The Lich King is back, and he aids a great game with a great ammount of flaws.
+ You can be a Death Knight.
+ Some really cool features for expert players, like a level cap to 80.
+ One of the best title songs ever implented into a game.
- Terribly overcrowded, making it impossible to even play.
- DKs are overpowered.
- PVP elements still remain unfinished.
- Does hardly anything to make the game better; in fact, it makes it worse.
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Deciphering how many sleepless school nights the World of Warcraft series has cost me would probably be impossible. I'd sit in front of my computer at 2:00 AM, using the keyboard and mouse as surgical expansions of my arm, slaying as many PVP players as I could find (trust me the fact that I even mentioned PVP doesn't mean it was ever actually finished). Whenever that got boring, you could duke it out through instances to gain new weapons, equipment, and above all, XP, to become stronger. Role-playing was also a heavy social element if you perfered that way. On top of that, mods and patches were spilling out like crazy to make the game even better. If I find myself onward to school a few hours late, I'd blame it all on World of Warcraft. The Burning Crusade, not surprisingly, just attracted another 3,000 fanboys 6 seconds ago who track and rejoice Blizzard's every move. So when Blizzard said the next expansion, the applauding of the Lich King, was taking place, I wasn't shocked at all. Or was I? For worse, I wasn't.
If you don't know the story of the Warcraft series, this expansion will teach you absolutely nothing. From screenshots, you may depict an icey king in an attempt to release some sort of wraith on the face of the planet. Its been quite a while since Arthras made his publicity into the World of Warcraft, and after 5 years of waiting and dreaming, he's finally ready to gather his undead minions for battle. I'm not going to spoil the whole thing for you, in case you've managed to avert from the story, but for better, you will have enough time to read about the storyline during the expansion's installation (which, strangely, took up to 2 hours on my machine).
With patches calking an already intense game, its pretty clear that the expansion actually doesn't offer alot of content for players; especially those who are new. Most of the content is for the lvl 55s and up, and one notable one is the ability to continue your character up to the new cap of lvl 80. Next, there is a new "Northwind" continent on the map availble for you to explore, and grom a few minutes at the game, you'll notice that in every capitol city, there are new expansions to territory, for better or worse. Also present is a new "Barber" shop for customizing your character once more in case you made a mistake at the innitial creation. New quests, items, and some new areas to explore all combine with the numerous patches to up the ante of addictivness. Nutshelled, all of this is probably urging on the ever-present patching. There's not a whole lot of content for casual players, and there is nothing that changes the gameplay at all or anything like that.
The primary inclusion of the expansion is World of Warcraft's first "Hero" class: The Death Knight. Once you get any character to lvl 55, a new Death Knight option pops up in the Character creation menu, allowing you to make a new Death Knight for any race in the game, one per realm. Being a Death Knight is a really cool bonus and their name alone says it all. Minions of Arthras, they hiss and snarl in ultra cool eletric-amplified voices, and their eyes glow hideiously. As they walk, they leave behind clouds of black, hemogoblinic smoke. They all have new abilities that let them rain fire arrows upon their enemies, summon Death Gates, or drag their foes through gravity with a grim white ghost hand. Death Knights are cool.
Though, getting to check all this out is presumming that the game's realms and servers are actually open. As Philly Val's motto reminds us, "What is popular will be crowded". A quick glance at the game reveals that a majority of the game's servers are marked completely "FULL" or "Locked". There are no new servers for whatever reason, so instead you can wait UP TO AN HOUR in order to log onto a server due to the overcrowding. You'll see this happening when the Queeue bar starts reaching up to the 1000s. Normal, PVP, RPPVP, you name it; even RP realms are jam-packed. Its so crowded with DKs that just trying to start up and log into the game itself is a challange. If your lucky, the servers are merely "High". The exsistance of a dark, shadowy hell-reject doesn't save this utter-most annoying flaw. This wouldn't be the end of the world if characters could be tranfered, but tangibly, Blizzard charges you harshly to move your character to other realms. Technical Glitches are less cool.
PVP sequances still remain, but unless you like getting totalled by a level 55 undead knight, there really is no reason to compete in them. DKs are insanely overpowered and can wipe a level 80 in a matter of seconds. The aspect of watching that -- this get to be too good -- a DK grab you with his ghostly hand with a handful of fire arrowrains subsequantily to see that the Death Knight suddenly be able to summon SIX UNDEAD MINIONS is a hilariously bad and unfair element of PVP, and generally discourages PVP as well as do everything it can to make it as least fun as possible.
If your really unlucky, the servers will be too damn overcrowded to even play and realize this.
So, why buy it? I'm still trying to figure this out. There's no content for the newcomers, and the only thing that's really new is the hero class. World of Warcraft still remains a fun game, but this monsteristy makes its gameplay limited. Servers are stuffed, problems annoy, and this "expansion", representing more of an addon, does hardly anything to make the game better; in fact, it makes it worse. You get almost the entire expansion through free patches, so its beyond a boggle to pick up the Lich King unless you have a lvl 55 character and want a DK.
And even then, the servers will probably be too overcrowded to try your DK.