Review -World of Warcraft: Wrath of The Lich King Classic
The Champions of Justice gather at the gates of the Lich King. “Let them come,” He says. “Frostmourne hungers!”
Wrath of The Lich King was the absolute peak of World of Warcraft’s success back in the day. With over 12 million active players, the second expansion of the MMORPG took us to Northrend, the icy home of the Lich King. The downfall of the proud paladin and prince of Lordaeron, Arthas Menethil, and his rise to become the leader of the Undead Scourge as the Lich King in Warcraft 3, culminating into the ultimate battle to put an end to him and the menacing Scourge in Wrath of The Lich King. 14 years after its original release, the Classic remake has become available to relive this epic conclusion again.
The undead rise! Again!
As a veteran WoW player, the Classic version of the original game and the first expansion, the Burning Crusade, has been an incredible journey of nostalgia the past few years. Leveling up different classes to maximum level, choosing talent points, gathering stronger gear, going on end-game raids for even better loot with my guild, the Classic MMORPG from Blizzard keeps on giving. I played the original game as a kid and as a teenager, with many fond memories of all the places on Azeroth I got to explore. A journey that was a major part of my life, and still is, albeit a lot less than it once was, with me coming back to every new expansion for World of Warcraft at least once. The journey of nostalgia has finally come full circle with the release of Wrath of The Lich King Classic. With the story of Warcraft 3 being the best Blizzard has ever produced in my opinion, the Lich King coming back after years of being absent in the World of Warcraft, I was understandably excited back in the day. Even with the announcement of the Classic release of this expansion, that teenage nostalgia inside me started to prop up again. The new Death knight class, the new crafting profession Inscription, the vast continent of Northrend, the introduction of Achievements, and the Lich King return to the fold made this to be the peak of World of Warcraft’s success, ever. The Lich King Classic has been available for a month and a half at the time of this review, and I have been enjoying exploring Northrend all over again.
The story of Wrath of The Lich King was the first time in World of Warcraft’s history that the game had coherent story throughout the entirety of the expansion, with a few B-plots added to expand on the history of the continent of Northrend and discovering what happened to characters from Warcraft’s extensive lore. The original game and the first expansion were a bunch of stories combined that had some iconic characters return, but it never felt as one whole. The Lich King is much different, as his presence can felt throughout Northrend as you are doing quests and killing monsters. The Lich King himself even shows up during some quests, building up the threat he poses to the whole of Azeroth. This will eventually transpire into the final battle atop Icecrown against the Lich King himself when that raid finally is unlocked in a few months.
That is what makes the questing experience in Wrath of The Lich King Classic so fantastic: Everything you do on the massive continent of Northrend adds to the story of the expansion and Warcraf as a whole. The Lich King and the Scourge are at the center, but there is a bunch of lore surrouding the Dragonflights and the Titans. All of it sets up many of the expansions that came after The Wrath of The Lich King. The expansion also introduced a more cinematic mode of storytelling to the game: in-game cutscenes. Before, you would only witness stories unfold fromyour character’s point of view. But in Wrath of The Lich King, Blizzard added in-game cinematics, with the most famous being the first-ever cutscene: The Wrathgate, where the Lich King makes its first appearance to fight against Horde and Alliance alike. Still a fan favourite after 14 years, and I specifically went out of my way to complete that questline as soon as possible, just to see its glory again. And glorious it was. Besides the sheer amount of lore behind them, the quests are also much more streamlined in each zone. In original WoW and The Burning Crusade, many of the quests were the same: Kill x amount of this, collect y amount of that, travel to another location to deliver something and travel all the way back again.
Those quests are still there, but quests in the Lich King are more coherent and the developers started experimenting with different mechanics, such as vehicle combat and flying combat. Some quests let your drive a tank or ride a dragon with unique abilities. These new types of combat were even implemented in some dungeons or raids. Back in the day, these changes were not really well received in the community and Blizzard mostly moved away from putting them in raids and dungeons in future expansions. But, now that I can try them again in Classic, the mechanics were not that bad. Clunky sure, even to this day, and sometimes frustrating, but it was something different and I can appreciate it more now. It takes quite some time to reach the new level cap of 80, as the questing experience is the same slow burn, or grind if you will, as the original game and The Burning Crusade. The game is designed to be played often. It’s an MMORPG of course, but that’s also what I noticed in previous Classic remakes: As I get older, I don’t have the same amount of time to play as I did back in the day. Pushing through this grind of reaching level 80 was fun because of the fantastic lore it provides, but I did find myself wondering at times what I’d accomplished in the last hour of killing undead.
“What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game.”
