Wrath of the Lich King Beta Starts With WWI 2008?

19th Feb 2008 10:14 PM GMT | Leord | 0 comments
These World Wide Invitationals by Blizzard have increased in size since they started some 4 years ago. Honestly, who even knew there was one in 2006 before they shocked everyone last year with StarCraft II in Korea? One change from last year is that they haven't actually said they will announce anything new and big. That could mean that they just haven't said anything yet, and some game is on the way (as June is still far away), or things are just as simple as it looks: There are no new games to be announced this time around.


That tasty bullet point; "And more..." is very alluring though! A lot of hints point at Blizzard starting a Wrath of the Lich King Beta (and/or StarCraft II Beta) shortly after WWI, or that they will announce a Beta Date during the event. Meanwhile, we can see that the StarCraft II production is coming along nice as well, and all those Q & A sessions (157 thus far!) with Karune & Xordiah certainly suggests they want to be as proactive as possible with the StarCraft II community.


Still, the Zerg has not yet been presented for StarCraft II, and considering that it has been several months since the Protoss and Terran were presented and playtested the first time, Zerg will probably require a few months of internal testing before they make their game available to the public. This does not exclude the possibility that they will give out a date for the StarCraft II Beta, but the WoW Expansion just seems to be closer. For us true fanboys/girls, we could be lucky and get two Beta announcements!


Blizzard is emanating a general feeling of good progress on Wrath of the Lich King as they are updating their Lich King pages with concept art, ingame pictures and videos, but still keeping the lid on, just like when they were making The Burning Crusade (or any game they have in progress). As these updates have been frequent by any Blizzard standards, one could imagine that they are moving along nicely on the actual expansion.




The first starting area, and a few quests were ready to be shown at BlizzCon 2007, together with clips of terrain, and detailed maps. From my tour of the Blizzard HQ, I also saw the same map on a whiteboard with even more details, so they were definitely prepared back then. Now, some six months down the road, you could probably count on Blizzard to have finished most of the terrain, a lot of the towns/cities/encounters and several (more) instances. Another four months from now, you can pretty much count on the expansion almost being on par with how The Burning Crusade Beta looked when they opened the first zones.


An example of this is the Tuskarr. We don't know if the male ingame model for Tuskarr, with animations was added to the game files of the current PTR to add hype, or by mistake (that has happened before, together with one or two other mistakes). This model and its animations is a good example of showing that Blizzard already has completed many such details. Blizzard hasn't even shown them in screenshots before!


If we are trying to find out the release date or the beta date for WotLK, it is good to look at more WoW-related facts; Blizzard is acting a lot like how they did after Naxxramas had been released for WoW, with easier access to PvP items and good epics becoming more easily available, preparing people to get levelling gear for their characters in the expansion. While Drysc doesn't tell us this specifically, it seems like he feels the expansion will come soon enough (within a couple of months). As we are going to be playing WotLK in Paris, Blizzard won't release anything before that, but four months is quite a bit in "Internet-time" (or "WoW-time"), and probably some good headway in production.


Patch 2.4 probably has two months on the PTR at most, which means all guilds that are farming Black Temple are either pausing, waiting for 2.4, or will be farming BT in two months time. They will then be let loose for at least two more months on the live realms raiding the Sunwell Plateau before WWI Paris. The amount of guilds that will have taken down Kil'Jaeden by the release of Wrath of the Lich King will definitely be a lot higher than the number of guilds that had cleared Naxxramas (something I recall Kaplan has said is also intentional, one reason Naxxramas is back and revamped in the expansion). Many of the top guilds will probably get invited to the Lich King Beta by default, but the question is how long Blizzard intend to have these top guilds sitting on their hands, potentially trying out some other games or - brace yourselves - IRL pastimes.


All these new "free" epics still have a big grind factor, with what seems to be a time frame to reach June or so for the non-hardcore (that isn't too casual). It will definitely be enough for the most hardcore to get all their alts some really shiny epics before this summer, or fully equipped main characters of the casual players.


Blizzard will definitely serve us all more than the two Northrend starting zones this time, this is already old news. The expansion material presented will be new, impressive, and overwhelming! How do I know this? Well, look at the Korean WWI 2007... It was HUGE. Pop stars, massive screens, StarCraft II announced, interviews, you name it! And Blizzard had made the event free to visit! Well, this time around, they have set a price on the tickets, and a 70€/£55 times a few thousand visitors will cover the expenses of a really good show. The Parc des Expositions de la porte de Versailles is also a huge centre for expos, and even if Blizzard only rents a fraction of it, we could possibly still have a Blizzard WWI 2008 in the scope of BlizzCon!


Still, the fact that they are charging for tickets this time around is probably partially because Paris is located near gamers that have more cash, Blizzard wants to save some money, and/or my theory in this article about announcing the third game and/or the MMO could be totally wrong. It might actually turn out to be Diablo III or World of StarCraft. But don't you think they have at least given us a small hint that something huge like that would be happening?


Time will tell, and we'll be there to inform you all first hand.

Tags: alpha, beta, beta keys, blizzcon, diablo 3, leaks, ...