New Wrath of the Lich King Fansite Kit

Blizzard is pleased to announce that their new fansite kit is available for download. This kit should provide you with some basic assets to create a cool Wrath of the Lich King fansite. In it, you'll find...
Concept art for Wrath of the Lich King
Wrath of the Lich King avatar pictures
Sample HTML to help you with your page layout
Logos for Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard, and Battle.net
Wallpapers
Wrath of the Lich King fact sheet and FAQ
A sample Wrath of the Lich King article
Graphics source files to help you with your own designs
We're excited to see your fansite creations. Once your site is alive and kicking, make sure to drop us an email at WoWfansites@blizzard.com to let us know.

The Next Battleground in WotLK

Nethaera shattered a few people's hopes for a new battleground soon, but reminded everyone about two PvP features coming in Blizzard's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.
There are no current plans to release one prior to Wrath of the Lich King. We are focusing on AV improvements for patch 2.3 and also on creating content for Wrath of the Lich King which includes a new battleground and of course the outdoor pvp zone, Lake Wintergrasp.

The skies of Northrend

One of the latest screenshots of Wrath of the Lich King shows a pink-colored sky over Northrend, with some possible cloud-moving effect I haven't seen in WoW before. When I look at this screenshot I imagine all those clouds roiling in the sky and I wonder if Northrend couldn't possibly beat Outland in most interesting skies after all.

It's a tough comparison -- Outland planets floating above the horizon are hard to beat, whereas Northrend will be limited to a more terrestrial skyscape. When The Burning Crusade first came out, I remember being impressed that the skies had any animation at all, whereas now, of course, the bar has been raised much much higher. Still, there's a lot that the skies of Northrend could offer us, especially if Blizzard were to go crazy with clouds and colors inspired by the Aurora Borealis.

What do you expect of future WoW skies? Do you hope for ever-increasing complexity, or do you think simple and realistic is always best?

Will Druids be getting reliable indoor CC in Wrath?

Druid root is very good for crowd control outdoors due to it working on any mob type, but most instances and raid zones are indoor only. In Burning Crusade the Druid class got a new spell, Cyclone, that worked indoors as well, but with a 6 sec duration (and diminishing returns), it was only effective in limited situations.

Druids have asked loud and long for more reliable crowd control abilities. And now it looks like they might get it.

Player Wisperella recently specced Moonkin and feels she would be more desirable in groups if the Druid Entangling Roots spell were usable indoors. With a 27 second duration and a 1.5 second cast time that can already be made uninterruptible through Talents, it could make Moonkin an integral part of many groups. Especially since Moonkin with their high armor won't get squished so easily trying to crowd control a mob that's pounding on them.

Community Manager Eyonix responded that an idea along these lines is "possible" in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. He couldn't guarantee that it would happen, but let us know that he has been campaigning for it "a very long time."

Time will tell if this will be one of the handful of new abilities Druids will get in the expansion.

New Wrath of the Lich King Screenshots

We've just added two new screenshots to the Wrath of the Lich King Screenshot Gallery.

Wotlk: New Wrath of the Lich King Screenshots

Blizzard recently released two new promo shots from the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Death Knight Interview

If you're a WoW-player, you'll be interested in this interview over at 1UP that covers the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Although there's not a lot that's new for the expansion as a whole, there are a few Death Knight tidbits tossed out by the devs near the end of the chit-chat. (If you're still stuck in the Dark Ages and you have no idea what a Death Knight does or even what it is, then here's the official Q&A for you. There's certainly a ton of lore to look through in the official links!)

In the 1UP interview, the devs speak of how to unlock the Death Knight. In the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King DKs will become accessible through doing a series of quests (this of course is apt to change). The devs also speak about the way DK spells are cast (using, instead of mana, runes) and giving additional, new details about rune cooldowns and the emphasis placed on the frost, blood, or unholy magic schools. Consider:

In general, Blood abilities are damage oriented, Frost is control-oriented, and Unholy contains utility and damage-over-time mechanics, but that's not a hard and fast rule. "We don't want to pigeonhole it to the point where when you're tanking you use all Frost runes, or when you're DPSing you use all blood runes.... There are inherently good reasons to use a mix, and even if you have at least one rune type on the bar, you'll have access to all your abilities should it become necessary."

Priests are lacking in discipline

It's official: even Blizzard rep Eyonix says that Priests are somewhat vague on the whole discipline thing -- not the virtue, that is, but the talent tree. Responding to a forum question asking "What is the purpose of Discipline?" Eyonix said:

Though some priests have found a use for the discipline tree, right now, it doesn't quite have a solid purpose/goal, but rather seems to act as a supporting tree. This is something we plan on addressing with Wrath of the Lich King. Originally, the goal of the tree was primarily intended to provide staying power, vs. the holy tree which provides throughput.

Also, so you're aware, the 41-point discipline talent, pain suppression, is being changed to be usable on others for patch 2.3.
I'll admit that my own priest is sadly a mere level 8, but I'm aware that this has been one of the big priest issues for a long time. One of my friends strives to be one of those special priests who have "found a use for the discipline tree" and he seems to do pretty well at it, though he admitted that he recently changed some of his talents around, leaving behind lesser-used talents in discipline in exchange for some holy talents. He refuses to give in and become yet another shadow priest, since he revels in succeeding at something few other priests try.

I would be quite interested to see how Blizzard changes the discipline talents in the next expansion. Will they stick with the original "staying power" idea, or will they go for something new? What do you think needs to be done?

What's going in Dalaran's old space?

Malikoi generously offers to buy Dalaran's old location over on the forums, and says he plans to create a new city, complete with flight path, graveyard, and even an arena. It's not like the Kirin Tor are going to need it any more, right? They're moving the magical city of Dalaran up to Northrend, so Malikoi should be able to pick up the old land.

Bornakk, however, says the Kirin Tor are not selling the land, which of course begs the question: what are they going to do with it? They could only take part of Dalaran up north, and leave part of it there in the Alterac Mountains (to serve as a new quest hub for lowbies, perhaps?). Or maybe Dalaran will have to fly up north under duress and what's left behind in Alterac will be the remains of some battle the mages had to fight?

It will be kind of a shame to not have that purple dome there any more (and it would be cheating if Blizzard just left it there when they've already told us the mages have made the decision to move the whole city). There's a lot of wonder to be found in Azeroth, but I can't think of any other experience that has matched up in exactly the same way to turning a corner from Hillsbrad and seeing a gigantic pink dome in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully whatever replaces it will inspire that same sense of magical amazement.

What will Arthas' catchphrase be?

I think we were all impressed by The Burning Crusade trailer and Illidan's ominous "You are not prepared!" speech. However, since it has become quite obvious that some players were prepared for Illidan, Tweadle on the European forums is speculating on what Arthas' catchphrase will be in Wrath of the Lich King. "No, you definately aren't prepared this time!" perhaps? My personal favorite, however, is Aeus' suggestion, "Penguins took my epics"But what do you think we'll be hearing from Arthas when we see him in Wrath of the Lich King?

New Wrath of the Lich King Screenshots

Blizzard recently released two new screenshots from the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King.

Attempts to Fix the Lack of Tanks for the Expansion

When asked what Wrath of the Lich King will do for the lack of available tanks and healers for groups, Bornakk replied with this interesting tidbit.
While we don't currently plan to add new healer options, we plan to make the Death Knight a viable tanking option and changes are coming to Warriors soon that should allow Arms/Fury warriors to be more viable tanks.
He also goes on to mention possibly implementing an itemrack-type feature that would help you change your suits more efficiently.