You know the drill: get quests, kill shit, collect stuff and dance naked. It’s the same template we know and love, but Northrend still brings a gaggle of features to Azeroth’s statistical cogs and gears. For a start, there’s a new profession: Inscription. With this, Blizzard are looking to buck the trend of adding stats or useable items, describing Inscription as “Enchanting for spells and abilities,” reinventing the wheel in the process.

“The idea behind it is to give players even more specialization options beyond the talent trees,” explains Kaplan in a manner that would bamboozle the WoW-phobic to death. “As a possible example, a mage could have their Frost Nova enhanced for either greater range or longer snare duration - our intention is to provide viable options rather than one ‘best’ Inscription for each modifiable spell or ability.” This, in less complex terms, means that there’s potential to differentiate characters here way beyond the 10 extra talent points that players are already looking forward to.

Another change to the expansion format is the introduction of Hero Classes, the first of which is the Death Knight (examples of whom were the Lich King’s work experience chaps in WarCraft III). In the spirit of balance, though, this character won’t be immediately available - you'll have to work to unlock it fully.

“While originally we planned for characters to become Death Knights, we felt that players shouldn’t be required to lose the character they’ve played for so long,” explains Kaplan. “Instead, we’re looking at how we can involve players in the story of freeing a Death Knight from the Lich King’s grasp through a quest chain. Once complete, this will allow a player to create new high-level Death Knight characters.” What’s more, with any luck, we’ll see more Hero classes some time after release, the hot tip being some kind of Archdruid quest directly connected to Malfurion Stormrage and the much-anticipated Emerald Dream.