I love the scenery. I have explored both starting areas – Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord. I love how different they both feel. I love the way Blizzard have adapted things that were problems in the Burning Crusade – giving two starter areas with lots of quest hubs means that on the whole people are pretty spread out, and everything is playable, even though some competition for some content can be a challenge at times.

I’ve run through Utgarde Keep a couple of times, and I hope this is a sign of things to come – a nice, short dungeon, not too much trash, we completed it in an hour or less. Some interesting boss fights. It seemed pretty easy for well-geared level 70s.

I recommend everyone make a Death Knight and play through their initial quest line. It’s great. The phasing of the world is smooth and seamless, and there are glimpses of the new siege weapon interface (taking over a cannon to shoot hundreds of soldiers on the beach for example). The storytelling is great, and I think they do a really good job of introducing the class. I have yet to suss out how best to play my Death Knight – at the moment I’m still just frantically mashing buttons for each fight, but it seems to make stuff dead

I’m loving the fact that new content has rejuvenated my husband’s enjoyment of the game – he now can’t wait for us to log in in the evening and quest together. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way for a Resto druid to level is duoing with a Warlock. Although I don’t feel quite as fragile as I did when levelling 60-70 – the changes to spell power have helped with that I think.

On the whole the launch was very smooth from my point of view. The EU servers did not experience the extended downtime that the US servers suffered from. Game delivered my Collector’s Edition the day before the release, and when I installed it I was delighted to see that it used the same patch files that I had already downloaded for the standard game – another learning point from TBC perhaps? I was all installed and ready to go when I got home from work on the evening of the 12th, and so when whisperings went around the server that Northrend content was opening up early (about 8pm UK time), I was poised and ready to go. I got my Frosty, created my Death Knight, and got a couple of hours questing in with my husband before bedtime.

As far as downsides go, there have been queues on my server – the longest being 30 minutes or so – which I have never seen before. I’m sure this is a sign of the popularity of the expansion, and Blizzard have another huge success on their hands. By last night the queue was down to 10 minutes or so – it’s inconvenient but I can live with it.

The only other downside I’ve seen is that there seems to be the same trend with quest rewards as in TBC – there’s no caster leather! All the quests seem to reward with caster cloth or melee leather. Where’s the Resto/Moonkin love? In TBC I didn’t replace any of my pre-TBC resto gear until about level 68 I think – I was hoping for something a little earlier in Wrath. It’s not that much of a big deal at the moment, as I’m in Tier 4/Badge gear, which should last me very well.

But those are two very minor niggles, and on the whole I’m an extremely happy Druid (with slight Death Knight tendancies!)