World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
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Blood and Gore,Suggestive Themes,Use of Alcohol,Violence
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment Genre(s): MMORPG Home Page: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wra...
Raiding 101The biggest downer of Wrath of the Lich King so far has been the lack of challenging endgame content. There's plenty of introductory content and it's generally very polished and consistently balanced. Once you hit 80, there is the familiar tour of existing 5-man instances in Heroic mode. They provide plenty of activities for the casual player for quite a while. Loot is good - good enough to replace old level 70 epics from Sunwell Plateau - and a badge system with Emblems of Heroism allows you to obtain additional pieces to fill out that last hole or two in your gear. All Heroic dungeons also have unique loot tables that do not share items with the normal version of the instance. Beyond the 5-mans, there are raids. At launch, Wrath of the Lich King includes four raid instances.
All offer both 10- and 25-man versions on separate raid timers and with separate loot tables. 10-man raids dish out same Emblems of Heroism as Heroic 5-mans while 25-man raids have their own badge system with Emblems of Valor for another set loot you can use to fill up any holes in your equipment.
Naxxramas is familiar to those who went hardcore on raids before Burning Crusade. The flying fortress was moved to the skies of Dragonblight and the content was re-tuned. Naxxramas is a massive instance with four wings and grand total of 15 bosses to farm for some shiny epic loot. It's considered to be the "Karazhan of Northrend" - the first step for any raiding guild to conquer. And conquered it was - first guild cleared Naxxramas (and all other available 25-man raids for that matter) in less than three days after launch. By the time my Shaman finally hit 80 after a three day no-life leveling session, one guild had already done the same with 25 characters and killed every single raid boss available in the game.  Thankfully Malygos is not something you'll automatically kill on the first try. The endgame content of Wrath of the Lich King is easy. Very easy. The raid content, especially for 25-man raids, is currently tuned for everyone who bothers to show up. Gear and playskill optional. Part of the problem is that there is only one real raid instance, Naxxramas. The three other raids are just single bosses, similar to Onyxia or Magtheridon. Go in, little or no trash, bash down boss, loot epics. Only the Malygos fight includes some novel concepts that require some creative thinking when facing him for the first time. Vault of Archavon does mix things up slightly - it's under Wintergrasp Keep and open only to the faction currently controlling the zone. It also provides a mix of PvE and PvP loot, much to the distress of Arena junkies who made a lot of noise about the fact that the "PvE scrubs" could gather up Season 5 Arena gear from Archavon the Stone Watcher - and do it before Arena Season 5 has even started. On the other hand, Archavon is so easy that even a random pile of 25 PvP players could run in, bash their head at the keyboard for ten minutes and then start fighting over the spoils. Surprisingly 10-man raids are actually slightly harder than the larger raids. With just 10 people you have far less room to play around and even one person dying can put a serious dent in your capability to finish the fight. It's still not exactly hard, but it means that if your small 10-man raid can clear Naxxramas, all you need is to add 15 random people (just pick them from a public channel) and you are ready to take on the larger version - it isn't any harder, drops better loot and gives you far more room for individual failures. Many 25-man raid fights are perfectly doable with just 15 people playing properly. Extending the Content - Achievements Achievement Unlocked: Wrath of the Lich King Content Cleared Blizzard has already responded to the complaints about the content being squarely aimed to the casual gamer - even the raids. The goal apparently is to provide a very smooth landing to the world of raids for those who have previously been unable to participate. Burning Crusade was the complete opposite in this regard - even Karazhan put up a fight early on and first 25-man raids were outright brutal early on. It was all nerfed later to accommodate casuals, but by then many had already decided that raiding was not for them. With Northrend the initial raid content starts out already designed for casuals and with the difficulty slider at "noob" level. To cater for the hardcore raid guilds, Blizzard has added some achievements. Buried among hundreds of other achievements there are raid-specific achievements that give recongnition for doing the encounters undermanned (8 or 20-man) and for doing the fights flawlessly or by using unconventional tactics. These range from easy (Safety Dance - don't die during Heigan's little dance sequence) to challenging (Make Quick Werk Of Him - Kill Patchwerk in under 3 minutes), ultimately moving on to outright hard ones. The ultimate challenge at the moment appears to be either the completion of The Immortal - clearing 25-man Naxxramas without anyone dying during any of the boss encounters, or the completion of The Twilight Zone - killing Sartharion and his three drakes with 10 people while fighting all four bosses simultaneously. It's true that some of the achievements are serious challenges even for the most hardcore raiding guilds, but the new paradigm of considering specific achievements as the ultimate indication of skill and dedication hasn't really been accepted by the players just yet. In a way the Sartharion encounter, with a clearly different and harder battle for those who want the achievement seems to be popular while partially luck-based achievements asking for doing something without any deaths or under an additional time limit are considered to be a weak substitute for complicated and challenging boss fights. The Bits That Missed The Launch Lich King has some guest roles in Icecrown, but the actual conclusion to the story is not yet in the game. While the list of new features and the sheer volume of content is quite impressive for an expansion pack, Blizzard mentioned some additional features during the pre-launch hype period of Wrath of the Lich King that ultimately didn't make the launch. There was talk about new dances, but those got cut fairly early on and the discussion turned towards a full-fledged dance studio for creation of user-customizable dances, to be introduced in a later patch. The most anticipated bit that didn't make it is the ability to "Dual Spec". The concept is to allow anyone to switch between (at least) two different talent builds pretty much on the spot, without a trip to the trainer and without a respec fee. Dual Specs should also allow you to have two sets of glyphs and two sets of quickbars and key bindings that seamlessly change when you switch to the other build. Currently this feature is expected to be introduced in patch 3.1, but this has not been explicitly confirmed by Blizzard yet. On the content side, the endgame content is mostly scheduled to be patched in. All existing raid instances are considered to be introductory and the first real challenge, Ulduar, is currently scheduled for patch 3.1 which should appear around January or February. Two other raid instances have also been mentioned for later patches. The one after Ulduar is still unnamed, but it's widely believed to be related to Azjol-Nerub and The Old Kingdom while the third one is the obvious final battle with the Lich King and his minions in Icecrown Citadel. If Blizzard's past patch cycles hold, Icecrown Citadel is still probably at least nine months away. It's nice that the expansion content is strung out over a longer period of time to ensure that the game stays fresh and interesting longer, but the fact that even the first "real" raid instance is missing at launch is a downer.
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