^^

this is your reward for the entire wrath expansion. it should be unique.
i truthfully wasn't expecting arthas' loot to share models with other weapons in game already.

What I hate is that they made the Windrunner weapon into a crossbow. I know, I know, there's already a bow in the earlier part of the instance and Blizzard generally doesn't want to make the uber-weapon into one which benefits a certain race due to racials, but it's still kinda depressing. Here's the ranged weapon of the previous elven Ranger-General of Quel'thalas and it's a crossbow, not a bow. :(

They can avoid the waste by making awesome, unique models, then reusing them for Cataclysm heirlooms or 'signature' levelling blues (i.e. the new Ring of Blood blues). That way we get awesome models now and awesome models later, when ICC is no longer relevant.

This whole expansion has been pretty disappointing in terms of armor and weapon models imo. Remember when you were leveling 70 - 80 all around Northrend, and there were maybe 2 or 3 models for each item? It took nearly until Naxx for me to get away from those god awful football pad looking shoulders they doled out to clothies. In fact, the only really awesome, imaginative gear I've seen has been from Alganon, the end-all, be-all Ulduar boss, who dropped weapons made out of friggin constellations...and NO ONE else drops them. If you're carrying around one of those weapons...everyone can see you downed Alganon. But for some reason, Arthas, the subject for this entire expansion we've all been pouring our lives into for over a year, drops gear that looks exactly like all his minion's drops in ICC. I feel this is pure laziness on Blizzard's part. You can't come up with ANYTHING new??? Hundreds of the best game developers and designers in the world and we get non-unique models for downing the LICH KING? Yeah, this might be close to QQ'ing, but for the hundreds of dollars we've paid to play this game to this point, and the time we've put into it, I feel Blizzard could have done a little better for effin ARTHAS. This is really starting to feel like a trend. For example, go back and watch the trailers for the original WoW, BC, and WotLK....they're amazing and beautiful. Now go watch the Cataclysm trailer....it's like a really cheesy advertisement and not at all as thrilling and exciting as the others. No, I'm not going to quit WoW over crappy Arthas drops, but come on Blizz! Maybe that's exactly what they know....none of us (or at least not enough to make a difference) are going to quit WoW anytime soon over gear models, and they can afford to be lazy about it. It's like Walmart...no matter how many times you go in there and bitch and wait in line for 30 minutes when there are 4 out of 30 registers open....they don't have to give a sh*t...they know you'll be back anyway, and you know it too.

Actually, if you look at the "reveal" trailers of TBC and WotLK you'll see the Cataclysm one is at the same level. The reveal trailers are generally made with the in-game engine showing only a few new areas of the zones.

That being said, I hope Blizzard re-does the Lich King gear like they did the T2 set way back in Classic. Remember the original Bloodfang set and what it later became? I almost rolled a rogue just because of that set! That's the kind of effect the top-end gear must have on people.

yep