Product Review
Fans of World of Warcraft, prepare for Blizzard Entertainment's next installment -- World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich. In this latest expansion, something is afoot in the cold, harsh northlands. The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. The necromantic power of the plague and legions of undead armies threaten to sweep across the land. Only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King and end his reign of terror.

The tuskarr, a walrus-like race of nomadic fisherman, inhabit the icy Borean Tundra. View larger. |

Half-giant warriors, the vrykul, once inhabited the land. View larger. |

You'll enjoy exploring Northrend and all its environments and dungeons. View larger. |

Explore Northrend and battle the Lich King with World of Warcraft's first hero class character -- The Death Knight. View larger. |

One of many new environments, Dragonblight is an arctic wasteland surrounded by dense forests. View larger. |

Many strange and terrifying creatures inhabit this frozen continent. View larger. |
Enter the Death Knight This expansion adds a host of content to the already massive existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore Northrend (the vast icy continent of the Lich King), and battle high-level heroes to determine the ultimate fate of Azeroth. As you face the dangers of the frigid, harsh north, prepare to master the dark necromantic powers of the Death Night -- World of Warcraft's first Hero class. No longer servants of the Lich King, the Death Knights begin their new calling as experienced, formidable adversaries. Each is heavily armed, armored, and in possession of a deadly arsenal of forbidden magic.
If you have a World of Warcraft account with a character of at least level 55, you will be able to create a new level-55 Death Knight of any race (if on a PvP realm, the Death Knight must be the same faction as your existing character). And upon entering the new world, your Death Knight will begin to quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way. This expansion allows for only one Death Knight per realm, per account.
New Environments in Northrend Await Journey through the remote, diverse lands of Northrend and explore Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra, and Howling Fjord. Named for bones of perished dragons and majestic shrines to the fallen creatures, Dragonblight is an arctic wasteland surrounded by dense forests.
Not everything is frozen in Northrend. The lush mountains of Grizzly Hills are the ancestral home to the furbolgs, who have grown accustomed to relative peace. Although their tranquility is being challenged by trappers, goblins, and ice trolls, Grizzly Hills remains a vast and dangerous wilderness.
The southwestern tip of Northrend is home to the sprawling Borean Tundra. The Horde has established a dominant presence in this icy portion of the continent and has formed a bond with the tuskarr, a walrus-like race of nomadic fisherman. Magical energy is afoot in the region, and it has caused increased tension.
High above the Great Sea at the southeastern tip of Northrend lies the Howling Fjord. Ancient mythology holds that a race of half-giant warriors, the vrykul, once inhabited the land, founding a prosperous civilization. They mysteriously vanished, leaving deserted villages and abandoned temples. In present times, the Alliance and the Horde have come to Howling Fjord to confront the Lich King. Strangely, this has prompted the return of the vrykul, who are attacking the Alliance and Horde settlements. Howling Fjord presents a difficult challenge on two fronts: withstanding the vrykul's onslaught and battling the evil Lich King.
A Multitude of Monsters Strange and terrifying creatures inhabit the frozen continent of Northrend, such as Nerubian Viziniers, Plague Eruptors, Shoveltusks and Flesh Giants, to name just a few. Half-spider, half-humanoid, the viziniers utilize sorcery and high intelligence to emerge as the rulers of Nerubians' underground kingdom. The Plague Eruptors are walking corpses created by the Lich King's evil experiments to spread horror and chaos across the living world.
Massive curved antlers make it easy to identify the Shoveltusks. These grumpy beasts are very dangerous, territorial, and best left alone. The Flesh Giants are nothing short of nightmarish abominations. Cobbled together from the pieces of giant body parts, the Flesh Giants employ tremendous strength to carry out the Lich King's wishes.
The World of Warcraft: Wrath of King Lich expansion pack allows you to engage in epic siege warfare. The pack presents the first Hero class and allows you to transform your Death Knight's look with character customization that even include hairstyles and dances. You'll enjoy exploring the Northrend and all its environments and dungeons, filled with some of the deadliest creatures -- and greatest treasures -- on all of Azeroth.
| System Requirements |
| Minimum | Recommended |
| Operating System | PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs) Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer |
| CPU | PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+ Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor | PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2 Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better |
| Graphics Hardware | PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better | PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better. |
| Memory | PC: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista) Mac: 1 GB | PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista) Mac: 2 GB |
| Hard Drive Space | 15 GB of free space |
| All Platform Requirements | Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play. |
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(229 customer reviews) 85 of 91 people found the following review helpful
Lich King has much more depth and is a lot more fun than Burning Crusade,
December 5, 2008 J. C. Amos (Seattle) - See all my reviews
= Fun:
This review is from: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack (DVD-ROM)
I have been playing World of Warcraft since a month after it came out. Not quite consistently, as I've taken a couple of 6 or so month breaks in that duration, but I've been there through all the changes. Having started playing the game again 2 years ago when Burning Crusade came out and being pretty disappointed, I have to say that restarting the game again this time with Lich King has been a much better experience. At first, I only got the expansion because all of my friends and all the old folks from my guild were getting back together. So I figured that even though I wasn't really looking forward to getting into the game again, at least I'd have the fun social aspect of it. But I'm having more fun playing the game with this expansion than I have had since the game started and everything was new.
So does that mean that the game has totally changed and we're playing a whole new WoW? Not exactly. It seems that this is the expectation that a lot of people are having...Read more
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful
For better or worse, its WoW with a new difficulty curve,
February 4, 2009 B. Dyer (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
= Fun:
This review is from: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack (DVD-ROM)
For the most part, this is by far the best incarnation of WoW yet. Northrend is joy to quest in since it looks nice, has excellent lore (at least for the alliance) that involves you like never before, and a new class that is really fun to play. However, after awhile the novelty of all this new stuff wears off and you're left with the end game content to keep you playing. As someone who can't raid, I was really looking forward to getting to run the new heroics and things. However, Blizzard's new philosophy on the "difficulty scaling" of the game has pretty much completely changed the way end game content runs. After less than a month of playing, my friends and I were tearing through the heroics like nothing. Its hard to get psyched for new gear when you can already dominate in what you have. Heroics in TBC were basically hard as heck raids for 5 people, and I miss that. Heroics aren't the only casualty to the new system: I've never seen so many people with the best gear in the...Read more
22 of 29 people found the following review helpful
More of the same,
May 23, 2009 D. Sun (Vallejo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
= Fun:
This review is from: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack (DVD-ROM)
WoW sucked me in for quite some time when it first came out. Quit for several months and came back for 1 month for BC and 1 month for LK. WoW is a finely crafted time sink...I mean game. You can putter around doing solo stuff, but the amount of effort, preparation, and time commitment for end game raiding is mind boggling.
This type of game is impossible at end game without a guild. The buildup of levels and the amount of statistic boosts on gear to convince people to play and try to collect new pieces for their paper dolls makes it so that there is a very low element of skill, since geared out people will slaughter without good gear.
WoW does offer other options, such as playing PvP instances to collect gear, but that is just a different time sink. Instead of raiding you get a PvP team together and try to kill other players.
The game itself is fun, but to be competitive it is a full time job that is only realistic for college kids skipping class, the...Read more