Wrath of the Lich King Hands On

It's an odd feeling walking into Blizzard's studio to see new World of Warcraft content. The game has experienced such an insane degree of success it's easy to think it wouldn't matter if Blizzard charged 30 bucks (USD) for a new continent called Popcorn Festival Explosion Land populated entirely by non-violent plush kittens that randomly mrglmrgl like murlocs. It probably wouldn't be the best long-term business decision and would irreparably violate the consumer-developer bond of trust, but you've got to believe it'd still be gobbled up by the public.

Before we get into the details, we should let you know that Blizzard still has no set release date for Wrath of the Lich King. Like its other publicly-known major title in development, StarCraft 2, it'll be done when it's done. From what was shown off at a presentation and the things Blizzard indicated were still under development, it sounds like there's still quite a bit of work to do.

One of the most prominent features of the new content is the addition of a new class, the Death Knight. Though we didn't actually get to play the class during our hands-on time with the game, we were given some details about how he fights and plays. If you have a level 55 character, which you likely do if you're still playing the game at this point, you can head to the character creation screen and generate one Death Knight, limited to one per server. Once created, you begin your time with him in an all-new starting area at level 55, which includes story bits explaining why and how you broke away from Arthas. Interestingly, this means you won't actually be able to see any of the new content as a Death Knight until you've leveled to around 70, which means you'll be plowing through Outland again.