Wrath of the Lich King World of Warcraft Expansion Sneak Peak

World of Warcraft lovers are holding their breath anxiously awaiting the coming of the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. This will be the second expansion available after The Burning Crusade which came out in early 2007. This anticipation has many gamers wondering what to expect and what to do to prepare for it. Blizzard has been working hard to keep this game fun for both casual players and the hard-core ones who play hours every day. The new expansion should be well balanced so both these groups enjoy themselves.

Wrath of the Lich King introduces a whole new continent, Northrend. While details of the new continent are sparse, you can expect the same kind of changes caused by Burning Crusade. The level cap will be raised to 80. All classes will get new talents. A new hero class is introduced. And a new profession will be added.

The new continent will introduce new materials for the professions. There will be new ore, cloth, herbs, leather, and gems. Because of this, the price of old materials will drop drastically. People will only need them to level new professions. If you've got a stockpile of any of these mats, you'll get the most gold for it before the expansion comes out so you should sell off any inventory.

Speaking of professions, there will be a new one. Inscription will be a new way to modify your spells and abilities to customize them more to your play style. The materials it will use will be herbs. This will cause an increase in herb prices. Everyone is going to want to try the new profession and that will cause the low level herbs to go up in price as everyone tries to buy them to level up the profession. You can take advantage of this by stockpiling herbs now and selling them for a big profit after the expansion. Also, if you plan on trying Inscription you should begin buying herbs now. Once the expansion is released, it will be hard getting those low level herbs.

One of the biggest announcements of the upcoming game is a new hero class called Death Knight. This class will be available to both horde and alliance and all races. The only requirement is a character that is at least level 55, which is the level the Death Knight starts at. This will be the first new class since World of Warcraft started. It will by a tanking/dps class. Everyone is gonna make one to try out. Those players will need other people to group with so if you have an alt that you want to level, you should be able to find plenty of death knights to group with for quests and instances. Healers will be in high demand.

New instances and raids will be introduced and Blizzard will be continuing the same design philosophies they employed in Burning crusade. There will be an area with a few instances as different wings and maybe a raid instance too. One big change that has already caused a lot of complaints is the fact that all raids will have both 10-man modes and 25-man modes. Many casual players complained earlier about the difficulty of putting in the time to do 25-man raids and this will give them more options. The 25-man modes will include more complex battles and better loot.

The recent patches have added so many new daily quests that most players have more gold than they know what to do with. If you don't have much gold because you don't have as much time to play as other people, you should be able to take advantage of the fact that there are so many rich people in the game. Many of them will rather buy things at the auction house than taking time to farm them themselves. Pay attention to prices in the auction house and take advantage of your professions to make as much gold as you need if you find yourself really low. Also, early on, Northrend materials will be expensive so if you are really desperate, you can try two gathering professions and switch when you hit level 80.

The pvp system will also be tweaked. They plan on introducing more world pvp events and are introducing a new battleground. Despite these, when it comes to pvp, Blizzard spends much more time focused on Arena. They are adding two new arenas and adjusting aspects of how they work.

They haven't announced a release date yet. Blizzard believes games are ready when they're ready and don't want to lock themselves into a corner. You can expect them to be aiming for a Christmas time release though to take advantage of all the holiday shopping. They may go passed it though. Burning Crusade wasn't released until January 2007. While your waiting, don't worry too much for new gear because the Northrend gear will be improvements and for a sneak peak at changes and new talents, check out the Wrath of the Lich King forums on the World of Warcraft website.