World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Also known as: WoW:WotLK

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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

See vehicle combat in our video tour through Northrend and get new details on the Death Knight class

Words: Tyler Nagata, GamesRadar US

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Although we weren’t able to get any hands-on time with the Death Knight, we did get to see a demonstration of some of the skills of the hero class. Chains of Ice will lock an enemy in place and looks similar to the Priest’s Shackle Undead spell with icy chains instead of golden ones. Plague Strike will put a disease effect on your target and Death Strike will deal damage based on how many disease effects the target is suffering from.

The Death Knight can also turn any corpse into a pet Ghoul. If you’re in a party, you can even resurrect a fallen teammate. Once resurrected, your teammate can play as a Ghoul till its timer expires. It’s the most fun and interesting skill we saw during the demo.

Above: In the background is a failed World Tree (like the one featured in Warcraft III). You can climb up to the top for a spectacular view of Grizzly Hills

As time passes, World of Warcraft continues to look less impressive on a technical level. But the attention to detail - when it comes to the design of Wrath of the Lich King’s unique environments - made our brief time in Northrend just as impressive as the first time we visited Ironforge and The Undercity.

As we trekked through Grizzly Hills we saw the remains of a gigantic tree sticking out of the ground like a nail that had been haphazardly hammered into place at a sharp angle by a drunken carpenter. The imposing piece of dead wood stretched high into the sky and demanded that we climb it for a better view. Once we reached the top, we could see mobs wandering about in what was left of the bottom portion of the tree’s trunk below and got a spectacular view of the lush forest in Grizzly Hills.

We still like leveling up our character and watching numbers grow larger as we acquire bigger swords and learn better spells as much as when we played our first MUD. But it’s the excitement that comes with exploring and discovering things like that sweet spot at the top of the tree in Grizzly Hills that made us fall in love with World of Warcraft years ago. We’re looking forward to rolling a Death Knight and finding new equipment for our main character. But most of all, we’re looking forward to losing ourselves in World of Warcraft… again.

May 9, 2008