The King Is Dead; Long Live The King?

08 Feb 2010 at 00:00:00 by Bill Vaughan

One year and three months after the Lich King was set loose upon World of Warcraft's Azeroth, he has finally been defeated. But can the King of MMOs keep its crown now the arguably most infamous villain in Warcraft lore is dead?

World of Warcraft is based on the Warcraft RTS games, the most recent of which, Warcraft III, is still highly popular. Arthas, or the Lich King as he's now known, was the focus of Warcraft III's expansion pack The Frozen Throne where we got to play out the Prince's fall from grace and witness his transformation into the Lich King. The events in WCIII directly affected the WoW we know today, so Arthas should be considered as important to WoW's lore as someone like Thrall. Now that he's gone, what effect is this likely to have on the game?

Honestly? None. Story wise, (beware, spoilers ahead) we've learned that the scourge will always need someone to govern them, and so a new Lich King has been appointed - no doubt, we'll see more of him later down the line – but I suspect what worries many Warcraft fans, people who have played the franchise since before WoW, is that Arthas was seen as the ultimate bad guy, responsible for the destruction of Lordaeron and Silvermoon, killer of Sylvanas Windrunner and a host of other crimes.

But, as Blizzard pointed out after the announcement of Wrath of the Lich King, Arthas isn't the only bad guy in Warcraft's history, not by a long shot. And in terms of lore, he only appeared in the chapter directly before WoW. So to players who've been with the Warcraft series since its RTS days, Arthas was admittedly a big deal, but his death isn't.

I also suspect that many WoW players don't really give a damn about the lore anyway, and were probably new to Warcraft when they first picked up WoW. Arthas, or the Lich King, was just another boss to loot. So how else could his demise adversely affect WoW?

Six months ago at BlizzCon 2009, WoW's next expansion, Cataclysm, was announced. Blizzard's epic plans for the game will almost redesign it from scratch, doing away with old deserted zones and replacing them with brand new areas filled with new quests, new layouts, new level recommendations and upgraded graphics. Old players are already vowing to return once this expansion hits the shelves but, based on WoW's last couple of expansions The Burning Crusade and WotLK, there's a lengthy gap between the announcement of an expansion and its release date.

Both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions went on sale around a year and three months after they were officially announced so, if Cataclysm follows the same pattern, it will be late Autumn when we see it go live. Blizzard has stated that patch 3.3, the opening of Icecrown Citadel, will be WoW's final content patch before Cataclysm, meaning that we have at least six months, maybe as long as nine months, before any new content is released. For the majority of WoW players, that's devastating news.

I expect Blizzard hopes that end-game players will be spending all their time between now and the release of Cataclysm working their way through Arthas' citadel in the hopes of killing him. However, Arthas is the hardest boss in the game and despite the encounter being available on 10 man difficulty, it's no walk in the park. Casual players, those who can spend around ten hours a week on WoW, really won't have a hope of ever seeing the Lich King defeated unless they're very lucky, and here's why;

To be able to get into Icecrown Citadel right now, players need a certain standard of gear - it's unlikely a pick up group will take anyone unless they already have the achievement or a very good gear score. To get the gear, players can run heroics over and over for emblems, but this will only get them so far. An alternative is trying to get better gear through pick up groups for lesser raids, such as Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader, but at this point most end game players will be in Icecrown Citadel, leaving only other under-geared players to attempt them. Again, luck may see the casual player through, but PUG groups for sub end-game raids end badly 90% of the time. A player's best bet to see the Lich King before Cataclysm is to join a decent guild, but this often requires players to be free at set days of the week for many hours at a time – something casual players can't often do.

In short, casual players, which make up a hefty percentage of WoW's player base, have a frustrating few months ahead of them. Unless Blizzard pulls something spectacular out of its sleeve in the meantime, I think many players will begin to seek their fun elsewhere.

Having said that, I think Cataclysm will be the most popular WoW expansion yet, and I suspect that former players will be reactivating their accounts in the droves. WoW will be safe once Cataclysm hits, for a while. It's lucky for Blizzard that BioWare's highly anticipated MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic isn't due out until next year. If it had been released sometime in the next few months, I think WoW would be fighting for its grip on that precious crown.

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