Today, MMORPG.com's Joe Iuliani gives his first impressions of the recently announced World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard announces World of Warcraft expansion. Chinese gold farmers rejoice. (Let's face it higher levels mean more gold, Burning Crusade proved that).

From what I can tell from what the official announcement has to say, if you have been happy with what World of Warcraft has had to offer, Wrath of the Lich King looks like a crowd pleaser. If you've been disenchanted with WoW, um, why are you still playing?

Announced Features of Wrath of the Lich King are:

• Master the necromantic powers of the Death Knight - World of Warcraft's first Hero class.
• Quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way.
• Learn the craft of spell augmentation with the new Inscription profession.
• Brave the harsh new continent of Northrend, the icy domain of the Lich King.
• Engage in epic siege warfare, deploying mighty siege engines to lay waste to destructible buildings in your path.
• Transform your hero's look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
• Explore perilous new dungeons filled with some of the deadliest creatures -- and greatest treasures -- on Azeroth.
• And much, much more...

Read the whole article here.

woot.... not impressed

Ruining WOW...

Unless you have a gajillion hours to play every month, WOW is no longer enjoyable for a large core of players.  First we worked so hard to obtain gear and attunements for 40 man raids and ZG, Ony, AQ, etc...only to have all that gear, time, and effort made obsolete by Outland greens. 

Now all the players working hard to obtain Kara gear and Arena rewards will see their efforts diminished by lvl 80 garbage.  Expanding the game is great, I'd love new environments and challenges.  I just wish they'd stop raising the lvl cap.  I'm retiring my lvl 70's and canceling my subscription, I have a real life as well and can no longer keep up with the time it involves to successfully play WoW.

I may buy it just to check out Northrend and some new features, but without me taking the time to actually grind I probably won't see much, which is too bad really.

Imagine putting all the time you've played WoW or any other MMORPGs into learning playing guitar - you could have been rockstar by now!

I really love the idea of an expansion .. But hell, I hate the fact that they are raising the level cap. God .. we are happy with level 70, Why raising it again ... surely much more Rep grinding ...

Anyway, I will try to take it the good way .. play when you can .. and enjoy what you got ... wich mean .. be happy of getting green trash better than epic ;) since you didn't got time to raid for much epic.

Oh ... Like my friend said. If you are angry about the time *lost* in the raid .. why are you playing ? you said it .. you lost your time trying to get epic. You shouldn't lost you time, but enjoying a game.

Originally posted by easttenn

Ruining WOW...

I have a real life as well and can no longer keep up with the time it involves to successfully play WoW.

Same shit as the last expansion...Not Impressed and In fact I will not be playing this lame game anymore, It's purely carebear and It's becoming more carebear every day. This game is a pure waist of time.

Honnestly, why complain that items gets replaced and a level increase? Would you rather have half of the new equipment of the expansion be completely useless to you? If you raided, you had the best Equipment for MONTHS. This expansion is not comming out tommorow. One of the key features of MMO's is to keep rewarding players. Thats why the level cap gets raised, and new equipment gets added. Would you rather have the same equipment and be the same level forever?

I'm only expressing my views on what I think, If you call that complaining then you can go troll somewhere else.

"Death Knights, by scouring the internet and with the help of a guild mate (thanks Solt), I was able to find these anticipated highlights of the this new class"

Way to go, you still have a couple things wrong.

MMORPGs get expansions and the level cap gets increased, thats the way things are. Deal with it.

Ive played this game sense it was in Alpha Beta, Pre Beta, Closed Beta, And Open Beta, Ive also played it sense release and for almost 3 years and 6 months so don't sit here and tell me that I am wrong. Shit if you had to ask your friend about it then that means you are just a newbie who has never played so you're expressions and views don't count unless you have played it for the last hmm...almost 4 years.

Will use a rune resource System!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!

How Rediculous i mean has anyone ever heard of the game runescape?? well in RUNEscape they have these tablets called RUNES that are used to do spells and now BLIZZARD! is going to make a rune resource system wow, omg , wow but i mean MMOs' have been coping other mmo games ideas from the beging because they can no longer decide on what should belong in THEIR game.

no, duh. A prime example is the voice chat Blizzard is implementing into WoW as we speak. They saw a few MMOs upcoming with integrated voice chat and new it was a threat to their business model. So what do they do? Oh lookie, we're putting in voice chat. Puh-lease! 

• Will use a Rune resource system rather than Mana, Rage, or Energy-- choose six
• Blood, Frost, or Unholy runes out of combat that can be consumed for spells, or refreshed by spells and abilities
• Is a complete ripoff of a Warhammer (TM) rune priest.

