WWI '08 notes from WoW Insider's chat with Xfire
Our very own Mark "Turpster" Turpin and Jennie Lees were invited to sit down with Xfire users and chat about their thoughts from the Worldwide Invitational. You can read the entire transcript, but we've encapsulated most of the goodies for you in this post.
Mounts and battlegrounds
Answering a question about water mounts, Jennie said that they don't seem to be in the works. Still, you can get your H2O kicks with the non-player-controllable boats in Lake Wintergrasp. Another questioner asked whether the flying combat mounts will take damage. Some of these combat mounts will have shielding to protect the player from damage, but the mount will take damage instead.
Killing Arthas
Consensus in the chat was that there is a lot of excitement around the idea of being able to kill Arthas, the Lich King, even if it takes up the same progression as Kil'Jaeden currently does in TBC. The hope is that Frostmourne will drop, but the consequences of getting the sword are not yet known. Will it corrupt the player and take away stats? Will players become the new Lich King if they pick it up? We'll have to wait and see.
That's just one of the questions awaiting an answer for us in the post-Wrath world. Another came from a chat question about whether there would be any future for the Warcraft franchise after Arthas is dead. From what our bloggers have heard, there's no standing still for the franchise. Turpster says, "I think a favourite King of mine might be making a return to a Stormy City!"
Loot
Blizzard has said that players in Tier 6 and Sunwell loot won't be replacing them with Northrend greens. However, as with TBC, the new expansion is a leveling of the playing field as far as gear is concerned so some of the new items will indeed seem pretty overpowered compared to what was available pre-expansion. For example, we've seen mid-range dungeon rewards that are almost equivalent to Cursed Vision of Sargeras!
Death Knight
A chat participant was concerned that playing the Death Knight class would be complicated because of the rune system. Turpster's theory is that the complexity of the class is the reason for the level 55 requirement.
Other observations
Turpster's on record predicting that Wrath will break Burning Crusade's opening sales record.
Even Samwise Didier and Cory Stockton from Blizzard didn't know the point of the evil penguin in the CSS code of the splash screens.
Jennie's banking on a Wrath collector's edition, much like TBC had, but none has been hinted at yet.
Best question of the chat: Will Gnomes still be sexy in WotLK? Turpster says, "They are Gnomes, they have a Racial Passive to Sexy, plus 5 to lookin' hot!"
Turpster's favorite thing about WotLK so far is the Orcish city of Garrosh. He hints at something forboding: "My favourite Orc is there with disturbing news about what is in store for the Orc's capital when Lich King hits the shops!"
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