BlizzCon started off with a bang with the official announcement of Wrath of the Lich King (those of us who picked up our schedules, found out about it before hand) and following the announcement was a panel about the new expansion and some more details on the areas, new class, and new profession. The basic details we all pretty much know, the level cap increased to eighty, the new zone is Northrend, Deathknight’s as the first hero class in the game, and inscription as the new profession.

As a very lore driven expansion it was made extremely clear that WotLK will introduce Arthas very early into the expansion and will have you interacting with him all the way up to the level cap, at which you can (presumably) take him down with a raid group. The nice thing about Northrend will be the fact that there will be two points of entry instead of the single point of entry that we had for Outland.

Some really nice details came out of the panel including the movement of Dalaran to Northrend as the new capital city which will be floating above the zone! This will be a huge lore area and it will be nice to see the city, sans the giant bubble that is currently over it. Also announced was the ability to use your flying mounts in Northrend! The Blizzard developers also dispelled any thoughts that we would be able to use our flying mounts in Azeroth, which has been addressed before and they have said they would not logistically be able to redo Azeroth to make it work.

Back to Northrend though, announced was a new Battleground that will support fifteen people per side (Blizzard seems to like this number) and they are estimating the match will take anywhere between thirty to forty minutes. This will also be the first BG to support siege weapons and destructible buildings! To coincide with the release of the expansion will be a new arena season (I’m thinking it will be Season 4), new arena gear, and new arena maps. Even more for the PvP crowd is a new non-instanced zone that is PvP oriented (as was the original design for Alteric Valley), it will be located in Lake Wintergrasp and support the new siege weapons and destructible buildings.

Moving onto the Death Knight, which will be the first hero class, it is expected to be able to fill a tank & DPS role. It will have the ability to tank with a two-hander or while dual-wielding (Tom Chilton then commented that you never saw Arthas wielding a shield). The class will be able to wield plate armor and will have a nice mix of spells & abilities which will be a mixture of casting & melee. Being the first hero class there were many questions that were in peoples minds that Tom answered fairly well.

Being the first hero class it will be an unlocked class, meaning a quest chain of some time (think of the Warlock Epic Mount questline), which after that you can create a Death Knight (any race) that will start at a relatively high level (assumedly 55-70 at this point), and this will also allow the ability to unlock more hero classes which are suppose to be down the pipeline. Alliance and Horde alike will be able to use the Death Knight.

The combat system for the Death Knight is very unique to itself and there is a rune resource system. You will be able to cast using three unique rune school of magic: blood, frost, and unholy. You can restore these runes and carve them into your weapons out of combat. Rune cooldowns can be affected by talents and attributes. Certain spells can also activate runes and spells can consume more that one rune. Shown there were only six slots to use for the runes. The Death Knight class unfortunately was not playable at the show, but it looks like it will be a very unique class, it will just be interesting to see how they balance it with the nine classes currently in the game.

Closing notes from Jeff Kaplan told us about the inclusion of Battleground Daily quests, Dungeon Daily quests, and a Cooking Daily quest. The panel had a lot of great information and it was nice when the Q&A session started because I asked Tom Chilton about the gear transition between 70 to 71 and he said it would follow the same progression as between 60 to 61 in terms of item level progression. Meaning that for entry level epics (think Karazhan gear) will most likely be replaced fairly quickly when entering Northrend.

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