The Lich King… Getting Ready To Go!
And so the Wrath of the Lich King beta is ready to go with Blizzard officially lifting the NDA. All the usual candidates are revealing a lot of new information so I thought I’d take the time to talk about my thoughts on Wrath, based on what I’ve seen so far anyway.
First off, I’m VERY excited about Wrath of the Lich King. I came to WoW pretty late and it will be exciting to explore the new expansion when everyone else does.
There are a LOT of class changes coming, Hunters and Paladins are getting shuffled around a lot, with every class getting altered in some way.
Stats are being shaken up as well with +Healing and +Damage being replaced by Spellpower and adjusted via talents, there seems to be a move to remove the emphasis on Hit Rating as well.
But the one big thing for me in WotLK is the addition of achievements, now achievements aren’t new, WoW isn’t even really the first Online game to include them. Guild Wars had an achievement-lite scheme to unlock titles and Lord of the Rings Online has the Deeds system.
Looking at WoW’s implementation is interesting because they’ve retro-fitted both Classic WoW and The Burning Crusade content into it. Which is both the right and a GREAT thing to do!
As WoW grows with each expansion, the old zones will slowly empty as there is less reason to be there. While having achievements that involve those old zones isn’t the solution, it’s a great start to getting folk to go back to places they’ve levelled out of.
Some of the achievements involve killing bosses in Classic, The Burning Crusade and Wrath dungeons and raids, while others involve levelling professions and exploring the continents. Based on the screenshots at WorldofRaids, there is a really varied assortment of achievements.
The REALLY interesting part for me though is what will these achievement points be spent on? The Blizzard Achievement page hints at tabards, non-combat pets and titles, but will there be other stuff, perhaps non-combat gear and other novelty items.
I’m sure we’ll find out as the beta progresses…
Tags: Achievements, hunter, paladin, wotlk, wow
