In the harsh, forbidden continent of Northrend, the story of Warcraft continues from the events in WC III Frozen throne with of course the focus on Arthas himself. While expeditions from horde and alliance is suddenly sent north and ship after ship are unloaded with brave adventurers, Arthas the Lich King sits confident in his throne already expecting this company.
In a more personal, darker and colder expansion, Wrath of the Lich King touches the player with psychological and moral confrontations. Are you fighting for the cause of right or is Arthas a mere mirror image of yourself?
Artas will not just be a endboss that only hardcore guilds can experience since Blizzard intends to implement encounters with him in different stages of the story on Northrend. It might be in earlier instances, as visions and in different quest chains. Once again will we be able to visit Caverns of Time to travel back to the time when the cursed city of Stratholme was plagued which led Artas into burning the whole place down. Players will witness the story when he orders all men, women and children to be killed while his friends turns their back on him which leads him to completely loose concept over right and wrong.
The Wrath of the Lich King Features:
- A new continent: Northrend, the harsh, icy continent where the Lich King holds rule, complete with new zones, quests, items and monsters.
- The dark, necromatic Death Knight, the first new character class added to World of Warcraft since its launch.
- New level cap of 80 providing access to mighty new powers and talents Fully dedicated PvP zone by the name of Lake Wintergrasp with the introduction of siege weapons and destructible buildings.
- New battlegrounds featuring siege engine warfare and destructable buildings, the first new battleground will be 15 man running along the same time frame as AB. The main objective will be to destroy enemy buildings, the more you destroy, the more honor you get.
- New trade skill “inscription” which allows the player to permanently enhance their spells and abilities. The new cap for tradeskills will be 450 and the inscription tradeskill will allow you to alter spells, possibly resulting in fireballs with knock back or stun, lengthen effects on spells, and even improve the damage of abilities.
- Two starting zones so you have a choice of where to level as soon as you step foot in Northrend, this will reduce some of the stress caused on release day. Expanding character customization options including new hairstyles & dances, the ability to change the hairstyles of existing characters, and new skin color variants
Northrend
Northrend is a crossiant-shaped continent in northern Azeroth. The continent is roughly half the size of the Eastern Kindom, but is expected to match Outlands in length and width. Although Northrend is known for its snow and ice, developers stated that parts of the continent will not be frozen over.
Northrend will feature approximately eleven zones with content for levels as low as 68, though players may travel to Northrend at any level. Arriving at Norhrend players will land either at the Howling Fjord or the Borean Tundra zones, located at opposite ends of the continent.Howling Fjord is home to evil vampiric half-giants called the Vrykul. A branch of humans that for ages have lived in Northrend but with Arthas promise of power led them into becoming a dark and barbaric race. The Vrykul is more or less dominating the easter part of Howling Fjord and are constantly raiding alliance and horde settlements.It’s among the cursed Vrykul we find two of the expansions exciting instances.Utgarde Keep, the very first dungeon with large halls and walls of dark stone where Northends first boss, Ragnar the pillager awaits and Utgarde Pinnacle, the L80 endgame instance.
Another new aquiantance in Northrend are the nomad race Tuskarr, which best are describes as a small humanoid walruss people and the total opposite of Vrykul. They are friendly, neutral people with a culture inspired by the Inuit. The Tuskar primarily make their homes in the western part of Norhtrend called Borean Tundra.
Grizzly Hills is a forested zone located in the southeast part of the continent inhabited by Grizzlemaw Furbold and Dwarves.Another southern area is the great Dragonblight a enormous ice plain covered with the bones of dragons which come there to die with their ancestors when nearing death.
In between the Dragonblight and the Borean Thundra lies Lake Wintergrasp which will be the first fully dedicated PVP zone in World of Warcraft, where Blizzard will make another serious attempt to have largescale PVP battles.
The magi of Dalaran have also relocated to Northrend to deal with the rising threat of the Dragonflight and Arthas. The city of Dalaran will function as the neutral sanctuary city for the continent, similar to in Outland. Dalaran is levitating at great heights but can be accessed by either foot or flying mount.
The Death Knight
In an expansion characterized of hard climat and the treat from The scorge, the new Death Knight class fits perfectly in the theme. It’s the first of a series of hero classes Blizzard is planning to implement, classes that separates from the normal ones in theme, background or way of playing.
The class is to be locked up through a not too complicated questline which in the end allows the player to create a Death Knight. According to Blizzards spokesman you will probably start you Death Knight career by breaking out from Stratholme realizing that it’s not such a good idea serving The Lich Kings anymore. It’s a class with more special and epic feeling and therefore it’s not going be playable from level 1. Instead the starting level is 60, possible even higher. The amount of skills he will posses will be much higher than of a level 1 character but a bit lesser than what is normal at level 60.
A Death Knight is going to play as a hybrid between tank and dps, combining close combat with spells and bases it’s abilities from rune weapons which is used as a power source instead of the normal manay, rage or energy. The three types of runes, blood, frost and unholy, have all different functions och can be combined freely. The possibility of changing the composition of the runes is possible only while not in combat. Filling up the rune weapon with frost runes when meeting a boss with low frost resistance for example. Spells cost one or more runes to cast, though after a max of six spells the rune meter is empty and will enter a cooldown period. Though it’s planned that various spells and abilities can restore the runes quicker, it seem that the spells from The Death Knight will be less frequent but more powerful than other classes. A example of rune restoring spell is blood blow – a Damage Over Time spell that restores two runes when duration is ended. Another ability is for example army of the dead, that summons ghouls from the ground to attract agro for eight seconds.
The Death Night Features:
- When created you will start at a higher level, between 60-70
- Designed to be a hybrid class, with the ability to tank or DPS
- Able to use plate armor
- They do not use shields! you have to tank with a 2 hander or dual wield.
- Use “runeblade” weapons
- Summoning spells like “army of the dead”
- Death Knight is the only class that uses the new rune system, it is a replacement of the manabar for this class.
- Three types of runes, blood, frost, and holy. Players can carve these into their weapons in order to gain new abilities and customize them to fit their play style and choice of talents
- The runes you are using will appear on your UI under the health bar
- Runes have a cooldown which can be modified by talents and attributes
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