With the release of WOTLK, Blizzard proved once again that they understand business far better than the American automobile industry. Regardless of whatever storm of skill and circumstance thrust WoW to the top of the MMO heap, the newest expansion shows that Blizzard isn't content simply to rest on its laurels. Except for graphics, which are difficult to advance in an expansion, WOTLK brings the 4-year old WoW universe on par with the newest innovations of fantasy MMOs and, in several ways, pushes beyond them.
As a minor example, take LOTRO which is now celebrating nineteen months and has just released its own expansion. While a fine game in its own right, LOTRO really didn't introduce anything "new" to MMOs. It differs from WoW in details rather than in kind. One of the details that LOTRO has offered is its post-creation character customization in the form of outfits and barbershops. While WoW hasn't allowed for outfit appearances it did introduce barbershops with its pre-WOTLK patch, bringing it on par. A more significant example occurs in a comparison with WAR. One of the few things that impressed me about WAR was its highly detailed Tome of Knowledge that catalogued player activities and accomplishments. Yet WoW has already matched this with its own Achievement system. Similarly, AoC's great selling points include PvP fortifications and the construction of siege equipment. In Northrend, such armament is possible as well as other new innovations like multi-player vehicles.
Comparisons aside, what has impressed me most about WOTLK thus far is the Death Knight. Hearing rumors of the prestige class beforehand, I was skeptical. The concept of the DK character type wasn't particularly inspiring to me, though I do recall the Death Knight had the best complaint from Warcraft II: "This is why I ended it all!" Or perhaps that was Teron Gorefiend specifically, it's been a while. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised despite my doubts. That is not to say that the introduction of WOTLK in general and the Death Knight in specific has been devoid of shortcomings. With its release, the game world and Hellfire Peninsula in particular, were swarmed with legions of new Death Knights. You couldn't throw a stick without hitting a dozen of them. I imagine in those first few days, that the DK starting zone was a region of intense overcrowding and extreme vexation. Fortunately, I had the restraint and wisdom (or so I'd like to think) of waiting a week before buying my copy of the expansion. By the time I experienced the DK sequence the starter region was no more crowded than any other zone. Such a shortcoming with any game as popular as WoW was largely unavoidable. A similar affliction was the hour long wait time to log in the first couple days. Yet that was a temporary annoyance and is not a slight against the expansion itself.
With the Death Knight introduction, Blizzard provided an experience that is rare, if not unheard of, in the MMO genre: the creation of a true character story (see my previous article series "The Death of Story" for a discussion of this). It does have the unfortunate shortcoming of being a character story that all Death Knights share. However, as I witnessed the redemption of Morgraine and then ran through the streets of Stormwind to the heckling cries of its populace I experienced character depth on a level I've never seen before in an MMO. I could actually feel what my character was going through: a scion of good, twisted toward evil by the magics of the Lich King and now offered a chance of redemption for a people who didn't understand. That is high drama! True, these experiences exist in single-player games like the classic Baldur's Gate. They are the very bedrock of a good pen-and-paper RPG and in MMOs can be externally induced by a creative player. But this is the first time I've ever seen an MMO use the tools at its disposal to truly assist in the endeavor. I actually deleted my first DK so I could play the starting sequence twice (though that was largely because I arrived at the scene of the final confrontation after Mograine had been defeated by Fordring and I wanted to participate in the battle). Some gamers, highly attuned to our society's 30-second commercial attention span, may complain that the dialogue following the battle dragged on forever. It was admittedly longer than most but was far briefer and more interesting then, say, a gryphon ride from Darkshore to Gadgetzan.
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