I was excited about the last expansion.

I doubt I'm even going to buy this one. 

Lovely to see that the thread already contains comments that the game is too carebear'ish, and that it requires too much time. To casual for some, too hardcore for others - sound to me like they got it pretty much right since the complaints are on both sides of the scale. :)

I can't tell the difference between Blizzard and SOE anymore. They both come out with hollow expansions that force more grind and no fun.

SWG showed that a hero class is a bad idea. It is a mistake to have an alpha class in a game.

I will sum up WoW and TBC and any new expansion that will ever come out...

level 1-70, start collecting your first set of gear find out it sucks and you cant pvp with it.  Start running instances collecting gear, then move onto raids collecting even more gear.  Then when bored of collecting pve gear.  Its time to PVP and guess what you can go into instance BG where there is a point right (World pvp died with BGs and the Honor system)?  It wouldnt just be a game of capture the flag or king of the hill I would hope...

Oh no its to collect guess what more gear and if the BG instances isnt enough for you then try your hand at the arena to collect arena gear!  Oh man the fun is endless!  There is nothing to that game what so ever all you do is collect gear.  Dont even try and say different, afk AV lol, AFK all the BGs, exploit the arena to rank up above 1500 each week easy and run instances all for what EPIXS and what will you do when you have them?  That right get ready for the next expansion so you can collect even more gear.  Casual or hardcore doesnt matter same still taste like shit from either side. 

Oh and the new expansion guess what a HERO class that you can do a long ass quest for and level back up and collect gear for.  The expansion sounds ground breaking

Gotta love that MMORPG.COM readership.....

Pretty much all of the complaints above fall in to one of the following "read between the lines categories:

1. "I am burned out on this game and need to discourage myself from playing it without joy by expressing my hatred for it."

2. "I am burned out on this game but am compulsive and must show my hatred for it to avoid falling back in to playing."

3. "I love another game and anything tied in to a more successful franchise scares me so I must attack it."

4. "I spent nine million hours getting my 60 level epic gear and when the new expansion added ten levels of content it showed me what a putz I was for wasting all that time in the first place and so I must hate it."

5. "I have a real life/real job havne't got the time to play and to avoid feeling bad I will express my hate for it."

6. "I like to express my rage through games by pvping till the cows come home and games like this get too touchy feely for me so I must vent my rage by calling it carebearish."

And then there's my own contribution...

"I get so frickin' bored with the grinding and high end crap that it drives me nuts that the new game doesn't cater to the players who prefer the low end questing from 1-60 and so must hate it."

Actually I am looking forward to it, it sounds both cool and horrifically messy all at the same time....

To all above: Joke! Joke! But sriously, we all need to relax. It's just another game, albeit an enormously successful and dangerously addictvie one.

Lol, as someone who is NOT playing WOW (tried it but didnt appeal me) I am surprised people already bash an expansion which isnt even out yet. Or WOW players complaining they raise the level cap. OMG! You are not on the top of the ladder! Cry me a river. Geez, thats the way MMOs work! They bring expansions and eventually raise the level cap from time to time. And just so as a sidenote: you can hardly level faster in any MMO than WOW, so I really dont understand your complains. It gives you a new goal and all you do is complain? Meh, if finally Blizzard would NOT toss levels for free to their players, now THAT would be a day to rejoice. But when its just "moar ov ze zaim" I dont see why any current WOW player should not like it. Blizzard will quite unlikely make real changes or surprises. And why should they. They milk this craptastic game wonderfully.

Well unlike some people here, i like the looks and features of the new exspansion. Like someone said before, lvl cap raising and new exspansions are the ways of mmo's.
I am one of the few who accually dont raid, cant bring up the intrests for it, and i really like the idea of lvling my warlock to lvl 80. I am in a awsome guild, and we help each other out when possible, and if you want to raid you can, and vice versa.

We as a guild are really looking forward to discovering new area's and getting new mount, WoW was good and with the tBC and WotLK we cant wait to explore and conquer this new land.

What about the "New Dances and Hairstyles" that was one of the highlights in the trailer.  That's surely important. :p

I think this expansion will be the beginning of the end.  Not the end of WoW.  But the end meaning that the subs will start declining.

Not that it'll be a bad thing.  I mean the game has peaked.  It's now pushing 3 years and all MMOs (except a select few) generally decline after that.  And with this expansion raising the level cap again, and being more of the same (aside from the hero class) I think it's going to start the gradual decline of popularity.

I'd much rather they create a regular new class that everyone can play without the ridiculous balance issue that'll come up.  The entire hero classes idea was a bad one from the get go.