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So, what’s new about Wrath of the Lich King, besides the fun stuff we’ve already covered? A whole lot, apparently, with factoids coming in about the zones, the dungeons, and even the newly-unveiled Death Knight hero class. For your reading pleasure, here’s a list of the compiled info, nugget-sized for convenience and brevity:

* The ending of Wrath of the Lich King will be definitive and have a note of finality, unlike Burning Crusade.
* The Sunwell will be the “ending”.
* Kil’jaeden is not fully summoned, which means players will be able to take him down with 25 Level 70s.
* Dalaran will have instanced dungeons, but no Auction Houses or Class trainers.
* Sunwell will have tweaked Blood Elves and somewhere around six to eight bosses.
* Utgarde will be similar to Ramparts, with parts of the map only being accessible after killing specific enemies. It will also have a Lich boss and a Vrykul boss.
* More micro dungeons (non-instanced dungeon-like areas). One example is Gjalerbon, where the Vrykuls and the Liches are working together.
* Two Death Knight spells revealed: Army of the Dead, which summons undead minions, and Death and Decay, an Area of Effect spell.
* Inscribers will be able to sell scrolls.
* Only a handful of spells can be inscribed.

Certainly a very meaty list, and if it’s anything to go by, Wrath of The Lich King will certainly change the playing landscape of World of Warcraft as we know it. Let’s just hope Blizzard delivers on the shots they’re already calling!

In a recent interview, Jeffrey Kaplan (lead designer for World of Warcraft) had this to say about what they’re including in Wrath of the Lich King as far as level 80 end-game content:

There’s a few things. We’ve a number of instances. We’re doing instances to cover all the levelling up experience as well, not just end-game instances. We’ll have five-person instances at the end-game and for the levelling up experience.

We’ll also do the heroic dungeons again, so that provides a lot of end-game content right there. We’re going to do a 25-person raid game.

We’re going to focus on bigger raid instances, meaning more like Naxxramas with lots of bosses rather than the smaller ones like Tempest Keep.

The big lesson we learned from The Burning Crusade was that our ten-person instances are extremely popular. So for Wrath of the Lich King we wanted progression in the ten-person raid game for the players… who want to stick to that ten-person cap.

We’ll also add a new arena, and there’ll be new arena awards.

Something we introduced in patch 2.1 - that we’re going to be [building on] in upcoming content patches as well as Wrath of the Lich King - is our system of daily quests.

Daily quests make for good end-game content for players who don’t want to PvP, who don’t want to do instances, who don’t want to raid and don’t want to group - they just like doing quests by themselves.

Daily quests are quests you can do once per day and then it resets the next day. And to alleviate the feeling that those create grinding or repetitive content, we’re coming up with daily quests with randomisation.

Games for Windows was given an exclusive interview with the Blizzard development team for their September 2007 issue.

The zone list revealed earlier is true - for the moment, Northrend is split into 10 zones (boundaries and level ranges are subject to change).

Enter through Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra in the eastern bay or western point, and fight your way to Icecrown Glacier, where Arthas’ Frozen Throne waits. Wrath of the Lich King introduces a couple new concepts: Lake Wintergrasp is WoW’s first outdoor PVP zone and Azjol-Nerub, home of the spiderlike Nerubian race, is the first “outdoor undergorund” zone - a cave under the heart of Northrend, vast enough to house massive structures and cities.

The full (but tentative list)…

• Howling Fjord (68-72)
• Borean Tundra (68-72)
• The Dragonblight (71-75)
• Zul’Drak (73-76)
• Grizzly Hills (74-76)
• Azjol-Nerub (74-78)
• Sholazar Basin (75-78)
• The Storm Peaks (77-80)
• Icecrown Glacier (78-80)
• Lake Wintergrasp (outdoor PVP)

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Today’s discussion is regarding flying mounts in Northrend. The opening post (OP) cited an interview with Jeff Kaplan (aka Tigole) recently discussed the Wrath of the Lich King and factors the Blizzard development team had to consider and change for the new WoW expansion.

1. They decided to open the Death Knight class to lower levels to prevent players power leveling to get level cap.

2. As for flying mounts in Northrend, according to reports, players will have to venture forth by foot until they reach level 78 at which time flying mounts will be usable.

From Blizzard’s Bornakk:

From a design standpoint, we don’t want people to just fly over continent and skip things when they are leveling up. Instead we want people to explore and experience the environment around them when they first reach the shores of Northrend. You will walk (or ride) from one quest to another as the zones unfold before you instead of just flying over it without batting an eye.

At some point though you will definitely be able to fly in Northrend. We are currently thinking around level 78, but haven’t made a final call on this yet.

It looks like they want you to actually experience the expansion and that’s not a bad thing. Without the lore and other stuff World of Warcraft might become only a grind fest.

