As I embarked upon my epic journey from the lands of Azeroth and the Outlands I became aware of a new land being discovered in the north of Azeroth, Northrend, full of new regions and new friend and foe alike. I played alliance with my fury warrior and with the choice of sailing from Stormwinds new harbor to the Borean tundra or using the old Auberdine dock in Menithil harbor to start my adventure in the howling fjord. I started questing in the Borean tundra first where upon docking you land in Valiance Keep. Here you can also find profession trainers and traders as well as your quest givers to start your adventure.

 Once i started on my quests and wanderings around the lands in the region I started to realize the scale of this expansion. With many new enemies and friends spread over the area and the variety of quests that challenge your different talents, it means that even though most of the time horde and Alliance are doing the same quests and leveling in the same area you rarely bump into each other. If you don’t play in a PVE realm then you still have roaming elites to contend usually being level 80 elites. I found it a pretty good idea to keep out of their way.

Both starting areas have their own dungeon instances the nexus which is based in Coldarra and Utgarde Keep which is based in the dock of Valgrade the Howling fjord starting area. The Nexus is interesting with bosses such has tree shapers which have many 72 level non-epic flower creatures they control and being able to conjure icy spikes to obliterate its attackers to a big female dragon who has amazing damage per second when she hits frenzy while your group grinds her down. Utgarde Keep however, has the likes of the new enemy the Vykril and proto-dragons with the end boss being Ingvar the Plunderer who does most of his damage with AOE’s and although you have to kill him twice he’s fairly easy to kill. I quite enjoyed doing the new instance additions they are not complicated and if you have a good group and keep the aggro to a minimum it makes the game experience for all players very enjoyable, especially with the rewards not disappointing when they drop from the kill.