This review contains spoilers
Ah, Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK for short. This expansion was once the peak of World of Warcraft subscriptions, so perhaps its no surprise that its also around when I first started playing; I can never remember the exact year, but I know I started playing in-between WotLK and the previous expansion (The Burning Crusade). Fans like to refer to people like me as "Wrath babies". Nonetheless, when WoW Classic was first announced, there was uncertainty of if they would revisit the other expansions and not just World of Warcraft in its original 2004 state, but most people I saw were excited for the mere idea that they could play WotLK (officially) again. Now that its been back for a while in the form of WotLK Classic, I've been playing this on and off. I've mostly fallen out of favor with World of Warcraft in recent years, but this was enough to bring me back and level a character to max. Despite my long history with this game and my love for it, I've always been very casual with it, so I didn't do any endgame content (raids) or dungeons. Nonetheless, I did enjoy my time with this one.
As essentially an emulation of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, WotLK Classic is pretty much just like how I remember Wrath being, aside from some modern things like level boosts and the surprising omission of Dungeon Finder. Dungeon Finder was part of the original expansion, but I suppose it was removed in Classic to encourage players to group up themselves rather than through a queue. Despite my fond memories for WotLK, though, I have to admit that I had never even gotten a character past Level 30 during my time playing a ton of WoW as a kid (I was a hopeless altaholic that couldn't get anywhere), so this was actually my first time really experiencing all WotLK has to offer as distinct from the current retail WoW. The new (at the time) continent of Northrend is a huge place with interesting area design and some cool quests. Whereas Outland - introduced in the previous expansion - was the bizarre continent warped by demons that generally had more desolate landmasses that almost felt alien at times, Northrend feels more high fantasy, yet grounded to earth in comparison. I think Pandaria will probably always be my favorite WoW continent just because of its wonderful aesthetic, but Northrend is great too. Nonetheless, I find WotLK Classic to be a good imitation of the original expansion, and that sold me on this being a great idea.
I felt more involved in the quests and stories in WotLK than I did in The Burning Crusade's, and certainly much more than vanilla WoW. There's something so cool and interesting about the things going on, from the resistance against Arthas and his wretched Scourge faction to the story of the Death Knights that once fought for Arthas but broke free from his control. Unfortunately there's a good amount of context in the main plot that is lost if you don't at least know how things went down in Warcraft 3; I imagine I'd care a ton about characters like Arthas and Muradin if I played those games, since their appearances here are relatively unexplained in WoW itself aside from one quest in the Dragonblight area that briefly shows how Arthas got corrupted into the Lich King after wielding the cursed sword Frostmourne. I've never been a WoW lore buff, though I'm still rather familiar with the stories of the more famous characters like Thrall, Varian Wrynn, Malfurion, and Arthas. Regardless of your lore knowledge, though, the various stories you get to see questing throughout Northrend would still be pretty engaging in my opinion. There's a common theme of fighting against the Scourge that was pretty cool, and each area typically has some kind of unique storyline to drive interest. WoW quests (and I suppose MMORPG quests in general) are infamous for being uninteresting and formulaic, but I think WotLK Classic still managed to have quests with some unique fun goals or interesting story flavor to break up the monotony.
Normally I'd include a gameplay section here. For what its worth, WotLK Classic's was fun, but I don't really have a lot to say about it since, unless you're doing the hard endgame content, its going to be pretty simple. Each class generally has a rotation of spells they're going to use for each fight that doesn't typically change much. I was playing a Druid in the Balance spec, for instance, and I found my rotation in that was pretty easy: add any buffs you may not have already (usually Mark of the Wild), Faerie Fire for the debuff, apply damage over time effects with Moonfire and Insect Swarm, then spam Wrath or Starfire until you get either the sun or moon passive which just makes one of them have a higher crit chance. I did also have some useful situational spells I had to use sometimes, but, for the vast majority of the time, my rotation was the same. I think this sort of thing is probably present in any MMORPG, though, so I wouldn't fault WoW for it. It was still a fun time.
