World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, often referred to as WotLK, or Wrath, is the second expansion set for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, following The…

97 13 November 2008

Role-playing (RPG) Fantasy Open world

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is a role-playing (rpg) developed by Blizzard Entertainment, released 13 November 2008 on Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 16 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is a role-playing (rpg) game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released in 2008. It is available on Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

The premise, in the publisher's words

For years, the heroes of the Alliance and Horde have fought against the evils in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, against the demons of the Burning Legion in Outland, and against each other - all the while unaware that a threat more dangerous than any they had yet encountered was preparing to make its move in the icy continent of Northrend. Now the Lich King, Arthas Menethil, has emerged from Icecrown Citadel to claim the world as his own. Heroes of the Alliance and Horde gather in Northrend to make a stand against the malevolent being that dares to declare himself Azeroth's one true king...and seeks to scour all life from the world.

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are fantasy and open world.

Where it sits in the Warcraft series

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is the 14th of 69 entries we hold in the Warcraft series. It arrived a year after World of Warcraft - Battle Chest. The next entry was World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Collector's Edition in 2008. Its critic score of 97 is 17 points above the series average of 80. That makes it the highest-rated entry in the series.

See all 69 Warcraft games in release order →

How it was received

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King holds a critic score of 97 out of 100. That places it above 99% of the 3,813 rated role-playing (rpg) games in our database, which average 73. Games released in 2008 averaged 65, so it scored 32 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 94, across 290 votes.

What it launched against

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King launched on 13 November 2008, within three weeks of Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead and LittleBigPlanet. It reviewed better than all of them.

Released around the same time: Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, LittleBigPlanet.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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