World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC)

It's not about hitting level 80; it's the journey getting there.
11/26/2008 8:10 PM | 4 Comments | Page 2 of 4

The Tundra has no instances, and appears to be designed to give the player a feel for the expansion. Yes, it is more grinding -- kill 12 of these, fetch this, kill this named mob -- but the non-player characters have more personality and more compelling stories than in the last expansion, The Burning Crusade. I found myself actually caring about their stories and pushing forward with entire quest lines before moving on to other quests.

Since I was taking a more casual approach this time around, I did a bit of fishing and cooking to raise my skill, before setting off to explore. The goal: get as many exploration achievements as possible, and also unveil as many of the flight paths as possible, for ease of travel later on. I made my way through the Tundra before heading into Dragonblight, a frozen, snowy zone full of dragons where a huge battle is being waged between the blue dragons and the other wyrms.

Grandeur is an essential element throughout the expansion, particularly as you go deeper, into massive zones and immense buildings and creatures that dwarf your character. You are in the land of titans and giants and mythical beings, waging an epic war both for and against the Lich King. But it's also present in the gameplay. The Dragonblight storyline is epic in nature, to the degree that the ongoing story of the advance of the Scourge and their attempt to wipe out the living almost takes a back seat. After completing an incredibly long quest chain in this zone (when I returned at around level 75), I got one of the most compelling, crap-your-pants moments that I have had in a game in a while. The event was truly inspired, and shows off Blizzard's ability to provide different content for players who have and have not completed the quest.

After fully exploring the zone, I made my way into Grizzly Hills, a zone designed to recreate logging country and the great outdoors. (Of course, it happens to be a great outdoors with undead trolls, bear gods and humans that aren't what they appear to be.) The zone has daily player-vs.-player quests in which you can get tokens used for gear upgrades. While this is a particularly nice concept, the gear rewards seem rather limited, and I was able to get the gear I needed after only two days of doing the quests. More gear offerings are definitely needed, because as of now, I have no reason to go back.

Unlike the other zones, Grizzly Hills seems schizophrenic, as there are numerous quests available, but maybe only one or two that apply to the overarching story. Most of the quests just seem to add flavor to the world as a whole, with little impact on the world's events.

From Grizzly Hills, I made my way into the Howling Fjord, the other starting zone in the game if you chose to come from Menethil Harbor instead of Stormwind. I personally found the Howling Fjord -- a tribute to the Nordic myths with an inspiring Scandinavian feel to it, and music to match -- more compelling than the Borean Tundra because of the look and feel of the quests. After exploring the whole zone (and linking my flight paths from one end of the continent to the other), I continued my quests here.