Lich King Traveler's Guide: Northrend, Part 1

In conjunction with our sister site WarCry, The Escapist invites you to join the Awesome Brigade for a tour of the Wrath of the Lich King beta. Be sure to keep checking WarCry for more in-depth and unique coverage of the Wrath of the Lich King beta.

Watch Video

Mage power! Awesome Brigade is a great guild name. ;)

Great idea to make a guide like this.

Pretty good video. Informative and amusing. I don't play WoW, but I still watched the whole thing, so that says something. Whether it says something about the video or me, I'm not sure...

Great to see that blizzard came up with some new quests in the expansion, what with the plague thing for the undead. That's so original! It's not like you've been doing that since level 5 as an undead quest. Oh wait...

Also I'm glad they finally made it easier to get to freakin stormwind as a Night Elf/Draenei. Now they need to make it so the Cow people can get out of their grazing field easier. Zepplin to Orgrimmar from TBluff anyone? There's the potential for there to be one! Why not?

To be fair, given that the intent behind the creation of the new plague has *always* been to use as a weapon against the Scourge, Blizzard would be kind of dropping the ball by not carrying that plotline to completion in the expansion.

And I would think the reason would be obvious... how else are they going to make sure everybody goes to the Barrens? :P

It's time to finally ask the question.
What is it about that game that excites so many people?

it almost makes me want to play the game again.

there are still some details i dont like... like (sorry the english isnt my native languaje) the limitations and lack of comunicacion between the alliance and horde, but if theres something good i can say about world of warcraft, are the well desingned enviroments that makes you wish to explore.

@Mr. Funk, that may be true but how come they didn't continue the trend in Outland and suddenly feel it necessary to continue said trend?! Unless I'm mistaken which I probably am, because even though I've leveled 4 characters, I don't pay attention to the quests I'm doing anymore (which is probably part of the reason I quit in the first place).

Well, Outland is pretty much Burning Legion territory. Not a single member of the Scourge in sight.

Whereas Northrend (home to Arthas' stronghold of Icecrown Citadel) is pretty much Scourge Central. The Forsaken had no reason to continue their plague in Outland, but they have every reason to continue it in Northrend when they're practically assaulting Arthas' front door.

Fair enough. I suppose that every race needs it's check points so to speak.

Speaking of, I'm rather excited to see how the storyline with Ashbringer and Highlord Alexandros Mograine turns out. However, with school fast approaching I'm sad to say I may have to pass up playing again until next summer. Even though I'll be further behind than everyone else, I've found that WoW's grind is easier than most games. Kudos to Blizzard for that, since I have video game A.D.D. and the MMO scene generally discourages that.

Hmmmm, I'm somewhat passive on WoW at this point since I never got past 50... but this video was actually really amusing. The writing is great, though the voice personality isn't all that appealing. He's no Yahtzee.

"Given that, as far as I can tell, the alliance doesn't seem to have any quests to help these forces. Its safe to say that it sucks to be them."

God DAnM u blizzard for not letting me get excepted in the opt to beta test >.<

His voice was really annoying.

It was so nerdy sounding.

Aww, come on. The voicing wasn't all that bad!
Although it could use a little more "umph", if you know what I mean.

Like Yahtzee. Mmmmm... Yahtzee...

Not everyone has to be, or should be, Yahtzee, folks.

I thought the tour guide did a great job, personally. I've never played WoW, and so have next to no idea what he's talking about most of the time, but still found the video to be extremely entertaining.

Hmm. Surprisingly interesting given i have never played WoW and never really got what it was about. This was a very insightful peek into the game and the expansion. Which i may have a go with. Thanks.

Susan Arendt:
Not everyone has to be, or should be, Yahtzee, folks.

I thought the tour guide did a great job, personally. I've never played WoW, and so have next to no idea what he's talking about most of the time, but still found the video to be extremely entertaining.

While I do agree and it certainly never was my intent to try and be like Yahtzee...

