exists at level 80, however. My first impression of level 80 game-play was “wow, you have got to be kidding me”. A bunch of old content revamped to be playable at level 80, how lazy can Blizzard get? So basically, a lot of old content followed by re-used skins and models–my first impression, not worth the money or the time.

The Good-

One of the good things that Blizzard did with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, was the amount of content they put into quests and leveling. New quests have elaborate stories behind them, which makes questing really fun. Also, the new instances that were created have some really fun boss fights that were really challenging for a while.

The Bad-

Be prepared, there are a lot of bad things about this game due to the rushed release and overall misunderstanding that Blizzard has with its users. First of all, almost all of the end-game raids are just old raids from level 60 that had the level of the monsters inside them increased. The fights are all the same, and the bosses even say all the same old lines. Second, the new content is way too easy! The first level 80 raid, that was supposed to keep people with a challenge for a couple months until the new raid would be released, was cleared easily in just weeks after the game’s release. Lastly and most importantly, arenas! For me, arenas are the most important part of World of Warcraft. In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, arenas required more skill than anything else in the game, and not anyone could excel in them. With the Wrath of the Lich King, arenas were made a mockery of. Instead of arenas taking skill, they altered the rating system so that as long as you played a ton of arena matches, you could get your rating up into the 2000s with a win loss ratio of 52% (in the Burning Crusade, 1850 was a good rating, and you had to win more than 80% of your matches). Also, Blizzard completely botched the class balance, making is so that any arena composition with a Death Knight or a Retribution Paladin would win with ease. The unbalanced classes and wretched rating system completely ruined arenas for World of Warcraft.

Overall-

Overall, I would not recommend that anyone start to play this game, unless you enjoy replaying old content and really easy end-game material that will require absolutely no skill, whether its arenas or raiding. If you want a solid game that has even classes and is a challenge to play, I would definitely recommend you check out another game. Granted, there really aren’t many good MMORPGs available right now, but if you want one that easily beats the overall gameplay of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, then I would definitely recommend the game Aion (review will be coming soon).