From Blizzard’s Bornakk:

The only details that have been finalized at this time is that we will offer new character-customization options with the hairstyles and dances, but not exactly how this will work in the game. More information will be provided when we get closer to the release of the expansion and decisions have been finalized.

Blizzard’s Lead Designer for World Design in World of Warcraft Jeff Kaplan (otherwise known as Tigole at the official WoW Forums), recently spoke at the Leipzig Games Convention about what’s going to be in the latest expansion Wrath of the Lich King.

Judging from what he said, it looks like happy times are coming to gamers everywhere. He gave word that there are quite a few things that weren’t announced in BlizzCon regarding WotLK. Among them includes the five man level 80 raid Caverns of Time which will be in Stratholm.

Kaplan also gave word that they’re looking into pursuing what the Bronze Dragon Flight is up to as well as give players a chance to fight beside Arthas before he was corrupted by the power of the Lich King.

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For Wrath of the Lich King we’re gonna have a full non-instanced zone that’s about roughly the size of Westfall; Lake Wintergrass is right in the center of the continent of Northrend. It will be massive; it will have various points of interest and objective to spread players out, so that they are not all on one spot, and we’ll also incorporate our siege weapons and our destructible buildings into that. Our goal is, we felt like, with Burning Crusade, we have done some things right and some things wrong with world PVP.

Looking at Hellfire Peninsula, it was too fluid, it was changing hands too fast and it didn’t feel like it had an impact. And, then, we felt that Halaa and the Spirit Towers were more in the right direction of how world PVP should feel. It should feel chaotic and frenetic, but with an impact and an ending that feels like it has changed the world a little bit. Not that we’re gonna copy those exactly (Halaa and Spirit Towers), but I look at those as things we did right, and, hopefully, we can apply those lessons to Lake Wintergrass; really epic, like effecting-the-whole-continent type of PVP zone.

(From an interview with Chris Robinson, Blizzard Entertainment Art Director)

The whole Death Knight questline, if you can call it that, starts at around level 55 to level 70, so you won’t be waiting till level 80 to start on that. You will be able to play with the Death Knight while keeping the old character. It’s also not going to be this all-powerful unit, and when asked about how hard it would be to get a Death Knight, I got the sense that the team wants to make it as accessible as one such class would allow.

I jokingly made a comment about a thousand Death Knights running around and Blizzard (also semi-jokingly) responded with approval to that comment. So, obviously, the Death Knight hero class is not something that they plan to keep exclusive to a select few of the most hardcore players. At least that’s the impression I got.

(From an interview with Chris Robinson, Blizzard Entertainment Art Director)

It looks like World of Warcraft players are getting more of the same graphics and OS wise with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. According to Blizzard poster Nethaera on the official WoW forums as a response to a question about the operating system and graphics requirements for Wrath of the Lich King:

The specifics for what will be required for running the expansion have yet to be worked out but it seems unlikely that we will be moving over to have everyone only able to play if they have Vista. We try to keep the game as accessible to as many people as possible and take that into account when developing our content.

Rob Pardo, Blizzard’s senior vice-president of game design, also recently quashed rumors about a graphics engine upgrade asserting there will be no system requirement change for Wrath of the Lich King.

Do you want to know what locations, famous personalities, and races you’ll find in Wrath of the Lich King? You’re in luck because Blizzard Poster/Community Manager Salthern has compiled a list of everything you can expect from the expansion.

So far, Northrend’s Zones are said to be around the size of those in Outland. Players will be given the option to start from two different zones: Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. Salthern then proceeded to give details about all the locations as well and pretty much everything else you can expect to encounter in Northrend:

Locations:

• Howling Fjord:
  • Your first chance to go up against the ancient Vrykul in their instance Utgarde Keep.
• Borean Tundra:
  • The home to the Tuskarr.
  • Parts of Borean Tundra are being melted down for water by the Naga.
  • Garrosh Hellscream has established a base of operations at Warsong Hold.
• Grizzly Hills:
  • The home of Furbolgs and their city of Grizzlemaw.
  • Also home to the ancient Dwarven City of Thor Modan.
  • The land is largely covered in forests - an example of our desire to make sure that not all zones are just snow and ice.
• Dragonblight:
  • The home of Wyrmrest Temple, the ancient meeting place where dragons go to die.
• Lake Wintergrasp:
  • A new non-instanced PvP zone with Siege Weapons, destructible buildings and multiple objectives with lasting effects. Players on Normal realms will automatically be flagged for PvP when entering this zone.
• The Storm Peaks:
  • Containing Ulduar, the ancient Titan city in the Far North.
• Capital City:
  • The Kirin Tor, led by Rhonin, have moved Dalaran to Northrend as a final front in their war against the Blue Dragon Flight. The Blue Dragon Flight, following a strengthened Malygos, are now attempting to purge all magic users from Azeroth.
  • It will act as the central neutral city floating above Northrend - a Shattrath of the North.

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