What’s going to be filling up your bags?

Face it: WoW is all about the stuff – the cool loot you win, the equipment you build, or the daft pets you buy. The items in Wrath of the Lich King reach new highs of both daftness and usefulness.

Parchments Enchanting: This is receiving a major boost in Lich King, allowing players to sell their enchants in the auction house. Players first enchant a parchment, and this is then passed on to the buyer. The buyer uses the enchantment on the item they wish to improve. Inscription, Wrath of the Lich King’s new profession, works in a similar way: inscriptors carve glyphs onto parchments that are then used to improve a player’s spells.

Penguin Egg: Baby penguins are a new cosmetic pet in the Wrath of the Lich King beta. They’re heart-meltingly cute.

Pet Grooming Kit: Mechanical chicken looking a little rusty? The pet-grooming kit will restore it to an unnatural shine.

The Hog wanna ride? You will after seeing The Hog, a motorbike and sidecar that can seat, not unreasonably, a driver and passenger. It’s for engineers only, but they can give anyone a lift in the sidecar.

Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator: The PEPG straps to your belt, and fires an electric pulse on demand, disabling all mechanical enemies in a nearby area.

Flexweave Underlay: Adds a small frame to any cloak, turning it into a parachute. Perfect for those who love to base-jump off WoW’s epic cliffs.

MOLL-E: Why head back into town, when you can carry around a personal mail-box? Don’t ask how MOLL-E gets the mail to the postman. We really don’t know.

Magnificent Flying Carpet: Tailors get to make this epic flying rug. You’ll need to be a top level tailor to craft it, however.

Vehicular combat comes to fantasy MMOs

The first time you step into a Shredder, you’re going to freak. World of Warcraft’s battlegrounds have been missing one vital component since launch: the siege engines and catapults that define medieval and fantasy warfare. Finally, they’re here, found in Northrend’s Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone. They’re hysterical: a mix of goblin engineering and medieval improvisation, they fit perfectly into WoW’s strange aesthetic.

Demolisher: The Demolisher is a proper truck: part van, part catapult. It can carry three passengers as well as the driver, can hurl boulders, and ram anyone in front, kebabing them on the forward-mounted spikes. Fear it.

Forsaken catapult: Let them burn. The Forsaken catapult is full of surprises: it’s agile, quick, and flings a plague barrel that spreads disease. More surprisingly it’s got a flamethrower mounted on the front.

Siege engine: Wintergrasp’s ultro-tank, the Siege Engine is the hardest hitting of all of WoW’s vehicles. One problem: it requires at least one passenger to operate its long range turret – but they’ll be protected from damage.

Flying bomber: Two players control the bomber: you need a pilot and a bombardier. The pilot can fire missiles, while the bombardier rains down napalm. It’s slow moving, though, so abuse its AA defences of chaff and speed boosts.

Goblin shredder: Holy Mecha Suit! The Shredder is primarily an AA platform, using homing missiles to shoot down flyers. The meat-saws will carve nearby players. Oh. And it’s got jetpacks. Yeah. Cool, eh?

Flying machine: The Spitfire of Wintergrasp. Expect to see pilots fly directly down strafing ground targets with volleys of rockets, then hitting the boosters to escape. Time to earn your wings.

Nov 11, 2008