A brilliant expansion to a highly addictive MMORPG. (Actual: 9.25)
There is a TON of stuff to do here. To begin with, there are a bunch of dungeons which are all well done (Nexus and Old Kingdom are my personal favorites). Each one is unique in it's own way and the boss battles in each one are fun and different (unlike a lot of the previous content). Naxxramas is also a very lengthy raid (though I'm kind of dissapointed that all they did was take an old-world raid and update it a bit and move it to a new area). Ulduar on the other hand is new and unique (it just got released relatively recently).
Another addition is the achievement system. Now there are goals for us players to shoot for (like with trophies and achievements in PS3 and XB360 respectively), and also let's us keep track of what we have done so far. There is also the new PvP world zone and the new PvP battleground (which, unlike Eye of the Storm, is actually new and different, adding vehicles and a siege element into this particular battleground). Also recently added are sea mounts that swim fast and the ability for land mounts to swim. Other additions include Glyphs (a way of granting unique abilities), combat tweaks, UI tweaks and the Inscription profession (for making scrolls and glyphs).
The two most fun additions for me though are the Argent Tournament and the Death Knight Hero Class. The Argent Tournament is a neat little set of little daily quests that involves mounted combat with neat prizes. The Death Knight is the shining star though. Once you have a character at level 55, you can then create a new character of any race and any faction on any server (one per server) with the new class, that starts off at level 55. This means that you only have to quickly level in Outland and then you get to jump right into Northrend. The first 15 levels of the Death Knight are actually quite over powered so that the Outland levelling is easy, but gives you a decent amount of time to test out and get used to the new abilities and spells. Death Knights have unique spells that revolve around the DK himself and sometimes summonable creatures and also can use runeblades, which are swords that can be enchanted. Another cool feature is that the DK has it's own starting area and little story to go with it, that is very fun and cool. It starts off with you working under the Lich King himself in his base of operations. It was actually one of the coolest little quest chains in the series so far.
One of the best features of this expansion though is the much improved story quests. For one, everything in Northrend is reasonably solo-able. Secondly, there are interesting scenes and the story is actually a bit more straightforward and interesting then the slow-moving and broad story of the previous games. There is even a full-fledged cutscene. Not to mention being able to meet some of the legends of the WoW Lore (Alexstrasza! Krasus! Rhonin! The Lich King! I could go on). It's things like that that really make this expansion feel epic.
As for the aesthetics, minor graphical improvements have been made to make the game not feel too outdated, and luckily the art style keeps this game looking good. The environments are not quite as varied as classic WoW or BC, but they do look absolutly great (Dragonblight and Icecrown are my personal favorites).
The sound is once again more of the same, though there is a bit more voice acting in this. The music though is probably the best yet though, and is very well done.
You are bound to get a TON of play time out of this fantastic expansion, and with a couple more raids still to be released, you can look forward to a lot of stuff.
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Value: 10/10
OVERALL: 9/10 (9.25/10.0)