Probably the greatest innovation for Wrath of the Lich King wasn’t the new Death Knight class,
or the new continent, but the advancement in story telling. This isn’t to say that Northrend and Death
Knights aren’t awesome, because they are, but I think everyone was sick of the “bring me 10 rat ears”
quests. Of course, those still showed up in WotLK, but there was also some amazing story lines. With
the phasing that they implemented, too, it made questing feel more like a single player game in the story
department.
One criticism I do have for WotLK are the raids in general. Naxxramas was old content for
some of us, and even when it was new it didn’t have the majesty of some other raids. Because it was
created in vanilla WoW, the overall layout and design didn’t have the flair that began with The Burning
Crusade. After Naxx, Ulduar came and I really think it was amazing. Great lore, great art direction,
great bosses, and fun encounters made it the best raid in a while. The Champion’s Colosseum raids
(ToC and ToGC) were kind of fun while they lasted, but they were a bit too quick and dirty to call
a “real” raid. Some encounters were fun, but it didn’t have the same scale as the others and because of
this didn’t hold my attention that long. Icecrown Citadel was was interesting and story driven which I
liked but it seems that a lot of guilds couldn’t defeat the heroic mode for a long time, and by that time
the enthusiasm had worn down. This isn’t exactly the fault of ICC as a raid, but moreso that it was the
last of the expansion, so aside from titles, there wasn’t much to shoot for at the end. And while
Frostmourne wasn’t available, some players did like grabbing Shadowmourne. I hear the quest line for
that is really fun.
I remember thinking that the Death Knight opening quest area was the best thing I had done ever
in way of questing. They were fun, interesting, and story driven. The phasing made it even sweeter.
Nuking enemies from the back of a frost wyrm was extremely satisfying, as was the battle at Light’s
Hope Chapel. Again, it made it feel like a single player game in ways of story which is perfect. I want
the story quality of a single player RPG, and the game play of a social game. I think, overall, WotLK
approved upon both of these.