Once you reach the level cap and you can do end-game Heroic dungeons, and 10-player and 25-player raids, that’s when the game truly begins. Clearing those dungeons and raids will get you new, more powerful armour and weapons to use. A party of five players can clear the dungeons, with a tank, healer and three damage dealers in the party. In the original Wrath of The Lich King expansion in 2008, Blizzard added the controversial Dungeon Finder. This feature would automatically put you in a party with people who also wanted to do the same dungeon as you, and teleported you to said dungeon, removing the effort of you finding players who wanted to join you on your adventure and heading to the entrance of the dungeon in the vast world of Azeroth. This also inadvertently removed most of the social interaction between players what made the game so fun in the first: Finding like-minded people and overcoming obstacles together. In this Classic version, Blizzard agreed with the community that this had a negative impact of the game. They removed the Dungeon Finder and replaced it with a Looking For Group feature, where you can list yourself for any content you wish to complete, ranging from raids and dungeons to quests and PvP. You are not automatically added to a party, but you must talk and ask people to join together. A much better system when compared to the old Dungeon Finder to find a group for end-game content.
The biggest addition to the game in 2008 was the Death Knight, the first new class to be added to the World of Warcraft since its release. Broken free from the Lich King’s hold over them, the Death Knights joined the Alliance or the Horde to take the fight to the one who corrupted them into undeath. The Death Knight is an iconic class in the Warcraft universe, with them being able to tank or deal melee damage .The Death Knight is a Hero Class, meaning that they do not start at level 1, but at level 55. Blizzard also removed the restriction that you needed at least one character that had a higher level than 55, allowing new players to start with a Death Knight at level 55. In the original release in 2008, Death Knights were extremely overpowered compared to the normal classes since Blizzard wanted Hero Classes to feel more powerful. Over the course of the expansion they were made less and less powerful, with their power at the final patch being only slightly more than other classes. That version of Death Knights has been used to make the Classic version. Luckily Blizzard did, otherwise there would have been the same overwhelming amount of Death Knight players in the game as it was in 2008.
With the new profession Inscription also come the new Glyph system. These Glyphs can be made with Inscription, each class having three slots for Major Glyphs and three slots for Minor Glyphs. The Major Glyphs are powerful additions to your character that changes abilities or spells for the better, dealing more damage or reducing their cooldown for example. Minor Glyphs can be useful in combat situations, but mostly these are just quality of life changes to your class. Now, there are a lot of different glyphs that a class can use, but only a few of them are effectively used by players, because of just how good the glyphs are for that class. The World of Warcraft community has always been a community of min-maxing everything. This started back in the day at the end of the original WoW , and only continued to grow in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of The Lich King expansions. In all the Classic remakes so far has that min-maxing culture never been clearer. Best-in-Slot gear lists, best class/race combinations, best professions for each class, the internet is now filled with information on what you have to choose to be competitive. Anything less is not sufficient.
In the original Wrath of The Lich King, I did feel that elitist min-maxing culture to fully come to the surface, with the addition of Achievements and gearscore. These Achievements can be earned for a lot of different things: Quests, exploration, PvP, but also dungeons and raids. I remember back in the day that I wanted to do raids, but my old guild had disbanded. But, to be able to join raids of other guilds or with random people, I needed to have the achievement for that raid. Which I did not have of course, because I had no guild. Your gear also had a gearscore, to indicate how powerful it was. If you didn’t have enough gearscore and the achievement, there was no way you would be invited. Some of the players did not mind and took you with them anyway, but the majority fell into that min-maxing culture that did sour the overall experience a bit. The best cure for this was finding a guild that just wanted to have fun, which I eventually did. Even though the raids are much easier in Classic, since everyone knows exactly what to do now, there are still groups that require you to have enough gearscore and the corresponding achievement to be able to join. The more casual player who can’t dedicate entire evenings to clear every single raid in the game, such as myself, could have difficulties finding a group willing to take you with them.
An epic conclusion to an epic tale
Finding the right guild for you, with other people who want to clear content at the same pace as you, is what makes World of Warcraft so endearing after all these years. An MMORPG is dependent on the community that carries it. Luckily the Classic community is made up of bunch of different groups of people, and is less toxic in general than how it was back in 2008. It took me quite some time to reach the level cap and clear all 10-player and 25-player raids currently available, but the Wrath of The Lich King Classic experience is fantastic. There are a few technical hiccups I’ve encountered in the game. The epic Battle for the Undercity, a questline that followed the iconic Wrathgate cinematic bugged out completely when I first did it. I got stuck inside the phased Undercity instance, which made it impossible to interact with characters in Undercity and Orgrimmar, two major faction hubs from where you get to travel to Northrend. This was eventually fixed by Blizzard, allowing players to travel between instances of the hubs. But the Looking for Group tab also bugs out at times, where it is stuck in an infinite loading circle. Logging out and back in fixes the problem, but a remaster of 14-year old really shouldn’t have these technical issues.
Looking past these flaws, I can easily see why Wrath of The Lich King is considered to be the best state World of Warcraft has ever been in. The continent of Northrend offers a great questing experience, filled to the brim with old and new lore. The raids and dungeons’ design are peak World of Warcraft, and easily stood the test of time. I can’t wait to finally revisit Ulduar, considered the best raid in WoW’s history, andconfront the Lich King again after such a long time.
4,5/5
Reviewed on PC.
Download code provided by the publisher.
