Wrath of the Lich King News

A lot of information dropped today on the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft. I've read over a lot of the upcoming stuff and I have to say I'm pretty excited. I don't think it's going to be released until close to Christmas 2008, but the lead up to it is pretty engaging.

Most of the information can be found here.

A few of the things I'm most excited about are the following:

-All 25 person dungeons will be playable as a 10 person dungeon with a lower tier of loot and boss encounters

I'm excited about this one because it means that even casual players such as myself will potentially have the chance to experience all of the dungeons and lore within the game. Before, only raids of 40 and then 25 people were able to do the top end dungeons and bosses and complete the quests and story lines unique to those places. I really love the story and lore of Warcraft, so the opportunity to be a part of that without neglecting my life to do 25 person raid content is a huge change, and from what I can see, something that a lot of people are happy about.

-5 person dungeons are designed to take an hour or less

Before Lal played, we had a few "conversations" about how long it took me to do a dungeon and that it was always longer than it should be. Now that she does play, dungeons still take a long time, we just do it together. Making them shorter makes them more reasonable for people who don't always have several hours to play at a time. Now I might be able to do a dungeon before I head off to work in the morning (If I can find a group that early). It also makes it more palatable for people like Lal, where dungeons aren't their favorite things to do, but in small doses for quests and gear, are much more accesible.

-New mounts will have a passenger seat for taking lower level characters

While it doesn't specifically apply, Lal and I were just talking about how she, a priest, should be able to ride me, a druid, in travel form, because she has no way of increasing her speed, other than a mount, which doesn't work indoors. This at least can be fun. Give your lowbie guild members a ride to the guild meeting!

There's a lot of new information on the Death Knight class too. While the Death Knight is cool and I'll probably create one just to try it out, I think I'm personally more excited about leveling to 80 and doing the new quests and dungeons in Northrend.