My thoughts on Wrath

So, I've had the expansion since about 16.00 on the launch date and while I'm not level eighty so I can't really comment on the heroics and raid instances that everyone's raving are too easy, I think I have a strong enough impression of the new game to give my 50p.

The Zones

Firstly, they're beautiful. The skyscapes are subdued enough to be unobtrusive when you're running around questing but so well constructed that should you tilt your camera above the usual I-am-questing level you'll suddenly find yourself peering at a smooth, detailed rendition of the Aurora Borealis rather than the often bland swathes of colour of Azeroth. Admittedly I've yet to come across anything quite like the sky over Hellfire Peninsula but, while most of the punch from seeing those planets was in what was being portrayed, Northrend's strength is in the sheer quality of the depictions.

That's thanks to the overall graphics upgrade, anyway, which happens to have a similarly breathtaking effect on the landscapes. The appearance of cliffs has improved dramatically, the new shadows adding to better textures to really give the rock faces depth, and the flatter regions haven't missed out on the love either. Little features like this really impressed me.

Then there's the raw size. Just like zones in the Outlands were way bigger than most of those in Azeroth, Northrend regions seem to dwarf their Burning Crusade predecessors. Now I'm not entirely sure if this is just an illusion stemming from new, unseen content grasping my attention and cutting down on autorun time (not being able to fly pre-77 certainly impacts a player's ability to make everything shrink beneath them) or something more to do with the way things don't seem as hemmed in as they did before rather than actual size, but either way, I'm judging by my current impression. And my current impression, as well as those voiced by my guildmates as we all struck out into the new content, is holy shit guys we'll never make it out alive. Also dem it's huge.

The Quests

Like with old content, quest hubs are often linked together with "take x message to y outpost" and each sends you out into the surrounding area to collect, maim or explore. But somehow it feels very different, and after a good deal of pondering this is all I've really managed to come up with as to why:

1. There are some interesting new twists on the old themes. One of the FedEx quests sending you from one of the first regions to the next doesn't send you off with a letter but with a refugee, who will follow you and bemoan their desperate situation before spying a smoke signal on the horizon and leading you off to a different destination than you originally expected. Killing quests may spawn tiny robots that follow you around as you kill more; instead of always ending in an instance, that quest that wants you to explore the strange teleportation runes may well just hurl you into a floating necropolis hundreds of feet up.

2. Linking to the first point, Blizzard have been working hard to ascertain the sort of quests the majority of players heralded as "most fun" pre-expansion are more prolific than they were before. The sort of errand that gives you an item to change your shape, for example, can be found quite often.

3. There's an obvious effort to promote atmosphere. Heading out to assassinate a mechagnome leader in the Borean Tundra will prompt a cutscene-esque speech from him as he stumbles across you stealing his log; the culmination of a Kirin Tor quest line sends you flying out on a drake's back to break free a missing archmage with a whole host of red dragons backing you up; and when you're carrying out the Lich King's will as your death knight your victims cower, beg and scream. It doesn't feel like you have to hit all the instances to get a real sense of storyline and progression.

4. You can't just grab all the quests from a hub and blitz that area. Obviously, this slows down leveling massively (although not enough to stall those people who were eighty within a couple of days nevertheless) but it means things are more coherent. Rarely do you rely on an NPC's existing knowledge - you'll probably have to stumble across something whilst carrying out another task, report back, help out with preliminary tests, try out the new theory, bring back the results and then perhaps murder whatever should have been changed but wasn't. While it sounds like a grind when I list it like that, I find that not being able to just systematically roll through a list of objectives in my quest log actually alleviates the sense of repetitive pointlessness. It's made me pause and actually read the whole log entry for each quests, instead of just shift-click its name and doing as commanded by the summary. Obsidian approves of this.

The Instances

This is where I'm least able to comment. So far I've run the Nexus, Utgarde Keep, Azjol-Nerub and Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. The last I was doing as Miriah with the House - where Miri was 70 and our highest level with Quin, the tank, at 73 - so we probably did it slower than a group at the right level but nevertheless, I've yet to feel an instance is really dragging on. Nexus is the only one that started to feel a bit samey, largely because it's a big square with bosses at the ends of tunnels off to the sides, but it looks so dem fine in the first place and has such a good final boss that I've forgiven it thus far. I suppose I'll wait until I've cleared everything before I start making sweeping statements about the state of dungeoneering in WotLK, anyway, though I hear the vast amounts of casual gamers are being tended to more than the selected elite, which is obviously a poorly calculated move on Blizzard's part. Working for the masses? How perfectly senseless.

Anyway, my adventures thus far look something like this.

Much love to Northrend.