Wrath of the Lich King - Hands On Report

9th May 2008 06:35 PM GMT | Maticus | 4 comments
After the presentation by Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton, we were immediately shown to PCs with Wrath pre-loaded. I kept notes on everything I experienced as I tested out the expansion in its current state of development.

You may notice a time stamp like this [6:15] next to a place or other item from the game, this indicates that you can see what I'm referring to in the official movie that Blizzard gave us to take away at the end of our day spent with them. The number on the time stamp is the moment in the movie I am referring to, eg. 6 minutes 15 seconds. The whole movie can be seen over on WoWTV. So, on with the report!

We could play either a Horde or Alliance character, and there was a selection of level 70 tanks, DPS or Healing characters to chose from. Sadly, there weren't any Death Knights available to play. Once the chosen character was selected, we were taken to one of the starting areas in Northrend, either at Howling Fjord [0:01], or Borean Tundra [2:10]. I chose a Horde character, so I started at the Forsaken town, Vengeance Landing [0:08].

As Kaplan had explained in the presentation, this is the first ever town with Forsaken architecture. The buildings have a very Gothic feel to them, as seen in the pictures below. Unsurprisingly, there were multiple quest givers here so I grabbed a couple of quests and headed off into the surrounding countryside to try them out.


Not far out of town and down towards the water's edge, I came across a new metal ore called Cobalt, which had the same graphics as Adamantite, but this will probably change before the game is released, and a few of the mobs I killed in in that area dropped a cloth called Frostweave, so it's likely that will be the Northrend version of Netherweave.

My pre-made character was equipped in a mixture of Blues and Greens, and the first quest I handed in offered some Green trousers as a reward. I noticed the stats were considerably better on these new trousers than the trousers I had on, but a lack of level requirement on the tooltips meant I couldn't see if there was a huge jump in stats on this Northrend gear. I suspect that there will be a bit of a leap in item stats though, even if it's not as severe as the Azeroth > Outland jump.

Not far from Vengeance Landing is Vengeance Lift [0:17], one of the huge elevators taking players up and down the cliffs. The lift takes you up to an area that is close to a couple of the Vrykul towns, Baleheim and Nifflevar [0:25]. The Vrykul I came across in and around these towns were level 68-70 [0:35]. Not far beyond these towns is the first instance hub that players who start in Howling Fjord will come across - Utgarde Keep [1:22]. Players have to battle through the Vrykul to get to this towering building, which looms over the landscape.



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