...I'll be the first to admit that I do, in fact, have a pretty nerdy voice :P

Warhammer should be a solid game but certainly not free of flaws (particularly at launch). It'll appeal to the PvP niche without a doubt.

That said, what I've seen and experienced in the WotLK beta so far really has me pumped. WAR may do some things better than WoW, but the reverse is also true, and I think there's plenty of room for both games.

Competition encourages both Mythic and Blizzard to step up their game. I fail to see how having more than one blockbuster MMOG is a bad thing ;)

I'd continue by saying that it indeed all LOOKS very epic. But having been a victim of the wow-virus myself for the better part of a year I can say that there will still be a few downsides in the game:
I doubt they'll be coming the magic 'boot-that-bloody-leecher-in-the-face'-button for your average battleground, as the even slightly active leecher can easily bypass the current afk reporting (that is, if enough people can be arsed to report in the first place) by just breaking wind once infront of a member of the opposing faction, then proceed by being slaughtered by said member and to spend the next ten minutes doing bugger-all until enough of the others have been arsed to report him again, at which point he repeats abovementioned sequence until the battleground ends.
Nor do I believe that my rather shitty arena team(s) will ever face an opponent who is somewhat equally geared and doesn't have at least 100-200 more resilience (making them exceptionally hard to kill, since your chance to crit and/or hit them is reduced rather fast)
Neither do I think that raiding will no longer be time-consuming enough to be called a second job. Granted, the group size can now be 10 all the way up to mr. big bad Arthas himself, making the forming of a good group much easier. However, this does not take away the endless amounts of time spent raiding/preparing for said raids.
Myself now studying engineering means I in no way have the time to go raiding much, nor can I be bothered to pvp, since it's thoroughly ruined already with balance issues and leechers who can still roam freely as long as they occasionally throw a pebble to the enemy, since there's no way to boot them from the battleground.

KaZZaP:
this just in wow is old and sucks and Warhammer is teh pwnzor

Yeah, right. Dream on kid.

CantFaketheFunk:
...I'll be the first to admit that I do, in fact, have a pretty nerdy voice :P

If you write a script I'll do the voice overs for you.

CantFaketheFunk:
Warhammer....It'll appeal to the PvP niche without a doubt.

I like PvP, and I've said it a lot of places both here and on Warcry, I think WAR PvP is really slow, but Spellborn has a way more impressive look of combat than both of them.

pretty cool no action though

Thats It, I'm getting a new computer just to see all the details and sights of WotLK!

YYZed:
pretty cool no action though

This was just a tour of the environs. You'll see plenty of action in future videos.

There are plenty of good "action" movies on Warcraft Movies or You-Tube if you just can't wait.

I don't even play WoW, and this video entertained me.

As far as the guide's voice, I didn't find it nerdy. I found it guide-ish. And so what if it WAS nerdy? Nerds play WoW.

Hi all! You can now find the second installment of the series over on our sister site, WarCry, here!

Enjoy.

Loved the vid cant wait for more

Have to say, this is awesome. I love WoW lore (one of the few, I suppose), but I have never really been able to play due to time commitment. At least this way, I have a way to SEE the new patch. Sure I can read about them on forums, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is like what, 15 pictures per second on my computer?

Tour guide? Neat but, just do the following zones and every quest in them (when possible, usually enough people in the zone for quests, or at least have made friends or joined a guild thus far).

BT->HF->GH->DB->SB<->ZD->SP->IC

The first 4 will, WILL put you near 77-78 easy (maybe higher if you do instances, which al;so provide plenty of interesting lore and gear). You may even hit 80 before tapping Zul'Drak or the Basin, and you can do either one, it doesn't matter, suggest the basin though, but both are great. Once you hit 80, continue to quest if you don't have epic flying, even before you complete every quest and get the loremaster achievement, I GUARENTEE you'll have 2-3k extra gold lying around, and not a penny extra from proffesions either.

Guess a Death Knight necro'ed this thread..oh oh oh...>.<

Also I liked this series when it came out...was sad that it ended so soon.