Northrend has always seemed more dead to me than Outland, at least after the first week. In Outland, you entered the portal and immediately had a massively battle going on on the other side. You were flown all around the first zone in the first handful of quests, and got to see lots of lore tie-ins and meets lots of new factions.

Further, the Alliance and Horde were coming together to fight a common foe, and the demons really were everywhere throughout the game. The other neutral factions (like the wind traders) had a lot more character than the neutral factions in Wrath do (Hodir? cool, but I don't come away with a big lasting impression).

Essentially, Outland somehow gave the impression that everyone there had just arrived and was exploring, and that the success of the entire war against the demons was hanging on a thread. Shatt was *great,* whereas Dalaran is a little too peaceful and perfect - no sense of urgency at all.

The Northrend factions all give the impression of having been there forever, of fighting static, never ending wars. There are some exceptions, but the lich king also fails to be a unifying force. He shows up in all the dungeons you'll hit early on, which is pretty cool, but there is a mess of totally unrelated stuff (the blue dragon flight, the titans and the old god). It's cool, but seems random and disconnected. How is any of this related to Arthas? Burning Crusade held together as a unified story line to a much greater extent.

The big exception, for me, is Zul'Drak, which I feel does a good job of showing how a number of factions are dealing with the lich king and the undead plague (I'm thinking the Ebon Blade, the Argent Crusade, and the trolls themselves).

Hopefully 3.2 will bring more focus and greater urgency. Right now, from a story perspective, there's no real reason why my character wouldn't choose to just live it up in Dalaran until some real threat appears.

Reply