We’re at the final phase, the last big content drop for Wrath of the Lich King Classic. The fun isn’t over yet. In fact, the height of the experience has just arrived for some with today’s patch.
As foretold, the fall of the Lich King
But after every ascent there must be some sort of decline, every climax is followed by its denouement. The final raids and dungeons will be run, somebody will get Frostmourne or some other peak reward, and the excitement will wear off. The concert can only endure so many encores.
It has been just over a year since Wrath Classic launched, since I made it to Northrend on the first boat to Borean Tundra.
Going ashore at Valliance Keep
The experience has been… well, I have a lot of summing up to do and I am sure I will make a full meal out of the whole thing with posts as our group wraps up the final dungeons, picks up and remaining achievements, and otherwise finishing off Northrend.
The short statement is that the whole thing was a lot more fun to relive than I thought it might be. I am always both eager and hesitant for a nostalgia based ride. I am older and my life has changed and how can something from 2008 and 2009 possibly live up to whatever misty water colored memories I have of that time?
And yet, it did. I just got my 4th 5th character to level 80, the level cap, last night. Yes, I used the Joyous Journeys xp buff… along with two pieces of heirloom gear… to get my druid from 74 to 80.
To the level cap once more
But I enjoyed the ride, and especially the last few levels. Almost sterotypically for the fantasy MMORPG genre, Wrath starts strong and ends strong, but is kind of weak in the middle. Even with all that xp help it was a bit of a struggle to get from 74 to 76, but after that it was a smooth ride.
Anyway, today is the final big patch. The servers are down as this post goes live, but are expected to be up by 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern US time. [Addendum: it was up and running at 10am Pacific.] When they are back up we will get:
- New Dungeons
- The Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection
- Random Dungeon Finder
- New Titan Rune Dungeons: Defense Protocol Gamma
- New Collections User Interface
I wrote about the Dungeon Finder already. The fast way to level up a new alt by serial queuing dungeons will be available to all.
The new collections interface will, among other things, unify your pets, mounts, and heirloom gear across all characters on your account, the way it has been since Mists of Pandaria in retail.
Then in two days the final big raid, Ice Crown Citadel opens up and guilds will be racing to see who can be the first on the server… or in the world if their fast… to defeat the Lich King in Wrath Classic.
And at some later date we’ll get the final filler raid, Ruby Sanctum.
Blizz has shared a video that sums all of this up.
And then, once that is all done… well… I bet they will tell us at BlizzCon at the start of November.
The safe bet seems to be Cataclysm Classic, which is another topic about which I will likely have many words. But when we’ll get it… that remains to be seen.
Yet another topic for all of this has got to be how Blizz has handled the timing and progression of WoW Classic. Compared to EverQuest classic servers, the pace has been glacial. The EQ might let an expansion linger for three months. Blizz is four years into this and has only done vanilla and two expansions. There are reasons for that, not the least of which is how each expansion over the life of WoW has had a huge impact on the game. Expansions change a lot when they land.
But that is all in the future. Today we’re waiting for that last phase of Wrath Classic to land so we can get on with it.
Related:
- Blizz – Official Announcement
- Blizz – Patch Notes
The Ancient Gaming Noob 