The Wrathgate

As a game designer, one should always be on the look out for really good ways of doing things. Always playing new games to get new ideas and learning new tricks. Each exceptional game you play is merely a lesson in how to (or sometimes how not to) do something.

It also shows the mark of a good company when they are able to take a tried and true formula and improve on it. Blizzard did this with a sequence of quests in the most recent expansion of World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Now there is still the standard fetch and fed-ex quests, but then there are quests that are clearly the main course of this expansion. One series of quests leads the player through the Dragonblight and hits several minor lore points before culminating in the event of the expansion.

Not only do they reward the player for their persistence with a glorious cutscene but it is followed up with a quest where the player attacks Undercity alongside King Varian and Jania, if you are Alliance, and with Thrall and Sylvannas if you are Horde.

Wrath of the Lich King, as an expansion, very much seemed to have the design philosophy “Make it feel like you are changing the world.” Phasing, a technology that allows the developer to change an area for each specific player was widely used in the expansion. As a player completes quests in a zone the NPCs, locations, even enemies change and shift to reflect the actions of the player. Quests chains tend to be much longer, far more lore steeped than before.

In the Battle for Undercity, it uses phased zones of the three major cities: Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Stormwind, to keep the player from being distracted by standard gameplay. It also pushes the player to complete the event immediately, as they can’t choose which phase to enter. Once completed, the player receives an achievement, Veteran of the Wrathgate. Then from that point on, the area surrounding the culmination of the quest in the Dragonblight is forever changed. Fire burns, bodies are strewn about, weapons lay alongside the fallen. It looks like a battle has been fought, of truly epic proportions, and your character participated.

It should say something that I always make the effort to complete the Wrathgate series on every character I level in Northrend. The lore, the cutscene, the sheer beauty and poetry of the quest line and event is a treat I am unable to pass up. And I have done it 5 times. Each time I revel in the quests and get very excited as I approach the end. I watch the entire cutscene and feel the tears prick my eyes.

Blizzard has managed to take a standard formula, make it exceptional, and make it endlessly re-playable. It leaves my appetite for Cataclysm whetted, with the hope they not only continue to do this kind of thing, but expand and improve it.

(Note: This is also very true of the Death Knight starting area. I honestly wish that people could get a trial version of the game and just play a Death Knight until they were out of the starting area. Yes, many of the jokes and references would be missed by new players, but it is still one of the most well designed and interesting parts of the game. The starting area does many of the same things that the Wrathgate does, minus the cutscene. Unfortunately one must have a level 55 character and Wrath to be able to even start a Death Knight. My fingers are crossed hoping that the starting areas in Cata are at least similarly well done, if not exactly like the DK starting area.)

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