Overall, this was a nice trip along memory lane for me, as well as just being a genuinely solid MMORPG journey from Level 1 to Level 80. Very time consuming, but addicting. I think WotLK really was as good as people say it was and not just a nostalgia thing, which I was glad to see for myself. Maybe at some point I'll try raiding; for now, I'm satisfied just having a max level character.
As essentially an emulation of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, WotLK Classic is pretty much just like how I remember Wrath being, aside from some modern things like level boosts and the surprising omission of Dungeon Finder. Dungeon Finder was part of the original expansion, but I suppose it was removed in Classic to encourage players to group up themselves rather than through a queue. Despite my fond memories for WotLK, though, I have to admit that I had never even gotten a character past Level 30 during my time playing a ton of WoW as a kid (I was a hopeless altaholic that couldn't get anywhere), so this was actually my first time really experiencing all WotLK has to offer as distinct from the current retail WoW. The new (at the time) continent of Northrend is a huge place with interesting area design and some cool quests. Whereas Outland - introduced in the previous expansion - was the bizarre continent warped by demons that generally had more desolate landmasses that almost felt alien at times, Northrend feels more high fantasy, yet grounded to earth in comparison. I think Pandaria will probably always be my favorite WoW continent just because of its wonderful aesthetic, but Northrend is great too. Nonetheless, I find WotLK Classic to be a good imitation of the original expansion, and that sold me on this being a great idea.
I felt more involved in the quests and stories in WotLK than I did in The Burning Crusade's, and certainly much more than vanilla WoW. There's something so cool and interesting about the things going on, from the resistance against Arthas and his wretched Scourge faction to the story of the Death Knights that once fought for Arthas but broke free from his control. Unfortunately there's a good amount of context in the main plot that is lost if you don't at least know how things went down in Warcraft 3; I imagine I'd care a ton about characters like Arthas and Muradin if I played those games, since their appearances here are relatively unexplained in WoW itself aside from one quest in the Dragonblight area that briefly shows how Arthas got corrupted into the Lich King after wielding the cursed sword Frostmourne. I've never been a WoW lore buff, though I'm still rather familiar with the stories of the more famous characters like Thrall, Varian Wrynn, Malfurion, and Arthas. Regardless of your lore knowledge, though, the various stories you get to see questing throughout Northrend would still be pretty engaging in my opinion. There's a common theme of fighting against the Scourge that was pretty cool, and each area typically has some kind of unique storyline to drive interest. WoW quests (and I suppose MMORPG quests in general) are infamous for being uninteresting and formulaic, but I think WotLK Classic still managed to have quests with some unique fun goals or interesting story flavor to break up the monotony.
Normally I'd include a gameplay section here. For what its worth, WotLK Classic's was fun, but I don't really have a lot to say about it since, unless you're doing the hard endgame content, its going to be pretty simple. Each class generally has a rotation of spells they're going to use for each fight that doesn't typically change much. I was playing a Druid in the Balance spec, for instance, and I found my rotation in that was pretty easy: add any buffs you may not have already (usually Mark of the Wild), Faerie Fire for the debuff, apply damage over time effects with Moonfire and Insect Swarm, then spam Wrath or Starfire until you get either the sun or moon passive which just makes one of them have a higher crit chance. I did also have some useful situational spells I had to use sometimes, but, for the vast majority of the time, my rotation was the same. I think this sort of thing is probably present in any MMORPG, though, so I wouldn't fault WoW for it. It was still a fun time.
Overall, this was a nice trip along memory lane for me, as well as just being a genuinely solid MMORPG journey from Level 1 to Level 80. Very time consuming, but addicting. I think WotLK really was as good as people say it was and not just a nostalgia thing, which I was glad to see for myself. Maybe at some point I'll try raiding; for now, I'm satisfied just having a max level character.