Wrath Of The Lich King

So today is the last official day of Wrath so isn't today the best day to do my sum up of the expansion. Going to break this into categories which are rather particular, but will do the job.

Leveling

Now I don't play alts but compared to the madness of the Burning Crusade initial leveling experience this was much better. Two separate zones made this much easier. Not to mention I really enjoyed how they modeled the zones to have their own story while questing. It gave that sense of accomplishment, and I think those who maybe are into their alts the sense of accomplishment.

PvP

In Vanilla and the Burning Crusade I was a real avid PvPer. I have always enjoyed the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance, as is known but my love of the lore of this game. In Wrath I wasn't really into Arena because I found that it had become too cookie cutter and that even the best skillful players could not compete with average players who were playing certain combinations. Arena to me is suppose to show the PvP skills of the player not their ability to form a group that can counter pretty much anything brought at them. So I didn't really participate in arena and therefore had no real interest in doing Battlegrounds besides random nights with guildies, when we were just messing around. Wintergrasp was fun but I just found it got old quickly and by the time they fixed the issues it had players were set in their ways

There was one aspect this expansion that I tried to bring back. This was World PvP. With the achievement "For The Horde" I started a weekly tradition on the weekends where Gauss' Armies this time not compose of the guild "Army of Gauss" but a random collection of guildies and people from trade would stomp our way through to kill the leaders of the Alliance. This was great fun and I look forward to going forward with this in Cataclysm.

Raiding

Well Naxx was a level 60 raid revamped for level 80s and it just wasn't difficult enough to keep the people busy before the next tier. Sartharion was a great raid and really let us experience hard modes for the first time. Something that as we saw later in the expansion was a big thing. Malyagos was an amazing encounter design besides the fact that there was not a way to practice phase 3 and the drakes didn't scale with gear from the start. Overall the first tier was just too easy because of Naxx and left people waiting way too long.

Ulduar was simply a great instance. It was extremely well put together and well thought out. The hard modes were in fact designed well although you kind of had to figure out how to get to them on your own. Also I enjoy the fact where a hard mode is not identical to a normal mode how you to do things differently because it is harder. Some of the best encounters of the expansion were in this instance. Yogg Saron being at the top of the list. I congratulate Blizzard on a wonderfully designed instance.

Trial of the Crusader, what can we say about this? Well the normal mode was a joke. So much so that my guild took 10 people who could do nothing and we sold the gear to them. The hard mode was in fact REALLY hard. There was too much randomness to the encounters on the hard mode though. Something which I think prompted them to think differently about how Cataclysm raiding would be. Tanks getting one shot on Beasts because the healers spamming were just off was just simple unfair. Not to mention how on Faction Champs there was just so much randomness you knew one of the random things was going to happen sometime. Congrats Blizzard though on Hard Mode Anub truly a great hard mode even if it was x10000 harder than the normal version. I like the idea of the instance, but I think most would agree probably the least liked raiding instance Blizzard has ever created.

Icecrown Citadel was to me basically everything I expected it to be. The landscapes were well created and all the encounters were thought out extremely well. The only problem? We were doing Icecrown for a year and the fact you had to kill Lich King before doing any hard mode fights. Sure you could turn it on or off for specific bosses, but still with some hard modes being easier than Lich King himself on normal it only makes sense to allow you to do the hard mode at least after defeating the boss on normal once.

Ruby Sanctum was a very good transition raid. The trash gave us a look at what we need to get ready for in Cataclysm and I hope the actually boss mechanics are something we see more of in Cataclysm where there is a lot more awareness rather than just nuke the crap out of the boss.

Overall I enjoyed raiding this expansion. Sure some of the content was easy, but the top level content was top level content. I hope they learned from their mistakes as they always seem to and we can have a great raiding experience come Cataclysm.

Lore

This is really the first expansion they have taken it really seriously, and I enjoyed it. Phasing helped a lot with this as well. Quests connected with one another and told every story. Like I talked about with the specific zones having its own individual story which connected to the main story of the expansion. Some people were disappointed with the way things ended with Arthas, but I think doing the Shadowmourne questline and the items in the sealed chest really told the story. So I will give Blizzard the thumbs up on this one, great job.

So those are my thoughts on Wrath Of The Lich King. Time to bring on Cataclysm!