News: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Preview Mania

One of the most prominent features of the new content is the addition of a new class, the Death Knight. Though we didn't actually get to play the class during our hands-on time with the game, we were given some details about how he fights and plays. If you have a level 55 character, which you likely do if you're still playing the game at this point, you can head to the character creation screen and generate one Death Knight, limited to one per server. Once created, you begin your time with him in an all-new starting area at level 55, which includes story bits explaining why and how you broke away from Arthas. Interestingly, this means you won't actually be able to see any of the new content as a Death Knight until you've leveled to around 70, which means you'll be plowing through Outland again.

We still like leveling up our character and watching numbers grow larger as we acquire bigger swords and learn better spells as much as when we played our first MUD. But it’s the excitement that comes with exploring and discovering things like that sweet spot at the top of the tree in Grizzly Hills that made us fall in love with World of Warcraft years ago. We’re looking forward to rolling a Death Knight and finding new equipment for our main character. But most of all, we’re looking forward to losing ourselves in World of Warcraft… again.

The last bit of info we'll discuss before we dive into the zones are the new quest types. We saw a demo of a rescue mission that segued into a unique twist on your typical escort. The demo followed a Draenei paladin who rescues a human from captivity. In order to escape, the former captive hops on a horse and heads off to safety. As he does, the Draenei actually mounted the same horse, sitting behind him, and went along for the ride. While the ride was obviously on rails, it was possible for the Draenei to perform a small selection of attacks on the enemies swarming to stop the escape. This feature is tied to the new vehicle mechanic for siege weapons that will also add action functionality when you're on certain flying mounts as well.

Unlike Burning Crusade, which threw all players into the same starting zone, the new expansion will give players a choice when starting their adventures. Not only does this serve to spread players out (which helps ameliorate the "mass extinction events" endemic to new areas), it avoids boredom during alt-play. Both the eastern zone of Howling Fjord (which was the area featured at Blizzcon) and western entry points of Borean Tundra will be accessible to Horde and Alliance. Each of them also sports creatures of similar level ranges along with starter dungeons players can access almost from the first moment they set foot on the continent.