A press event earlier these week has resulted in a veritable flood of new information regarding the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Most of the news floating about is regarding the Death Knight hero class, fleshing out the details of the eagerly awaited addition, as well as some information on the raids players will encounter in the frozen lands of Northrend.
Every player with a character over level 55 will be able to create one Death Knight per realm. The new character will start at level 55 with a full compliment of abilities at their disposal, the reasoning here being that anyone who has leveled that far will be able to get the hang of the new abilities quickly. Anyone who has ever played with a recently eBayed character can tell you this is a complete falsehood, but it'll be amusing to watch at least.
Speaking of amusing, Death Knights will also gain the ability to raise fallen enemies and comrades as ghouls to continue the fight. If you raise an ally in this fashion they will get a choice of whether or not to take control of their violated corpse. Good times!
Death Knights will also be the first character class that harnesses the power of disease, so expect to see +disease items going for a premium in the auction house come the expansion's release.
Other new information involves the raids present in WofLK, which instead of forcing players into 10-man or 25-man groups will come in two varieties each. That means that any raid dungeon in the expansion will have a 10-man and a 25-man option, with the drops for those gathering a bigger group being relatively more powerful.
This feature alone is worth the price of admission for me (like I wouldn't have bought the expansion anyway). As a more casual player (my current guild has 2 people in it), I regret that I've never gotten a chance to see some of the bigger raid instances from past updates. Scaling the raids is an excellent way to let folks experience all the expansion has to offer while still rewarding the big raiding guilds for performing the enviable feat of keeping 25 people from tearing each other's throats out every five minutes.
Incidentally, not one raid boss has been created yet. I'm sure they'll get around to that eventually.
Another fun fact, Northrend will have it's own flying mounts, as well as allowing players to use their Burning Crusade flying mounts in the new zones, while the old world still remains sadly flying mount free due to design constrictions. Maybe they'll come up with some suitable lore reason for this. Whirring sky razors infesting the two main continents perhaps? The Blizzard writers are nothing if not resourceful.
There really is a ton of information out there from several different source, including GameSpy and Curse.com, so I'm extremely grateful to the folks at MMO Champion for rounding up all the pertinent information in one place. Hit the link below and prepare to spend the rest of your Friday reading about Wrath of the Lich King.
Wrath of the Lich King Preview [MMO Champion - Thanks Wingsoverglory!]