Beta blog: World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King

Welcome to our regular column on the ongoing beta of the next big thing in the World of Warcraft.

Ishnu’alah!

Welcome to Eith’s (entirely non-sing-a-long) Wrath of the Lich King blog. A couple of days ago I was handed a shiny beta key so this blog will be my musings and impressions of Blizzard’s second expansion for the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft.

There’s a lot to cover, including the introduction of the first ‘hero class’ in the game (Death Knights), new professions, new zones, new graphics, a new achievement system, even new hair. So, spoilers ahoy, and should you want to keep your eyes pure and virginal for the actual launch consider yourself warned.

Do you smell something?
I know a lot of people are interested in how Blizzard has decided to implement the new hero class so I rolled me a Death Knight and took her through the beginner zone. It’s really refreshing to have a brand-spankin’ new character and not be faced with the horror that is Stranglethorn or other zones that are a pain to get through, ganked or not.

As far as initial impressions go this class is fun and in many ways (both lore-wise and game mechanics related) they function something like a corrupted paladin; extremely limited abilities at range, but an enjoyable blend of melee and casting when you’re in the thick of a fight.

Deathknights - whole new levels of angst for RP-nerds.

As a freshly resurrected member of the Scourge players begin in an instanced starting-zone-version of the Plaguelands as a level 55 Death Knight. Yes, it’s a lot of fun to have a new character appear withquite significant green items, but I wasn’t happy about my missing talent points. The developers, however, have come up with a pretty interesting way of handing out those precious points – quests.

Each quest completed in the instanced zone rewards some gold and between one and six talent points to spend. The quests are also a lot of fun, in that evil Scourge way; there’s something inherently satisfying about riding a frostworm, killing humans by the hundreds and swooping down on a Scarlet Crusader so your dragon can eat him on the wing. Pure class. By the end of the zone you’re fully kitted out in blues and get a kick arse quest/event that ends the instanced zone and sends you out into the world and into your faction.

Face-rolling fun
Okay yes, I admit it, in some ways the Death Knight seems overpowered – though perhaps that’s just the fact that you start out so much higher than a normal starting character. Time will tell whether the class normalises through levelling to 80.

Death Knight talent trees come in three plague-ridden flavours; Blood, Frost and Unholy. I’m yet to try out the Frost (nominally the ‘tanking’ spec of this class) or Unholy (the PvP build) builds but Blood is face-rolling fun. Yes, you can roll your face across the keyboard and get a good result. Blood spec is fast and furious – little downtime and capable of taking on multiple high level mobs and surviving easily. Combined with the Rune Tap ability and Blood Strike to heal a Blood-specced Knight, this seems to create an efficient levelling machine.

Death Knights grow runic power as they fight, much like a warrior pools rage. That runic power can then be tapped by different abilities from the Frost, Blood or Unholy trees – two runes of each type are available at a time. The UI’s representation of which runes are available or on cooldown is kinda small at this stage in the beta however.

Death Grip a Fel Reaver… and die
As expected, upon my arrival in Outland to continue levelling, I was faced with dozens of Death Knights. Also, as expected, general chat was flooded with talk about using the ranged pull ‘Death Grip’ on passing Fel Reavers. However, it seems even heroic classes aren’t up to the challenge of taking on a Fel Reaver at level 58.

Come here, ya big lug, I'm gonna...

... die. Poo.

Death Grip is a great mechanic, particularly as a ranged pull for a class that functions mainly as melee with limited local area spell capabilities. It has a great animation sequence that lifts your targeted mob into the air, pulling it towards you and forcing it to fight (I suspect this will also be great for retreating mobs, but I’m yet to confirm this).

Blizz has taken some pity on Death Knight noobs as they make their way into the world – First Aid starts out at 275, which is helpful to say the least, but other professions have to be acquired the old-fashioned way.

Recent (shocking) discoveries
I’m sure a lot of you run mods like Cartographer or similar, which open the world map and reveal areas even if your character has never actually explored that element of the zone. So, having recently dropped tailoring and enchanting to pick up the new Inscription profession while on the beta server, I sent my 70 mage (that would be Eithriel -ed) into Elwynn Forest to start herbalism, the matched profession.

It was as I was running around following herb nodes on my map that the familiar ‘ding’ noise went off, and I learnt that I’ve finally, after 70 levels, explored all of Elwynn Forest. Phear my leet mage skills. So, that’s how achievements work – some will be automatically awarded on installation of the expansion as far as I can tell, for characters already of a certain level, but new characters can experience the joy of extra ‘ding’ noises as they complete 50 quests, for example.

Hopefully next week we can get into the nitty-gritty of Northrend, where it’s frozen all the time but the quest givers keep asking you to go swimming. Oh hai, hypothermia.