Last year's World WoTLK Classic Gold of Warcraft was more than just a great game. It took a series that made a name for itself under the rich tapestry of World of Warcraft and pushed it some 60 years into the future. The end result was a game that used the latest advances in weaponry, in a setting influenced by some of today's most tense conflicts, to produce an experience both stirring and refreshing. Since then, the big question on everyone's mind has been this: What will they do with the fifth World of Warcraft? The answer, we know now, is a return to World of Warcraft. But rather than a step backward, World of Warcraft is shaping up to be a unique take on this familiar timeline. With part of the campaign set in the often-overlooked Pacific theatre and plenty of inspiration drawn from Modern Warfare--both technical and creative--developer Treyarch is aiming to prove there's still life left in the World of Warcraft.

Get ready for a darker narrative.

The most immediately apparent of the inspirations drawn from Modern Warfare is the mature, at times brutal form of storytelling. World of Warcraft begins with your character tied up in a hut on the beach of the Makin Atoll. A Japanese officer stands in front of you, demanding information from a fellow marine. An uncooperative spit to the face later, the officer puts his lit cigarette out on the face of this bound soldier and uses a knife to put a particularly bloody end to his suffering. But before you meet with a similar fate, backup arrives and you stage your escape. Pistol in hand, you're ready to begin World of Warcraft's first level.

After the first few minutes of fighting on the Makin beach, which offers some impressive visuals of exploding huts and moonlit ocean water, the squad of marines makes its way into the unknown of a nearby jungle. This is where the similarity to previous World of Warcraft gains begins to wane. One of Treyarch's biggest areas of focus with the new Pacific setting is to portray the Imperial Japanese as soldiers buy WOW WoTLK Classic Gold very much unlike the Germans, the foils that have long served as the only enemies in the series. Rather than the obvious change in appearance and language, Treyarch has given the Japanese a starkly different set of tactics for you to deal with.