Blizzard has released the opening cinematic for Wrath of the Lich King, the much anticipated expansion to World of Warcraft.  The video continues Blizzard's tradition of stunning visual sequences and depicts Arthas, the Lich King himself, preparing his forces for the dark and frigid days to come.

Wrath of the Lich King Opening Cinematic

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WOW. Great cinimatic. Blizzard could make so much more money if they gave up games and went to making movies.

Typical Blizzard.... always so fucking awesome Cinematics.... ARGH.

And yes i agree they could make some hella great movies with that quality!

/agree. Blizzard would make amazing movies! Let's start a Blizz-Make-A-Movie-petition!! :)

Extremely beautiful, but definitely lacking... no battles, no fighting, no pcs... plus there's just a lack of urgency and battle.

WAR cinematic trumped this EASILY! Hell, the BC cinematic trumped this too.

The Warhammer Intro is better, sweet lil gobbo haha ^^

Completely agree, both the WAR and BC trailers were much better

The Warhammer cinematic was far better than this, and Im even not a fan of Warhammer.

This cinematics is really great, but i think this isn't the last one for the WotLK, because there isn't an actual adress to players. Both ortiginal WoW and BC cinematics featured challenge to players, which they had to complete, but now it's only an Artha's memory from the past.

P.S. This is an adress to Loremasters > Taren Menethil talks about what the good king should do. Arthas still remembers this. So that means that Ner'Zhul hasn't taken over all goodness that Arthas had?

Heh no suprise this trailer got released when it did a Day after i got to see the English version of the War trailer.

As a side note between the 2 trailers i still prefer the WAR one.

Very boring...a serious downgrade from the first two. Not much happened at all. Seriously, they could have put that into an mp3 and the "effect" wouldn't have been lost.

I won't say that it's bad; I will say that I'm rather underwhelmed.  They should probably have stuck with the "characters on parade" theme of the previous two.

But that's my opinion.  And props for the fact that it at least sounded like it was narrated by the late great Tony Jay.

I'm amazed by the quality of that video... Blizzard never disappoints with their trailers (or in game vids for that matter).

That follows so nicely from the ending of the WC3:frozen throne cinematic (best ever made imo). It's a continuation of that trailer and it feels so epic. Anyone that doesn't undersand the lore won't really understand it though.

I only hope that given the pace of technology that one day we would be able to play games where this cinematic is actual in game graphics. Now that would be amazing....

They did a good job with this one :)

I think this video is excellent. It's a change of pace from the previous two. Those were action videos, this is a story video. People have different tastes, and some will dislike it simply for not being their style (like people hate pop, grunge or metal music, regarless of how well-made it may be), but I honestly don't think the quality of the video - especially the thorough irony of Arthas' fate and his father words - is lacking in any way.

I find it quite funny to see those who think it was crap, makes it easy to see that they obviously never played the Frozen Throne xpac to WC3, or perhaps Warcraft at all prior to WoW.

If you saw the TFT final Cinematic, then this one not only fits this expansion well, it's doing what Blizzard said they would do with this expansion, making people see a lot more to the main Villain from start and getting more of his story told along the way.

Hell play Warcraft 3 and the expansion, then you might change your mind, if you don't , well too bad.

I found it much better than the Warhammer cinematics. The narration alone was fantastic. I found the warhammer online cinematics to be too cheesy :/